Animals are powerful symbols of life, they are reflections of the world.They can help us to understand our world.

Simon is a symbol of rebirth and renewal, showing how living things can crawl back from the abyss and live their lives. Orson, who started it all, speaks to the unpredictability of life, how it takes its own course, regardless of our wishes and expectations. Rocky was a symbol of acceptance for me, and fidelity. And Red signifies renewal to me, the turning of the circle.

Who on earth would have imagined a stranger, a woman of faith to e-mail me out of the blue and say that God wanted me to have a dog? I thought she was strange. But it was me who was strange, who was closed. She was simply right.

So I went out with the video camera this morning to catch Simon’s call to life – I got a short one, he was eating, and to photograph the gentle scene of the barn cats, sleeping, to show you Orson’s marker and Red standing over it. I didn’t tell him too, he just did. Red seems to know things that are in my heart. And this video spoke to me of the times, it seemed relevant.

This prompted a brief meditation on grief. Every day people message me that they are sad about the animals who are gone – Rose, Elvis, Orson, Rocky. They often tell me they are crying. Grief is individual, people have to do it their own way. I respect death and do not hide from it or deny it. It is a part of life. I do not feel sad for the lives of any of my animals, Orson is included. Life is more powerful than me, and I to not mourn the nature of life. Orson is gone, Red is here. Rocky is gone, Simon is here. We are all dealing with this at this time, it is impossible to escape it in our electronic world where a corporate media drowns us in disturbing images day and night. It seems as if murder and chaos have engulfed the world, and there is nothing else in it.

The power of animals is not when they separate us from human beings or life, but when they show us life and bring us to other human beings. And they help us find perspective in a world that sometimes seems to have gone mad. I welcome life, and the good and the bad. There will always be both, there has always been both.

This week has helped remind me that we are not a perfect species, and that we have always done harm to one another. And it reminds me that we are beautiful species, and have always loved and helped one another. Come and see the video if you wish, I think it speaks to that.

We all draw our own lessons from the world. Some say the lesson of life is to be alarmed, be prepared. The message for me is to be prepared for love and connection. It is out there to find, along with all of the mayhem. Photography teaches me that also. It is not what the camera sees, it is what I see. Someone e-mailed me and said it was a dark time. And it Simon’s message. And Rocky’s. And Red’s. And Orson’s. I can’t cry over that, it is like crying over life itself.

I don’t see this as a dark time, although it is understandable anyone near a screen would see it that way. It is a dark time in a complex world filled with suffering and joy. It is an awful thing that is happening.  It is not the only thing that is happening.