For Nancy's Page and Art click here
Please read this Disclaimer
If you mean to be at the National Zoo's website, click here
An abbreviated mobile version of The Zoo Fence is here
‧ Contact us ‧
Why The Zoo Fence? One night in 1974, in a fishing camp on the windward side of Moloka'i in the Hawaiian Islands, one of us dreamed of publishing a journal called One day in Eden, Adam sees Eve for the first
time.The Zoo Fence
. The name probably originated from the practice of the Honolulu Zoo to allow artists to display their work on the zoo fence along Monsarrat Avenue. Some years later, when The Laughing Cat issued a newsletter which evolved into this website, the choice of a name seemed already to have been made. Why laughing cat? Back then, we shared our home with a cat that, on appropriate occasions, laughed.
the zoo fence at Waikiki
“I am Adam,” he says to her.
“Yes, I know,” Eve replies, “so am
I.”
In The Beginning
Chapter 4
• Most items ahead will say click here but when in doubt, simply click.
If there is more to it, a click will reveal it. •
Search
· The Zoo Fence ·
click here
A spiritual seeker's rule of thumb:
If it can fit into my mind, it's too small
click here
Consider this …
The body is not what I am.
The body is where I am.
Meaning what?
Not sure.
click here
I know that I know nothing
Plato quoting Socrates
we two
Stefan and Nancy
click here
Call No Man Father
a path to awakening
click here
RELIGIOUS & SPIRITUAL
click here
Words I Use
and what I mean
click here
Whoso Knoweth Himself …
marriage is not about the two of us
marriage is about the three of us
you and me and God (believed in or not)
We're all aware of words like kindness, compassion, and love,
how we apply these words to others
— not just human beings but all forms of life.
I did not know that we had quarreled.
Who am I to judge?
When a military paratrooper leaps out of an airplane, he or she knows that a parachute will automatically open, and they will land safely. But what if that is not known to them? How will they feel about jumping? For too many of us, physical death is like knowing we will eventually jump out of an airplane unaware we are equipped with a parachute. So, we fear death.
Found by Nancy in a long since forgotten folder:
All I am is a file of concepts composed of memories stored, events remembered, anticipated, and emotions attached, originally probably arbitrarily, but now, when repeated, based in the file called memory
Fear is generated by those concepts (not an individual, though those concepts do make up that individuality), when they are threatened by change of any kind, loss, deletion, or newness.
This body is solely a gross material representation of the instrument that records all of this. The brain is its memory bank, literally a material representation of all the experiences of that instrument.
So who am ‘I’? Of course, all I can be is the energy, the consciousness, the awareness, the generating source of all of this manifestation. Unlimited in source, but limited within the instrument.
One evening, an elderly Cherokee Brave told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.
He said, “My son, the battle is between two ‘wolves’ inside us all. One is evil. It is anger, envy, jealously, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.
The other is good. It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, faith, and forgiveness.”
The boy thought about what his grandfather had said, and then asked him, “Which wolf wins?”
The old man replied, “The one you feed.”
The year was 1974, Peter K. Wensleydale and Ambassador Quenton Adkins were meeting alone in the Ambassador’s office on the third floor of the American Embassy in Gazinga. “What’s this supposed to be?” the Ambassador asked, as he read from the sheet of paper Peter had just handed him. “It’s a letter of resignation, sir,” Peter said, adding, as gingerly as if he were handling a stick of dynamite, “mine.”
A Continuing Fiction
After which Peter and Anna Wensleydale swapped their life as diplomats for a homestead in Cranberry County Maine, where they built their own home themselves, bottom to top, and where their friends include, among other species, a dog, cats, a rooster, and a neighbor’s sheep, all of whom speak to them and one another, and where their continuing experiences include the death of Peter’s life-teacher who is a horse named Montauk, the marriage of two chickens, Cantachiaro and Joy Pristine, and a happy surprise contrived by their dog Tancredi and Beatrice Marlowe the school teacher.
If the doors of perception were cleansed,
· A Hundred Prayers · Oh, Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations.
Thou art Everywhere, but I worship thee here:
Thou art without form, but I worship thee in these forms;
Thou needest no praise, yet I offer thee these prayers and salutations.
Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human limitations. M. M. Kaye
everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.
