"Time slows down amid donkeys. In their company things happen quietly and methodically. It's hard to forget their innocent gaze. It's a calm that instills calm. Your mind wanders, you dream, you go elsewhere, yet somehow you remain very present."

This is in the front cover of a book I am reading called "The wisdom of donkeys: finding tranquility in a chaotic world".

How true these words are. When sitting on one of the benches down in the Main Yard, the donkeys walk quietly over to you and are happy and content in your company. Tarnia was one of those donkeys who enjoyed the company of people. She was affectionately known as "Teapot" by the grooms because she was short and stout. She will indeed me missed by us all.

As I read the comments, on the death of loved friend "Teapot", I reflected on a beautiful poem by Frances Jammes called "Prayer to Go to Paradise with the Donkeys". I would like to share it with you at the Sanctuary and I must add that I have altered it in phrases to fit my personal story:

Prayer to Go to Paradise with the Donkeys

When you elect to call me, God, O call
When dusty roads proclaim a festival
As here below I have been wont to do,
I'd like to choose my road to Heaven too,
Where, though we see them not, stars shine by day.
I'll take my stick and tramp the great highway
And to my friends the donkeys I shall say
"I'm a Jenny too, and 'tis to Heaven I plod,
For hell's unknown to them that dwell with God.
Come, dear and gentle lovers of blue skies,
Poor beasts who flick your ears to drive away the blows,
the buzzing bees and plaguing flies..."
Let me appear among those beasts because -
I love them and they droop their heads and pause
And join their little feet so gently that
The heart is filled with longing for the sure true
Modesty of their lot.
I'll come escorted by a million ears,
By them that bear big baskets to the marts,
That drag the showman's caravans and carts
With feather-wisks and tins and kitchen wares,
By them with battered cans upon their backs,
The lame she-jenny's and their jacks,
Their tortured legs are running with blue sores
Besieged by rings of stubborn sucking flies.
With them, God, let me enter Paradise.
Then let the angels tranquilly assemble
And show us bush grown streams where cherries tremble,
Smooth as the laughing flesh of little feys,
And 'mong the spirits gathered in Your glades
Let me be like Your beasts that bend above
The heavenly waters, where their poverty will be reflected everlastingly,
Suffused in Your divine and limpid love.

Thank you to all at the Sanctuary. And we can all now picture ourselves being escorted by a million "warm baguettes" as Andy Merrifield describes dear Gribouille's ears!