Slugs

I'm making my peace with slugs.  It has been a rainy few months, so they are pretty much everywhere, yard and garden.  They ooze their way around amazingly fast.  Isn't it funny how creatures that ooze aren't nearly as appealing as creatures with furry feet?  Or even birds, with their reptilian feet... at least they have cute feathery bodies.  But slugs?  Not much to appeal to human aesthetics.  Unless you're two years old.

My two year old grandson helped restore my sense of appreciation for slugs tonight.  We were outside watching all the toads come out for the evening, chasing some lightening bugs, and marveling at the clearness of the evening star.  Then he discovered a really, really big slug.  I'm a country girl, and I even like worms... but slugs make me want to go 'eeeeewww.'  Like the good grandma that I am, I got down and admired this giant bit of ooze, and before long I really was seeing it, for the first time.  Yes, it still oozes.  Yes, it still sucks holes in my hostas.  But it is alive.  Its antennae move and communicate as we get closer and talk to it.  There is awareness.

As an animal lover and caretaker of the Sanctuary here, I have enormous respect and love for animals great and small, wild or tame.  But I realized that the exclusion of love and respect for even one life form can lead us to be careless of Life, and set us on a downward spiral.  We can't say some parts of creation are perfect, and exclude the parts we think inconvenience us, or aren't pretty or comfortable enough.  If we except parts of Life, we can't see Life's wholeness, and we are no longer whole.

As I get older, I discover I'm returning to that childlike wonder and appreciation of ALL of it.  And I feel the wholeness of that, and revel in it.  I hope that each person who reads this will take some time to notice what aspects of life they have been rejecting, and start to notice whatever it is again with love and appreciation.  The joy this brings is indescribable.  Another precious day of Life in Sanctuary.