Full disclosure: I love the horses.
Horses beautifying a field by just by standing in it, storybook horses like Black Beauty, movie stars like War Horse, and most of all, race horses.
I’ve only seen horse races on television, but never miss the Triple Crown events that are happening now: The Kentucky Derby, The Preakness, and soon the Belmont Stakes. Infinitely more interesting to me than sports like football or even baseball, horse races have a mystical element: the relationship between the animal and the rider and the fact that animals – not humans — are in control.
I am awed by horses: their strength, their dignity, their beauty, what they will do for us and with us. and most of all, their heart.
Since before Biblical times, horses have been the partners of humankind: plowing, hauling, carrying, running into the bullets and swords of brutal scenes of war and killing when asked to by their masters. In what is considered to be the oldest of any Scriptural verse, referring to the Crossing of the Red Sea, we learn “the horse and the rider were thrown into the sea.” The television horses of my youth (Roy Roger’s Trigger, Hoppalong Cassidy’s Topper, and the Lone Ranger’s Silver) were stars in their own right.
Now horses are even stepping up to be part of therapy for emotionally-scarred humans, who are helped by the animals to relearn the basics of trust, gentleness, and compassion.
“Heart” is a word we use casually, but refers to more than the organ pumping blood through the body.. It also connotes courage, generosity, fortitude, substance. The great horses have heart.
The winner of the first two legs of this year’s Triple Crown, named “I’ll Have Another” was ridden by jockey Mario Gutierrez who commented, “It’s a great feeling when you’re riding a horse that is giving you a hundred percent.” When all-time superhorse Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by an astounding 31 lengths, the jockey said, “I know this sounds crazy, but the horse did it by himself. I was along for the ride.”
When Secretariat died, an autopsy revealed that his heart was two and a half times larger than the average horse – 22 lbs, compared to the usual 9 lbs. This trait was not an oddity, but was a special gene passed on through his mother.
Isn’t that wonderful? I don’t think anyone was surprised that the great horse was propelled by a great heart in every sense.
One of the Great Mysteries for me is that of the relationship we may be allowed with other elements of creations, such as horses. Yes, we sometimes exhibit more concern for our pets than we do for other human beings. Yet what an animal will do for us and with us, and the bonds that can develop with another species is a peek into the window of the bigger picture of God’s creation and the gifts that await.
See you in church … or at the races.
Barbara
