Earth Spirit

There is a great debate out there: Animals.

Just…animals.

Crim told me that a boy in her Myth, Legend, and Folklore class raised his hand one day and said ‘nothing anyone says will convince me that animals have souls.’ That gives me chills, because I’ve come up against that belief so often, and I don’t understand it. Why are humans so conceited? “Humans are the only ones that can have souls, Humans are cool enough for aliens to want to seek us out, out of the billions of planets out there, and destroy us specifically.” (Sorry about the second one, but that’s another conceited thing I hear a lot. We aren’t that special guys! We’re one in a billion! Is it sad that Star Trek is the most realistic way of describing how things would go down if we really did meet aliens? But I digress.)

Animals are extremely important in our spiritual lives, no matter what our point of view. In what I know of paganism, this is an obvious statement. Animals are of nature and should be respected, just as much as any other part. To the Christian side of me though, there is a lot of oppression to this statement.

Verses are quoted left and right to ‘prove’ this statement, but, in my eyes, these verses hold less sway than when people try to use the bible to say that gays shouldn’t be allowed to marry (and that is a very weak argument in and of itself). When the verses are read to me, all I can hear is the conceitedness of the man who had the bible re-written (King James) and the other men of his time that helped him. However, I don’t hear anything that points to animals being soulless.

Also, if time has proved anything, it’s that animals are the angels of the world. They bring cheer and happiness back to the sick and desolate, they save lives, they make a house into a home, and they are our connector to nature. Even most people that live in the middle of the concrete jungles can’t deny the dogs and cats around them. The people that do tend to be ignorant and turned into themselves. I dislike them.

How can our worldly angels not have souls? How can we condemn our angels to…nothing?

No, I truly believe that they do have souls, and they are here because we need them. HOWEVER, I am not so selfish to think that they are only here because we need them. We are here because they need us.

We are all here together, sharing this world.

-Cami

(Picture – Bandit, exploring, taken by me. RIP my little sweet-heart. I love you.)