Yesterday I received several text messages and pictures from Cincinnati.  My daughter and her partner traveled from Louisville to visit the Cincinnati Zoo.  The objective of their journey was to spend time with Fiona, the recently born baby hippo.  She was born 6 weeks premature, and is the smallest hippo ever to survive.

Perhaps all of us, yes, every single American citizen would be well served to visit a zoo to spend some time quietly in company with the animals, observing, reflecting upon their direct, in-the-moment manner of living.  As mammals with language, and a storehouse of memory, such present based living is not simple or easy for human beings.  The reminder that such is our heritage; this is where we come from, our kinship with Nature— is effective treatment for our trauma of soul.

And do we not need treatment?  I have need of treatment.  Ingrained prejudices toward groups of a class or a race, or perhaps ancient grudges, old wounds which we’ve not allowed to heal,  are

revealed as unnecessary, the impediments which they are.  In the presence of animals we are encouraged to reflect upon and lay aside the insecurity, the inner fears that have always haunted us.  Ignorance is allowing the pain of the the past to obscure the present, to distort the beauty and the complexity of life.  Be real, let the baggage go.  Look Fiona in the eye.

Fiona finds what she needs when she is hungry.  Then she is satisfied.  Fiona just is, just is the magnificent hippo-being which she was endowed upon her birth.

And so it is, or so it can be with you and with I my friend.

Cheers to us including Fiona!

Here is a clip from the Zoo about Fiona.  Enjoy!