Elephant Talks to God
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The Elephant Talks to God
The Elephant Talks to God
Dale Estey
Copyright © Dale Estey, 2006.
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.
Cover design by Lisa Rousseau and Julie Scriver.
Page design by Tasha MacDougall.
Images: istock and Dreamstime.
Printed in Canada
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Estey, Dale
The elephant talks to God / Dale Estey.
First published: 1989.
ISBN 0-86492-459-3
1. Theology — Fiction. 2. Faith — Fiction. 3. Religion — Fiction.
I. Title.
PS8559.S74E6 2006 C813′.54 C2006-903467-2
Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture and Sport for its publishing activities.
Goose Lane Editions
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Fredericton, New Brunswick
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To she who must be obeyed — and thus must be
perpetually disappointed. “How are ya now?”
Contents
Not Profound
A Woman from China
Questions & Answers
Oh, to Follow
Yin & Yang
Filling Faith
Love
Jealousy
You Cannot Lose Your Soul
Thoughts Have Life
Wisdom
Christmas at the Mission
Why Do We Have Memories?
Live is an Active Verb
Butterfly Power
Take the Hint
A Small Elephant
Change of Environment
El Elefante
It’s Like Eyelashes
Fishing
Pots o’ Clay
Only I
Dancing With the Wind
Humble Neither in Might Nor Main
How Close?
The Death Procession
No Dynasty
The Ant’s Point of View
Staring at the Stars
Explain Fish to Me
Why is There Life?
God’s Place
Not Profound
The elephant decided it was time to have a talk with God. He had been troubled for weeks, and he wasn’t feeling any more assured, even at the new watering hole. He walked away from the rest of the herd and went through the jungle for half a day until he came to a large clearing filled with tall grass. He ate for an hour, then raised his head and trumpeted. Nothing happened, so he trumpeted again.
“I heard you,” said the voice from the sky.
“Sorry.”
“That’s all right. I was with another elephant.”
A cloud hovered more closely over his head. “What seems to be wrong?”
The elephant took his time and recited all his questions and problems fully.
“It’s all in the Bible,” said God.
“I can’t read,” answered the elephant.
“That’s not up to me,” said God, and the cloud started moving away.
“That’s it?” asked the elephant. “It’s not up to you.”
“Sorry,” said God.
“That’s not very profound!” shouted the elephant at the disappearing cloud.
“You’re only an elephant,” answered God.
A Woman from China
The elephant was happy.
He moved his ears and sprayed water behind them. He grabbed trunkfuls of mud and threw them along his body. He closed his eyes and stuck his head under the river’s surface, then slowly flopped over and settled on his side, stirring up currents which raced to the other shore. He blew bubbles and opened his eyes to see them break against his toenails. He wiggled his tail and scared a fish.
“Give me a squirt, will you?”
The voice alarmed the elephant, and he inhaled when he should not have. He struggled to his feet, coughing.
“You’re too easily startled,” the voice came nearer. “Here, I’ll help.” The elephant felt a light touch on his back, and the coughing stopped.
“Thanks.” The elephant looked around. “Where are you?”
“I’m everywhere,” said God.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” said the elephant.
“Nobody does,” answered the voice.
“I’m sorry. I’ve forgotten what you wanted,” the elephant continued to peer around him.
“I’m over here.”
The elephant looked to his left and saw a huge boulder.
“And what I wanted was to get sprayed with water.”
The elephant lumbered over to the boulder, took a large drink of water, and soaked the grey stone thoroughly.
“Thanks,” said the boulder.
“You could have called up a hurricane,” said the elephant.
“It means more coming from you.”
“I liked you better as a cloud.”
“I’m everything,” answered God. “Being repetitive is a waste.”
“Can you explain that to me?” The elephant sat down by the boulder. “I mean, being everything and everywhere.”
“Not really. It’s a lot like being able to think. Your body can be in the jungle, yet you can imagine a waterhole or the grasslands — many things at once. That’s what I am.”
“Have you ever been understood?” asked the elephant.
“Yes … once. About seven hundred years ago. A woman in Shansi Province in China actually figured it all out.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing. She wisely kept it to herself.”
The elephant hesitated, then settled more comfortably against the boulder. He felt very content gazing at the blue sky and enjoying the coolness of the water.
“God?”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for mud.”
