Glen Downie – Creatures – And Maybe Even My Mother

Recently, I found tucked in an old book a poem by Glen Downie – The creatures by glen downie.  This poem reminded me of a famous line from Hillel.

If I am not for myself, who will be for me?

Hillel reminds us that in order to protect ourselves, we must begin by undertaking an internal quest to see the world and ourselves not as we were told to see them, but as they truly are — or might be–the world of possibilities.

The creatures by glen downie

Caged in your sleep may the great beasts
bless and protect you always   the bears of
loving kindness   the wise Blakean tigers
of wrath & the horses of
instruction  Dream untroubled
by paradox of proportion – the ladybug
bigger than the cat   the mouse
as large as the elephant
& wearing pants   in their all-forgiving silence
may they love you in ways we fail to
these friends of first refuge
the peaceable kingdom
where the lion lies down with the lamb

And I thought of my mother.

As long as I can remember, I would comment that my mother lived in a world inhabited by creatures that none of us could see. Now, as I am getting so much older, I, too, see them.  Likewise, children see things that the rest of us cannot.  We tell them that their “imaginary friends/creatures” really don’t exist.  They believe us — after all, we are the adults — and eventually the friends and the creatures cease to exist.

But maybe, just maybe, those creatures still do exist — have always existed.

As children we were taught that we were created in the Image of the Divine. We believe that Image no longer exists. But maybe. just maybe, we have always been that Image of the Divine.  We believed everyone who told us who and what we are – MERELY human. But being human is being in the Image of the Divine.

I AM for myself, but now I need to see who that really is.

B’Shalom
Rabbi Stanley Halpern