THE LION WHO WANTED TO BE A

                          

GAZELLE

 

                

1 Corinthians: (Chapter 13, verse 13) : “Now we know partly,

             but then we shall understand as completely as we are

                                                    understood

.”

 

      The sun rose brightly on the Serengeti Plain and Tsarina had just given birth during the early hours of the morning. It was her first litter and she was basking proudly in the wonder of birth. She was the pride of the pride and no lioness on the whole plain could be happier than she. Tsaro, her husband and king of the pride, stood at a distance. He looked over at her with a watchful but jealous eye and dropped his jaw in a majestic yawn.

 

      Her littler of offspring were twins, one a boy the other a girl but in the early stages of new-birth one could hardly tell them apart.

 

       Tsarina and Tsaro called their cubs Anima and Kore. Anima was as beautiful as the dawn itself. She pranced among the flowers and across the reeds of the plain as though they had always been a part of her. She hardly noticed the dangers of the other predators on the Plains, but in the security of the pride, where the elders kept an ever vigilant watch, she was able to grow up in peace and without a care.

      Kore, her brother, was almost as playful, but far more reflective for his age. He was at best a daydreamer gazing more at the sky than the herds of wildebeest and zebra that roamed the expansive plains at the foot of Kilimanjaro. There was something gentle about him, that which ever denied the true nature of a lion.

 

    The months passed and the lion cubs grew strong and ever playful. They watched the hunts and obeyed their elders and admired from a distance the power of the kill. But somehow the mystery of the hunt which cast a shadow of death did not penetrate the world of their lives.

     Tsarina would bring strips of meat from the hunt to her children and urge them to nourish themselves and grow strong.

 

    “You must eat well if you hope someday to become a hunter yourself,” She would tell them.

    `And you, my son,` Tsaro would say to the young cub,  ‘You must be powerful so that you will someday rule over the pride.” Tsaro said this with great solemnity for he wanted nothing more than to pass his power on to his favored and only son.

 

    After a hunt the pride would gather around the carcass of a killed beast and tear at it with violent force. Mother Tsarina would rip off pieces of the kill to share with her children and those who were old enough would dig in and help themselves.

 

 

The vultures and hyenas gathered at the rim of a larger circle and waited for the lions to recede before they would go in and clean the carcass of any remaining flesh stripping it down to the bareness of the bone.

 

Unlike his sister who glowed with excitement after a hunt, Kore found himself to be disinterested in the kill and was not too fond of meat.

“Strange for a lion!” thought his father.

“Very strange, indeed!” thought his mother.

“Very, very strange!” said all the lions of the pride.

His ever growing indifference caused him to become thinner and weak. He ate only out of hunger and only when necessary, never for any pleasure or sheer delight in the rewards of a kill. In truth, he wanted more than ever to be a vegan and abstain from meat.

 

On day Kore, before he was hardly a year old and towards the end of summer, wandered off by himself to be away from the pride.

    “It is dangerous out there!” his mother had warned him. “Not all of the animals are friendly and we are often feared and hated across the plains.”

    Yes, there was danger. There were the wild dogs and fierce hyenas, the wild baboons with needle sharp teeth and all potential enemies who would gladly prey on an innocent cub.

 

    But Kore was not afraid. He was more curious than frightened. He walked slowly away from the pride and onto the grassy plain. He had been walking aimlessly for about an hour when he came across a gazelle and her new-born fawn. The mother was startled and wanted to run. Her heart was beating at a pace rapid enough to send out a warning of fear.

 

      “Don't be afraid,” said Kore very gently. “I will not hurt you. I am not like the others. I do not kill.”

     The mother gazelle did not quite understand. She was not well versed in the language of the lions. She only knew their ways. Although she sensed that he was no threat, she moved protectively closer towards her child circling around the fawn as if to set up an invisible shield between herself and the lion.

 

     Kore watched her carefully. Although he was still young he had a strange, deep wisdom which transcended both his age and time. He saw before him another life, a life with its own struggle, fears, strengths and weaknesses. He saw the gazelle as a beautiful creature, one which lives on the vegetation of the plains rather than on the flesh of its inhabitants.

    “How much better they are than we!” he thought to himself.  

 

 

    “Nonsense!” said Tsaro when Kore told him about his encounter with the gazelle and fawn.

