by Denise Levertov
Come into animal presence
No man is so guileless as
the serpent. The lonely white
rabbit on the roof is a star
twitching its ears at the rain.
The llama intricately
folding its hind legs to be seated
not disdains but mildly
disregards human approval.
What joy when the insouciant
armadillo glances at us and doesn't
quicken his trotting
across the track and into the palm brush.
What is this joy? That no animal
falters, but knows what it must do?
That the snake has no blemish,
that the rabbit inspects his strange surroundings
in white star-silence? The llama
rests in dignity, the armadillo
has some intention to pursue in the palm-forest.
Those who were sacred have remained so,
holiness does not dissolve, it is a presence
of bronze, only the sight that saw it
faltered and turned from it.
An old joy returns in holy presence.
Today we celebrate our fellow animals. Not just our animal friends, I include we who walk on two legs too. It is important to recognise that we too are animals. That the animals who we share this world with are kin. We are formed from the same flesh and I believe have the same spirit animating us. Ok we are not exactly the same, but we are formed from the same earth and are animated by the very same breath of life. In fact it is worth remembering that the word “animal” is formed from the Latin word “animalis”, which actually means having a soul; the word animal shares the same root as the word for breath “animus”. So yes, we are formed from the same earth with the very same spirit within us.
Now somewhere along the way we humans began to think of ourselves as far superior to other animals, somehow separate from them. This though was not always so, in ancient times and in the so-called primitive cultures a few of which still exist today, people lauded the animals as great teachers, purveyors of wisdom, possessors of souls and spiritual qualities. There was a time when humans and animals were more closely connected. Some of we modern rational thinkers tend to look on all this as ignorance. But I wonder. I challenge you to wonder too. Is it possible that they might know something we don’t?
I certainly recognise what I call soul in humans in Molly. She has been such a part of my life these last four years. We have gone through so much together. The Hindu’s talk of the Atman in each of us, I see this in Molly.
Molly has become a part of the lives of so many others; Molly is a bridge between myself and others. She enables me to get closer to people when I am out and about. She led to a conversation the other day which brought healing to a person as she left our company. What began as someone interested in Molly lead to a deep conversation about grief, love and loss. If that is not the soul at work in life, I do not know what is. Molly’s soul became a bridge between two human souls that certainly brought healing. I had a lovely conversation with groomer about her on Monday. She had obviously charmed her in their time together. Unlike some dogs she loves, particularly the personal attention. Molly is deeply intuitive and in tune, she seems to know how to be with different people. Like all of us she is not perfect, she has her characteristics that can annoy too. Don’t we all.
Now of course dogs experience life in their own way. Molly takes in the world sensually, very differently to me. She lives through her nose, as dogs do. She inhales life and then breathes that spirit out blessing it in her own dog like way. This is soulful to me. I sometimes get frustrated at this, especially if I am trying to get somewhere. I later get frustrated with myself for not letting her fully savour every morsel of the journey.
She does not carry shame about her existence as I can at times. She doesn’t doubt her being. She is fully at ease with her own animal body. She belongs wherever she goes. Molly does not complain about her existence she has to just be wherever she finds herself. She might not want to go out in the rain and would like a little more attention at times. The groomer was laughing at how when she stopped grooming for a while Molly asked her why with a little bark and nudge of her nose. She found it so funny. Molly though has no shame or doubt about her existence.
Walt Whitman observed this about the animals.
“They do not sweat and whine about their condition, they do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins, they do not make me sick discussing their duty to God, not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things.”
Whitman the poet of the body and the soul, holds up a mirror to we creatures, who inhabit an animal body complicated by our human being. We see the soul, as an organ of want and worry, which we invented to explain why we make art, why we fall in love, why we yearn to converse with reality in prayers and postulates. The animal though perhaps is the true being of soul as they experience life and bless life through soulful expression. This is what I see through Molly however she interacts with life. She truly lives on the frontier living through the conversational nature of life, although she has no words.
