Co-existence

14/11/2011
Fr. Jose Kaimlett

Recently I saw an old film by Fredric Jossif called “The Animals.” It showed some very exciting scenes filmed in the so-called Pavlov section of the Moscow Zoological Gardens. The scenes are exciting because in them nothing happens that you expect to.

For instance, a majestic tawny lion is living in the same cage as a little kid. And nothing happens.

In another cage a wolf is lying alongside a sheep and two are playfully sparring like two boxers.

Year in and year out a tiger has been confined with a doe, but never in their co-existence had the presence of the deer awakened his appetite. They sleep, eat and play together. And nothing happens…..

At first one is tempted to say that these animals are better than us humans. And then one asks: How can it be? What does it?

This experiment has been going on now for 20 years and has had not even one failure. The lions and the lambs live in the same cage, eat different food out of the same trough. The goat does not envy the tiger its meat diet and the lion has no interest in taking the grass and hay away from the sheep.

–  JosefMueller-Marein

Co-education or growing up together does it. Kids don’t discriminate; it is much later as they grow up that by and by they learn it from their elders. “Justice” is giving to each one his due. When that is accepted as an inviolable principle there is no room for jealousy and no room for friction; whereas the absence of justice is the root cause of all violence.

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