    “Nonsense, indeed!” echoed his mother.

    “Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense!” echoed all the members of the pride.

    “They were born to be eaten,” said Tsarina, “and you were born to be a lion.”

 

     "You were born to be a lion,” his father roared. “It is your nature to be so. You must prey upon the weaker species to provide food for the young. We were meant to have dominion over the plains.”

 

      But Kore was not impressed with dominion over anything. He was different. He wanted to rule over no one.

 

     Several weeks after he had spoken to his father Tsaro, Kore went out again onto the plains to visit the gazelles.

     The smaller fawn had grown larger and was more independent of his mother. The mother looked on protectively but gave her child more freedom to roam this time. When she saw Kore she moved closer to her fawn and looked coldly at him with a piercing stare.

 

     "What do you want of us?" she demanded.

     "I want to be a friend." Kore responded innocently.

     "But you are not one of us. You never can be. Go back to your pride and, if you love us as you say, then leave us alone.

 

     Kore realized that she bore within herself a deep hurt and hatred for the lions and their pride. It was not what he had wanted to hear or hope for.

    

     Days passed which turned into weeks which turned into months and Kore became older but not wiser in the ways of being a lion. In the eyes of his parents he was indeed foolish, denying who he was in search of that which could never be attained.

 

     He became isolated from the pride and part of it was self-imposed. Why do I have to belong to a species which lives off the flesh of others?" he pondered to himself.

 

    One day while wandering away from the pride, Kore found himself hidden in the shelter of tall grasses but he sensed that danger was near and encroaching upon him. He focused his senses on the danger which came to him with instinct and realized that the danger was all around him. He was being stalked by an unseen enemy, one with the intent to kill and he was to be the victim. He peered through the grass  but saw nothing.

     When he turned around to retreat from the fear which gripped his heart he found that he was surrounded by hyenas, a pack of them which jumped from their hiding places in the grass and began to attack him on all sides.     

 

    As fearsome a lion as he could have been by nature, he was no match for the savage attack. Although he was meant to be a king by birth, his gentle nature had little courage to ward off the fierce bites of the wild, loathsome and thirsty hyenas. They ripped at his flesh and his pathetic cried for help went unheard by other members of the pride. One hyena bit into his hind legs, another tore at his back and a third reached for his throat with a powerful grip and would not let go.

 

     Kore’s gentle soul offered little resistance. Halfway through the attack he realized it was his fate to be a victim. He saw in front of his eyes a vision of all the life that had been sacrificed on the plain so that those of his own kind could survive. His life now took on a majestic sense of self-sacrifice which echoed across the plain. In his final death agony he opened his throat that has been so savagely ripped apart and uttered a soundless cry into the open sky. It was a cry which reached the ears of the mother gazelle that he had wanted so much to befriend; and it was not left unheard. He knew at that very moment what had become of his fate but harbored little remorse other that a feeling of indifference as the benign cruelty of nature and the world of the wild.

 

     Within moments of his death the hyenas moved in for the feast. He was ripped apart and devoured becoming part of the intricate food chain which nourished the plains and contributed to the cycle of rebirth and renewal.

 

     After the hyenas has finished, the vultures came in to clean the bones. When all that was left remained, there was nothing more than a white skeleton, a calcified frame bereft of form and life.

 

     The rain washed the bones, washed them, washed them. The bones were baptized and were being transformed. A new spirit was working itself through the marrow which had not yet dried and the spirit began to take shape. It took on an invisible form recognized only by the air, the wind and the rain itself. From death came rebirth in the spirit of the soul.

 

    Kore breathed a new life, his lion spirit was being transformed into that of a gazelle. His former mane had disappeared and from his head two elongated and twisted antlers emerged, and his once pudgy face with its sharp feline teeth slowly transformed into the graceful lines of a gazelle. His legs became slender and sleek as powerful paws were transformed into hoofs and his former whip-like tail was now a mere stub. His former majesty was transformed into silent grace.

    His spirit grew and his transformation was complete. In death he was given a new life, one which was invisible to the other forms of life on the plain, but it was a life he had merited through desire and sacrifice.

    His spirit now was free and he swept across the plains possessed by a freedom unknown to those who had loved him before.