Extra Article: What the Animals Teach

When I look at the light of the stars and imagine greater vision, I realize that what I am looking at existed long before I was born. And if I imagine some wiser being with greater vision is, in some future, looking at me on the earth, that being will be seeing me long after I have been. Does that mean that being is seeing an illusion or a true thing? I believe what the animals believe without even realizing it: that everything is unique and irreplaceable and that nothing that has been is ever lost, or ever ceases to be. It only changes form. I have lived long enough to have "lost" more than half of all those, human and non-human, that I have truly cared about, just as those who care about me will "lose" me. And yet, perhaps because of the caring, at least in part, I have lost nothing, and no one will lose me. Grief there is, and grief there will be, because we are small and see too little, but that too passes, as we do. Yet something there is that does not pass and does not change, and I believe it is from that we come and to that we return, all of us, and though the passing may be terribly difficult, as is the coming, it is nothing compared to the wonder that awaits us when we can truly see. Perhaps that is why we find comfort during grief by going outside, sitting still, and listening and watching, because there we can FEEL what it is that sustains, and so we are sustained. I write this because I am very affected by the losses some of you have sustained in recent days, and I want to give you something, and this is what I have to give. I wish it could be more, but it is what I have. Take care.

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