Chickens and Chain Mail

For many fans of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the “making of” featurettes are almost as fun as the films themselves. In the extended documentary of The Two Towers, we get to see a great deal about how New Line Cinema created the Fighting Uruk-Hai, the goblin horde that assails our heroes at Helm’s Deep. One of the things that strikes many people as nearly insane is the level of detail that went into their clothing and, in particular, their armor. For every single one of the hundreds of extras who worked on these movies, entire shirts of real, functioning chain mail were hand-forged: shirts that could not even be seen in the films because they were usually covered with cloaks!

Why put in so much “needless” work? Well, bear with me. My beautiful bride has a long-time love affair with ducks and chickens which I have always found endearing, though slightly baffling, and a few months ago, we finally decided to start keeping a few chickens of our own. In the process of learning about how to tend them, we have watched various documentaries, including one called The Natural History of the Chicken.

This film reveals profound depths in the physical and (yes, I know how it sounds) psychological underpinnings of the chicken. I know, love, and respect these creatures far better now, despite the fact that I still feel as though God had an uproarious time inventing them. It’s just a silly little bird. Why put so much care and craft into every feather? No one’s going to notice. Most of the feathers can’t even be seen!

Well, now you see where I’m going with this. You may not see every ring of the Orcish armor, nor every feather of the chicken’s plume. But we can feel the love, the absolute love, that went into every molecule of these things. Why put in so much needless work? Because it’s needless! Because love gives itself in superabundance. Because chain mail is cool and chickens are fun and God is so in love with us it’s insane!