St Basil and the Hedgehog of Regret
Thoughts on regret, animals and forms of geriatric emotional compression.
This way or no way
You know, I’ll be free
Just like that bluebird
Now ain’t that just like me
David Bowie, Lazarus
Now that I am retired, getting older increasingly feels as if everyone and everything is receding from me. I am far from the first older person to notice this. But as the space clears, other things rush in.
Recently, I keep finding myself feeling unbearably sad and guilty about an animal I hurt over half a century ago, kicking a hedgehog in a field one night as a teenager with my equally unpleasant teenage pals across a field in Wyken, Coventry. I’m sorry to say that it is not the worst thing I ever did, but it seems that, in old age, all the unhappiness you've had, all the dubious things you've done, all the people you have hurt, may return to haunt you, compressed into the wounding image of a hedgehog you will never be able to say sorry to.
Thinking about my sacred little hedgehog again today led me to this prayer, from the Liturgy of the Cappadocian Father, founder of Eastern monasticism, St. Basil the Great (329-379 CE), who did not live long enough to retire, but knew what he was talking about anyway:
The Earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof. O God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom thou has given the earth as their home in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty, so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to Thee in song, has been a groan of travail. May we realise that they live, not for us alone, but for themselves and for Thee, and that they love the sweetness of life.
St. Basil1
Liturgy of St. Basil, quoted in Andrew Linzey and Tom Regan, Compassion for Animals, SPCK Press, 1988, p34.