To Love a Coyote
Early morning runs are different at 45.
While I’ve always struggled to run well, battling against my own low-to-the-ground body and stuttering stride, my mid-forties bring new wrinkles to each stride. I do not have the wind that I used to, the ability to go on auto-pilot and let my legs move while thinking about a thousand other things.
I have decided to leave my job and then decided to stay during my runs, sometimes on the same run.
On occasion I’ve made peace with a personal slight, once again forgiving someone through my sweat.
Lines from books were written stride-by-stride through shaded Illinois forest preserves.
Running represents a kind of freedom of mind, heart, and body that I crave. Which means that midwestern winter feels like a walking grave most years, forcing me indoors and off the well-beaten paths.
But now the struggle is different. Age and stage have me asking questions about whether I should continue, whether my joints can handle the daily pressure. Researchers say that every strike your foot makes during a run exerts nearly twice your body weight on your foot and knee.
Pressure over time may make coal into diamonds, but it turns joint tissue into dust.
My body often feels like my enemy when I run, whereas before my body was a companion to my mind and heart on a very difficult journey. We would agree to our shared struggle afterward, stretching and icing in a semi-glorious state.
And other things happen on those runs. Unexpected battles emerge that draw me deep into discussions I didn’t know I needed to have. Discussions with the Divine that shifted my perspective.
My most recent conversation with the Divine had to do with a coyote.
If you come to our house for dinner, after a delicious meal that Holley prepares and as much conversation as you can handle, we’ll help you with your coats and turn the porch light on as you leave.
And, nearly automatically, I will say: “Be careful on the way home. Dodge the deer, hit the coyotes.”
That may sound strange, but I meant every word. The deer that find their home in the woods through which I run are beautiful, majestic creatures. The coyotes are nuisances; impostor dogs whose faces carry an irreversible scowl. When I lived in central Illinois farm country, several friends said that farmers would pay high school kids to drive through their property and kill coyotes.
How? By whatever means necessary. Let’s leave it at that.
As someone who prefers to run before the world wakes up, coyotes are my nemesis. In the pre-dawn and even mid-dawn hours, you can’t predict what these fake dogs might do. Buried in a song or a podcast, I’ve come upon a coyote in a cloistered spot and had to decide “Do I stop or keep going?” More often than not they trundle back into the underbrush, belly swollen from rabbits and squirrels, but you never quite know.
I detest the impostor dogs. At least I did.
One morning I rounded the corner of our forest preserve, huffing and swiping sweat from my brow, and ahead of me on the path was something I had never seen.
It was a coyote pup, a whelp.
The whelp stopped in the middle of my lane, some 50 yards away. It looked at me, and I noticed that the trademark scowl was missing. A quick look might convince you this was some mutt from your neighborhood - one that sorts through your trash and always looks as if it has a destination in mind, but is in no hurry to get there.
I stopped running and realized there was a beauty to this little thing. An innocence. Regardless of the scowl that would come with age and scavenging, at this moment I wanted nothing more than to just look at it. Of course, the few seconds vanished as the whelp saw me and ran into the woods towards mother or the pack.
I thought about my saying, “Dodge the deer, hit the coyotes.” Something about those small brown eyes staring back at me felt like fire - like conviction. Like prophetic rebuke.
Celtic theologian J.P. Newell quotes ancient theologian Pelagius, who taught that when we look into the face of a newborn child, we are looking into the “face of God born freshly among us.” The innocence of a child reminds us of an innocence that is in all of us, deep down.
The innocence gets buried over time, but buried things still exist. Sometimes the doctrines of human worthlessness and total depravity are just as harmful to this innocence as acts of violence, abuse, and betrayal.
Yet behind it all is the voice of the Divine saying “You are loved. You belong. You are beloved. You always have been and always will be. So let’s take a shovel and uncover that reality so it can change your life from the inside out.”
But what about the coyote?
What I recognized was how often I refuse to see the deep innocence of God in my enemies. A coyote is a part of creation, just as much as I am.
My enemy, whomever and wherever they are, bear just as much likeness to the Divine as I do.
As long as I can distance myself from “them” - make that person or “those people” a threat and something other than me - then I can continue to hate them. Even wish them harm.
But that’s the bothersome thing about such a simple teaching like “love your enemies.” Loving our enemies means realizing that our enemy is in need of love and acceptance just as we are. They carry the broadening innocence of God within them, and they have buried that innocence but sometimes we have buried that innocence for them.
Why? Because once we recognize the innocence of God in the eyes of our enemy - once we see our likeness in the likeness of God within them - our hate then turns against us. It turns against God, in a way.
For me to wish the coyote to die is to lose the innocence of all creation, including myself, that is just waiting to be born. The whelp on the path was not my enemy. A threat? Possibly. Something I want to pick up and carry around? Doubtful.
But I can no longer wish for harm for something that bears the innocence of the creativity of God.
This is also true of that person - maybe a family member - who is part of that other political party. The outspoken one that we see as a threat to…well, a threat to whatever we have made into a little god.
Side note:The easiest way to identify an idol is to mess with it and see what happens in our guts.
They bear the innocence of God. That person deserves the love and acceptance of God in the same way we do.
The person who has a different sexual orientation or different relationship to their gender than we do - the one we claim has an “agenda” that seeks to wreck all humanity as we know it - they are filled with the innocence of God. Love and beauty are due them, just as it is to us. And besides, there is no one on earth who lives without an agenda of some kind. No one.
I finished my run haunted and troubled, but with a new way of seeing the coyotes. We haven’t made our peace, but I don’t think I’ll give my departing guests the same advice.
Instead, maybe I’ll say: “Drive safe. Watch out for the innocent creation you may encounter on the way home.”
People may laugh, climbing into the car saying, “He’s so weird.” And they’re right.
Today, who are your enemies - those you have turned your anger and disdain toward for so long that you no longer see them as individuals but as a “them”?
Where is God revealing to you their innocence, their grace, the way they share the same humanity that you do?
What would it mean for you to love them, to wish them goodness and life just as you would your best friend or you child?
Photo by John Thomas on Unsplash