St. Francis and The Cricket

At Meherabad, where I live in my architect-built home, insects easily get in due to open doors or narrow openings underneath where the doors do not fit tightly. When I find (or hear) a cricket inside, I’m delighted, as among the orders of insects, crickets are one of my favorites.* If I find one in my kitchen sink, though, it ends up on the floor.

One day, about to pour water down the utility room sink, I noticed a cricket among its small pools. Reaching down I paused, then said—a pet! With sudden insight, I realized that the floor wasn’t a better place so I poured my water and watched. The cricket moved to the sink’s curved edge, and we continued sharing the sink.

Then one day, with a large amount of water, I forgot to first check for where the cricket was. With a whoosh, water filled the sink’s bottom, and in the aftermath the cricket lay curled in the drain, apparently dead. Placing it on my palm, I saw that one antenna was bent under so I rolled my pet onto its back and gently poked the antennae into place, then nudged one leg to its proper position. Telling it to please live, I rolled it back over, and as I watched, two triangular parts rapidly unfolded. I held it until it began to jump (possibly off my hand) and grateful, returned it to the sink.

But the friendship I felt would end. Once again I forgot to look first and by the curl this time, I knew. Still I placed it on my palm and moved its parts but without a response and until it could be buried I put it in an appropriate place.

After moving into my home five years ago, I had been back in America where I went to a garden shop hoping to find a statue of St. Francis to bring to India. The one right for me was twelve pounds of cement, but I knew that I had to have it as a part of my life. Not that year but the following, I made sure that I had room to pack it thickly wrapped, as my luggage would be tossed onto moving belts, and upon unpacking, found that it had arrived without a chip missing.

Standing it on the ledge of the porch, I was at first undecided as to which way St. Francis should face. But there really was no decision to make. I knew that when I looked out my kitchen window, I wanted to see his tranquil face and pose with the birds and trees behind. It was in the curve of the arm of St. Francis that I nestled my cricket until over time, its body came to rest under a young neem where I placed one of its white flowers atop the covering earth.

“My realization is, “We do not need a large situation to help us grow in compassion. Something as small as a cricket may do.”

* Grasshoppers and Crickets (Order: Orthoptera)

* St. Francis of Assisi founded the Franciscan Dominican Order. “If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.” http://www.unitedearth.com.au/assisi.html.