Tortoise

The animals were mirrors, brought to the man so he could see himself.  Universal  teachings in childrens tales, fairy tales, bestiaries all tell this purpose. Predators, food chain, natural selection, survival of the fittest, express a prestated conditions the teller wants to prove, but in the end, to Zhuangzi, the tortoise, the long lived yarrow and the chow all teachers are as trees.


Teachers need to be loved to be understood. In knowing and loving animal and plant, tortoise and yarrow, one of the old names for tortoise was the golden age "thing that sits among the plants." Her hibernation was in the "tortoise home," its "resting place," the thing that sits among the bushes, ziix hehet cquiij, in Seri. You may partly see as it sits among the plants. Isaiah knew this: For so the LORD said to me, I will take my rest, and I will consider in my dwelling place like a clear heat on herbs, and like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.

It is more likely to find a thing in its own nature, in its habitat than not. The distribution of tortoise neighborhoods is like the distribution of truths. They are found along a certain axis, within boundaries, in this country. Could tortoise be transplanted to Australia? You can take tortoise out of the country but you can't take Sonora out of tortoise. So with wisdom. You can infer wisdom  but you cannot take it captive.

Neighborhoods and tortoises are also like Mennonites. This anomaly occurs because my family renounced them practically speaking, but could not uproot the Mennonite from their lives. Father, grandmother, aunts, were pressed by the dilemma of submitting to group thought, as though by sheer number a position could be right. Efforts at being a Mennonite were thwarted by a tendency not to submit. That's the long and short,  but the sympathies of the Mennonite pervade all concerns for the persecuted, the downtrodden. Today however the wisdom of the crowd makes them all electronically submit.

Important for their extraordinary psychological involvement with each other, the psyches and problems are the same for all groups even if the rules are different in the conflict of individuals with groups, over how strictly to enforce their own laws, that is, mercy vs. justice, a universal opposite, "we would not want to consider ourselves wiser than our forebears"   (Ruth, Lancaster, 527). The analogy is pretty far afield that Mennonites are like tortoise, for they are like badger here:

Badger

 Badger stands on hands and knees 
except he has a head.

There is a cowl, but nothing in the shell,

Does that tell you, where he's gone?

He knows his life is not his own.

To earth, work tells us, 
when badger turns to flesh.

Mother, is your milk in dugs? 
Coyote, do you cover,

Cornstalk, robe what fill? 
With no head you stand him up 
but he flows through.

 2.

Milfoil

Tortoise is an elder of philosophic reach and slow breath in the adolescent cultures of the world. A tortoise lifts a front leg and meditates the step. I say this as a friend. I say this from Chuang Tzu, who began to collect his tortoise meditations in those Chuang Pomes where Zhuangzi  loves milfoil.

To join the Tortoise Society (Devender's, Sonoran Desert Tortoise) you must build burrows, collect logs from downed trees, piles of rock, dig out  full grown chinaberry and toxic oleanders. Give first aid, raise hatchlings. It goes on. I don't know how many there are. They climb the blocks and go out the fence. They dig under logs. To reprove the fence with welded wire I move a log.There is a two year old completely dug in in August! The female is twice as big as the male. Three times! She is at least eighty. Call her Ming-ling. That's not the name painted on her shell from her previous assistant, an Indian agent from early Arizona. She and her mate in his backyard had their names and his phone number painted on so he could track them down. The male got out once 4 years ago and went across the street to his old home. John and Nathan came over, "did you lose a tortoise?"

I  know and associate with Ming-ling in this part of her life because the religion prof next door had a housemate who  saw the Indian agent go down. They took him to the heart hospital, then told me he was a goner. I went to see. He needed so much help that my wife started taking him meals at his home after his discharge, the last weeks of his life. She and Reba took meals and sat while he ate. I had admitted him to the physician's care. Ming-ling and her consort were in his back yard under the black plastic of his covered wood piles. Babies were found years later. When he took the last lurch down the walk the gates were left open. I brought Ming-ling and mate over and began this fellowship.

She is  reflective unlike he who has harried other males to death. He mounts her in August and looks like he will fall backwards off a cliff. We feed  hibiscus flower, ruella, diachondra, mallow and they graze at will. After a monsoon she will saunter to the slab where water pools to sip. His burrow is in haphazard spots, under a vine, half dug in a wall. He has moved to an outbuilding of her den, which extends under the slab and hollowed out below  large logs. This world still exists. There are many years ordure to savor it. The entrance faces southeast. Winter mornings she basks at the door.

In a likely community of dog and tortoise we have a chow, Blessing, 祝福 (Zhùfú), who has endeared herself by bringing hatchlings, impossible to see against the grass, in her mouth to place at my feet. Sometimes she tosses them in the air, but not with malice. I learn to sense this. Chows are the lion dog from North China, friend of Chuang Tzu, tortoise and yarrow.

The American hound of that pack has never touched one, only this particular chow, companion of that first who came like the tortoises, lassoed by our son who had prayed for a dog. This was of course the famous Jogger 慢跑者 (Mànpǎo zhě), of exploits like Zhuangzi  of the spirit. When he left I asked after his destiny of ultimate care from that Maste of the AM Palm Sunday communion. To a resounding "yes" I saw him leap upon the Master barking and run those circles of joy he used. I saw all the creatures around that throne, and the Yahweh stood and raised his arms. We were silent. Then she touched me on the arm and handed me the bread. So in the community of ants that swarm the monsoon, and floods in the microcosm of wasps and carpenter bees on Indian corn above cucurbs, tortoises flow. They are a symbol of something else.

 Cited
John L. Ruth, The Earth is the Lord's. A Narrative History of the Lancaster Mennonite Conference. 2001.

'A divine tortoise', said Confucius, 'can appear to prince Yüan in a dream, yet it cannot escape the net of Yü Ch'ieh. Its wisdom can yield seventy-two faultless omens, yet it cannot escape the misery of being cut to pieces. Truly wisdom has its limits; spirituality, that which it cannot reach.'In spite of the highest wisdom, there are countless snares to be avoided. If a fish has not to fear nets, there are always pelicans. Get rid of small wisdom, and great wisdom will shine upon you. Put away goodness and you will be naturally good. A child does not learn to speak because taught by professors of the art, but because it lives among people who can themselves speak.'
Hui Tzu said to Chuang Tzu, 'Your theme, Sir, is the useless.'
'You must understand the useless', replied Chuang Tzu, 'before you discuss the useful. #26

Tortoise is always a hero. Consider how he saved these islands:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110430/sc_livescience/aliengianttortoisehelpsrestoreecosystem

This is an up close look in the mirror of  many mirrors. Its  symbolic meanings are implied, but it's bad luck to break a mirror.