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Imagine
a warm spring day on a small farm in Mississippi.
The flowers are in fragrant bloom, and a sow that has free
run of the farmyard has just given birth to piglets.
Later that day, a glance under the porch where the new
babies are resting reveals a wonderful sight. The
mother pig has carefully bitten off blossoms to make a
bouquet of jonquils, which she has arranged in a bright
yellow wreath surrounding the sleeping litter.
No one who saw such a scene could
doubt that animals know just as much about nurturing and
celebrating life as people do, and maybe much more.
The woman who wrote to tell me about this barnyard nativity
accompanied her letter with a hand -rendered drawing showing
a halo of flowers with their stems pointing outward, petals
toward the center, piglets nestled snugly in the
middle. She included other stories as well, like the
one about her two horses Rifle, a gelding, and April, a
pretty black mare. Rifle was quite enamored of
April. When the mare was sent to Missouri to be bred
to a race horse, Rifle was never the same again, and he died
not long afterward. Such experiences, along with
seventy-four years of caring for dogs and cats, convinced my
correspondent that animals indeed have souls, with joy and
sorrows very much like our own.
Over the years I received a good
many letters like that from readers who believed, like me,
that animals can inspire us to wiser and more winsome
living. When The Souls of Animals was first
published, I wrote about my own dog, Chinook, calling him my
spiritual guide. Although he is no longer
living, what I said then still holds:
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"My
dog has deep knowledge to impart. He makes
friends easily and doesn't hold a grudge. He
enjoys simple pleasures and takes each day as it
comes. Like a true Zen master, he eats when
he's hungry and sleeps when he's tired. He's
not hung up about sex. Best of all, he
befriends me with an unconditional love that human
beings would do well to emulate.
"Chinook
does have his failings, of course. He's afraid
of firecrackers and hides in the clothes closet
whenever we run the vacuum cleaner, but unlike me
he's not afraid of what other people think of him or
anxious about his public image. He barks at
the mail carrier and the newsboy, but in contrast
with some people I know he never growls at the
children or barks at his wife.
"So
my dog is sort of a guru. When I become too
serious and preoccupied, he reminds me of the
importance of frolicking and play. When I get
too wrapped up in abstractions and ideas, he reminds
me of the importance of exercising and caring for my
body. On his own canine level, he shows me
that it might be possible to live without inner
conflicts or neuroses: uncomplicated, genuine and
glad to be alive." |
As Mark Twain remarked long ago,
human beings have a lot to learn from the Higher
Animals. Just because the haven't invented static
cling, ICBMs, or television evangelists doesn't mean they
aren't spiritually evolved.
But what does it mean for an
animal (including the human animal) to be spiritually
evolved? In my mind, it means many things: the
development of a moral sense, the appreciation of beauty,
the capacity for creativity, and the awareness of one's self
within a larger universe as well as a sense of mystery and
wonder about it all. These are the most precious gifts
we possess, yet there is nothing esoteric or otherworldly
about such spiritual capabilities. Indeed, my
contention is that spirituality is quite natural, rooted
firmly in the biological order and in the ecology shared by
all life.
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