In the spring of 2013, I began studying Tai Chi, the Chinese practice of movement and meditation. One day when I was feeling particularly unsettled, I walked through the pasture, into the barn, stood still and began my movements there.
Simon, attuned to me as always, came over and stood quietly by my side. As I moved my arms in a circle and looked up at the sky, I felt a gentle pressure in my back. Simon had pressed his head against my spine, and for the next ten minutes, I leaned back against him, practicing my movements, feeling his support and connection.
It was a profoundly spiritual moment, an experience that showed me just how close an animal can be to a human he knows and feels safe around. I felt that Simon completely understood what I was doing in my practice, and helped me to achieve the calm and peacefulness I was seeking. Perhaps it helped him as well.
The news of the world is filled with cruelty and violence; we are forced to confront it all day, almost every day. Troubling stories are no longer compartmentalized in the morning paper or on the evening news. They permeate our lives, our homes, our work spaces, the very air we breathe. They are no longer occasional disturbances, but now part of the ether.
It is difficult to feel compassion for the people we see and read and hear about doing the most awful things. Our civic life is filled with strife and argument rather than comfort and guidance.
Every day, we are called upon to forgive and understand behavior that is sometimes beyond our comprehension and challenges our ideas about compassion.
Jesus, Thomas Merton, Albert Schweitzer, and the Dalai Lama can say what they want about compassion; most people do not accept their messages, do not believe we are all one and the same. Most of our institutions are not built on empathy. Compassion is tricky, dangerous, volatile. It is easy to talk about it, but another thing to practice it. Simon had taught me that. But he also taught me not to give up on it.
The Lincolns, Gandhis, Martin Luther Kings, and Nelson Mandelas of the world are much admired, but if you look at their mostly common fates—we tend to either kill or exile them—their practice of compassion was perceived to be dangerous. Why would any normal human being choose that fate?
Donkeys have always represented the best and worst of the human experience, loved, celebrated in great art, revered, reviled, abandoned, and mistreated. They have always walked with human beings in the theater of chance, as Simon was walking with me.
There is a wonderful simplicity to compassion, as Simon helped me understand that afternoon. All you need to do is ask yourself this: what kind of a person do you want to be?
Months later, a priest, the codirector of a Catholic boys orphanage in Brooklyn, called me. The group, Father Joseph said, was coming upstate to spend a few days at a retreat. A reader of my blog, he thought it would be wonderful for the boys to meet some farm animals and to see Red herd sheep.
Most of the boys knew dogs only as guard animals; they had no concept of pets. But mainly, he said, he thought they ought to meet Simon. The priest sensed his gentleness from my photos and stories about him.
He warned me that most of the boys had come from extraordinarily difficult backgrounds. Some were the victims of rape and incest. Others had been arrested by the police for different crimes. Some were the children of illegal immigrants or had been abandoned when their parents had died, gotten sick, or just vanished.
Some had severe emotional and behavioral problems; he hoped I would be comfortable with that.
Father Joseph added that only one of the boys—a young teenager from Mexico—had ever seen a farm animal; he had grown up with a donkey. The priest told me he was especially drawn to the idea that a spirit can suffer awful misfortune and keep an open heart. He thought that might be the message of Simon, one the boys could empathize with and perhaps emulate.
I agreed to the visit. A few days later two battered vans pulled into the farm’s driveway, and about twenty boys and five or six counselors and priests hopped out.
Father Joseph had not misrepresented the group or exaggerated their troubles. They were all children of color—black, Latino, Asian. Some could barely speak and had obvious emotional disorders and physical disabilities.
I admired Father Joseph, the priest who had called me and now stood grinning in my backyard. He had a warm smile, and his patience and affection for the boys was palpable. This was somebody who didn’t need any lessons in compassion; he was all about it. Although some of the boys challenged him, refused to come when called, or talked over him, he never wavered in his calm and affectionate responses and eventually got everybody to do what needed to be done.
Lenore and Red greeted the boys enthusiastically, tails wagging. Most of the boys were clearly afraid of dogs. I remembered Father Joseph’s caution about their unfamiliarity with animals and called the dogs off, making them stand back until the visitors could get used to them.
