“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If there’s anything I like to see
It’s a bunch of pudgy God-fearing grown men at it again,
Shooting down the starlings.
I mean, crazy man. Go, go, go.
Why not have a band play and give balloons away?
There’s nothing like killing birds
To clean up the business section.
We could feature a Starling Day, for our centennial celebration,
Such elation as the city fathers
And other pot-bellied elders
Did their best to keep the city clean.
We could give ice cream away to the kids who killed the most,
The hosts of observers could yell the cheer:
“Oh, it takes such courage and it takes such brawn
To drop the blackbirds on the County House lawn.”

The idiot swears
That the birds are holy.
He shouts as the starlings drop
And the police chuckle good-naturedly
“Stop. The spirits are displeased.
Look how the bare branches rustle.”

One man bent to wash his hands in it
And saw
The skin peel off like dirt,
But the lawn was full
With the falling corpses of the birds,
And when he cried out, no one heard.

I’d identified all life with the birds, of course. Miss Cunningham, Rob, me and all the people that we knew were surely getting shot down; falling through time, we were dying in a descent that we couldn’t understand or control. Either that, or Seth and the material — still so strange to me — were giving answers that I refused, so far, to accept in practical terms.

Remembering how upset I had been about the death of the starlings, Rob asked, “Could you say something about the birds that were killed at the gallery?”

Ruburt was upset, and with good reason. … It goes without saying that a bird’s death is inevitable, but a cat killing a bird does not have to juggle the same sort of values with which a man must be concerned. For now, suffice it to say that to kill for self-protection or food on your plane does not involve you in what we may call for the first time, I believe, karmic consequences.