Natural Faith
Copyright 2021 Don Ray. Feel free to print and share.
Deer and coyotes
Deer stand on the trail above the gamboling coyote pups in the valley, a mother and yearling deer maybe.
The deer look down at the source of noise and motion and leave the trail to head for it! They twist through the brush, negotiating openings and turning to go right into the middle of the bare spot where the coyotes play!
The pups scatter!
The deer head back up to the trail, the coyotes return to the opening. The deer again focus their attention below the trail, again come down, the larger lead deer with its head down, moving with intent into the coyote area! The coyotes again disappear but regroup in an adjacent opening in the brush. The lead deer swings below the coyotes, then doubles back up the slope to where a few remain!
Finally, the pair of deer head back up the slope to the trail.
The coyote family has regrouped a little further south in a different red dirt opening. The deer now look in that direction, and now return down the slope to the new gathering spot, taking yet another pass at their canine neighbors, again breaking up the group!
Is this play?...or curiosity?.....or preemptive defense?......or establishing dominance to make a first impression in hopes of warding off later threat from the grown coyotes?
The deer return to their course on which they were travelling before the detour. Puppy play resumes.
Running and chasing and spinning and boxing and running and running and running, flashing into view across the red soil in the gaps between the junipers across the valley, groups chasing this way then turning the tables and becoming the chased, cutting tight racing curves around the bases of the trees, pawing at their quarry as they catch it, full speed for the entire hour, so alive, so youthful, tails extended out in health and joy.
Finally puppy play winds down, and
beautiful coyotes pose majestically in sun lit open patches of bare soil,
lying beside each other,
Lying next to each other, rolling over, mouthing
Sitting so prettily, fur glowing white and red
in morning sun.
. It is a good morning, a very good morning.
Days later:
Coyote ridge, sunrise.
No little coyote family. I look and look to no avail. I knew this day would come…...but what’s that sound? From the mini-slot canyon, it just might be….I cannot imagine anything else making that sound.
How they blessed my life! What a dream come true. What a gift of presence and the Spirit and companionship and connection. Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!
Little coyotes gone? It had to be someday. I will worry about them.
Presence of Spirit, connection of essence of Spirit, deep sharing of Life, Nature and its children offer us that gift. In Bodhi kitty's little chattering conversations as you walk by, in his insistent and remarkable communication that he has pottied, in his excited running into the kitchen to get a treat, there is essence of life, a connection needing no extrapolation or interpretation, the other’s need and desire and joy my need and desire and joy.
Coyote yelp! No question! Sounds like it is just beyond the south dam. Looking for family? Announcing capture of a treasure?
The universe of the conscious experience, an expanding universe, for time is nothing more than the expansion of conscious experience, always growing, always incorporating, even if fragile physical synaptic structures give the illusion of “past” and “forgotten” as connections break and decay.
The universes of the conscious experience, interfacing and bumping up against each other, colliding and conflicting, and on exquisitely rare and beautiful occasions overlapping.
These expanding universes of consciousness and awareness, reluctantly incorporating the intersections of mutually shared experiences, yet craving mutually shared experiences, always prompt to take the opportunity to inject their conscious experience into the experience of the other, always resistant to having the other’s conscious experience absorbed into their own.
But in rare moments, in the scruffing of a kitty’s ear as it rubs its head against your hand, in the wordless communication that captures the ineffable bond between pet and human, in watching coyote puppies play and joust and race, the overlap of the universes of conscious experience is shared and mutually experienced, not in mere communication and interaction at the edges of those expanding universes, but in actual overlap of the experience, mutually shared essence of experience. In such wordless moments we finally know what it is to not be alone.
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At the ranch
One of the two big black horses was nuzzling the little pigs this morning, on and on before he knew I was watching, licking and grooming, the two little pigs together.
So sweetly he treated the little pigs!....nuzzling and licking on and on as I kept my distance. Instinct told me this was one of those glimpses into secrets of Nature, and once White-tummy horse noticed me the moment ended, little piggies going about their business.
All seems to fit this morning, in this sage moment, all seems to fit. Each sound of bird and each imperceptible movement of damp air all fit into a Wholeness. Mystery can wait, surely productivity can wait. Some treasures are too precious to not lavishly spend.
“There will be time enough, there will be time enough” seems to whisper the Spirit as the hands race wildly around the watch dial.
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Hillside
So beautiful, this simple hillside. So beautiful in peace and momentary safety.
The big yellow butterflies, the tall, tall green, the quiet, the blessed quiet.
Angels tread lightly in this tall grass, angels bringing their ministrations, bringing their manna for the soul.
Angels visit, invisible and inaudible, certainly not in white robes, though maybe in white jeans.
Angels visit and linger and even dwell, bringing tidings of presence and sustaining Spirit.
No wings these angels, for they have no need of wings. Their message is a revealing of what soul already knows, written in runes and whispered in tongues. Not to be taken too seriously, these incorporeal angels, easily mistaken for breeze or rustling grass.
So beautiful, so beautiful this hillside and its air, air that smells of life. So precious, the feel of the texture of grass seed stalks
Time abates, languorously flowing hand in hand with warm breeze. This is no place for brazen miracles or amped up prophets. This is prophecy for the taking, lessons rich and plentiful embedded in the miracle of this lush moment.
Green and blue meet in sharp and ragged edge, these colors of Source.
