 |
The bleak beauty
of a new saltmarsh on the Otter estuary in East Devon, part of a National
Nature Reserve |
I
read on Instagram this morning that scientists have now discovered that energy
leaves the body (of both humans and animals) when we die. Tibetan monks
comment, ‘You need science to tell you what silence already knows?’
I
agree with the monks. Science is not proof. Our own experience is what matters. As my little book of Chinese wisdom says, 'Why light a candle to see the sun?'
I’ve
seen the soul of one of our dogs, Brindle, fly from her body like a puff of
smoke and zoom northwards over our shed. It wasn’t just energy. It was a
discrete entity and it was in a hurry. Brindle had nearly died a year before
and I’d prayed for her to stay alive because I wasn’t in a position to deal
with her death at the time. She’d waited for me, even though she’d wanted to
go. I write about this, and more, in a previous post.
I
feel annoyed when I read about things like the above because I don’t talk about
most of what I experience because people mock. They need science to ‘prove’
things. Then the world catches up with me and I wish I’d had the courage to
speak sooner.
This blog is one of the few places where I do speak out and my time here now
without either parents or Frog is for me to learn to be my whole self without
shame or doubt. That’s something else I ‘know’, and I knew it as soon as Frog
died.
I
didn’t see his soul go. It vanished in a second, as we stood at a field gate and looked at the view and he dropped to the ground beside me with a cry of
surprise.
Then
the emergency services arrived and spent about an hour by the side of the road trying
to revive him. Then they took him to hospital and tried some more with bigger
machines. When they pronounced him dead, I was relieved. And
that’s something I’ve never admitted before. He wanted to go. It was his
time to go. He was removing himself for the moment so that I could learn.
How
Frog and I have communicated since then is another story, and one I might go
into another time.
And
none of that is what I intended to write in this post. I intended to tell you
about another moving film from the Right to Roam campaigners. In September I directed you to a film about their mass
trespass swim at Kinder Reservoir. This new film is about looking after a neglected
river in East London and about what they call ‘wild service’. And I hope to
tell you more about that too when I know more myself.
 |
| Sunset last week as I walked home with Ellie |