Jean, a seventeen-year-old Haitian orphan whose family was killed in that country’s devastating earthquake, was the first to step forward and put his hand on Red’s head. Red, now a licensed therapy dog, stood still and looked Jean in the eye. The other boys were astonished. It seemed they had never seen a dog quite like Red, and, one by one, most of them followed Jean’s example.
I noticed that Simon had appeared outside the pole barn and had walked over to the gate. Simon understood the concept of visitors, and his gaze fell on Father Joseph and the other counselors, who were holding large bags of carrots.
Simon looked over the group carefully and let out a joyous and welcoming bray that sent several boys running back to the vans.
No, no, this is Simon’s welcome, I explained. This is how he says hello.
Another boy named Juan walked up to the gate. Father Joseph whispered to me that his family had been murdered in front of him in a Bronx drug war; he had never seen the ocean or a farm. The boy came up to me and shook my hand and asked me in broken but intelligible English to tell Simon’s story to the group, which I did. I told the story of Simon’s mistreatment on the farm and gave a brief synopsis of the history of donkeys. I discussed what they eat, how long they live, and how to approach them and touch them.
Then I opened the gate and invited them all to come into the pasture and stand in a semicircle around the donkeys. The counselors and I broke up the carrots into little pieces and handed chunks to those boys who wanted to get closer—only four or five did.
Simon was an intuitive host; it was always hard to reconcile his troubled story with his gentle nature. He was good at reading people; he never approached people who were nervous around him.
For ten minutes or so, one member of the group after another stepped forward with their hands out and Simon crunched away at the carrots he had come to expect from visitors.
Juan stayed back; he was clearly frightened of the big donkey, unwilling to get close or to offer him a carrot.
Simon had a ring of people around him—counselors and kids—holding their carrots out, but something drew him to Juan, who stood back by the gate. Simon walked through the circle and toward Juan, who was holding Father Joseph’s hand and watching wide-eyed.
“It’s okay,” I said, moving toward them. “He won’t hurt you.” I trusted Simon completely, but I wasn’t certain what he wanted from Juan. Simon stood alongside of the boy. He looked down at his bright green sneakers, shook his head a bit, and leaned down to sniff them—perhaps he thought they were food.
Then he simply stood alongside the boy, staring out through the gate.
“What does he want?” asked Juan nervously.
“He is waiting for you to rub or scratch his ears,” I said.
There was a long silence. The other boys were all standing still, holding their carrots and watching. Then some of them began offering opinions about what Simon wanted—he wanted food, he wanted a walk, he wanted to say hello.
After a while, I saw Juan’s hand slowly come out and scratch Simon right below his ears, one of his favorite scratching spots. Simon stood stock still, his lips trembling, as happens when donkeys are content; it’s like a cat purring.
Simon waited, rooted to the ground. Juan rubbed his nose, then asked for some carrots to offer him. He reached out nervously, holding his palm open as we had suggested. Simon gingerly reached over and took the carrot, chewing it thoughtfully and carefully. Juan, still holding Father Joseph’s hand, began stroking Simon along the side of his neck.
Some of the other boys came over; they all petted Simon and gave him their remaining carrots. We then took the group out of Simon’s pasture to the other side of the farmhouse to watch Red herd the sheep. Juan asked if he could stay behind and be with Simon, and one of the counselors agreed to stay behind with him. I said it was fine.
Red and I did our sheepherding-for-visitors show. The boys were mesmerized; none of them had ever seen a dog as responsive or agile as Red, and the idea that he could control the sheep seemed to fascinate them.
At the end of the demonstration, Father Joseph took my arm and walked me out into the yard where I could see Simon and Juan standing at the gate, and he pointed to them.
Juan was standing in front of Simon, his forehead pressing against the contented donkey. Simon and the boy seemed to be lost in their own world, communicating in a powerful and emotional way—a way I could not have imagined just a few months earlier.
“You cannot imagine what a gift this is for Juan,” Father Joseph told me, and then he smiled. “What a compassionate heart your donkey has.”
