While out visiting the ancient trees a few days ago, I saw a hare in the field. He started running and stopped when I stopped. I stepped forward. He ran. I stopped, he stopped. This carried on all the way up the field. I later saw him - or another - in the wood. And on the way back, a pair, one larger than the other. The larger hare ran, the smaller stopped and watched me.
I felt the wildness of hares. No one has a hare for a pet. The hare's utter disregard for any kind of containment or constraint. They sleep, not in a cozy burrow, but on the face of the earth, as they shine on the face of the moon.
It reminded me of my own sort of wildness. My impatience with the letter of the law and the ties of convention. My unwillingness to be bound by an institution. Much as I love my hollow places, I love to be able to see my way out - to be free to come and go and free to choose. Earth is home enough.
On the same walk, I saw three of four kestrels. No surprise, really, but they seemed so close and as if they radiated gold and silver against cerulean sky. Again, the wild call, the call of freedom. the disregard for stricture and scripture.
The hare and the kestrel were like aspects of, reflections of my soul's yearning - and also individual others with minds and missions. Both and.
The day blessed me, with the trees and the creatures.
I am willing to accept that the numinous nature of these encounters was all just made up by my own mind (which is fine as at least part of my mind wants to give me moments of wonder and connection) but it gives a shimmer to my day.
I don’t want to lose a sense of humility that asks, always, am I not just finding what I, my ego, wants to find? I want that space of uncertainty that allows all this to both be and not be AND to be or not be. The radical uncertainty. I think that’s important. As soon as I leap into certainty, I am damned. I think. And so the world remains unknowable and I remain unknowing. And, good: it is all so much bigger than I am.
As the hare hails me, so the kestrel calls me,
with the one wild longing to be radically free.
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