The cat and the deer

"As important as it is to believe, it is even more important not to believe. Pure belief is too thick. There is no room for movement and no motive for reflection. When belief is rigid, it is infinitely more dangerous than unbelief. And belief becomes thick and rigid so frequently that it is often difficult for a thoughtful person to want to believe or admit to being a believer. ....

"...a person of no belief lives an unconscious existence as though he were in a river that he has never observed from the banks. Belief gives daily life the hesitancy of reflection and a little air. Maybe just a dot of belief would save the secularist from absorption in his culture, and a dot of unbelief might save the devotee from drowning in his faith." (34-35) So writes Thomas Moore in his 2002 book The Soul's Religion.

We have an insouciant orange and white cat who loves to go outdoors and explore around the environs of her home. On Mothers Day I'd let her out into the sunny, mild morning, and was then sitting in the window seat, listening to Krista Tippet's program OnBeing and observing the world, when I noticed a deer browsing at the edge of the yard. Then little Miss Yuengling (our pale ale cat, and the companion black-with-white-trim one is Guinness) pranced into the picture, too. The deer, which had been casually looking about between bites, turned to this other creature rustling and bounding about. The deer's jaw and feet stayed very still, but it swiveled and focused it's ears directly at the cat, and craned its neck a bit, and even it's nostrils quivered. The cat bounded and bounced along, oblivious.

A few minutes later I went to the kitchen and from a different window saw that the cat had pranced and circled her way around to where two other deer were ambling along. She appeared so suddenly in their domain that one of them raised its white flag of a tail and jumped a few leaps away before stopping to really notice who caused the startling movement and noise. There they were, these timid, large creatures and the small, unconcerned one commanding all their attention, the little boss of the scene.

Yuengling was, perhaps, foolishly fearless, and the deer were unnecessarily fearful; she seemingly certain of her position, they quite uncertain. Certainty and uncertainty, faith and lack of faith, belief and unbelief. I find myself in both camps, believing in all that is seen and unseen, and also full of questions and distrustful of those who have such definite, certain sureness that they have answers to the whys and ways of the now and hereafter. Seems to me that wisdom writings present wise questions along with wise instructions for my life. Let me be some combination of both the cat and the deer.