All creatures…

“Put your hands on my shoulders,” Diarmuid said. And suddenly my feet were on solid, safe ground and I walked confidently behind him down to the paddock gate, in total darkness. It was Christmas night and the rural sky was full of stars. Furthermore there was a crescent moon lying on its back low on the horizon. But neither moon nor stars gave any effective light for bringing in the two horses for the night. Diarmuid left me at the gate and I was to hold it open allowing the two skittish animals to come up and into their bright inviting stables.

Somewhere down in the inky darkness Diarmuid was making encouraging noises; but the horses had other ideas. One behind the other they raced first to the right side of the field and then back again to the left resembling, as they thundered past me, veritable ‘ghost riders in the sky’. Eventually it was a bucket with some rattling nuts in it, that persuaded one of them to let himself be led up through the gate. And soon the other followed making his obedient way into his own well-stocked cubicle, play over.

As we left the yard to go to Mass, their heads stretched out from their top half-doors, eyeballing the two sedate mares in other boxes who were doing likewise. And I identified with Diarmuid’s attraction to the wonderful world of the horse. If cows, donkeys and sheep featured in the fields around Bethlehem, horses can’t have been far away – ‘all creatures great and small etc.’ Each contributes its unique energy to the ineffable cosmos, of which each of us is also a part.

(Drawing by Colum Keating; www.columkeating.ie)