Mindfulness and Guinea Pigs

How can a baby guinea pig teach you about Benedictine values, like mindfulness, obedience, and balance?

I love raising guinea pigs because they provide excellent training for life. Just by living, they deepen our acceptance of sex, death, and miracles. Just by needing to be fed—every single day—they force us out of ourselves every single day. They give and receive love freely.

And yes, they teach Benedictine values. One of our sows recently had a litter that I suspect was premature. After three days, the babies stopped gaining weight, and it became clear that they needed a nutritional boost. So we started hand-feeding them with kitten milk replacer through a syringe, twice a day.

That’s trickier than it sounds. It is very easy to squirt the fluid in too fast—and send it into their respiratory instead of their digestive system. At that age, such a mistake is usually fatal. To avoid this, you feed leisurely, let them lead, and focus exclusively on what you’re doing.

In other words, you feed mindfully. You obey by letting another of God’s creatures lead you—and express the will of God for you in that moment. You feed leisurely and thereby appreciate life’s balance. It doesn’t get more Benedictine than that.