I think sometimes our words, the limits of our language, get in the way our living soulfully alive being blessed and blessing this life. Something two of my favourite poets Walt Whitman and David Whyte often spoke of. I see something of Whitman in the writing of Melanie Challenger who wrote in “How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human”
She wrote:
We live behind a hidden membrane through which — at any moment — one of us may tumble to find ourselves on the other side. Opening our eyes, we face the truth of what we are, a thinking and feeling colony of energy and matter wrapped in precious flesh that prickles when it’s cold or in love. We are a creature of organic substance and electricity that can be eaten, injured and dissipated back into the enigmatic physics of the universe. The truth is that being human is being animal. This is a difficult thing to admit if we are raised on a belief in our distinction.
We are though animal, we have a soul. Maybe we are a soul. We should sing the joy of being an animal. Do as Mary Oliver instructed. “Let the soft animal of our body love what it loves.”
Molly and me went for a walk in the woods the other day. As we were walking I thought to myself, you know sometimes even the woods need cheering up. So, I thought to myself, do you know what I’m going to tell this joke. And you know what happened? Nobody laughed. So, I thought to myself, If you tell a joke in the woods and nobody laughs, is it really a joke?
Apologies for the terrible joke, but I am mocking that old expression “That if a tree falls in a wood and nobody is around to hear it, can we say for certain that it actually fell? I realise it is just a thought experiment, but it one that is part of the problem. Life does not need human witness for it to be so. It also diminishes the spirit of the tree that has no meaning unless we humans give it to the tree. Yes I realise that this claim could be made about this very address. It brings to mind this wonderful poem by Wendell Berry, To the Unseeable Animal”
“To The Unseeable Animal” by Wendell Berry
My daughter: "I hope there's an animal
somewhere that nobody has ever seen.
And I hope nobody ever sees it."
Being, whose flesh dissolves
at our glance, knower
of the secret sums and measures,
you are always here,
dwelling in the oldest sycamores,
visiting the faithful springs
when they are dark and the foxes
have crept to their edges.
I have come upon pools
in streams, places overgrown
with the woods' shadow,
where I knew you had rested,
watching the little fish
hang still in the flow;
as I approached they seemed
particles of your clear mind
disappearing among the rocks.
I have waked deep in the woods
in the early morning, sure
that while I slept
your gaze passed over me.
That we do not know you
is your perfection
and our hope. The darkness
keeps us near you.
As I observe Molly blessing and being blessed by life through her inquisitive nose I wonder how much I deny and filter out in life. How much I don’t know and or don’t want to know. Know it or not life goes on regardless of me. We are too often afraid of the unknown, that we need to know. It is not living, in fear of what might not be. In this poem Wendell Berry beautiful offers a hopeful view of the unknown. That the elements of life that we haven’t yet discovered are just as likely, if not more likely, to contain beauty and promise as they are to spell doom. “That we do not know you,” Berry writes, “is your perfection and our hope.” The things out there in the dark are to be revered and respected, even celebrated, rather than feared.
Our souls need to be enthused with respair, with a new and fresh hope. We need to carry this in our solus so as to receive the blessings of living and to bless all we meet with our joy filled presence.
It is in watching Molly and living in nature itself that enables me to do this. In so doing I am being taught how to not fear my nature and to be wholly true to it. It helps me see myself as I truly am As a part of life, as part of the nature of everything. So many of our human problems stem from our sense of separation, that we are not a part of everything. By observing the animals we can once again see that we are a part of everything and that we belong here and that there is nothing really wrong with us. We just forget who we are from time to time.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, author of “The Secret Garden” said:
“How it is that animals understand things I do not know, but it is certain that they do understand. Perhaps there is a language which is not made of words, and everything in the world understands it. Perhaps there is a soul hidden in everything and it can always speak, without even making a sound, to another soul.”
We can learn so much from our brothers and sisters the animals, they can teach us once again what it is to be fully human and a part of life.
We just need to remember to let the soft animal of its body, love what it loves. If you want to know just go outside and observes the birds in the air and or the dogs in the park. Listen to them fly and sing or watch them at play. All souls need to let the soft animal of their bodies love what they love.
It seems right to end with Mary Oliver’s “Wild Geese”
“Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Please find below a video devotion based on the material in this "Blogspot"
