Critter
Wisdom
“I
think I could turn and live with animals. They do not sweat and whine
about their condition. Not one is dissatisfied.”
Walt
Whitman
My
little dog, Liza, has a practice. Each morning, as I am dragging
myself from bed, she gets up from her's. I stretch, and she
stretches. Then she comes to me and bows, front elbows to the floor,
tail waving in the air. I bow to her, hands together, down at her
level, and say, “Namaste, Liza. The spirit in me bows to the spirit
in you.”
During the work week, I have four dogs at my house; my son's three, and Liza.
The “big dogs” are diggers, and have excavated a cavern in my
back yard searching for voles they can hear scratching in the ground. From time to time, I fill it with stumps and rocks, sand and mulch, and they very
patiently dig it out again. Now there's an even bigger hole with a
variety of logs and stones lying about, like a ruined mini-Stonehenge. I call it, “The Shrine of the Sacrificial Vole.” The
dogs don't complain that I fill their vole-hole, they don't despair,
they simply set about their job of digging.
Animals can teach us a thing or two about how to
live. Birds, for instance, spend vast amounts of time and energy
building nests. They search for just the right stuff, and
painstakingly weave it together for their precious eggs. They don't
whine about the difficulty of the work, the quality of the raw
materials, or having to do the same darn thing year after year. They
don't fight over twigs and feathers, or compare their constructions
to their bird neighbors, or criticize the squirrels for their messy
nests. They just do their bird thing, and sing while they do it. Live
and let live, you know.
If
you have a chance today, pay attention to the critters in your area.
They have wisdom to impart. Take notes.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment