Finding the Open Door

 

Today I came upon a doe deer  caught in a hog trap.  Knowing the frantic nature of a wild animal in close proximity to humans, I approached slowly, quietly, but panic still ensued.  The deer banged and ran against the walls of the cage, bloodying its mouth and tongue.  As I tried to hold the gate open to show it the way out, it continued to bang itself against the pen at the other end. After wiring the gate open, I went around to the closed end of the cage to provoke the animal to go toward the open door.  It still banged itself unmercifully against the wires of the closed end until it passed out.  I thought it had died, but it came to and only continued to bang itself and bloody itself even more against the closed end of the trap.  Nothing seemed to dissuade this deer from self-destruction, and all the time there was an open door in the other direction, at the other end of the trap.  The deer passed out again.  In desperation, I turned the trap on its end, tumbling the unconscious deer to the open end.  Thank God, its head fell in the opening of the open door; it could have seen freedom only a few inches away, but it was incapacitated, unconscious, perhaps dying from the stress of the capture.  As an encouragement for the deer to fully realize its possibilities, I left, hoping the deer would awake and grasp its own inherent freedom, to live the life it was intended for. 

 

And so it is with us.  How often do we bang ourselves against the indulgences of our time, in an almost methodical, maniacal, committed absorption in self-destruction when the open door is within our grasp? 

 

When I went back, the deer was gone; It had found the door, found the freedom it was intended for.

I pray we all find that open