During the last few days in the UK with Jen, we stayed at a friend’s flat in Fernhurst, a beautiful village south of London. The place was crisscrossed with public footpaths, and we took turns going in different directions exploring the area.

I fell in love with these footpaths and how the English have preserved them; they are ley lines, energetic paths of connection that maintain a centuries old love of the land.

This particular day, the footpath took me to a farm with horses. One pasture had three horses; one pair of obvious friends and an odd man out. The three were wearing fly masks over their heads; see-thru skirts that cover their eyes to protect them from the many flies buzzing around.

I walked up to the fence, about twenty feet from where they were and put out my hand…

The pair came over first; while one sniffed my open palm, the other rested his chin on his buddy’s back. They were very comfortable and physical with each other. They turned side to side, facing in opposite directions, and when one would swish his tail, it would flick the flies off his friend’s face.

I wasn’t feeding them any grass and they moved off, content to nuzzle each other. I went over to the solo horse, his aloneness triggering loneliness in me.

He came over and smelt my hand. He was more cautious, and kept shying away. I quieted myself more deeply in response, and then he lifted his head over the fence and nuzzled me.

Something in me melted… in an instant we became old friends. I petted him, and the more comfortable I got, the more confident my hand moved; rubbing and scratching his ears, his head, his mane…

As I rubbed and scratched, love flowing freely between us, I wondered where the guidance and inspiration for my freely moving hand came from…

Touch is powerful, an intimate physical expression of connection and caring… touching this horse is the same as petting a cat, stroking our lover’s face, massaging a friend’s shoulders…

My hand glides across the horse, going here, scratching there… the subtleties of it’s movement is independent of ‘me’… Its motion exudes grace, is the embodiment of caring, an expression of love… I watch as some loving force guides this hand in a nurturing union with the horse…

Is the guidance for the movement of my hand coming from me, from ‘my’ intuition? Is the horse intuitively telling me where to rub?  Exactly where does the inspiration of how to lovingly touch another come from?

(If you cannot see the video, click here)

I was out for a run, listening to my i-pod’s deliciously current mix of Beatles, Enigma, James Taylor, Andrea Bocelli & Snatam Kaur…

I was in a sweaty rapture; breath bellowing, blood pumping, cells tingling, when I heard a faint yapping…

Turning, I see a tiny little dog, no bigger than my sneaker, running boldly behind me, a litany of canine threats stringing forth from her tiny maw.

Her ‘owner’ was barking too, at her to stop chasing me.

Me, after discerning she wasn’t going to nip my ankles, smiled and kept running. A spontaneous wave of love for the tiny pooch flashed out of me (I grew up with dogs, a lifelong member of the dog tribe) and continued on…

As did she. Her tiny yips stayed with me, and after passing a few more houses, I turned to see she was following.

I used to carry some resistance to tiny dogs (I grew up with German Shepards), and the little floor mop variety seemed a bit, well, vain. Besides, I’m a manly man, a woodsman, hunter, gatherer, much more comfortable with a husky or half-blood (wolf) next to me at the campfire.

It wasn’t until my mother, before she passed, took in a tiny shitzu that I overcame my prejudices of size. That pooch, Sweetie, helped me admit what I already knew, that the size of a dog is irrelevant to its ability to shower us (and the rest of the world) with its love.

So out of concern for this tiny tot barking at my ankles, I stopped, turned, squatted and, cupping my hands together, lay them palms up onto the sun-warmed tar of the quiet street. I called to her softly, the sweet voice of Snatam Kaur singing a love song of Kabir’s in my own ears…

Still she yipped, but she came closer, half circling.

Once upon a time I’d have been more cautious. I’ve been bitten by a few dogs, carried the memory for moments such as this. Yet something in that tiny yip called forth something very paternal within me, and I whispered to her even more gently…

She wriggles her way closer… she’s absolutely tiny, the middle of her head is the same height as my ankle…

She’s vibrating so fast she’s hard to see. So this is where the term ‘beside one’s self’ comes from.

Closer she comes, still yipping… I feel her intensity, her tumultuous mix of excitement and fear, curiosity and love… I feel her passion to connect, to somehow confront and transform me from a giant monster lumbering thru her neighborhood into another lover, just like her…

I feel it, want it too, want connection, want the gap between us closed, want intimacy, touch…

She’s so scared. I’m a thousand times bigger than she, barreling thru her world, and her heart’s racing from the brazen chase. Yet her desire to connect is within me as well… don’t know if the desire’s hers or mine or life’s… doesn’t matter, its strong, real, calling forth to something within me, asking to be heard, met…

I calm myself in response, settle even more deeply. My breath slows, my heart opens wider… a very soft whisper ushers forth from somewhere within me, an ancient place of oneness, a place of deep gentleness… a divine response to her calling, and she comes closer…

She moves in from the side, sniffing the outer edge of my hand. I know better than to move, resist the desire to pet her, and give her the time she needs… her tongue flicks out, peppers my skin with kisses. The smile on my face is not human, coming from some heavenly place elsewhere…

He appears out of nowhere, scoops her up in his hands. “Gotcha”, he says.

A big guy, he’s huffing from the chase. I wish he’d given us a minute. Not today, its over, and I feel a flash of anger at his crudeness.

It quickly passes; he either doesn’t know any better or is too uncomfortable with the tenderness and intimacy of the moment. I ask him her name, offering entry into the connection.

“Elizabeth”, he says, and I pet her ever so tenderly with two fingertips. She quivers happily in reply, her eyes alight with fire. She’s perfectly content, everything’s ok, the gap is closed…

He turns, heads home, unaware of what just happened… I’m unsure myself, it looks so simple to the ordinary eye. Yet there’s no denying what I feel, and I continue on, knowing that two souls in different bodies just shared holy communion in the middle of this quiet street.