William Black The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
What we believe about the nature of reality (what we think to be real) depends very largely on the image we have about the existence and nature of a Creator. Even the apparent absence of such an image is reflected in our outlook on the world around us. We cannot separate our impressions of Creation from those we have of its Creator; indeed, if they are not the same thing, certainly they are two sides of the same thought. In a very real sense, we can say that our reality, or our sense of it, stems from or is directly related to the image we have of God … again, even the absense of such an image.
Take Off Your Shoes
Memory & Loss
· Healing Mistakes ·
· Forgive The Day ·
· Off Balance ·
· Here's A Thought ·
· Where Evil Dwells ·
· The Silence Rule ·
Maharajji was in a car. They came to a bridge.
Coming the other way were sugar carts pulled by oxen,
blocking the way. The driver slowed the car.
Maharajji asked, “Why are you slowing?”
The driver replied, “We can’t get through.”
Maharajji told him, “Go!”
The driver protested.
Maharajji said, “Close your eyes, and go!”
The driver closed his eyes, and pressed on the gas pedal.
When he opened his eyes,
they were on the other side of the bridge.
Miracle of Love
Stories about Neem Karoli Baba
When the flush of a newborn sun
fell first on Eden‘s green and gold,
Our father Adam sat under the Tree
and scratched with a stick in the mud;
And the first rude sketch that the world had seen
was joy to his mighty heart,
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves:
“It‘s pretty, but is it Art?”
Rudyard Kipling
The Conundrum of the Workshops
There is a family of red foxes that lives in the woods near our home. Some while ago, our neighbor saw one of the kits calmly trotting into her barn. The next morning, she found the fox in an empty horse stall, curled up against one wall, as if asleep. But the fox was not asleep; the fox was dead. There was a wound on one leg that may have been the cause of death. The game warden said it is not unusual for foxes to select a barn as a place to die.
But here's the thing. The evidence at the scene suggests this fox died calmly and easily, as if it considered death as natural a process of life as hunting field mice, feasting on wild blueberries, or prancing down a country road. There are no signs of frantic digging, scratching, wall climbing, or other desperate behavior. This fox was not trying to escape its fate, and it did not struggle against it. Instead, it seems that this fox realized somewhere within that it was about to die, and so it found an appropriate site, and, without any fanfare, it simply did so.
What is the difference between us and the fox? Is it that we perceive death as the opposite of life, and so we struggle against it; and the fox recognizes death is the opposite of birth, and so takes it in stride.
See also here.
Editor’s Desktop
“Schoodic Point II” by Nancy Russell Nadzo
Imagine a production of William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. On the stage, a great drama unfolds, shaped by prejudice, youthful beauty, romance, joy, delight, love, anger, despair, faith, death — the stuff of all our lives. But none of it is real. None of the characters is real, none of the emotions is real, none of the action actually occurs.There is no such person as “Romeo”, there is no such person as “Juliet”. They were never born, they never loved, they never died. It is all an illusion. The only reality in that context consists of Shakespeare as author, the actors as players, and ourselves as audience. All of those know the play is an illusion, and that all that is real is themselves. But still, the play is performed again and again, and again and again we laugh and we cry. As if it were real. Likewise, what you and I each call “my life” is thoroughly an illusion. Here, we do not truly know what is Real because each of us has taken on the identity of “me”, the principal character in “my life”. And just as neither “Romeo” nor “Juliet” can know Shakespeare, neither can the separate, separative (“I am me, and you aren't”) self of our lives know our Reality. For that, we must transcend the character, and recognize and resume our True Identity in and as and with (choose a preposition) the Author, the Source, the Supreme, the One, Brahman, Yahweh, God (choose a label). That is the spiritual process, transforming our current sense of identity bit by bit until finally it is transcended altogether, and we “Remember I Am”. Then, we Realize we never were the character, that we have never been born and cannot die, and that What Is always was and always will be. In a word, Reality destroys illusion.
In the beginning there was nothing.
God said, “Let there be light!”
And there was light.
There was still nothing,
but you could see it a whole lot better.
Ellen DeGeneres & Genesis 1:3
Can the existence of God be proved?
Suppose you are asleep in your bed, and a Teacher were to enter the room. Would you be aware of her presence? Obviously not. But would there be any doubt of her presence there? Again, obviously not. What proof of her presence could she offer you to make you aware of her presence? Obviously none, for no matter how brilliant her argument, however crystal clear its formulation, as long as you remained asleep, it would fall on deaf ears.
