I dragged a lawn chair way up in the pasture and Simon quickly came over to me, and I gave him and Lulu and Fanny some carrots and he stayed behind and we sat in the pasture, head to head, for what seemed to be the longest time, but was perhaps only a half hour or so.  And Simon came and put his head against my shoulder and I looked into his eyes, and I heard a voice saying, “you helped heal me, and I will help heal you,” and it was inside my head, but that was what I felt, a sense of great calm, of healing, of a connection that transcended the ordinary, that felt so deep and beautiful. And it took my breath away, the two of us sitting up there like that, a cool breeze washing over us, and I thought how blessed am I, to be experiencing this powerful and ancient thing.

Simon, like many donkeys, seems to see into the souls of people, and being with him has changed me, altered me. He has been to the edge of life and returned, and so have I, and there we were, these two souls, fused as one, an intersection of the life we both share on this earth. There are many good people who would spend a day like this grabbing bargains in Wal-Mart, or shopping online,  and I mean them no disrespect. Most people can’t sit with a donkey in the afternoon.  Very few of the many tens of  millions of shoppers caused trouble, something the news sometimes forgets to point out. And people must find meaning in their own way. But I would not rather be anywhere but where I was this afternoon, it seemed to me I was getting the greatest gift and bargain of all, a change to brush against one small entry in the journal of life.