Paul Kingsnorth says it’s not just the indigenous peoples have a sense of the world being alive or having relationships with animals. It’s also the Christian view of the world. I was sitting in front of my computer for the third of his classes in St Basil’s Writers Workshop. What it means to be human is to be like Adam and Eve in the garden when they were at peace with the natural world. We broke the communion we had with God and with animals because we wanted to be God. And death infected everything. As a result, he says, “We’re at war with nature, Creation is sickened by human rebellion. We can’t go back home to this garden. Even if we could find it because there is an angel with fiery sword guarding it.”
But the wild saints made peace with creation. He talked about St. Kevin who prayed with his arms stretched out like he was on the cross and a blackbird landed in his palm. The blackbird built a nest and fledged her babies while his arm stayed outstretched. He read Seamus Heaney’s poem, St. Kevin and the Black Bird (this link is Heaney’s reading.)
He talked about St. Cuthbert who prayed in the North Atlantic and when he came out the otters dried him off with their fur. He said, “Longer they pray, the more they lose themselves. As they turn into the world. They become whole. Animals recognize that as the state of first humans before fall. Even wild beasts can’t harm you.”
Then he gave us our assignment:
Why don’t you go outside and find an animal that you can write about where you imagine you are a saint. How would they respond to you?
I switched off Zoom, went downstairs and sat with our old dog and ate my yogurt. Dolly won’t eat unless I’m eating and sitting with her. Then I put leashes on both dogs and walked them around the house. It was so bitter the birds and squirrels were quiet. The snow and grass looked like merle dog or a piebald horse. I came in to write the following:
I’m getting there. This saint business. Probably I shouldn’t admit this, here, now. To you or myself.
I’ve had birds hop ahead, lifting off and landing, leading me out the driveway. (You can read about it in I Follow a Sparrow Who Leads Me Here.) The sparrows will light on the wires in the barn, and on the wall and look. Always I’m reminded of how He knows when they fall. I have found their feathers in the water bucket or on the road.
The feral cat Onyx became my friend. Onyx who used to hiss and meow both. We welcomed him because the rats were so tame I could pet one as he ran up the rafters. We had chickens then who came running when they saw me because I carried food. Is it food that speaks the language between us and the animals? The dolphin trainers thought so. Then came the dog and horse trainers following.
But I could call Onyx back from a quarter mile away. He loved to jump on the hay insulating our heat plant, while I drew water. He rubbed his face in my hands. We brought him inside after he was injured and the vet refused to put him to sleep because he was a good cat, because I was losing the dog of my heart.
A few days ago, our feral cat Tiger sat on the ledge talking to me. And I spoke back His voice quieted. I told him I was sorry his brother died. But I am not a saint. I stepped up and lifted my hand toward him. He disappeared back to the loft and cried in a loud voice and was silent.
And coyotes have howled behind the shed. If I were a saint, they might come up to me and wrap themselves around my legs. But I have shouted, “Get away” and they have quieted.
A saint would let animals speak. They would be allowed to have an opinion. Oma barks and leaps for my leash because she doesn’t want still prayer. She doesn’t want quiet. She wants my attention, my eyes on her, my walk paced to bring her focus to me, mine to her.
I have told my mare that the bitter medicine would help her. She stood, no halter, nothing, and let me plunge the bitter taste in her mouth. Horses know language. Skeptical friends have spoken to their horses. They have come back incredulous that the horse understood. There’s a woman who can do this with wild animals at the vet. She says tell them. She saved my two mares when they were fighting to kill each other. She said don’t even let them share a fence because they’ll get hooked on the dopamine. So that’s what we did. A few years later they were biting each other’s withers, scratching their itch and we opened the gates. The fighting was done.
I am too full of grump to be a saint today. It’s too cold to not say still prayer and walk up Snake Road. It’s too cold for the squirrels to run the trees. Yesterday I saw one drop ten feet from one branch to the other. It bounced. It held him.
I am too full of the mystery why my husband, Bruce and I are so alone. We are profoundly orphaned with no children, no siblings, no parents. Our frail old age worries me. A friend says there are children who would like an aunt or grandma but that just makes me tired. And I wonder if there’s something of this saint, the fire of the loneliness, burning, bearing down on me, if that’s the ground I’m supposed to walk on.
The voice crying in the wilderness speaks. I am in the wilderness.
But it’s Bruce who’s the saint around here. He’s emptied himself, and serves, showing me God the servant in his simple love, in all the things he does for me. God pushing, pushing, pushing to lift up my eyes, lift up my heart and say don’t be afraid, my love for you is real. What I told you in the cave is real, there is therefore no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus. I have searched for you.
And to be honest I’m not sure I want to be a saint. Oh, I’d love for Tiger and Ma Cat to wrap their bodies around my legs, let me touch them.
I’d love for Mrs. Horse to come to me, but then again, she does. She stands at the fence waiting for me, for my attention, along with slabs of hay. She knows when my focus leaves and she will stop, when we are driving, wait for me to come back. She hears my breath calming her to come back to me when she wants to run and I must force myself to empty, to be calm, to relax my muscles. But fear drops down and I avoid the radiance of her love, her welcome. This horse could hurt me a faint echo that still stops me even though she has not, even when she could throw her back legs out and nail me. She has not.
I don’t want the ambition of it, to do the hard things, just so the birds will land on my shoulders, or the bees will swarm. Well, we had that happen too this summer. But there’s something to this deep solitude. This quiet life.
If saints empty themselves, if they forget who they are, maybe there are multitudes in nursing homes, maybe they should be turned loose for birds to land on them, for foxes to trot up to their wheelchairs, and squirrels to dance and play, running up their laps jumping from lap to lap.
I tell God no. I never used to. I used to say, Okay do what you want. But these days I say no. No to being a fancy saint. No to having a big audience as a writer. I like my quiet. I think knowing my no, that it’s there, I can then ask the Lord to shape me like the potter shapes the clay, to bring me this person he had in mind.
Meanwhile I lean down to pick up my dog’s poop, the cold bitter around my hand as I wrap it in a bag and pick up the soft warmth, drop it in the poop bucket, to be dumped on the manure pile later.
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