Saint-Exupéry – Feminism and Religion

I am tamed by cats. I live with them. Note that I do not say that I “own” cats. Cats are their own beings, as are the dogs and fish and gerbils and parrots and other critters that may live with us. Do farmers and ranchers really own their chickens and cows? I don’t think so. They’re our kin. We’re all the children of the Goddess, of our blessed Mother Earth.

I wrote recently about one of my all-time favorite books, Le Petit Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, a book I first read in my high school French I class. Le Petit Prince is said to be a children’s tale, a sort of fairy tale of the desert. Actually, it’s “about” many things: the value of childhood innocence, the incomprehensibility of serious adults (in his voyage from Asteroid B-612 to earth, the prince visits a king, a businessman, a drunk, and a lamplighter), the follies and the lessons of love. In the Sahara Desert, the Little Prince meets a golden desert fox that tells him that we see better with our hearts than with our eyes. The fox also asks the Little Prince to “tame” him, that is, to allow them to become familiar and friendly with each other.

I am tamed by cats. I live with them. Note that I do not say that I “own” cats. Cats are their own beings, as are the dogs and fish and gerbils and parrots and other critters that may live with us. Do farmers and ranchers really own their chickens and cows? I don’t think so. They’re our kin. Continue reading “A Feline Petit Prince by Barbara Ardinger”

What le renard teaches le petit prince is that when people tame each other, they spend time together and get to know each other. It’s not power-over, but power-with. We become important to each other…. The world is made more sacred. That’s what we pagans and good, honorable people in the other religions who talk to each other without preaching are doing.

In Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince) by the French writer and aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the little prince takes advantage of the migration of wild birds to leave his home, the tiny Asteroid B 612, because he running away from a vain and fickle rose. After he arrives on earth, he sees a whole garden of roses, and it breaks his heart because he thought his rose was unique in all the world. When he returns to the desert where he originally landed, he meets le renard, a very wise fox. The fox tells the prince that they should “tame” each other. “Apprivoise-moi,” he says, “tame me. Let us create ties so that we know each other.”[i] Continue reading “Rien n’est parfait by Barbara Ardinger”