The lion, the fire, and the words we lost

Before words, there was Knowing...

The San people of the African desert tell a story about a time when all creatures lived together beneath the earth, beneath the trees and the roots, long before this world became the world we know.

There were no paved streets beneath your feet back then, only ancient roots, and starlight to dispel darkness. In that first home, a human child could fall asleep against a lion and wake to the deep rumble of its chest, the way you might wake to your cat curled beside you in the morning. Fear did not exist in that sanctuary. Hunger never turned one soul against another. There was only a single, silent language that every living thing understood. It was spoken not through voice or word, but through breath, scent, and the simple knowing of another life resting near yours.

Imagine what it was to live like that, wrapped in the same shared experience. To walk beside the great elephants, moving with such unhurried grace and learning what true patience felt like in your own bones. To run alongside cheetahs through dry grass, pure muscle and wind, understanding for the first time what it meant to be completely unafraid of your own power. You did not just live near the majestic animal kingdom, you walked together.

Then came the fire...

Ancient legends wrote about what followed. Stories that have been passed down through generations tell about Kaang, the creator. Stories tell about how Kaang lifted everyone upward, out through the roots and into a vast world of open skies. And he left them with this warning, "Whatever you do, do not light a fire".

Night fell, as it always does, and the darkness pressed in, cold and unfamiliar. In that shadow of the unknown, human fear did what fear always does. A flame was lit.

The animals had never known such a thing. A light that moved without life. A heat with no body to carry it. They scattered into the shadows and the whispering grass, terrified. In that single instant, something sacred broke that has never fully mended. The old language vanished into the trees with them. What remained were two kinds of creatures standing on opposite sides of a fire, looking at each other across the flames, no longer able to understand what the other was feeling.

It is not only the San who remember a lost world. The Hopi speak of a time when humans and animals communicated mind to mind, thoughts passing between them like gentle light. The ancient Hindu texts describe a golden age where no creature feared another.

So many distant cultures, all telling similar stories of the kinship that existed between species. And they all talk about a connection that was broken, an unspoken language that was lost.

The yearning still remains...

I believe that an ancient part of us still longs for that connection, that knowing what another life felt like. Underneath all our practices, we still yearn to belong, to feel that kinship, and we dream of running with the cheetahs, swimming with the dolphins, and flying with the peregrines, like we did a long time back.

We don't have the wild ones around us as before, but we do have our own four-footed, two-footed, furry, feathery, finned companions - the ones who choose to share our homes and our lives.

What if they were a doorway to that yearning?

Can You Remember?

Stay with this reflection as long as you need to. You can put on some soft music and journal or meditate on this as well, and see what comes up for you.

And now from Sir Lancelot's Desk 🐾​
​(on the subject of back to the future)

Dearest Readers,

Idee and I watched Back to the Future last evening, and afterward she turned to me with an entirely predictable question. Could I, if I wanted to, travel through time?

I gave her one of my looks. I am not going there with her...or you....

In this movie, this human travels thirty years into the past and his most pressing concern is his mother's love life. Extraordinary use of plutonium. I would have at least fixed the tuna prices and altered the veterinary syllabus forever.

Oh well....if you really must insist, I have to tell you that traveling through time does not require a flux capacitor, a sports car, or hair quite that alarming, as the movie tells you. Instead, you must find the gap. The time that exists between one moment and the next, the wispy sliver of the in-between most humans rush straight through. Weren't you paying attention in class?

I do this several times a day, usually right before dinner, when the gap between "not yet" and "now" becomes unbearably dramatic from a human perspective and perfectly sensible from mine. Pay closer attention, and the gap finds you.

As for the hair on that scientist. I have decided it is simply what happens to anyone who has never discovered the efficiency of a proper grooming routine. I forgive him. He clearly did his best with what he had.

Yours in psi,​
​Sir Lancelot​
​Senior Household Energetic Consultant

And on a personal note...

Around the twentieth of every month, no matter where I am or what I’m doing, a quiet little voice in my head turns on its toes and whispers, “Ooh, what are we writing this month? What new story...or what very old story, are we going to tell?”

When I first sat down to write these letters to you, I made a small, self-protective bargain with myself: "Just once a month. Because really, who on earth is going to bother reading this?" I thought I’d be sending these words out into a vast, empty blue.

And then you showed up.

The numbers tell me that almost sixty percent of you open these letters, read them, and sit with them. But far beyond the numbers, it’s your responses, your replies that mean everything to me. This has become my favorite way of connecting with you.

I’ve come to cherish this leisurely, unhurried pace. I love imagining where you are when you open this, maybe at a corner table in your favorite coffee shop, maybe wrapped in a sweater on a bench in the park, or sitting somewhere quiet out in the grass. And maybe, just maybe, reading a few lines out loud to the animals beside you.

So we’re staying right here. Once a month, just a quiet moment shared together. I’m thinking of calling these letters The Monthly Paws. What do you say?

​
​Thank you for being on the other end of these words.

With love and a little wild magic,​
​Indrani