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Year of the Snake

Writer's picture: Lawrence TaylorLawrence Taylor

Wednesday, January 29, 2025 – the Lunar New Year, AKA, Chinese New Year, the year of the snake. Snakes get a bad rap, perhaps because of a combination of a woodenly literalistic reading of Genesis and a ton of social misinformation. Personally, I’ve always found snakes fascinating.


One evening my parents were hosting a cocktail party for colleagues, and, in my 8 or 9-year-old mind, I assumed everyone would like to meet my hognosed snake, so I brought him into the living room and let him go so he could demonstrate his playing dead defense. True to form, he looked at the room of adults, flipped over and stuck his tongue out. When I turned him right-side-up, he promptly flipped over as if to say, “I’m dead, stupid.” The room full of scientists, professors, and physicians reacted with calm façades apart from one dear woman who almost climbed out the window backwards.


Yes, the satan is depicted in the Jewish origin story as a seraph, a snake-like creature, and yes, the text says God later put enmity between the evil one and the woman. The antagonism is between her and satan, however, not between all women and all snakes.


Sure, there are some species of venomous snakes, but most are not only harmless, they’re also beneficial. If we had more snakes around, we’d have way less problem with rodents and the diseases they carry. Besides, the venomous ones just want you to leave them alone.


Once we were tent camping on a huge ranch in southern Arizona. My wife asked the good-old-boy cowboy what wildlife might hurt us. He said the only thing he could think of were diamondback rattlers, to which my wife inquired, “What do you do if a rattlesnake gets in your tent?” The good-old-boy paused under his Stetson, then looked up and said, “Get the hell out the tent.” Wisdom. We did not encounter any snakes.


Symbolically, snakes speak of growth, shedding the old, out-grown skin, sloughing off negativity, laying aside both our overly inflated egos and our feelings of worthlessness. The Greek New Testament speaks of denying self, shedding the old nature, and putting on the new, by which is meant exuviating negativity, selfishness, and toxic thoughts and relationships. Doing so allows us to grow into increasing compassion, enabling us to more genuinely love. As we grow, we more deeply love God, the Source, and we learn to more genuinely love ourselves, others, and nature. We begin to recognize that we humans, animals, plants, and insects are connected in a great web of life. We steward rather than exploit. We persuade rather than control. We serve rather than dominate.



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