Questions & Answers
The elephant grunted, yet the world slept on. The stars kept their steady gaze upon the slumbering herd, and the darkened jungle murmured with its night sounds. The elephant gave a dissatisfied twitch of his trunk and finally rose to his feet. Taking care not to nudge any of his slumbering neighbours, he walked to the river and took a deep drink of water. When he raised his head and shook some final drops from his trunk, he noticed a fluorescent nimbus floating over to the rushing current.
“How did you know?” asked the elephant.
“I was taking a quiet turn with an angel,” the cloud pulsated, “as Katherine Mansfield would say.”
“I can’t sleep,” said the elephant.
“It will come with time; it always does.”
“You made so many questions,” complained the elephant.
“And as many answers,” said God.
Oh, to Follow
The elephant was a curious pachyderm and followed his persistent quest with a guileless intensity.
“More lucky than smart,” said some of the other elephants as he blundered his way toward another piece of knowledge. They nodded their heads in his direction with the heavy weight of caution and warned their small ones that too much thought would make them strange.
“An elephant wades in water,” they would sagely say, “only if the mudhole is wide enough.”
And the little ones would watch him, as they stood between the legs of their parents, and wish that they could follow.
Yin & Yang
The elephant was on the high cliff overlooking the ocean.
It was not a trip he often made, for although he found the view exhilarating, it was also disquieting. He missed the comfort of the trees and the jungle. Even the grasslands promised an eventual border of protection. But here, his gaze became lost in the horizon, and he could see nothing to prove there was an end.
As he pondered this panorama, he noticed a cloud moving across the ocean below him. It wafted its way up the side of the cliff.
“This is a switch,” said the cloud.
“What’s it like down there?” joked the elephant.
“That would be an easy thing to discover,” noted God.
“This looks like a place of Revelations,” said the elephant.
“Well, thank your God it is no road to Damascus,” said God. “A flash of light could easily startle you over the cliff. Then where would you be?”
“A good question,” pointed out the elephant.
“Touché,” said the cloud. “In fact, this would even be an unwise place to kick against the pricks. One false move, and —”
“Exit elephant.”
“Exactly.”
“I thought it was a little knowledge that was dangerous.” The elephant was not yet used to being eye-to-cloud with God. “Shouldn’t a leap from here safely get me all the answers?”
“Don’t overestimate death,” said God. “It’s a transition — not an end. All the answers do not await you at the bottom of this cliff.”
“You make it sound as if I’d just be waking from sleep.”
“‘For in that sleep of death …’”
“‘What dreams may come!’” shouted the elephant. “Yes. Yes. ‘What dreams may come.’”
“Step back now,” cautioned the cloud. “We don’t want you making your quietus quite yet.”
“But that’s the way it often happens; isn’t it?” The elephant carefully moved away from the cliff. “We get the great thing we have wanted for so long but at the same time lose everything else.”
“Your trunk can only hold so much,” pointed out God. “To pick up one thing, you have to put down another.”
“I dunno,” said the elephant. “Keeping up with you is like keeping track of the monkeys when they’re in the vines. It leads to utter confusion.”
“You feel confused?”
“Yes.” The elephant paused and looked around. “Well … no.”
He gazed out over the ocean for a long time and sensed that the silence was not going to be broken by anyone but him.
“You’re doing it again. I get so excited by understanding something that it calms me. Then I get so peaceful because I’ve figured out something, that it frightens me. I get frustrated when I realize how much there is to learn, yet I fear I’ll be bored if I learn too much.”
The elephant walked deliberately back to the edge of the cliff. “I feel as though I could step off and fly to the ends of the sun and the sea.”
“That’s not a feeling I would put into action,” said the cloud.
“No?”
“No.”
“So. One revelation a day.”
“Oh, you could handle two,” said the cloud. “But it would be your last one on earth.”
“Gotcha,” said the elephant.
“If you’ve had enough of the view,” suggested God, “perhaps we should be getting back.”
“OK.”
The elephant stood a long time and watched the reflection of the sun. It spread its golden path across the surface of the ocean directly at him. He then turned and started walking home to the jungle.
“Are you coming with me?” he called over his shoulder.
“I’m always with you,” said God.
Filling Faith
The elephant was dozing on the verge of the grasslands.
He occasionally shifted his bulk from one side to the other and took a leisurely gaze at his surroundings. He did not have far to retreat to the safety of the jungle, so with an open eye and an attentive ear, he felt his precautions were enough. He had not, however, taken into consideration an assault from the air.
“Gotcha,” said the cloud.
“Snort,” said the elephant.
“Let’s be up and away.”
“Us?” queried the elephant, as he struggled to his feet.
“You’ve heard of the royal ‘we,’” said God. “You can imagine how I feel.”
