The cardinal from hell is back. This time, he’s assaulting my studio windows.

Many years ago, I had a disturbing experience with a cardinal. He became obsessed with the rear-view mirrors of my car. Every day he would fly at them, pecking furiously at the mirror while leaving his droppings down the side of my car. What was he doing? Was he attacking what he saw in the mirror as if it were his adversary or had he fallen in love with his own Image and, like Narcissus, lavished it with pecks and kisses?  After a while he finally gave up and that ended the matter. In the meantime, he’d left a dreadful mess on my car. I was furious. 

In my studio recently, I heard a noise at the window. Would you believe it was a cardinal attacking or ravishing the window exactly as I’d seen happen years ago with my car mirrors? What does one do? He would not stop. The light struck the window such that the window was able to reflect his image, like a mirror. I thought the only thing I could do was to somehow put something over the window so that there would be no reflection.

Taking several sheets of paper on which I had old research material written, I taped the papers on the window, effectively blocking the reflection. That way I hoped he would lose interest in the window.  I inadvertently left a small section of the window uncovered and sure enough he went for it and began his combative assaults, or was he abandoning himself to his passions. I never knew which

I was determined to put an end to this outrageous behavior. I went outside again with more paper, and taped additional pages on all of the places at the window where I thought he would be able to see his image. After taping them up, I went back into the house. I stayed there, undisturbed for several hours. I knew that I’d successfully driven him off.  I had put an end to this unnatural behavior. I went outside just to check to see how secure the pages were. 

I noticed for the first time the nature of the research material I had written on the several sheets of paper. The material contained data I’d collected on the history of cathedrals.

I am a member of Trinity Cathedral here in Easton. There had been increasing interest in the diocese in reviewing the place and function of a cathedral in the religious and social life of the twenty first century. What new functions might cathedrals have in today’s changing society. I did some research on how cathedrals evolved and what role they played in English, French, Spanish and more recently in American societies.

Cathedrals have occupied a significant place in medieval social and religious life. As the Church of England spread its influence here on the shore, Trinity Cathedral here in Easton was the Shore’s first and only Cathedral. I am a communicant, there.

Cathedrals today are visual remnants of the power and wealth that Christianly once enjoyed. The majestic aura of cathedrals that once awed Christians and others as well, had mystical significance, to be sure, but were also monuments to power and prestige. They remain an awesome sight today and people the world over, religious or not, travel to see them, simply because they are magnificent structures. I myself was ordained a priest in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. Sadly, many cathedrals have become increasingly museum pieces, valued for their architectural magnificence, but not venerated for the divine vision that inspired them. 

I had since lost interest in my research and doubted whether I’d ever apply what I’d learned to anything useful. I tucked the papers away planning to use the blank sides for scrap paper.

Only much later did it occur to me that cardinals (clerics) are regular visitors to cathedrals. They go in and out of them all the time. Cardinals belong there.  They perform many of the ritual and liturgical rites of Christianity. What had not occurred to me until I recognized the subject of the papers I’d placed on the windows, was how, in a sense, I was using my investigation into one kind of cardinal’s habitation, to drive another kind away from my own. Like a homeopathic physician, I was administrating to myself a modified dose of the toxin attacking me, in order to mitigate its debilitating effects.

Of course, cardinals, the ones with wings, are not literate. The cardinal attacking my windows would have no way of knowing anything about the subject of the documents that were frustrating his access to my studio windows. While the irony of this may well have been lost on this cardinal, it was not lost on me. Where the papers ended up may have been an ignominious end to my noble research endeavors. They were covered with bird droppings. I took some comfort in the thought that at least my efforts were not totally in vain. They found a use.

I normally associate a cardinal (cleric) with heavenly preoccupations. This cardinal hammering at my studio windows, was surely from hell. It’s worth noting how traditional satanic images appearing in masks and paintings, will portray the devil as bright red . . . like a cardinal.

There are cardinals and there are cardinals.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.

Slugs prefer getting out at night. They’re at their best in the dark.

Slugs travel nightly along the brick walk leading to my studio. I see glistening trails left from their nocturnal sojourns. I notice the trails routinely on my morning treks to the studio. I’d not seen one quite like the one I saw just the other day.

The trails I normally see suggest that a slug is on his way somewhere; heading to a definite destination so that, although the trail may weave a little this way and that, it’s usually comparatively straight.

This trail however seemed as if he’d created a minimalist painting, making some kind of statement; but just what is anyone’s guess. It looked to me like a human head, a person whose mouth seems open, trying to say something. It looks as though he had not finished making up his necktie.

