Occasionally in life, I have seen animals or birds at moments that felt really magical.
I was once walking along a Lake Michigan beach, for example, when a Monarch butterfly lit upon my hand and simply rested there for a moment or two. That felt magical.
Then there was the day I was walking toward my car early in the morning when a heron flew by just over my head, looking majestic and powerful. The next morning, early, I found a heron feather in a bush near the same parking lot. So I collected it, and still have it, as a reminder of a particular moment that affected me in ways I don’t entirely understand.
Perhaps you have had similar experiences—moments of encounter with animals that feel unique and special. That glimmer in your memory somehow.
But most of us, I’m guessing, go through life not wondering about the personality or presence of animals (and plants) very much. If we do think about them, it’s probably as food sources. Or as objects of beauty. Or as irritations we need to manage or eradicate.
The way we think about animals and plants is based mostly on the assumption that we are at the top of the evolutionary heap. I have seen this idea illustrated as a pyramid, with a human at the top. Underneath are mammals, sea creatures, birds, plants of various sorts, snakes, bugs, and so on. That’s how we are taught to see the world: non-human living things are beneath us. Sometimes the label placed on that image is “ego-centricity.”
There’s often another image placed right next to the “ego-centric” pyramid. Images of humans, mammals, sea creatures, trees, vines, snakes, lizards and bugs are arrayed in a circle. An image with no top or bottom, with no single creature at its head. The human figure is embedded in an array where all non-human living things are on an equal level. Sometime the label placed on this image is “eco-centricity.”
“Ego-centricity.” “Eco-centricity.” Different alternatives for viewing the world placed right next to each other.
Until recently, I didn’t think much about that image when I encountered it.
Then I began to read and reflect more on how interlinked and interconnected humans are with all the other non-human living things, all plants and animals. We need each other to survive and thrive. The health of individual species within creation depends upon the health of all other species. The individual cannot be separated from the whole, not if we are to thrive.
Then I started reading more about how plants and animals behave and act. Crows, for example, can use simple tools and can communicate with each other a lot (I have a friend who thinks crows will someday rule the world). Trees communicate with each other, warn each other of dangers, and sometimes help the weakest among them to live.
Modern science, you might say, is beginning to catch up with the awareness and knowledge of the ancients. All of nature (ourselves included) is interrelated; everything depends upon everything else. We live within a single web, woven by the Wisdom of the Holy.
Today’s passage from Job tells of God declaring how Wisdom shaped and crafted the world. And how beloved that world is. God observes the wild animals, cares for them, provides them homes among other aspects of the wild. Hawks and eagles cavort and hunt—taking their place within the vast array of all. The Psalmist tells of similar wonders: They tell of the relationship of birds to trees freely providing a home, of goats enjoying the mountains, of grasses and plants upon which we all depend, of natural cycles of day and season, of animals that thrive at night. Of how deftly and essentially everything is interwoven. Of how everything is loved and appreciated by the Holy One.
The prophets speak also of these close interrelationships, though in less joyous ways. Hosea, for example, speaks of the land mourning because of human folly and destruction. The ancestors of our faith understood a truth that we must retrieve and re-enliven. All creatures and plants are necessary to the web of life. As Andi Loyd says in a recent issue of Christian Century:
If we could see our interconnectedness…it would look like a fabric: threads running between each of us and every person upon whom our lives depend; threads tracing the path from each of us to the nonhuman creatures that interact with our life….
Stretching all the way out to the pollinators that help make food, and the plants that feed them, and the insects and microbes that enliven the soil that sustains the plants…and so on. We are embedded in an fabulously intricate weave of creation…With an astonishing diversity that must be preserved for any and all of us to thrive.
There are many practical steps we could take toward creation’s mutual thriving:
- moving toward sustainable agriculture
- planting pollinator gardens
- changing eating habits
- migration bridges over roads and highways
- decreasing pollutants and poisons
- protecting forests and their inhabitants
And much more
Practical solutions, though, rely upon deeper motivations and impulses. The preservation and thriving of the entire circle of creation depends, at least in part, upon our spiritual lives: do we see ourselves at the top of the heap, freely exploiting all other beings? Or do we see ourselves in interdependent relationship…honoring all else in the circle, recognizing the imprint of the Holy upon them as well?
This recognition of interdependence and of God present within all things runs throughout the history of Christianity. The fourth century theologian Gregory of Nyssa, for example wrote that “when one considers the universe, can anyone be so simple-minded as not to believe that the Divine is present in everything, pervading, embracing and penetrating it?” And in the present day, Pope Francis encourages us to remember that all species have a message for us.
This message from within christendom is vital. We are only just beginning to catch up with Indigenous wisdoms that speak of “all our relations” and that often don’t have a word for “nature“ because they assume humans are part of it (ecocentric) rather than separate (egocentric).
These times of environmental crisis require a change in our practical habits. And they demand spiritual shifts:
- Recognizing the imprint of incarnation on everything
- Learning deep humility, gratitude, and compassion
- And more than anything, a growing and active love of neighbor that can not be separated from love for all creation and love of God.
May it be so.
-Rev. Ruth Moerdyk
Scripture Text: Job 39: 1-8, 26-30; Psalm 104: 14-23