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Pastor's Corner
The story has been bopping around out there, flitting near
the surface of my consciousness. It's the
tale of this Brit who wanted to know...first hand and
existentially...what it was like to be a badger. What do badgers
think? How do they experience the world?
In order to accomplish this, he started spending his time
snuffling along the ground like a badger. He began to regularly eat
what badgers eat, meaning he developed a sophisticated gourmand's grasp
of the nuances of worm-meat.
The "eating worms" bit is a serious hook.
He also 'became' other creatures. Stags.
Badgers. Otters. Swifts, too, apparently, although I'd love
to know how he managed to fly well enough to catch gnats.
This, of course, makes a great pitch for a book. Which, of course, was the whole idea.
It's fascinating. Here, the effort to encounter
reality from the perspective of an animal, something that's hard for we
humans to get at, what with our big brains and our bipedal ambulation and
our general disconnect from our own animal nature.
I was thinking about this the other day, because I was
walking.
Or rather, I was walking again. For years, I'd taken
long walks as a part of my weekly routine. When my younger son was
in multi-hour rehearsals, I'd work for a bit in the library, then take
hour-long rambles through neighborhoods. It was time to observe,
time to think.
When he stopped taking drums, I stopped walking as
much. The pattern was broken. I spent more time
driving. More time on social media. More time around the
house.
And it made me...well...fidgety. A little more
anxious. A little heavier. A little less creative.
My soul felt it, that ineffable wholeness of self, meat
and spirit woven up into the unique particularity of my person. Not
walking weighed on my soul.
I needed to walk. So lately, as I run
errands, I walk. They take longer, because I get out and use myself
to get myself there.
And it struck me, as I walked, that the full engagement of
my body was as strange to our peculiar mechanized way of life as being a
badger or a stag or a fox.
As I walk, I am using my limbs as they were
intended. I am erect, my eyes and ears and nose alert to the
world. I am not encased in steel, the scents of tree and grass
filtered away by climate control. I am hearing the world for which
I am so well evolved, the sound of wind, the hum of tire on the
road. I see light and detail, the crumbling granularity of American
roads, the details of homes, the rustle of a deer in the underbrush.
When I choose to walk, I am not being maximally
productive, not optimizing my time, not being efficient.
But I am being human, in the way that my Creator shaped
me.
It's a good thing, remembering what it is to be human.
Peace of Christ, and Blessings,
David
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