When I see minimalist paintings, my first thought is, “That’s easy, I could do that.” I think viewers work harder trying to guess what a picture means than the artist took in painting it. All the slug had to do was keep walking (slithering? crawling?) and his or her wake became the creation. That’s about as easy as art can be. Its apparent simplicity seems free from all the intense angst normally associated with creative acts.

But, of course I am reading into the glistening trail he left and shamelessly attributing anthropomorphic motives to this humble slug.
I photographed the slug’s trail so that when writing my essay, anyone reading it could see why I might have been fascinated, and be on the same page with me as I ruminate about this creature’s remarkable ability to capture my attention.

We have had this brick walk for about 20 years. While seeing these trails regularly, I’ve never actually seen a slug. Where do they come from? Where do they live, I wonder?

Doing some light research on slugs, what appeared first on several sites were ways to get rid of them. Why so harsh? I’ve never been bothered by a slug. I thought they were slimy and maybe slightly icky, but not harmful. In fact, they are a sort of lagniappe for birds and other animals and for thrushes especially, slugs are regarded as haute cuisine.

The hapless slug’s vulnerability, brings out the worst in little kids. They delight in watching the slug shrivel up into nothing when covered with salt. For kids, the kick they get is up there with pulling the wings from flies. Hopefully, mellowed with time and experience, this unfortunate inclination to harm others will disappear. I do know that our dark side can be mitigated some, but we need to remain alert to it.

When we’re provoked, it can return with surprising vengeance.

But to return to the slug as artist; after seeing his artwork, I now think of slugs differently, even reverently.

Art and creativity of most kinds involve a person’s entire being. Artists, writer’s, and sculptors speak regularly of how their work proceeds from some place deep within them; it rises unbidden ––it just comes out.

Certainly, the same might be said of the slug who leaves his trails behind. Something within him is naturally released –– it just comes out. He does his finest work crawling around at night. Like all artists, slugs are never sure that what comes out of them will look like or what shape it will finally take. It’s too dark to see. I can say this confidently of the slug; that whatever he does, he gives it his all. The legacy he leaves behind –– the visible one –– can be surprisingly enchanting.

Slugs, like most artists, are plodders. Plodders creep along, grinding away slowly at their tasks, and, like the mills of the gods, they ‘grind slowly but exceedingly fine.’ In that regard, I’m thinking of a botanical artist whom I know. Her work renders stunning illustrations of various plants and flowers, studiously crafted with minute and in the sharpest detail. It is slow, tedious work. I’ve been told that it once took her three months to illustrate one ear of corn. I can only imagine that a person’s whole being must be totally absorbed, even consumed by such activity. The art of seeing more deeply into things is not to regard them hurriedly, but to slowly ponder them. I read somewhere that a famous writer, when asked how his writing had gone that day, replied, “I finished a sentence.”

There are, so many dreams, hopes, and wonders that come to us under the cover of night only to vanish at daybreak, in the way our nocturnal dreams, so vivid in darkness are lost to the light.

This is not so with my tiny friend, the minimalist slug; his narrow path says so much with so little. What he conceived in darkness, glistens in the light for all to celebrate.

Of course, this is fanciful thinking. I’m imputing more to what this slug is and has done than he ever has ever himself . . . or have I, really? But I will tell you that I have to wonder how many people there are in this world –– how many creatures there are who will never know how much beauty and grace they have brought to others from the hidden riches of their own inner lives, resources they never really knew they themselves had. They discovered them when they were reflected back to them by those people whose lives they had made better because of who they were. I wish I could say thanks to the slug. I guess by writing this, I am.

Think this is too far-fetched? St. Francis didn’t.

Contemplative, Fr. Richard Rohr, writes: “Francis of Assisi is known for his love for animals, but too often the stories become overly romanticized . . . Francis’ respect for animals is far more profound than mere “birdbath Franciscanism” lets on. Everything was a mirror for Francis. What he saw in the natural world, in the sky, in animals, and even plants was a reflection of God’s glory.”

If Francis hadn’t already, I’d op for adding the humble slug to his list.

Columnist George Merrill is an Episcopal Church priest and pastoral psychotherapist. A writer and photographer, he’s authored two books on spirituality: Reflections: Psychological and Spiritual Images of the Heart and The Bay of the Mother of God: A Yankee Discovers the Chesapeake Bay. He is a native New Yorker, previously directing counseling services in Hartford, Connecticut, and in Baltimore. George’s essays, some award winning, have appeared in regional magazines and are broadcast twice monthly on Delmarva Public Radio.