Bull Frog In Paradise

I just saved a Bull Frog in the cistern we are restoring in
our 100 year old barn. She is a beautiful creature and has
lived there for for perhaps more than a year. But since we are
about to do some heavy duty construction on the barn's foundation,
I needed to go down through a very narrow hole to retrieve her.

I grabbed her with two hands and looked into her eyes before placing
her in a plastic jar to hand to Tom, my husband, who had created
a large pool for her in the basement.

A Saint Francis moment, indeed.

Saint Francis moments abound here on Blue Heron Farm, which we
call this beautiful place.

We live on the meandering Conestoga River, bringing geese, heron,
ducks and bird life to us in abundance. And Frogs, of course.

We have deer friends who are secure here after our eighteen years
of residency.

One friend in particular is a deep brown color and we plant a tomato
garden for her and her family every year.

She stands and looks at us in the early spring each year as if to say:
Hey! Don't forget to plant my garden!!

Humans are not the most trustworthy species as far as deer are concerned.

The fifth aphorism of Pananjali states: "When a person is steadfast in
his abstention from harming others, then all living creatures will cease
to feel enmity in his presence."

The deer, racoons, geese, frogs and heron all use our property as a refuge.

They know they are safe and we marvel in their company.

Hanging out with these creatures of God-ess reminds me of Saint Francis
and what I call the Saint Francis effect.

My dogs are the recipient of great love in what they teach us in this
life time: unconditional love, forgiveness, and great patience in
the face of human foible.

The greatest book ever written about Saint Francis is called: "God's Pauper:
St. Francis of Assisi" by Nikos Kazantzakis, author of Zorba the Greek.

The book was out of print for many years but then was re-published
in paperback in 1999. I got a copy as soon as I heard about it, circa 2002.

Reading the book transports consciousness to a mystical perspective.

The prologue of the book serves as an example:

"If I have omitted many of Francis's sayings and deeds and if I have
altered others, and added still others which did not take place but
which might have taken place, I have done so not out of ignorance or
impudence or irreverence, but from a need to match the Saint's life
with his myth, bringing that life as fully into accord with its essence
as possible.

"Art has its right, and not only the right but the duty to subject
everything else to its essence. It feeds upon the story, then assimilates
it slowly, cunningly, and turns it into legend.

"While writing this legend which is truer than truth itself, I was overwhelmed
by love, reverence and admiration for Francis, the hero and great martyr.
Often large tears smudged the manuscript; often a hand hovered before me
in the air, a hand with an eternally-renewed wound: someone seemed to have
driven a nail through it, seemed to be driving a nail through it
for all eternity.

"Everywhere about me, as I write, I sensed the Saint's invisible presence;
because for me, Saint Francis is the model of the dutiful man, the man who by
means of ceaseless, supremely cruel struggle, succeeds in fulfilling
our highest obligation, something higher even than morality or
truth or beauty: the obligation to transubstantiate the matter which God
entrusted to us and turn it into spirit." Nikos Kazantzakis

Do we all have this same obligation? to transubstantiate the matter which God
entrusts to us and turn it into spirit?

Only Nikos Kazantzakis could or would ask that question and have us wonder
if we, too, can rise to this test of human potential?

Communing with the animals of Mother Nature these last eighteen years
continues to be a spiritual practice: of being riveted in present moment
reality, of experiencing compassion and love for all creatures great and small,
and in these spaces of infinite awareness, we perceive the fragile preciousness
of this world and beyond.

The Saint Francis statue which beautifies the flower garden is also a reminder
of this fragile balance.

The Bullfrog in her new home typifies many more hours of grace as we care for her.
The dogs know she is here to stay, probably knew this long before I did.

The Saint Francis effect is now clear. All of these years of animal
communication and sharing the land and our home, and reading Nikos Kazantzakis's
words today, has simplified this.

As we look to the Saints and in this case, Saint Francis for guidance, we are
automatically transforming matter into spirit.

God-ess has entrusted this beautiful planet to us, our families, homes, our very lives;
may we care and love and transform all of it and ask the infinite realms, which
surround us at all times, to help us remember their guiding presence and to
learn to access it the moment we ask.

May we know that these wishes are granted ceaselessly.

Friend Bull Frog has come to live with us in the basement.

This is the height of cricket season, and crickets live in
abundance here on Blue Heron Farm.

Bull Froggy loves crickets.

S/he lives under an under water rock.

When we plop the cricket into the water, Bull Froggy, with the
speed that the eye can see only briefly, zips and splashes and
the cricket is gone.

What a show!

The dogs are first to line up for this natural entertainment and wonder.

Froggy seems to in-joy being the center of such gleeful delight!

This reminds me of the Sawet Owl we rescued after she crashed into our
windshield, crossing the Gettysburg Battle Field.

Tom's Aunt Hilda was dying and we were traveling to her to offer our
support.

We later found out that the Sawet migratory pattern centers right there
and was in place long before the Battle itself.

We took her home and nursed her back to good health, and she lived in the barn
that entire winter.

Her food consisted of a mouse or two each day. We'd carefully place the
rodent into a coat pocket before walking quietly into her territory.

She was waiting for us.

Like the speed of bewitching magic, she'd swoop and take that mouse
out of pocket and return to her perch on a high barn beam, bowing
each time with wide alert eyes.

A thank you.

A message of gratitude.

The day Tom's Aunt Hilda passed, our Sawet buried herself alive
in the corner of the barn.

Sawet was a messenger of the after-life worlds, calling to all of us
if we listen.

Bull Froggy reminds me of the owl, of the dogs, of the river where she will
ultimately make her way back, to the depths of worlds made more mysterious
by the unseen depths of moving water.