I am not saying Christians are like coyotes.
[For that, some could cut caustically to coyotes are like Christians — tricksters, roaming in the dark, feeding on the dead … ]
Simply noticed — somewhat in passing, as it’s said, having attained, apparently … achieved? … some kind of state where nearly anything I hear, read, run across suggests something els … which then sets me off connecting dots, sometimes ones that shd stay dots and not be made into lines, stay dots … stars? pointillism? … and not be made into fodder.
Simply saw something inside, a memory, a connection, after a Facebook post linking to a brief note from Utah Public Radio that areas where coyotes are hunted have more coyotes. This reminded me of a shred from a fairly-known-by-now prayer of Bp Velimirovic —
as a hunted animal finds safer shelter than an unhunted animal,
so have I, persecuted by enemies, found the safest sanctuary …
A prayer for forgiveness and loving our enemies — Bless my enemies, O Lord; even I bless and do not curse them, the refrain.
So it quickly occurred to me that if this is so — coyote populations grow where they’re pursued for precisely the opposite aim — then those who like coyotes, or don’t like killing animals generally, ought to welcome things like bounty programs on the beasts, such as in Utah itself.
I am not being facetious, here.
How shd that work itself out?!
What wd coyote care look like.
Later thought also of the 2007 Mercy Me tune, Bring the Rain, wherein the narrator asks for hardships, if this is the means by which deeper relationship with Jesus comes, too … or comes to. Rain is a’course a well-worn image, a trope even, a cliché of song and film — standing in for struggle, romance, and baptism, as witness, to take just one example, the Shawshank Redemption scene. This also adds the crucifixion — itself a rather hoary element of itself. A British Film Institute article from some years back purported to name the ’15 Best’ rain scenes. The link is broken now but it suggests how many there cd be if there are that many at the top.
[There aren’t; it’s clickbait. Be grateful the link is broken.]
And a better idea than ‘coyotes and Christians’ is coyotes and crucifixion — taking up our cross, taking on Christ’s bidding to ‘come and die’ [Bonhoeffer], thenby, to neologize briefly, dying to self, paradoxically thereby finding self … trying to connect it to the whole enterprise is too large as to be laughable. I want more to suggest the coyote as outsider, as fringe dweller, as really not fit for polite society, which shuns and disdains and, well … kills it.
Even as trickster, as we permit this, welcome it, and, dust clears, there is more of us, the individual, and are more of us, the collective. Ha! Fooled ya.
Even when Wile E Coyote drops off that cliff, he’s back at his task in the very next scene.
He’s tryna eat the roadrunner but that’s of no account. It’s comedy, and he always fails.
And I found the idea wasn’t original, tho the original one isn’t what’s here meant.
In fact, there’s a book. You can’t be shocked by this — there being one or my finding it. It’s Coyote Meets Jesus, with the connection chosen specifically, according to its description, because coyote ‘he represents both the good and bad that are characteristic of human nature.’
[Two other books, having nearly nothing to do with this post: Coyote America and God’s Dog. Tried the first, but on Audible and there was a thing I didn’t like about it I can’t recall right now — might’ve just been the narrator, which of course kills any Audible affirmation. Mean to try both sometime.]
Here’s another actual connection, and a big one, period, and for showing my idea wasn’t original.
An artist and animal rights activist once exhibited a dead coyote nailed to a cross. This was controversial. Her contention focused on animal death as a result of human actions.
[The image here is of a photograph, colored and reproduced, of the original work — the flesh-and-dead wolf-cousin nailed to two slats of wood.]
I remembered meeting someone whose job at the time was hunting coyotes in Southern California tract housing neighborhoods, and how this job only existed bec we built tract housing neighborhoods in coyote habitats. I remember a graveyard shift job driving a patrol car for security activities, nightly seeing a posse of three or four coyotes regularly trotting about industrial parks, and along the railroad that ran through them.
I am not making a political point, tho it compels me some to realize I, as she, reimagined the crucifixion as containing characteristics of coyote life …
It’s not what she meant, but to be fair, what she meant isn’t what the Crucifixion means. Except when it does — how we ought to become certain kinds of people who, again paradoxically will give up [at least some] life so others might have more. Commonly this means other humans but it doesn’t have to be only them. What might we give up for various sorts of creatures to live better?
What might we give up so we ourselves will live better.
Stretched at all here, my analogy breaks down real fast.
I am not saying Christian are like coyotes, are like this.
I’m saying we shd be.
Image Credits:
Warner Bros
and
Crucified Coyote
Paulette Nenner
1981, Gallery 98