The Pacifist

It was a real shocker to find myself back in civilization again on Tuesday morning. My world seemed suddenly . . . not quite wild enough. Warning: spending a few days in a wild area might do that to you! You just might be . . . changed.

So to console myself, I took a little break during my work day to visit one of my favorite places in town, which is to say, the Arboretum. Apparently I have not been visiting the children's garden much lately, as I arrived there to discover this!

This is a statue of an American bison, and it sits right in the middle of Childhood's Gate, the children's garden at Penn State's Arboretum. In fact, it's rather large! How they got it in there without me noticing, I'll never know. The ground is neatly mulched around it and it looks like it's been there forever!

On this morning, the creature sported a jaunty sunflower above its one ear. And no, I am not the person who put the flower there. That was done by someone with a similarly whimsical spirit who visited before I did. But I did admire the pretty flower and the way it seemed to transform the creature into something gentler and more lovely even than it had been.

It reminded me of the book about Ferdinand the Bull, who would much rather sit on the hill sniffing flowers than fighting in a bullfighting ring. The story is a favorite from my childhood: the tale of a pacifist bull who refused to fight, no matter what. (Like Benjamin Franklin, I have never known a good war, or a bad peace.)

I admit that I just may find some resonance in this tale because my own ancestors - Anabaptists - fled Germany into Switzerland in the 1700s because they refused to fight in the wars. From there they came to America, and so here I am, standing where I am in the New World, because my ancestors were pacifists!

By the way, I don't know if they plan to name this creature (some of the other critters in the gardens do get names, as it turns out), but to me, he will always be Ferdinand the Bull. :-)

Here's a fine tune to celebrate this peaceful image with, and I know I've used it at least once before, but it is a message well worth repeating. John Lennon would have been 75 years old last week. Happy birthday, dear John! Here's John Lennon, with Give Peace a Chance.