Taller than the trees
Levavi Oculos Meos in Montes.
I will lift my eyes to the hills.
The giraffe is indeed one of God’s very special angels.
Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs considered the giraffe a creature who — being so tremendously tall with such incredible eyes — sees above, beyond and before all other animals.
To foresee is to see as the giraffe does.
A giraffe is the tallest terrestrial animal on earth, and it certainly has the longest neck. Each single vertebra is almost a foot long and flexible enough to twist around for a rest on the rump. This is how they nap, for the very short periods of rest they need.
The giraffe's large, sensitive eyes are incredibly powerful, giving them the greatest range of vision of any animal on land. Though giraffes are gentle beasts, they are far from slow, far from stupid.
A giraffe is smart, fast, and patient.
They can run almost 40 mph and stroll at 10 mph. With their long, strong legs and powerful hooves they can deliver a ferocious kick in any direction, a swift blow that can be fatal and can easily decapitate a lion.
Yet a giraffe is an herbivore who loves to crunch at the crown tops of trees such as the Acacia.
Therefore, a giraffe is not exactly a predator, and not quite prey.
Why did the giraffe grow so tall and develop such great eyesight? Not to escape predators, as science has recently and reluctantly admitted, but for vision — farsight.
To see; both far and high.
The Constellation Camelopardalis
Indeed, the giraffe has a constellation of its own, the Constellation Camelopardalis — the spotted camel — a name that is an echo of the Egyptians idea of the giraffe, who they regarded reverently both as a hybrid creature and a prophet. The Constellation Camelopardalis, like all such, is located above the ground, above the sky, in outer space.
It is shaped like a giraffe and is just as mysterious.
It circles the North Star, Polaris, the bright, still star to which the Big Dipper points.
Constellation Camelopardalis is extraordinarily large and quite subtle. Because of its visible faintness to most of the eyes on earth, this area of space was once mistakenly thought of as empty. Inconspicuous and unseen as it has been, however, neither the constellation nor the giraffe have ever been irrelevant.
Giraffe Girl
As both David Culler and Timothy Grey had observed, Abigail Grace Shirley was a very unusual young woman. They regarded her as startling more than stunning, but she was both. Her fair skin was rich and had the faintest rose hue, and her freckles seemed to have been each individually sculpted, every single bronze mark having its own unique shape and design.
They were not carelessly scattered at all, but appeared like a rich star-filled night sky from which many different patterns and forms could be visualized, including a formation on her right shoulder that completely matched the Constellation Camelopardalis.
Abigail was tall and willowy, with lean, elegant muscles and a proud, beautiful neck. Her bright tawny hair fell in thick waves and curtained her heart-shaped face in a bold frame. Her brow was darker and well-formed but also delicate and expressive.
Her sweet pink mouth was set into a well-formed and firm jaw. Her mouth was small, but her lips were blooming, and she could make many faces, from silly to serious. Her dark eyes were thickly lashed and deep, giving her a look of compelling intensity and intelligence.
Every detail about her — oval fingers and nails, marble carved shoulders, and her finely crafted ankles — seemed to have been thoughtfully and lovingly made.
Her voice, too, was musical and layered with many notes and tones. She usually spoke both humorously and kindly, but she could also lower her voice into a deep script imbued with authority. Her speech was filled with sayings and terms from all different times and places, for she read constantly as a child and learned many words and expressions from the people she grew up around.
Not to mention — like many of her kind — she had been around for quite some time.
As a child living in Africa, she had learned the language so well that her father, Pastor Shirley, had often used her as an interpreter for his communication with the people on his religious missions. In fact, when they saw the girl with her bright, wise eyes and tiny smile, they trusted her, and she was smart enough to appreciate and respect their language and its unique ideas.
Therefore, the conversations that happened exceeded their translation, and she listened, learned, and communicated far more than her father could have ever understood. However, he did suspect he was being left out of something, and he felt resentful about it.
He was a suspicious person, anyway.
He trusted girls very little, and Africans even less. After the interviews and interpretations, he would often question her relentlessly, attempting to uncover what a certain face expression, gesture, or word had concealed.
Abigail answered him calmly and honestly, but he never discovered anything because he did not know what questions to ask.
Abigail's mother died just after her daughter was born. She had been in terrible pain and yet when the baby was held nearby her entire face and body relaxed into an expression of peaceful bliss.
She did not have the physical strength to hold the infant herself, but the nurse brought the baby very close, and gently unwrapped the bundle to reveal the child's form.
The mother’s eyes swept the child from head to toe and back, again and again, as sweet tears of relief and release flowed from her eyes.
Love filled the room like the explosion of a sweet bomb.
It was as though her mother was being born and dying at the same time. Both child and mother gazed at each other with recognition and hope, sorrow and joy. The nurse who held the newborn blinked back her own tears out of a sense of respect for a moment so rich with spiritual birth and passage that it only belonged to those two, mother and daughter.
It was just the three of them at that time in the room, the doctor and father did not come back in the room until the mother had passed on moments later.
“Abigail. Abigail Grace.” The mother whispered the girl’s full name as her final words. “The very joy of Father!”
The nurse did weep later, when she was all alone. She knew in her heart that the father the mother had meant was not the child’s human parent.
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