As I was pushing the lawnmower along to tame the wild clover that is my yard, I spotted a tiny frog hopping frantically through the blades of grass ahead in my path. Not wishing any harm to come to the little fellow, I stopped the mower and gently directed it to the section I had already cut. A few more passes and I spot that same frog (at least I think it was the same one) hopping and scooting across my path again for the taller grass and weeds. This time I bent down and as gently as I could, scooped the creature up and quickly placed them back where I was done, trying to point them in the opposite direction from their original path. And so it went as I continued along, discovering not one, but four or five of these small amphibians residing in my lawn, each time maneuvering around, patiently waiting, or directly intervening so as to not mow any of them down. This got me to thinking about perspectives, the frogs’ and mine, and how each had a different view and experience. Not telepathically connected to my yard residents, I can only guess that their experiences of loud noise, scary movements in the sky above them, and disorienting encounters, some resulting in everything going dark, sudden sense of being moved, and being set down far from where they were headed, maybe set back quite a ways from their intended direction or destination, were in many ways beyond their instinctual understanding of the world and their place in it. I wonder about my own life, my own understanding and perception of the universe and my place in it, and how there have been times of upheaval and disorientation. My experiences are not of physically being plucked out of my home and set down far away, but of a disruption that is psychological, emotional, spiritual. Those I think back on… a failed relationship, being fired from my first job in my chosen profession, coming to terms with mental health issues in my family, have been times when I was “moved” into confusing, unfamiliar landscapes without an understanding of how or why. Even though the distance from those events afforded by time and reflection provides some degree of insight, I am still left wondering how different, on a cosmological or ontological scale, I am from those little jumpers I encountered. Were those moments in my life, and any others that may lie ahead, times when God’s hand scooped me out of harms way, even though it didn’t seem that way to me, because the vision of the Divine could see what I in no way ever could, and so placed me where it was best for me to move forward in my growth. It is humbling to be reminded of how limited my human vision is even on the best of days. My pedestrian yard chore experience reminds me of Loren Eisley’s ruminations in one part of his essay “The Hidden Teacher” where he writes about his encounter with an orb spider in her web and how his intrusion into her universe with the tip of his pen triggers her response as if a fly had become ensnared, how her “understanding” of the event is limited to her spider experience of existence. He wonders how different, for all our technology and rational capabilities, we really are in our ability to see beyond what we have come to know or believe from our human experience. While ever seeking to gain new insights and perspectives, I am paradoxically left with the choice to believe that God, the Source of All, is benevolent and the fullness of Love or not; to trust in the difficult moments of life, beyond my capacity to know or understand, that I too have just been spared the mower’s blade in some existential way.