Part 2

Animals as Guides for the Soul: Stories of Life-Changing Encounters
by Susan Chernak McElroy

(Page 2 of 2)

The challenges brought to my life by my animal family since the publication of my first book often feel like mine alone. However, if the hundreds of letters from my readers are any indication, these issues I claim as uniquely mine are shared by many: Is there a place in heaven for animals? Can we sometimes do a disservice to our animals in our exuberant efforts to communicate better with them? Do my dreams of animals mean anything? Why am I ashamed to share my joy of animals with other people? How can I better serve my animals, and is their service to me - to humankind - altruism or bondage? Is there healing for me in tragic events with animals - animals I am ashamed to say I have not served well? How can I help heal the relationship between humans and animals, between my animals and me?

These questions were the catalyst for Animals as Guides for the Soul. The themes they evoked became the five stations along the four-footed path explored in this book: spirituality, communication, service, forgiveness, and transformation. These are life issues common not only to animal lovers but to everyone.

Because I believe that home is where our soul work is most richly cultivated, the first chapter of this book is an intimate introduction to my home and animal family. This place, my farm called Brightstar, is the anchor point of my life and work, and we will return in story and experience to Brightstar and my animal family many times.

Next along the animal path is a journey into spirit. All of my life I have been in conflict with much of Western theology, which excludes or minimizes animals. To welcome animals back into my spiritual arena has required a revising of my personal theology. The qualities of enchantment, grace, and blessing can be treasure maps to a new, personally defined connection with the divine. Animals, in their otherness, beckon us into new modes of awareness and are adept at leading us to these three spiritual gold mines.

As a woman who twice nearly lost her voice to cancer, I have been struggling with issues of communication for a long time. Because communication is such an enormous and complex topic, I have devoted two chapters to its exploration. Chapter 2 discusses communication with animals on a direct level, while Chapter 3 celebrates communication of a more symbolic nature. This second realm of communicating embraces dreams, sudden insights, "messengers," angels, or "signs." Although we have been culturally indoctrinated to dismiss these means of ancient knowing, we would do well to tune our inner ears to these abandoned frequencies. Animals and animal images seem to thrive in this inner universe and can serve as gentle and surprising guides to alternative ways of wisdom.

Last year, I stumbled upon a quote that changed my life: "What is not given is lost." The truth of these few words becomes more evident to me every day, and their truth is particularly relevant to the theme of Chapter 4, service. Service is a critical station on the path to self-development and soulful living. But in my life, service has often been associated more with drudgery than with altruism. Animals have populated every real and imagined world of service, from the most ideal to the most tragic. Reflecting on animals' lives of ministry - and bondage - can bring us to a much deeper understanding of how service relates to feelings of freedom and imprisonment in our own lives.

Those who live most fully and most joyfully also know how to grieve. Yet culturally we are denied access to our grief. My former employer allowed three days of "grief leave" if an immediate family member died. Three days to do the work of years! Most difficult to mourn are the losses for which we feel responsible, actions of which we are ashamed. I remember striking my family dog repeatedly when I was very young. The memory, the shame, stings like icy rain forty years later. To forgive ourselves for our transgressions is the work of the soul. Because animals often suffer illness or accident or die in our care, they can serve as excellent missionaries to a place of reconciliation, healed grief, and forgiveness. Often, I believe animals come to our lives specifically to deliver this intimate gift, the awesome gift of their passing. Chapter 5 provides insight for reconciling these painful losses.

At a certain point in our personal development, we mature into a sense of reverence for the greater world. Enfolding the world into our circle of compassion, we recognize that the world needs healing as much as we do. Healing the relationship between humans and animals is crucial to restoring the health of the world. For many years, I have regarded my "enemies" - those who do not care for the world and for animals in the same manner that I do - with animosity. Upon reflection, I have observed that bitterness and hate are qualities I never witness in the animal kingdom. The antelope does not hate the wolf. Animals instruct me to put aside judgment, lick a wound whether it be mine or another's, give thanks for life, and make room for others at the manger. This is how the healing of the world begins, and how those committed to this transformation can go forward. The final chapter of Animals as Guides for the Soul explores the nature of peace, of vision, and of transformation. Although the focus of this chapter is on transforming the relationship between humans and animals, the methods I suggest are universal in their application: stimulate transformation in one place and you initiate transformation in other places as well.

To travel along this five-stationed animal path to the soul, I have used the vehicle of story. When I had cancer, I learned quickly that stories were far more healing to me than statistics or information. Although stories are still frequently disparaged as anecdotal evidence in some professional circles, the winds are changing. Physician Rachel Naomi Remen "doctors" with the use of stories - telling them, listening to them. Dean Ornish, M.D., writes: "There is no meaning in facts. As a physician and a human being, I live in a world of stories. ... Stories are the language of community." Ornish also reminds us that if good information and facts were all it took to change human behavior, "no one would smoke"! Thomas Moore advises, "Stories offer a powerful way for the soul to find a space for itself."

Everyone's story is unique, yet all stories are the one story of our humanness. Not surprisingly, stories that tell of the lives of animals often seem universal as well, as though we can see the light of our dog's eyes in every creature's eyes. If we look with an unprejudiced heart, we may see our own eyes reflected in every creature's eyes, as well.

Real stories do not usually have tidy endings, or indeed, any endings. Many of the stories told in this book leave just as much untold. Animals enter, dwell for a time, leave, and become memories or dreams. Human companions are left to weave the meaning of the encounter into their hearts. As such, this is not a book of answers. It is instead an intimate exploration of issues that face us all: issues of relationship, integrity, conflict, and reconciliation, all told in the mythic form of story. All of these stories star an animal, a memory of an animal, a dream of an animal.

Each chapter ends in a story - one or two of my own and one or more from readers. These stories, some subtle and some dramatic, embody part of the essence of that chapter. Several are stories that reveal decades of accumulated life-experience.

It is my fervent hope that in reading these animal stories, both mine and others, you will be inspired to share your own. The world is hungry for stories that affirm the deep affinity between humans and animals. All of our stories - those that ended well and even those that ended with more confusion than we would have liked - offer great hope to a world longing to heal the relationship between animals and humans.

© 1998 by Susan Chernak McElroy.

About the Author

A former technical writer and editor, Susan Chernak McElroy is the author of the New York Times bestseller Animals as Teachers and Healers. Susan has enjoyed a lifelong love affair with animals. Her enchantment with creatures great and small has been nurtured and strengthened through a lifetime of work with animals, first as a vet assistant, then a zookeeper, humane educator, puppy trainer, kennel and stable hand, and wildlife rehabilitator. She currently lives with her husband and animal family on a small farm in Wyoming named Brightstar.