Saturday, August 18, 2007

Buffalo Spirit

When Robert was about 18 his mom gave him an illustrated book called Old Turtle. It's a book about how we should all stop arguing about G-d, realize S/he is everywhere and everything, and act accordingly. It begins with plants and animals and geographic features of the earth insisting that G-d is like whatever they are, and then the people being to disagree too and the plants and animals and people begin to fight and die. This sad moment is illustrated with a picture of a ravaged wilderness, a burnt orange sky, some dead fish in the river, and a cow skeleton.

Sometimes the kids like to look at the animal pictures in this book. Last night Zion was flipping through it and stopped on the ravaged earth page. He asked what the cow skeleton was, and why there were dead fish. We explained that people were not being kind to each other or to animals, that they were fighting about G-d, and hurting and killing each other and the earth. Zion looked at the picture for a moment and then picked up his toy buffalo and waved him over the book. "Buffalo is making the world beautiful again", he explained.

And so is Zion.

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