But suppose you awaken, and perceive the Teacher standing there. Would you become aware of her presence? Obviously so. What proof would you need then? Obviously none, your experience itself, the experience of your own awareness, would be proof enough.
Ditto God.
For more, see Credo.
Search
· The Zoo Fence ·
· click here ·
Words I Use
and what I mean
An uncertain thought …
The Universe is a Portrait of God
perceived by us as a landscape
composed of you, me, places, events,
planets, stars, galaxies, dreams,
latitudes, longitudes,
past present future,
genders, races, groups, associations,
religions, nationalities, philosophies,
thoughts, beliefs, expectations,
decisions, intentions, regrets, and
other unimaginable unspeakable infinite stuff beyond,
all of which to us,
who confuse appearance for Reality,
is many, and to God is One.
God’s Gender
Piangendo dissi: Le presenti cose
col falso lor piacer volser miei passi,
tosto che 'l vostro viso si nascose.
In tears I said,
Soon as you hid your face,
things, with their false appeal,
lured me astray.
Dante
The Divine Comedy
The War Prayer
Mark Twain
caution: it's heavy
· Books Whose Titles Say It ·
Walk On! by Christmas Humphreys.
Tomes may be written, but none says it better than these two words.
The Wisdom of Insecurity by Alan Watts.
We can remove our finger from the breach, and let the waters flow. Relax, we're fish.
The Cloud of Unknowing author unknown.
It really is just a cloud, which with intense prayer, devotion, and commitment, blows away.
Yeshua Buddha by Jay G. Williams.
He who is commonly called Jesus Christ smells as sweet by this other name.
What You Think of Me Is None of My Business by Terry Cole-Whittaker.
This extraordinary title — when administered humbly, gently, and in love — liberates us.
· Some Books We Read ·
Click Here
· Our Books ·
In The Beginning
The Eden Conspiracy Unveiled
ISBN 0-937226-06-8
The Cranberry Tales
A Children's Story for Adults Too
ISBN 0-937226-05-X
There Is A Way
Meditations for A Seeker
ISBN 0-937226-00-9
Take Off Your Shoes
A Seeker's Guide to The Nature of Reality
ISBN-10 0937226017
ISBN-13 978-0937226018
Hear The Wind, See The Wind
ISBN 0-937226-03-3
Sun Days, Moon Days
When The Miracles Begin
ISBN 0-937226-04-1
Being Who You Are
ISBN 0-937226-02-05
The Far Pavilions
DISCLAIMER
Inevitably and rightly, there is a lot on The Zoo Fence about scriptures considered sacred
by various traditions. As you read those comments and observations, please understand that
nothing written here is, or is intended to be, an academic consideration. I am not a
theologian, biblical scholar, or historian. I am not an expert. In the context of this
website, my interest in sacred writings is solely as a spiritual seeker who has undertaken
a personal inner journey for the Truth of who and what and where I am. I know that many of my
statements, and perhaps even all of my conclusions, will not reflect, and perhaps may even
contradict, current orthodoxy, theology, and history. I mean no disrespect by that, but it
does not concern me, for again I am not an academic, and this is not an academic undertaking. For me, the scriptures of the world’s spiritual traditions are a guide and a tool and a
vehicle which can facilitate and accelerate my own personal passage along the spiritual path only
if I understand their message to me. Therefore, I take it to be my duty, even my sacred
responsibility, to discover and understand their meaning to me personally, to decipher
what the Universal Teacher (Whoever or Whatever or even If Ever that is) intends for me to see in them and to do by them. Here, on The Zoo Fence, I share that with you, and I ask that you read it in that spirit.
T H I S and T H A T
A friend's death …
Selections, Sources, and References
q
FYI
This version of The Zoo Fence has been updated
most recently on May 11, 2026.
The Zoo Fence was first published in hard copy in January 1996.
It has been on the internet since February, 1997,
first at America Online, then from 1/1998 at GeoCities, then
from 7/2000 at OLM,
and now from 3/2011 at InMotion.
The Zoo Fence at birth
My thanks to Alan Simpson
for the colorbar
used on this site,
and for his book on Netscape Navigator
providing my first introduction to HTML.
To return to the home page (this page) of this website
click on The Zoo Fence
at the top of any page.
Please read this disclaimer
who we are
© Copyright and Trademark™ information
click here.
The Zoo Fence is Made in Maine
by a laughing cat