Baaa, Baaa, Baaa

Tonight, the coyote’s call makes my hair stand on end. Their laugh is inocuous enough, as a vague concept, somewhere out there on the hillsides. But I’ve grown fond of these little lambs and their family units traveling as a community of ecological lawn-mowers - munching down the hillsides of this retreat center where I’m staying in Petaluma.

Earlier today, at lunch time, I walked by the flock and noted one sheep had a wound - like an open gash on its flank. I wondered if it had had a too close encounter of the tree kind. Hearing the coyote’s yip yip at midnight and linking it with that visual of torn sheep flesh, gives me the heeby jeebies.

In our workshop assistant’s meeting Saturday morning I heard that one of the students  was particularly tuned in to how different one lamb’s bleat sounded from the others. Following her ears and intuition she found the little one trapped in the fencing and terribly dehydrated. The mother had gone in a different direction. Another lamb nearby was dead of dehydration. She picked up and carried to the caretaker the living lamb and one other who was in trouble. Cindy saved two lost lambs! There’s an upwelling of tears through my core at the thought of lambs lost and lambs found... and saved from the brink.

These third year students of Somatic Experiencing are doing such profound work with one another around resolving trauma, that I am moved to tears several times a day - just to witness the depth of grief, terror and rage we humans can endure, embody and process - with enough awareness and enough safety. To know that we have the equal and opposite capacity to soar to spiritual heights of ecstasy is cause for hope.

Lost lambs coming home.

This is one of the songs my mom used to play on the piano and sing all the lyrics in her rich alto. It’s by Cole Porter.

We’re poor little lambs who have lost our way, baaa baaa baaa

We’re little black sheep who have gone astray baaa, baaa, baaa

Gentlemen songsters off on a spree doomed from here to eternity. 

Lord, have mercy on such as we, Baaaa Baaaa Baaaa