Let a grass stalk brush your hand, listen well for what you may not hear but will understand without hearing. Know without seeing, understand without hearing, fear not the mystery of Communion.
The only threat here is that you will miss the beauty, that you will hurry and miss how luxuriantly long a moment can be.
Let air full of life fill your nostrils while a blank awareness full of Spirit fills your soul.
Look intently at what most would call “nothing” and discern what the angels would tell you.
Ride the ripples of time that give birth to moments eternal, yes, moments eternal that beckon to awareness.
See the futility of denial; there is far more here than you might have hoped. Carry it with you, this eternal moment, this knowing the unknowable, this seeing the unseeable, this understanding of the inexplicable.
Carry it with you that you may come Home.
In time, in time, we will all learn as we are ready. In time, in time, we will all share such moments.
For now, let the angels dance. Let them tend your soul, your long-neglected soul.
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Frantic
The robin parents frantically cheep and cheep, or should I say cry and cry? I hear one for the longest time up near the top of the Aspen tree. From the other end of the area I heard it. Are they calling a warning to the lost babies? Are they letting them know to stay put, wherever they are under the foliage?
From the tree! A baby! At the corner! Dad stays with it. Dad stays low with it, near the ground, making the same call as the mother: “cheep…...cheep…….cheepcheepcheepcheepcheepcheep” the first two sharp and loud, then the last ones mumbled and trailing off. They sound so frantic! The baby makes little squeak sounds in response. This baby is all the way to the fence. near the gate. It flutters at the base of the fence. Will it listen to dad? Will it understand? Louder squeaks! Everyone is scared! Dad is on the ground with it, then dad goes to a branch right above it. The baby flutters to the base of the tree. The little precious conversation of life and tenderness continues. Dad flutters near the ground. Mom makes her call still from up high. The baby heads to the sunflowers. It is too active! It should stay still! I want to put it in the nest!.....but I fear that would only multiply stress and compound problems. The baby sits on a rock fully out in the open. It needs days before it can fly! It sounds so lost and forlorn and scared and perplexed and puzzled and worried! It flutters toward me. Surely it would never sit still in the nest again.
The little one hops under the overhang with me! It hops onto my foot! Such plaintive little chirps! It stays some time on my foot. Should I again try to put it in its homey cozy little nest? Has its adventure satisfied it and is it ready to go home? Would it stay this time? What to do?! What not to do?! It hops off, looking for home, reaching the base of the stairs that lead to its home. Oh, to rescue it!
It wanders around, its oversized feet hopping under the roof, its undersized wings unable to even fly over the drainpipe. I hear rain drops. I hear thunder. The best place for it is surely under the overhang right where I sit. It has gone around the corner. Mom cries. Dad cries. The baby cries. The fate of the other two baby robins remains unknown. Hopefully one remains in the nest.
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Is this what happened to us? Did we leave the nest too soon? In good time would we have been given access to the Tree of Knowledge? Is that why we are so lost and confused, having simply stretched our wings too early, falling out of the Garden, not yet ready for our inheritance as children of God. So God calls from on high, the Christos comes down to our level, we all cry and seek shelter from the storms.
Robin dad still calls from the pine tree.
Fledging
This world is merely a launching point. To understand the Purpose and Reality of the stew while just looking at the iron pot is impossible. This world is the iron pot. But the feast in preparation is not evident if you just study the iron.
This world is preparing the feast of Love, a purified Love of the highest form. The pot of this physical world boils and mixes the conscious life in a chaotic mix of unpredictable roiling bubbles and steam. It is madness, this world, mad and maddening chaos instituted by the sizzling pot. But out of that cauldron of churning madness is distilled pure Love.
All the generosity and compassion we can muster will never fix the world. But all that generosity and compassion creates the pure Love that endures through eternity. The world is never fixed, yet not one whit of selfless Love ever goes to waste.
We experience only the physical structure of the iron pot and the chaos induced at its simmering surface. So we struggle as we should to end the wars and the bigotry and the homelessness. In the process we change and heal lives. But the world still has the wars and the homeless and the suffering and it always will. It always will until this age passes, and it always will provide fertile ground for creating the senseless, irrational Love that is eternal.
And God looked upon it with the deepest of sorrows and said “it is good, it is very good”.
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Living in faith means of necessity living in contradiction to the world. Prayer is not evidently productive; to listen to God and Spirit is to not listen to advice and demands of this world.
Living in faith means not prioritizing all the things that the world prioritizes. Living in faith is crazy. The faith commitment will for a while move forward in the illusion that faith and prayer will be consistent with the unfolding of worldly circumstances. But sooner or later comes the painful realization that faith demands a path so divergent from the practicalities of career and social popularity and productivity and security and wealth accrual that faith is demanding something really crazy, and making that demand without guarantee of outcome. Through the heart, through ineffable longing, through an inscrutable rightness, through irresistible temptation away from common sense and security, faith proffers its offers, and we linger a little too long, feel a little too right, immerse irretrievably too deeply in that baptism that makes no sense to anyone else, and if we dare admit it, makes no sense to us.
We may turn from it for a while, worldly logic
and necessity may momentarily prevail, but we can never forget our affair with
faith, that glimpse of something we do not yet recognize, that touch so foreign
and familiar…...faith….mad, maddening, marvelous, motivating faith, senseless,
pointless, and essential.
