The Magic Between the Living and the Dead

“Have you ever seen a deer so small, it’s like the size of my dog,” Brad* said.

“I didn’t realize it was dead,” I said when we decided to get out of the car.  Its head had been smashed in.  It was the smallest fawn I’d ever seen and the blood had collected in a small puddle around its ear.  Its eyes were open and lifeless.

I stood over the body and the cars seemed fast so close to us as they swished by.  This is man and nature colliding, I thought.

“We can’t just leave it here,” Brad said.

“I’ve got my medicine bag in the car,” I said as I crossed the busy street more carefully than the doe had attempted.  We didn’t have a lighter so we prayed over the body and sprinkled sage and copal over it.  Brad closed its eyes before lifting its body and carrying it into the woods to place behind a tree.  We both squatted there and Brad and I both saw it breathing.  Brad said its body was stiff, though I hadn’t touched it. 

The sunlight crept through the trees and the shadows danced on the fawn’s belly.  The belly inflated and deflated again.  Brad and I crouched there looking at one another in disbelief.  This was magic.  This was sacred.  This was real.  We both bore witness to the miraculous dance in the time that exists between the living and the dead.

There have been many studies done where people don’t see things because they  don’t expect to see things.  How many things do we miss in our awareness because we believe it to be unbelievable or perhaps unexpected?  The mind is a very powerful thing - it can train itself to react to a very strict reality, but what happens when you begin to open those windows of consciousness? When those rules that dictate reality begin to bend so slightly? How much more aware will you be?  How much more will you see?

*The name was changed.