A Bear With Twigs

Once upon a time, a bear got an idea. This bear lived in the middle of the deep woods of Alabama and had many friends, including the beavers, rabbits and deer. She took what would normally be a tool for building shelter or, among the humans, starting a fire, two simple twigs, and she beat upon mushrooms with them. She heard a pleasing 'thump' sound when she did this and recalled something that the Native Americans called a 'drum.'

This bear, who called herself simply 'bear' within her mind, got the idea that she could be like the humans, and recalled a picnic once where more humans took what they had and improvised a whole song, harmonizing using containers, strings, lutes, and their voices. Bear wanted to start a band, a team of sorts that could make music throughout all of God's majesty.

"But," Bear thought to herself at first, "I'm just an animal. A creature like me only has instinct to go off; I do not truly know what is beautiful and just, I just do the best I can to survive. But am I good enough to harmonize in the way I have dreamed with other beings of my sort?"

"Hey, Bear," said a nearby Rabbit--in the way that animals communicate with each other--as he hopped closer to investigate, "I saw you drumming upon those tasty 'shrooms instead of eating them. And I liked the way it sounded, but I am curious: what made you think to beat upon them with twigs?"

"It's hard to express," said Bear, "but there is such a thing as a creative force within my instinct, that I cannot touch, see, smell, hear or otherwise sense, but strong thoughts within me compel me to make music in worship of and service to this unseen force, and in service to myself as well."

"Fascinating," said Rabbit. "I have carrots that I love to munch on, but I bet they could make a different sound as I rub them together." And he did so, to create a scritch-scratch. He broke one, to create a loud snap, a percussive force of sound to which Bear listened, but Rabbit could not break them into pieces forever or on his own, so he simply scritch-scratched like a human DJ.

"I was having doubts," Bear confessed, "that I could ever learn to play human-like music. But what you have shown me encourages me."

"All you need to do, Bear," Rabbit consoled, "is allow yourself to be a beginner. Practice makes perfect. You do not even know your twigs very well. Over time, they will become an extension of you, and you will be able to use your muscle memory to play beautiful music. You must trust yourself as you learn."

"You are quite wise, Rabbit," Bear praised, "and I deeply appreciate what you have said."

A crocodile slunk out from a nearby stream and began to express in a surly tone, "What is going on over here? I was trying to take a nap in the stream."

"We are making music," Bear explained. "Would you like to join us?"

"Music?" Crocodile asked. "What is that?"

"Harmony of many tools of thought, sound and movement."

"I," Crocodile expressed with fear and doubt, "have no such tools of which you speak, and my short arms would not be able to manipulate them anyway."

"Therefore," Rabbit said kindly, "you can be our lead singer! You have a powerful baritone that I can hear even as graarrgghs and gurgles. Whatever sound you make is beautiful, even though you cannot express yourself quite like humans, in speech. Always remember this."

"Like I said," Bear interjected, "You are wise, Rabbit."

Crocodile practiced with his voice. He raised his baritone to the heavens, testing his range, and found he could sing higher and more beautifully than he thought. His vocal chords had been rough, tight and constricted, because interally he was sad, easily choked up, and he hesitated at first to use his voice when seeking help from others.

"Is there something wrong?" Rabbit asked kindly, "I heard a lot of hesitation in your singing." Bear nodded his agreement to express his mutual concern.

Crocodile said, "I have kept my feelings within too long. They are eating away at me, but at least I am aware of them. For, I lost a Mrs. Crocodile not long ago. I had to leave her, yet was very afraid to do so because the future was so uncertain. I realized recently that I have not sufficiently mourned that loss, because I have unwittingly denied myself the power of true expression for many years."

Bear added some wisdom of her own, "Keep your chin up, friend. At first we saw you were angry with us. Maybe you are really just angry with yourself and projected it to others." Empathetically, he continued, "You are welcome here to make music with us and get those things off your mind. Sing loudly for all to hear!"

Crocodile smiled, and a tear came to his eye. "Thank you for being so welcoming. We can be a band yet!"

Rabbit said, "We need a fourth member, someone who can raise our musical power to great heights!"

Bear said, "I will travel far and wide to find someone who can play the winds as they blow through the Creator's majesty."

Crocodile cautioned, "Ah, but no one can control the wind, or the weather. You are thinking in too big of terms."

Bear said, "There must be someone who knows what I mean. I shall return."

Bear retreated into the woods for a while to think about what to do. She ate honey and plants to keep her energy up during this therapeutic retreat. But the thought came to her sooner than she expected: the birds.

"If I want our band to truly soar," she thought, "I should defer to someone who knows the skies, and who knows that the winds play through all of us, including the trees and their holes, some of which could maybe be covered up, while not others. I would simply not have the lung capacity to play this instrument."

Fortunately for Bear, a bald eagle was pondering in her own right on a branch high above and saw Bear below her.

"Woman to woman," Eagle called down, "I ask what you are doing by this tree."

"Oh, hello, Eagle," Bear expressed, "I was hoping to run into someone just like you."

"What a coincidence," Eagle replied, "Sometimes, there are great meanings in coincidences."

"What do you mean?" Bear asked.

"A power higher than us can coordinate anything according to exact timing, even the winds," said the Eagle. "Even the waters, even every element there is to all existence, including what the humans have created for themselves."

"You have the wisdom I have been seeking!" exclaimed Bear. "Will you come join our band, by playing a woodwind instrument?"

"Band?"

"I bring you a message, since you happen to be here, one of harmony. I, Rabbit and Crocodile have banded together to make great music in service to ourselves and that higher power. It is soothing and empowering, even to the most tortured of minds."

"You understand more than you think you do, Bear," Eagle said, "for it is in community and our common natural bonds that we heal the most of what bothers us. I would be honored to play small trees for you by sending my winds of breath through them, and will even recruit the squirrels therein to join me."

"Yay!" Bear exclaimed, throwing her paws in the air, "Rejoice! For our band is complete! I have completed the task I set out to do! Let's celebrate! Come with me, Eagle."

Eagle flew to where Bear would reunite with his friends, watching down upon Bear as she soared to make sure their paths would coincide well enough. She knew that some wrong notes would be played, that the band would need practice to get really good at what they wanted to do, but was dedicated to being their spiritual leader as a connection to the distant. She saw the separation between them, as she was a creature of the sky, and they were all creatures of the earth.

Thus, when a woodwind, the carrots, the twigs upon the mushrooms and the voice of a crocodile came together, Bear was overjoyed and proud of the teamwork, and she listened deeply to their music harmonizing together. Every beat, every scratch, every note, came together in her mindful listening to mean far more to her than she could ever have imagined.

Within weeks, the band had created and practiced enough songs to be able to perform an entire playlist and hold concerts for the rest of the Earth's creatures. By practicing faith in themselves and in the higher power that they all knew created them, they even worked out several creative conflicts, such as when Crocodile became too surly to sing, for they all understood that he needed the most healing of all via their own music.

But eventually, even Crocodile found the power within himself to create a song all of his own, for which he did not yet know how to create an instrumental back-up, except perhaps through smaller forms of using his mouth and teeth, like the playing of reeds. Someday, he thought, he would learn how to play the reeds better. But for now and the foreseeable future, he decided to use the voice he had found via the other animals' kindness, so he sang about the winds, something he did not fully understand until the Eagle had joined him on his rough personal journey.

The band gave each other kindness, joy, empathy, patience, time, and love, and through these powers and many more, they made beautiful music for the rest of their lives.

And ultimately, Bear allowed himself to be proud of it all, for he started the band with an idea. Just a bear with twigs, beating on a set of mushrooms.