An Elephant Herd, an Old Man, and a Chaplain

I've been following Adine Roode since March, 2020. She runs a sanctuary and five-star lodge in South Africa. I don't remember exactly how I found her, but likely down in a pandemic-era YouTube rabbit hole. Adine rescues elephants. Most have been traumatized. Some came from terrible conditions in Zimbabwe, others were caught up in snares, some were orphaned as little babies, some babies didn’t survive.

I was spellbound and inexplicably soothed by these elephants. There's something about the rhythm of the herd - their deliberate, synchronized movements, the way they care for each other - that had a therapeutic effect on me. They became a central part of my bedtime ritual. While they walked through the bush, drank or bathed at the water hole, or coated their massive bodies in mud, those rumbling, loving giants eased me out of my anxious mind and into the blissful oblivion of sleep.

Over time, I've learned the elephants' names. I recognize many by sight. I understand the meaning in their movements, their moods. They are deeply social, curious, profoundly intelligent, and astonishingly communicative. They regularly use sound, touch, scent, visual cues and vibration to listen, understand and communicate with each other, to take care of each other. They fill me with wonder and awe.

Their sense organs are unimaginably foreign to us, so much so that scientists have rigged up elaborate research projects to prove that what we are observing is, well, real communication. As if these beings that have existed on Planet Earth for 60 million years need to prove anything at all. They just go about their days listening, communicating and caring.

I don’t think we humans fully grasp, much less utilize, our own capacity for connection and communication. I'm beginning to suspect we have sense organs we don't understand, ways of knowing that we’ve forgotten, or ignored, or anesthetized.

The elephants remind me.

I’ve watched them night after night for years, mostly in the storm or shadow of cancer. I watch and wonder about how they heal from trauma, and what it means to be rescued. What possibilities arise when a being, once captive, harmed or broken, is given space to reconnect with its own nature? What might a rescued elephant learn to believe about herself?

I'm wondering because I may have just been rescued too.

Back in September, I was at my acupuncture session, a regular part of my pain management regimen. I had just started to drop into that floaty, liminal place, somewhere between aware and dreaming. A wrinkled, wizened old man appeared, staring directly at me through penetrating dark eyes. He was so vivid and real. He held my gaze and said, in a deep, low, calm voice:

"Don't worry. You will be rescued."

The words startled me and questions bubbled up like water from a spring. Rescued from what? Rescued how? Do you mean cured?

But he was gone.

After that, my disease progressed at a breathtaking pace. By March, I could feel death whispering my name. I had to laugh at the old man's prophecy, and assumed he was either my imagination playing tricks, or he meant a rescue that would happen on the other side.

But I couldn't stop wrestling with his words. The message felt so clear, yet 'rescue' puzzled me. I didn't dare hope it meant an end to my suffering, but I couldn't shake the feeling that his prophecy mattered.

Here I am, nine months later, in complete remission, after more than four years of relentless disease progression. Have I been rescued? If so, rescued from what? For what purpose?

On Wednesday, a hospital chaplain paid me a visit. I would be discharged the next day, and was contemplating a life untethered from the hospital and the clinic. What would that look like? How would I manage the fear of relapse?

So, we talked as you do with someone who shows up unbidden at a moment of great need. I was stripped down and cracked open. I told her about the elephants and the old man. Holding my gaze, she asked, "Do these rescues feel similar?" I honestly didn’t know.

She said she was fascinated with Greek philosophy, especially the concept of flourishing, what the Greeks called eudaimonia. It was a cornerstone of her ministry.

I did a little research.

Aristotle said eudaimonia isn't happiness or comfort, but the full expression of your true nature, a life aligned with virtue and meaning. Not something that happens to you, but something you grow into.

And yet.

Is there a precondition for that kind of flourishing? Is a major rupture, like a bitter cancer diagnosis, or the loss of a marriage, child or home, necessary to grow into a new, perhaps better, life—one that’s aligned with our deepest truths? Is rescue Step One?

I used to think of rescue as passive. Someone pulls you out of the wreckage, tosses you a rope, or airlifts you off the roof. In that context, the old man's message might have meant an end to my suffering.

Instead, I think it transformed what my suffering meant.

This rescue feels like an awakening. A redirection. A holy interruption. Not rescue from the fire, but through it.

The mystics understood this concept - transformation through suffering.

Rumi wrote, "The wound is the place where the Light enters you." And Julian of Norwich, writing from her own sickbed, insisted, "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."

These are declarations from inside the cold darkness of suffering. An invitation to flourish despite your circumstances.

Back to the central question: have I been rescued?

Maybe I've been airlifted out of a life defined by appointments, infusions, scans and waiting rooms.

But maybe I'm being invited to flourish. To release myself from the belief that my worth is tied to productivity or income. Maybe I’ve been rescued to finally turn toward my own nature, and what is mine, and mine alone, to do. To come home to myself.

Adine’s rescued elephants never returned to the wild, never went back to their original lives. Rather, they were given an opportunity to become more themselves. Their stories didn’t end with the rescue; that was just the beginning. Their lives continue to unfold in harmony with their natures, and as they allow themselves to fully express their natures, they flourish.

Maybe I will too.

I’ve been playing with these ideas in a sometimes fumbling attempt to understand what’s happened to me, to find my own rhythm in the new sanctuary of remission. What about you?

• Is there a part of you calling out for rescue? Have you listened?

• Have you ever felt rescued into a life you hadn’t even dreamt of?

• What messages might your body—or your dreams—be trying to communicate?

• Could rescue be the moment you stop pretending you're fine?