Alone in the desert…

If I were alone in the desert and feeling afraid,
I would want a child to be with me.
For then my fear would disappear and I would be made strong.
This is what life in itself can do because it is so noble, so full of pleasure and so powerful.

But if I could not have a child with me,
I would like to have at least a living animal at my side to comfort me.

Therefore,
let those who bring about wonderful things in their big, dark books take an animal – perhaps a dog – to help them.

The life within the animal will give strength in turn.
For equality gives strength in all things and at all times.

Meister Eckhart

Our other sisters and brothers...

For both men and women through the ages, it was in the wilderness that they discovered the soul. The civilized or domesticated world was of our making; wilderness was God's making - the first and natural cathedral.

But now we have created a society that idealizes civilization and runs away from wilderness. Many people are actually afraid of nature. Not only have we succeeded in taming the wilderness; we have ended up taming the soul.

Yet nature continues to speak to something deep within each of us. Have you ever been transfixed while looking into the eyes of an animal? When an animal looks into our eyes, the sensation is almost numinous. The world beyond the human is somehow communicating something essential to us. Carl Jung said, "When religion stops talking about animals it will be all downhill." Being in wilderness brings us back to our senses, back to our deep selves.

Richard Rohr, from On the Threshold of Transformation

We can easily take this kind of thinking too far - for one thing, we are ourselves made in the image of God, and our own making is a little bit of God's own creativity working through us - but Rohr has nailed something which is deeply true. The soul of an animal (Psalm 104:30; Ecclesiastes 3:18-21) is not like ours. There is something about it that feels almost as though it is fresh from the hand of God, clean and wholesome, full of a eagerness we have long forgotten. Even the donkeys recognised Jesus (Luke 19:29-38) and the foal who had never been ridden carried him quietly through the roaring crowds. Truly, as Francis saw, the animals are our sisters and brothers; we worship the one God, together.

Gentleness…

Let your gentleness draw others to peace, gentleness and concord. This is our vocation: to heal wounds, to bind what is broken, to bring home those who are lost.

Not to hurt our humble brethren [the animals] is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough.  We have a higher mission: to be of service to them whenever they require it.

If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

St. Francis of Assisi

The Rescue

Dietrich Bonhoeffer compared our Advent waiting for the coming of Christ at Christmas to the waiting of a miner trapped underground. The miner is totally alert, totally absorbed in listening for every blow and every footfall of his rescuers making their way toward him. Can you imagine, Bonhoeffer wonders, that the miner ever thought of anything “other than the approaching liberation from the moment he heard the first tapping against the rock?” Advent is like that. “When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” (Luke 21:28).

Bonhoeffer writes:

It is already knocking at the door, don’t you hear it? It is breaking open its way through the rubble and hard rock of your life and heart. Christ is breaking open his way to you. He wants to again soften your heart, which has become hard… he calls to us that he is coming and that he will rescue us from the prison of our existence, from fear, guilt, and loneliness…

The only question is: Will we let redemption come to us or will we resist it? Will we let ourselves be pulled into this movement coming down from heaven to earth or will we refuse to have anything to do with it? Either with us or without us, Christmas will come. It is up to each individual to decide what it will be.

This picture, The Rescue, is by Jan Oliver, a contemporary painter of retablos living in Pueblo, Colorado. It’s one of the most moving portrayals of St. Francis of Assisi I’ve seen, since it so clearly captures his total identification with Christ’s mercy for all of creation. I just love Jan’s work, and I’d urge you to click on her name and check out her excellent website for yourself.

Hat-tips:

Gabrielle, for introducing me to Jan’s work
Jay, for the original Bonhoeffer Advent meditation

Praying for Squirrels…

I couldn’t resist posting a quick link to a wonderful post on Episcopal Cafe…

It is as if scales began to fall from my eyes just a bit. Who pauses to mourn a squirrel? To think anew about how we drive without care of our surrounds and those who inhabit them with us? There are countless millions of these pesky rodents. Yet, this squirrel was a fellow creature, a unique creation of flesh and blood whom God declared “good, indeed, very good.” He too is a subject of God’s care and concern in his own right irrespective of how he stands in relation to us human beings. God hears his “Holy, holy, holy” with our own, as the Psalmist reminds: “All thy works shall give thanks to thee, O Lord, and all thy saints shall bless thee!”

Do click over and read it—tremendously important stuff, really, not just about squirrels but about all of creation.

(Profound hat-tip to Lee at A Thinking Reed)

God does not forget his little ones…

Jesus is the door to a life in and with God. “I am the gate,” he says (John 10:9). “I am the Way; I am Truth and Life. No one can come to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). Still, many people never have heard or will hear of Jesus. They are born, live their lives, and die without having been exposed to Jesus and his words. Are they lost? Is there no place in the Father’s house for them?

Jesus opened the door to God's house for all people, also for those who never knew or will know that it was Jesus who opened it. The Spirit that Jesus sent “blows where it pleases” (John 3:8), and it can lead anyone through the door to God’s house.

from Henri J.M. Nouwen’s Bread for the Journey.

Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten in God’s sight.

Jesus (Luke 12.6)

God does not forget his little ones, not even the ones we big important Western white men never so much as notice. God’s Spirit gives life to every living thing (Ps 104.30), and God does not abandon the work of his hands (Psalm 138). Who are we, I mean, just who do we think we are, to say that this man is worth more than that woman, that that animal is worth more than this one? How can we look into another’s eyes, and not feel reverence for God who gave that spirit, and love and care for the home he has set it in?