VIE

I was asked a question last week, is a life of an insect as precious as an animal? What's the difference between a fly and a groundhog? I didn't know how to execute and explain the idea itself. We wouldn't have a heart to just go out and kill an animal, but swatting flies is like second nature. We do not think or understand and swat swat, we bring an end to something or of something. So instead of rambling on and on about my ideology, I have quoted a beautiful paragraph by Barbara Brown Taylor from her book, An Altar in the World......

An Altar in the World - Barbara Brown Taylor 

The practice of paying attention.

"Reverence may take all kinds of forms, depending in what it is that awakens awe in you by reminding you of your true size. But size is not everything. Properly attended to, even a saltmarsh mosquito is capable of evoking reverence. See those white and black striped stockings on legs thinner than a needle? Where in those legs is there room for knees? And yet see how they bend, as the bug lowers herself to your flesh. Soon you and she will be blood kin. Your itch is the price of her life. The easiest practice of reverence I know is simply to sit down somewhere outside, preferably near a body of water, and pay attention for at least twenty minutes. It is not necessary to take on the whole world at first. Just take the three square feet on earth on which you are sitting, paying close attention to everything that lives within that small estate. You might even decide not to kill anything for twenty minutes, including the saltmarsh mosquito that lands on your arm. Just blow her away and ask her please to go find someone else to eat. With any luck you will soon begin to see the souls in pebbles, ants, small mounds of moss and the acorn on its way to becoming an oak tree. You may feel some tenderness for the struggling mayfly the ants are carrying away. You did not make your heart any more than you made a tree. You are a guest here. You have been given a free pass to this modest domain and everything in it".

"Reverence stands in the awe of something- something that dwarfs the self, that allows human beings to sense the full extent of our limits- so that we can begin to see one another more reverently as well. An irrevelant soul who is unable to feel awe in the presence of things higher than the self in unable to feel awe in the presence of things it sees as lower than the self".