Our dog Tig is in his happy space; lying on his back on his sofa, and as I look on, I feel like my chest will explode with an unexpected love tsunami.

How many beings can we love at once? How many will we allow to love us in return?

His defencelessness intensifies the emotional exposure. This brings to mind some thoughts that sit near the centre of my capacity for making meaning of what I am attempting to be at this point of my life, in Summer Hill and elsewhere. 

I had a dream where I was standing in a forest, watching as the machines move in. Maybe they’ve come for pulpwood or lumber, to clear a field for row crops or a housing development. Above the din of the chainsaws, I imagine I heard one tree saying to another:

“They must be suffering from a hunger that will find no satisfaction, a thirst that will not abate. What poor, poor creatures.”

Forgiveness might be the deepest form of generosity.

If we discovered that we are still worthy of forgiveness, how would we tell the story of our time?

I recently listened to one of the participants in the civil rights movements; an amazing ‘humane man’ called John Lewis who described how he and his fellow civil rights demonstrators practiced for the march on Selma—role-playing for hours in church basements; cursing and even pouring cold water over one another and looking the pretend police officer in the eye, with love. Only love. As he proudly tells it; not a single demonstrator struck back on that bloody day.

John Lewis describes the practice he relied upon in the heat of the demonstration. He kept his gaze fixed upon the police officer who was beating him and pictured him as a young child. Then he imagined what might have happened to that child, such that he grew up to be filled with so much fear and hate. 

According to Lewis, “Dr. King used to joke sometimes and say things like, ‘Just love the hell outta everybody. Just love ’em.’”

This love is offered as a gift to anyone who is hurting for any reason. Forgiveness might be the deepest form of generosity.

Once we’ve been forgiven—by a forest, a friend, or a formerly-enslaved person—what will we do?

Just the other evening, when talking in the pub with a group of good friends about mine and Jud’s relationship with our sheep, someone pointed out that we were only able to do what we do because we have, let’s say; ‘full pockets’. What came to my mind, was; our ‘generosity’ might very well be seen as a self indulgent luxury.

It’s not an easy one to answer. Where did the mythical story, that ‘full pockets make good, kind people’ come from? – even if every study looking into such things finds an inverse relationship between affluence and generosity—as in, rich people give less proportionately and report a greater felt sense of scarcity than people with less financial security, I have to admit that the “full pockets” story is very difficult to shake.

Here’s one clue from Dr Merrill Gates; a protestant pastor and director of Indian affairs, writing in the late 1800s:

“To bring the Indian out of savagery and into citizenship, we need to awaken in him wants. In his dull savagery he must be touched by the divine angel of discontent….Discontent with the tee-pee and the Indian camp….is needed to get the Indian out of the blanket and into trousers—and trousers with a pocket in them, and with a pocket that aches to be filled with dollars!

We have found it necessary, as one of the first steps in developing a stronger personality in the Indian, to make him responsible for property. Even if he learns its value only by losing it, and going without it until he works for more, the educational process has begun.”

Preacher Merrill Gates, who one assumes; considered himself a good and kind Christian, did though skip the following passage from Acts 2:44 :

“And all who believed, were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day….they received their food with glad and generous hearts.”

This was written quite a long time before the communist manifesto.

I like to picture the radical Nazarene back in the day; fresh in from forty days fasting in the wild, with a pair of scissors in his hands walking barefoot from town to town cutting the bottoms out of people’s pockets. For he would have understood that which I have experienced whilst travelling the world, and as a young child in an empty pocket community in Sheffield; that those with empty pockets are more often than not the most generous.

Without pockets to fill, we might find it easier to remember our human capacity for generosity as none other than the forgiveness—the grace—of the greening land.

Tig sleeps peacefully as I write this blog. I love watching the residual, instinctual wild energy Tig possesses in his domesticated body. Perhaps that’s why we love our pets so deeply. Could they help us remember that we, too, emerged from the wild, from nothing, with no pockets? That we, too, might carry some lingering traces of that generosity, even here in the thick of the modern world? Could they help us remember that we, too, might be worthy of forgiveness? Once we’ve been forgiven, what will we do?

As an aside, Tig who has no pockets to fill must be invoking something else that inspires his love – it’s a mystery.

November Little Heading 

My heart

Like the sky

Covering everything intimately

with love

✨