Last night around midnight, I woke up and thought about last Thursday when I saw what peace on earth looked like.
I didn’t have my cellphone on Thursday, so I couldn’t take a picture. So I had to record it the old-fashioned way: a mental snapshot.
I am reluctant to have my phone on me while I’m hugging any horse, mule, or even a donkey. It’s a safety issue: a spam guy from India might call again to check on my truck warranty and spook the horse, leaving me on the ground looking like a hunk of SPAM minus the can.
Thursday, I stopped by, as I have done for 12 years, to trim the hooves on a horse named Gem. She is over 30 years old. That is as close to a miracle as you will find in almost any pasture. It is also a testament to the good care and love she receives from her owners.
When I arrived, Gem was lying down in the sun with her legs tucked under. Her chin was resting on the ground as if Mother Earth herself was doing her part to support Gem’s peaceful sleep that I was about to disturb.
She was as quiet as a mouse whisper.
I was beginning to think the Great Time Keeper had stopped her clock and called her to the barn to get her reward and find out her new assignment on earth.
Then I saw her flick a fly away with her right ear. Her left ear is bent down because of nerve damage from sticking her hind hoof in her ear to scratch, so its ability to flick has flopped.
That quick flicker in time confirmed that I had misdiagnosed and over-exaggerated her long-in-the-tooth condition.
She would indeed still need her hooves trimmed.
A few feet away, two boys were sitting on the dirt, chattering about something. Both looked to be about 8 years old, maybe a little older.
Between them were two small mounds of dirt they had formed into what looked like forts. If they had been at the beach, I would have called them sand castles. But these boys weren’t sitting on white sand. They were on a derriere-darkening, more fertile piece of earth that looked and smelled like it had potential.
In the distance, the daddy to one boy and the grandfather were pilling limbs on a fire. Even with my weak ears, I could hear the crackle every time they dumped limbs on the flames.
The low rumble of an old tractor idling in the shade gave the vision a sound foundation.
Modernism might call this scene bland and tasteless, like a pot of unsalted grits. But it reminded me of what you might see on a feed store calendar — a scene as optimistic as the cover of a spring seed catalog.
I set my tools down and gazed for a long second. It was like I was about to walk into someone else’s dream.
“If there is Heaven on Earth, this is what it would look like,” I thought to myself before I continued walking
Even after I got up close, Gem didn’t move. She raised her head after I rattled a plastic bottle of oats. I’ve been working on her since 2012, so she knows what that rattle means.
“I hate to bother you, ole girl,” I said as I slipped a halter over her nose and gave the lead rope a slight tug.
She raised her head a little higher, pulled her folded legs from under her chest, and planted them on the ground in front of her.
With a droop of dread in her eyebrows, she rocked back and forth a few times, building momentum.
I have to do that, too, when getting out of my recliner. I’m sure I also have that droop in my brow because I know it will be painful, and I dread the process.
She raised her front end higher, put her back legs under herself, and grunted her hind end off the ground. I wanted to give her a hand up. But that would be hard since I was the only one with a hand.
Her grunts sounded a lot like the ones I make after a horse knocks me down, and I’m getting up off the ground. Only I throw in a few grumbles along with the grunts.
Once she stood for a moment and gathered her thoughts and balance, I gave her a mouthful of oats as a reward for cheating gravity one more time.
I was trimming her feet when the boys came over to watch. I offered to trim their toenails. They laughed, declined, looked at me like I had a possum sitting on my head, and stepped backwards.
I talked a bit with the father and grandfather before I gathered my tools, walked back to the truck, and went to my next stop.
That was four days ago. But that image is still printed on my memory.
I know scenes like this have to be all around us every day. It’s just that we are too busy to notice them.
So last night around midnight, I thought about it again and was able to pull up the image inside my head.
Why then? I don’t know.
But when you think about it, every night is special at the stroke of midnight. It is the exact moment when yesterday becomes today, a tick in time when our past touches our future.
To me, it was a timely reminder to take note of and remember our ordinary encounters with peace on earth, even if it has a flopped ear.
