Praying opossum
“There’s a big possum in the courtyard,” Annie said. I came to the door and looked out. Sure enough, the marsupial denizen was poddling out the gate toward the street. She wasn’t that big, but she was indeed a possum. Fast for a possum is slow for almost anything else, so with a little spurt of effort I was able to get there in time to watch her go out into the street and slow down. [Anyone who has encountered a possum on a country highway knows that possums have a kind of death wish when it comes to streets and roads.] The possum crossed to the other side, but then she made a circle and headed back into the street. I decided to herd her back into our courtyard, where at least she would be safe from traffic and find somewhere else to go. So I herded the possum, and she disappeared back into the underbrush from which, no doubt, she had come.
25 years ago, one of the first nights I spent at Richmond Hill, I saw a possum in the courtyard. There were no cars parked there, then – no lobby, no cloister, no guests. Just me and the possum. The one I met last week was probably – almost certainly — a descendant of that founding possum. If not a direct descendant, she was at least a niece. That’s the thing about possums. They are all kin.
The Virginia opossum is ancient. They were first recognized by English speaking persons right here on the James River, perhaps even right here on this hill. The Powhatan people named the possum, and the English settlers adopted that name, since they had never seen anything like it. John Smith wrote that “an Opassom hath a head like a Swine, and a taile like a Rat, and is of the bigness of a Cat.” William Strachey, the first Secretary of the Jamestown colony, said that an “aposoum (was) a beast in bignes of a pig and taste alike.” He must have eaten one.
This poddling creature which was sort of running in our courtyard is known worldwide as the “Virginia opossum,” named right here by the English in 1610!
But she is really far more ancient than that. We can date the first proto-opossum in the Western hemisphere from the time of the extinction of the dinosaurs in “the Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction Event” about 65 million years. 20 million years ago, in the Miocene period, the North American tribe of possums vanished, but they continued in South America, then separate from North America. The Isthmus of Panama saved the day. Three million years ago some daring opossums headed north. They made the generations-long trek up the new isthmus to North America, and turned east to Virginia. They’ve been here ever since.
You are talking ancient. This little critter who was running out of our gate was the direct descendant of someone who came to this hill three million years ago. We know that her great-great-great etc. grandparents were here 10,000 years ago in the underbrush beside the ancestors of the Powhatan people who sat on this hill watching the sunset in contemplation and prayer.
Possums live and die quickly, mind you, even if they are not hit by a car. Their life span is two to four years, so we’ve seen eight to ten generations here since this Community took up the prayers on Richmond Hill.
Have you ever seen a possum play dead? They do. Have you ever seen a possum walking around with babies hanging onto its tail by their tails? She does. They do. Have you ever seen a possum with babies in her pouch? They do that here.
The prayers in this place were begun, perhaps, by the possums, and if they were, they are continued by them. Possums pray naturally, like all God’s creatures. They are like the birds of the air which Jesus talked about. Possums “don’t sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet,” Jesus observes, “our heavenly Father feeds them.” They’ve been up here living that way for three million years.
This is what passes for permanence in the world as we know it. Permanent means you’re in a steady space except for an event like a Cretaceous-Paleogene Extinction or the separation of continents, or the establishment of an isthmus. You’re here, developing your life, creating community, learning to pray and serve God. That’s the prayer of the possum, and it is permanently here. The city at the falls of the James was begun by possums, long before the humans came.
When the humans got here, things became chaotic. Heavy racial strife. Ugliness. Conquest. Wars. Horrible oppression. Desperation. Depression. Pollution. Flight. Sprawl. To be sure, wherever we have gone from this hill where Richmond began there were already possums present. But as the possum gathers her young into the pouch, so God desires to gather his people of this metropolitan city together.
The agony of individualism is not the same as the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Rather, he comes with a Holy Spirit which calms us, joins us, and makes us members of a single family articulated through justice, mutual effort, and mutual concern. Love of neighbor is not an individual thing between two people. It is the character of a true and healthy community, where those whom we don’t know are as important to us as those whom we do know. Nothing else is happy. Nothing else is hopeful. Nothing else is capable of joy. Nothing else fulfills prayer.
I saw the prayer of a possum. She was on this hill, praying in the setting sun. She may have been playing possum that day. But for a possum, “playing possum” is not play. It is a matter of survival, and it is prayer. The prayer is from ancient days, from the extinction of the dinosaurs through the separation of the continents and the building of the isthmus to the coming of the Indians and the erection of the English cross at the falls by John Smith. It is this: Bring these people together. Make them healthy. Overcome their fear of one another and their attempts to ignore one another or to base their lives on excluding one another from the equation of hope.
If you can hear it, the Virginia opossum prays. She prays on this hill, where her family has been praying for unnumbered centuries. She will not cease, until righteousness and justice are established here at the falls of the James.
B. P. Campbell, Pastoral Director
