Sacredness

Mathews describes her childhood relationship with her animals as a kind of bridge connecting her with nature. She says on page 559:

“…animals that were available to me throughout my childhood had opened me to a larger world, a world astir with presence or presences that vastly exceeded the human. It was this direct contact with unknowable but pervasive presence which instilled in me a sense of the sacredness or enchantment of the world, and the potentiality for the ‘magic’ within it.”

She blames our disconnection with the natural world on industrialization and urbanization. Her connection with her pony/animals was a communication in which she was able to release her deepest feelings and thoughts to. She describes a mutual relationship in which she and the horse communicated in a deeper form that went beyond language and connected her to a long forgotten time when people viewed animals and nature as sacred. My first thought was the connection the Native Americans had with animals and nature. They often worshiped gods from nature and they respected the animals they killed. They seemed to have a deeper understanding of the nature of animals and the natural world that we have lost as a society somewhere along the way.

Have we lost our sense of sacredness toward the natural world and its animals?

Do you think someone can have a relationship with an animal that would be just as deep as one between two humans? What about someone whose only family is the animals they keep as pets?