"GO ASK THE ANIMALS"

August 3, 1997

 

(Blessing of the Animals follows this meditation)

 

David has a number of wives and a great number of concubines but, bored to

death with his royal bounty, he absconds with another man's wife. This

morning's scripture tells us that "the Lord" was not one bit happy about

it. God sends Nathan, David's prophet, to tell the king about it. It is

one of the most artful passages in the Bible.

 

Nathan, no fool, tells a story, a parable really, in order to catch the

king. It is so wonderful, so full of fine detail. This poor man who has

one ewe lamb that eats from his table, and drinks from his own cup and goes

to sleep on his master's bosom. He does all but tell us that the name of

the lamb is "flossy." David is incensed, at the gall of someone to steal

such a family pet. Yes, but even his sense of justice here is ill

expressed. The man must replace it replace it four-fold," says David.

That's fine if we were talking about one of a host of beasts of burden, or

some sheep raised strictly for meat or wool. But we are talking about a

family pet here. Who, for instance, would take four golden retrievers for

the lost of the beloved one he has grown up with? The animal we have

chased squirrels with

in the woods and waves with on the beach, an animal that has looked after

us while we were sick and shown us again and again what the word devotion

means.

 

Frederick Bueckner has written, "When a dauchsund takes a shine to you it

is not likely to be because he has thought it over ahead of time. Or in

spite of certain reservations. Or in expectation of certain benefits. It

seems to be just because it feels to him like a good idea at the time. Such

as he is he gives himself to you hook line and sinker, the bad breath no

less than the frenzied tail and the front paws climbing in the air.

Needless to say, the whole picture can change in a flash if you try to make

of with his dinner, but for the moment his entire being is an act of love

bordering on the beatific."

 

Another Old Testament figure, Job, has something to say about animals.

His so called friends talk on at length about the world. Their view of

everything is so neat and tidy and so human centered. They even presume to

know how God will act and what God thinks about everything.

 

Job answers them facetiously: "Surely wisdom itself will die with you . . .

[But if you really are interested in learning something] Go ask the

animals and they will teach you." Animals are some of our finest teachers:

As I said earlier they have much to teach us about love, about the value

AND peril of curiosity; they even teach us about matters of the spirit.

 

Once a man was visiting a certain saintly man. When the visitor arrived he

found the man in prayer. He sat so till that not even a hair on his head

moved. When the holy man had finished his prayer his visitor asked where he

had learned to sit so still for so long: "From my cat., he repied."

 

When we feel that we are terribly short on the gifts necessary to do

whatever task it is we need to do a look at a snake can be very assuring

for with no hands or feet he still does very well.

 

Eight hundred years ago Thomas Aquinas, noting the infinite variety of

creatures on this God's earth, said: "Because the divine goodness could

not adequately be represented by one creature alone, God produced many

diverse creatures, that what was wanting in one in the representation of

the divine might be supplied by another."

I think there is genius in that thought. The German mystic, Meister

Eckhart echoes it:

"Every creature is full of God and is a book about God."

 

Like Job's friends, we humans are tempted to think that we are the be-all

and the end-all of creation. We believe everything on earth is there

precisley to serve us. Animals help us think again about that --

 

Two African men stood together at a river they were about to cross when

they spied several crocodiles. "Are you afraid," one asks the other.

"Don't you know that God is merciful and good."

"Yes I do," says the more timid man, "But what if God should

chooses right now to be good to the crocodiles?"

 

I want to close this portion of our worship with a poem by Joseph Bruchac

called "Grampa" which goes even further in opening our minds to

appreciating the autonomous value of God's most common creatures:

 

The old man

must have stopped our car

two dozen times to climb out

and gather into his hands

the small toads blinded

by our lights and leaping,

live drops of rain.

 

The rain was falling,

a mist about his white hair

and I kept saying

you can't save them all,

accept it, get back in

we've got places to go.

 

But leathery hands full

of wet brown life,

knee deep in the summer

roadside grass,

he just smiled and said

they have places to go to too.