“I,” said the elephant, looking at the cloud, “perhaps can’t imagine it.”
“Perhaps.” The cloud paused in its movement. “But with your imagination, I would say the jury is still out. What I am is approached more closely through imagination than any other door.”
“More than faith?”
“Faith is an engine of belief. Imagination is the path to understanding.”
“And what path are we taking?” asked the elephant as he followed the cloud into the jungle.
“Tried and true,” laughed God. “Each step secure for a large fellow such as yourself.”
“Much appreciated,” said the elephant. “I know your affection for waysides.”
He calmly continued along the trail, keeping his eyes where he put his feet yet with an occasional glance at the cloud. They went on for a long time, and the jungle became thicker and more quiet.
“I don’t know this place,” said the elephant.
“No,” answered God. “You don’t.”
“Do we have a particular destination?”
“No.”
“Just out for a walk, then?”
“Yes.”
“Hmmm,” said the elephant.
“Hmmm?”
“You don’t do things without a purpose,” said the elephant. “It is a trait of yours.”
“I think,” said the cloud, “that the doing of something is always purpose enough.”
“But we do something to achieve an end.”
“You forage for food when you are hungry?”
“Yes.” The elephant raised his head hopefully. “Is that where we’re going?”
“Yet you know,” said God, ignoring the question with a smile, “you will be hungry again and eventually have to start all over.”
“Yes.” The elephant answered doubtfully. “But that’s the way of the world.”
“Yes.” The cloud stopped abruptly. “Continual progression. Every time you think something ends, there is no end. It is only a landmark showing where you’ve been and where you go. Every ending you perceive guides you further through life.”
“If we don’t eat food — we die.” The elephant spoke firmly. “So life does end with death.”
“Oh,” said God, who parted an immense tangle of vines to reveal the most lush field the elephant had ever seen, “ye of little faith.”
Love
The elephant rammed into a tree. He looked up with some surprise and then stepped back, shattering a wooden fence. He turned around to see what the noise was and gouged another tree with one of his tusks. The birds were, by this time, in an uproar, the monkeys were scaling the nearest vines amid much chattering, and a passing hyena was laughing uproariously. The elephant ambled unconcernedly away from the havoc he had created and started along the narrow path. He broke off branches, stomped bushes into oblivion, and uprooted a tree for the sheer joy of it. He gently snatched a startled toucan bird out of a branch with his trunk and started to tickle him with little snorts of air. The bird began to giggle, and the elephant let him fly away. The whole jungle was now frantic, and it was not long before a cloud came scudding across the sky.
“What the hell?” asked the cloud.
The elephant looked up and smiled.
“You’re drunk,” said the cloud.
The elephant filled his cheeks as full as they would go and trumpeted very loudly.
“Oh dear,” said the cloud.
The elephant marched around in a tiny circle and then trumpeted again.
“You’re in love,” said God.
“You got it,” said the elephant, nodding vigorously.
“It had to happen sometime,” the cloud sighed.
“Birds do it, bees do it,” the elephant started singing.
“Even elephants with knees do it,” chimed in God. “I know, I know.”
The elephant grinned foolishly and stopped moving about. “Any lessons to be learned?” he asked.
“Oh yes,” God sighed again. “So much.”
“Well, I’m ready.” The elephant kicked up his heels, a difficult task at the best of times. “Teach me.”
“Oh no.” The cloud started to rise into the air. “You’re on your own this time. Love is for lovers to teach.” The cloud moved away, casting a shadow across the elephant, who was now trying to dance on his hind legs. God had to chuckle, knowing only too well the feelings: warmed by the joy.
Jealousy
The elephant sighed, looked around, and felt that not enough notice was being taken. So he pointedly, loudly, sighed again, ruffling the water in which he sat.
“If you knew the sighs I’ve heard,” said the boulder, patiently waiting in the river.
“An elephant’s sighs are as good as any.”
“Yes, of course,” said God as the boulder was nudged by the elephant’s shoulder. “Uniquely laced with peanut but heartfelt nevertheless.”
“You don’t like peanuts?” asked the elephant accusingly.
“I like everything I made or else they wouldn’t exist.” The boulder settled more profoundly. “I can’t, however, be held responsible for your reactions to things. I made other elephants, and you fall in love.”
“Not anymore.” The elephant slapped his trunk on the water.
“Don’t interrupt your God,” said God. “You fall in love, and that’s your own doing. My job is making elephant number one and elephant number two. From then on it’s up to your own designs and devices.”