The Community of All Beings
By Anne A. Simpkinson, Director of Communications
Posted on
One of the joys of working at Mercy by the Sea is the staff’s appreciation of the creatures with whom we share the grounds. There’s "Ralphie," the woodchuck, who birthed two little ones this summer; a lean fox that makes frequent appearances; chipmunks; and rabbits, who graze in the courtyard outside our offices.
Let’s not forget the seagull who likes to sit on our assistant cook Adam's car; Harriet, the hawk; the bald-headed cardinal who turned up this year; and a host of crows, gulls, ospreys, sparrows, mourning doves and robins. One of our volunteer gardeners, Bob Bartusiak, recently put up bird feeders which are attracting imperial red cardinals, stunning gold finches, chickadees and squirrels, whose antics mesmerize us. Daily we’re entertained by two tenacious squirrels – one male, the other female – who hang upside by their claws while munching on black sunflower seeds.
Perhaps that’s why a short four-minute video, “Encountering Another Being II,” caught my attention. In it, Dr. Stephan Harding, the Resident Ecologist at Schumacher College, describes his experience of meeting a muntjac deer in a way that was very different from his scientific study of the small, stocky, russet brown forest creature. Sometimes, while waiting in the forest for minutes or even an hour or more, the deer would appear and then look directly at him. It was then that he experienced meeting the “being coming forth from itself as itself in a way that’s beyond intellect, in a way that’s much more deeply intuitive, and much harder to express …” It was as if, he says, time stood still. He understood the deer as itself, as a system, and how it fit into the ecology of the forest, and the ecology of the earth itself. Dr. Harding’s experience of the deer transformed the creature from an object of study to a being to respect and indeed reverence.
Respect and reverence towards all beings – human and otherwise – are at the heart of Mercy by the Sea’s hospitality that extends to all, yes, even the four-legged and winged creatures that share this land with us.
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