While driving home down a dark winding road last night, I saw the hindquarters of a deer having crossed on the left side of the road.  I live in a part of New York which is deer country, and over a tenth of a second or so, thought "where there is one, there are others crossing."  Usually, I can see them, waiting to cross one after the other.  I honk the horn, as deer are mesmerized by headlights and don't move.  There was nothing in the road.  With a sickening thud, a deer leaped from out of my vision at the car, striking the right side and front bumper.  The sound was indescribeable, and I shouted "Noooooooo!" But there was nothing I could do.  It had happened.  For those of you who don't know me, I am an animal lover.  Although I have not had the personal conviction to become a vegetarian, I would not willingly cause another living creature pain.

    A few hundred feet down the road, I stopped, visibly shaken.  I was ok.  I turned around, expecting to find the poor thing suffering, and I called the police, reporting it.  However, I could find no sign of the animal, eventhough I drove back and forth several times.

    I began to think, I could have died - easily.  Were there guides or angels present?  I didn't feel them there.  The damage to my car means less to me than the suffering of one of God's creatures.  I began to think - we do learn from these seemingly random events and negative experiences.  But what was the lesson?  What was I meant to learn?  I wasn't driving terribly fast.  It was pitch dark.  I said a prayer for the animal, and tried, while meditating to contact it and tell it to pass over if it were suffering.  I doubted that any animal could survive the impact from my car.

    So I started this thread as not just a means to catharsis, but to pose a question.  Do folks here feel that every seemingly random event is truly random (since free will reigns)?  Or, is there a meaning behind every tragedy and seemingly random event?

Matthew

Crystal Moment
by Robert Peter Tristram Coffin (1892-1955)

Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

A wooded island rang with sounds
Of church bells in the throats of hounds.

A buck leaped out and took the tide
With jewels flowing past each side.

With his head high like a tree
He swam within a yard of me.

I saw the golden drop of light
In his eyes turned dark with fright.

I saw the forest's holiness
On him like a fierce caress.

Fear made him lovely past belief,
My heart was trembling like a leaf.

He leans towards the land and life
With need above him like a knife.

In his wake the hot hounds churned
They stretched their muzzles out and yearned.

They bayed no more, but swam and throbbed
Hunger drove them till they sobbed.

Pursued, pursuers reached the shore
And vanished. I saw nothing more.

So they passed, a pageant such
As only gods could witness much,

Life and death upon one tether
And running beautiful together.

thanks for the poem Lucy, I usually don't like to read poetry, not even my own, but I really like that poem!

That poem...my pagan friends would say he saw the wild hunt...

I think there is intention and there is randomness too.  Isn't an either/or deal.  When John was killed, the accident was one of those "stretch about six different circumstances/coincidences to their limit" kind of things for it to happen.  Calm clear day, chunk of tree limb had to hit a very tiny spot that required it to fall in a weird trajectory for that split second that four guys experienced at their work were all looking elsewhere.  He had never had a serious accident at work in twenty-five years in a very dangerous job.  Except one...about five months before the accident that killed him, he was hit in almost the same place in the head by a swinging cable, he just ducked enough that time to prevent major damage.  Both accidents were flukes, really.  Makes me think that he was supposed to die from a head injury at about fifty-one...but not at such-and-such a time on a particular day in a precise way.  And I think if you do really really stupid stuff, like dashing into traffic repeatedly, that you can check out earlier than may have been the original plan.  Likewise, people who *really really* need to hang around a little longer will come through hurricanes or tsunamis in totally unbelievable ways. So my vote is for a basic plan seasoned with random events and leavened with lessons...metaphorically...

Marilyn - I've read that too, and it's exactly what I think in John's case.  Even more...I've always had some interest in the afterlife, and communicating with spirits (hard not to in this house, place came with it's own resident ghosties, after all). 

However, it was never a *big* interest...not like I sought out books or internet info about it.  Never tried in more than a "whatever" kind of way to contact my Dad or anyone else who had passed, didn't even pester our house ghosts that much. 

Then about a year ago, which was before John got hit the first time, I positively got on a binge...bought books by the score, looked up everything I could find on the subject.  My guess (and it's just that)...we planned this together, and somewhere way back in my little pea brain was the knowledge that I'd better get ready for losing him.  As I said to him the other day (and he'd better be listening where ever he is), this was probably at least partly my idea, but you know?  Even if it was IT WAS STILL A BAD ONE!! 

Marilyn,

Sylvia Browne writes of this.

with Love,
Bob

If you want to do your part in ending unnecessary
animal suffering, you might want to consider cutting
pork from your diet, and boycotting pork products
in general.
The modern, corporate/industrial manner in which pigs
are raised for slaughter makes even an avid hunter
like myself cringe... these animals literally spend their (mercifully short) lives in an old-fashioned vision of Hell.
(Google "pig factories" or "pork industry" and see what
I'm talking about.) It is interesting also that pigs are
probably among the top 5 intelligent creatures on Earth...
As for the deer, collisions with cars (I've had a few close calls myself!) are an ever-increasing reality as their numbers grow due to an increase of suitable habitat for them (due to man's clearing of forests... this creates more "treeline" habitat which is ideal for whitetail deer, the species I assume you encountered) and (especially in the East) lack of natural predators (due to extermination efforts) TOGETHER with ever-mounting development (housing, roads, ect.) pushing into deer habitat (associated with human population growth.) Therefore, the reason this happened to you (and the deer!) COULD be said to simply be the price being exacted for collective human stupidity and corporate greed. Too bad that price is usually borne by innocents like your deer (and not the corporate bigshots and bureaucrats responsible for this situation..!)

B-man

Hi, DocM,

Sorry to hear about your experience with the deer, as I love all animals too. The main thing is that you were unhurt.

A very close friend of mine was a regular visitor to America (he lived in the U.K.) where he used to travel extensively with his wife in their RV.
Following one visit he returned home with two very small devices which he fixed to the front bumper (fender) of his car here, as we also have many deer roaming wild. I asked him what they were, only to be told that as he drove along they made a noise, inaudible to the human ear, caused by the wind passing through them which would alert deer of oncoming traffic and scare them away from the approaching noise.
He also had them fitted on his RV in America. Fortunately he never had any accidents with deer, probably because of them.

Have you thought about buying and fitting them to your car? Sorry I cannot help with any details about them, though.

Best wishes, roger