Alive.

At 0100 on Christmas Day, a hay net is given to the statue of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge opposite Horse Guards, in the belief that all animal statues come alive for a few hours on Christmas morning.

Thanks, Mum.

Baptized.

Nearer to the earth's heart,

Deeper within its silence:

Animals know this world

In a way we never will.

We who are ever

Distanced and distracted

By the parade of bright

Windows thought opens:

Their seamless presence

Is not fractured thus.

Stranded between time

Gone and time emerging,

We manage seldom

To be where we are:

Whereas they are always

Looking out from

The here and now.

May we learn to return

And rest in the beauty

Of animal being,

Learn to lean low,

Leave our locked minds,

And with freed senses

Feel the earth

Breathing with us.

May we enter

Into lightness of spirit,

And slip frequently into

The feel of the wild.

Let the clear silence

Of our animal being

Cleanse our hearts

Of corrosive words.

May we learn to walk

Upon the earth

With all their confidence

And clear-eyed stillness

So that our minds

Might be baptized

In the name of the wind

And light and the rain.

John O'Donohue

Told.

THE GREEN MAN

Since early childhood I believed
in a door in the forest.  I looked for it
for more than half a century
and it evaded me.  The Green Man
lived there, part tree and part human.
Keeping his distance he told me a lot.
Walk mostly sideways in the wilderness
to confuse those who would track you.
When outside, sleep with your eyes open
and see the coyote pup approach out
of curiosity, the small bear resting
against a stump a hundred yards away, 
a warbler standing on your toe singing.
When I was lost he howled at me from a tree, "Wrong way."
I dreamed where he lived, high on the steep
bank of the river concealed under a thick drapery
of tree roots but I skidded on my tummy
down into the river, a sign to give up.
There was a stinking wolf den close by so my dog
wouldn't stay with me.  The Green Man alone, forever.

Jim Harrison

Believe.

So many traditions look for the ethereal in animals. The Hindus, among others, believe we are reincarnated over and over, taking on animal and human forms as we move toward the divine. Cats were deified in ancient Egypt, and in the Catholic tradition, St. Francis of Assisi communicated with and preached to animals. Many Native American cultures have totems — wolves, hawks and others — to guide, protect and test individuals throughout life. Human beings may look to animals to embody what we can’t see but want to believe is there.

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