Respect for Nature

by

john Clements

Fanciers who fly long distance pigeons know the practice of 'Open Hole'  helps. This directly opposed to successful fanciers who do sprint racing; here a system of controlled  management adds to their success.

The two philosophies are entirely different. The long distance man first wants to at least clock as his first consideration while the sprint fancier wants speed.

Occasionally the sprint man, using sprint methods,   tries his hand in long distance racing - usually as the distance increases he fails to clock.  This, if he is a thinking fancier,  should be no surprise to him but a few  sprint fanciers who think they have the system totally cracked and know  everything  about pigeon racing, are amazed that their sprint methods do not work when it comes to the long distance.

There are reasons for all of this. When a pigeon gets home from distances over 700 miles in the space of  two days is unquestionably a Spiritual or Nature  event.  This is an event where the full and hardly understood power of  'Nature'  is more in control than the puny efforts of mans limited  understanding.

With this in mind it is obvious why the 'Open Hole' method works -  it leaves a lot to 'Nature' to do its thing in its own time and in its own way.  It is more likely to succeed than any over strict control system. I have not told the whole story of preparing long distance pigeons here, my focus is about the role of the 'spiritual'  in our lives and in society in general.

Any culture - any country - any sport or pastime needs  to have a respect for the 'Spiritual’. Muhammad Ali, the boxer, is the case I have in mind.  Many will remember  he served a time in prison because he refused to be part of the Vietnam war.  There was certainly a huge spiritual component in his make-up that allowed him to withstand the pressure of Government. This component also  made him what he was as a boxer, a legend and a world figure. A lot of now common phrases are attributed to him or his followers.  ‘Rope a Dope’ ‘float like a butterfly’  etc?  for example.

Political systems (I don't need to name them) over the ages have tried to deny spiritual respect as a part of their political philosophy. All have failed and will continue to fail simply because any materialistic, monetary or scientific understanding  is just not enough to know the whole thing.

Up to now the Modern pigeon sport here in the UK  and many fanciers have concentrated on Material scientific explanations for success but don’t seem to have any spiritual understanding. The mere fact that some of our pigeons home from huge distances should scream a spiritual message to all of us.

This message - for the wise -   should be part of the awareness of those who run our major clubs and those who  make decisions. In this computer dominated  age a yearly list of individual pigeons that home from over 700 miles in two days would help. .  This is not a lot to ask and there would not be many of them. . If this were done the sport would hugely benefit and perhaps begin to reverse  the decline it is now suffering. It would do this because it now had now began to respect  the ''spiritual' and ‘Nature’ as part of our sport and once again return us to a new kind of rude good health.