Feast Day of St Francis of Assisi – patron saint of animals

“”Ask the animals, and they will teach you, the birds of the air, and they will tell you; ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you, and the fish of the sea will declare to you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being.” Job 12:7-10

In this brief passage from the book of Job we learn that all forms of life have something to teach us. The animals, the birds, the plants, and the fish are all named together as beings who can teach us.

Later on in the book, God asks Job, “Who gives the ibis (a kind of bird) wisdom or gives the rooster understanding?” Of course, the unsaid answer to that question is undoubtedly God, who gives all creatures whatever particular wisdom they may possess.

In nature we often see different kinds of animals living together in symbiotic relationships. There are fish who live in the shadows of sharks. The sharks do not eat these fish but rather let them swim freely inside their mouth. The fish clean the shark’s teeth and live on the scraps of what they have eaten.

The shark has one kind of wisdom and the little fish has another. Both live and grow together, mutually benefiting from their shared wisdom. Dogs and humans, as an example, go as far back as history can record. We evolved in unison with each other. We have come into existence hand in hand with one another.

In this process of sharing wisdom, humans and dogs have developed a friendship. As the old saying goes, “a dog is a man’s best friend.” Wisdom calls us into friendship. Human beings have a remarkable sort of wisdom. We see things in a way that no other animal can.

Yet, our wisdom is not complete in itself. We can see that human ingenuity can be a source of death as much as it can be a source of life. When we forget our animal neighbours, who are also our cousins, our wisdom becomes self-serving.

But this disjointed and chaotic wisdom which humanity seems to have right now is not the only way. We can open our hearts and minds to the ancient song which all of nature sings. There is a natural harmony of wisdom and friendship which is beckoning us to return to it.

When we allow the wisdom of animal being to inform our own, we will no longer destroy the earth for our own short-term gain, but rather see, with eyes unclouded by ignorance, that our wellbeing is forever entwined with the wellbeing of all life on earth.”

Justin Coutts

“We often hear grown-up people complaining of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train. Did you ever hear a small boy complain of having to hang about a railway station and wait for a train? No; for to him to be inside a railway station is to be inside a cavern of wonder and a palace of poetical pleasures. Because to him the red light and the green light on the signal are like a new sun and a new moon. Because to him when the wooden arm of the signal falls down suddenly, it is as if a great king had thrown down his staff as a signal and started a shrieking tournament of trains. I myself am of little boys’ habit in this matter. They also serve who only stand and wait for the two-fifteen.”

G. K. Chesterton

“My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.”

Mahatma Gandhi, born Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on this day in 1869

Return Again, a traditional Jewish song, sung during the Days of Awe (the 10 day period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when people seek to bring themselves back into alignment with themselves, each other, the earth and God):

“Return again, return again
Return to the land of your soul
Return again, return again
Return to the land of your soul

Return to what you are
Return to who you are
Return to where you are born and reborn again

Return to what you are
Return to who you are
Return to where you are born and reborn again

Return again, return again
Return to the land of your soul”

You can hear the song at the following link:

Autumn Day by Rainer Maria Rilke

“Lord: it is time. The summer was generous.
Lay your shadows onto the sundials
and let loose the winds upon the fields.
Command the last fruits to be full,
give them yet two more southern days,
urge them to perfection, and chase
the last sweetness into the heavy wine.
Who now has no house, builds no more.
Who is now alone, will long remain so,
will stay awake, read, write long letters
and will wander restlessly here and there
in the avenues, when the leaves drift.”

Blessing in the Storm by Jan Richardson

“I cannot claim
to still the storm
that has seized you,
cannot calm
the waves that wash
through your soul,
that break against
your fierce and
aching heart.
But I will wade
into these waters,
will stand with you
in this storm,
will say peace to you
in the waves,
peace to you
in the winds,
peace to you
in every moment
that finds you still
within the storm.”

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”

Confucius, born on this day in 55 BC

“Many of us consider growing up as a kind of increasing, and getting old as a kind of decreasing. When we say that humans go from ashes to ashes and from dust to dust, it doesn’t sound very joyful, because none of us wants to return to dust. It is our mind of discrimination that thinks this way, because we don’t know what dust really is. Every atom is a vast mystery. We still have not yet fully understood electrons and nuclei; for scientists, a speck of dust is very exciting. A particle of dust is a marvel…

We have the tendency to think that we are much more than a grain of dust; that we are greater and the dust is lesser. But looking deeply we see that a grain of dust is just as wonderful as a human being, and that the grain of dust contains the human being, just as the human being contains the grain of dust. We do not have to die in order to return to dust, we are the dust in this very moment. When you see the no-increasing, no-decreasing nature of reality, you will have no more fear, no more complexes.

There is an old proverb that says: Be humble; you are made of dust. Be noble; you are made of stars.

But the stars are also made of dust, and dust is made of ancient stars. There is the nature of interbeing between dust and stars. So nobility and humility must also have the nature of interbeing. Looking at the one, you can recognize the other.

We have become so arrogant that we not only think we understand what a speck of dust is, but we even pretend that we understand what a human being is—that same human being who will return to dust. When we have lived with someone for twenty or thirty years, we have the impression that we know everything about that person. While we drive the car with them sitting right next to us, we think about other things. We aren’t interested in him or her anymore. The person sitting there beside us is a real mystery! That person sitting there is a wonder of the cosmos, a child born of distant stars…

Even one hair of that person is the entire cosmos; one eyelash can be a door opening to the ultimate reality. One speck of dust can hold the Kingdom of God, the Pure Land. You, the speck of dust, and all things inter-are.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

“I know a person who is convinced their deceased brother is in hell because of who they loved
I told them that if hell is real, I don’t think it is a destination
I believe hell is a campsite that gets formed in the hearts of people who judge others for living a life that they refuse to try and understand
Those who condemn others to damnation are the very architects of hell on Earth my love
Let us build a heaven in the space that exists between my life and yours
Let us create an endless garden paradise where every single exotic flower is honored
Let us form a community of angels who don’t try and polish each other’s halos
We only have so many heartbeats left inside of us to waste a single one on deciding who gets to grow like a sunflower under the light of the hereafter
Who knows what happens to us once our bodies release our souls like birthday party balloons?
Why spend an ounce of energy on deciding who gets to go to heaven when we can spend our lives building it here on Earth with the bricks of how we treat each other?
Until I hear the harps and see the golden gates, I’m going to consider this world the Promised Land
And I promise to be as kind as I can be with your heart while we are here together.”

John Roedel

“Our work for peace must begin within the private world of each of us. To build for humanity a world without fear, we must be without fear. To build a world of justice, we must be just.”

Dag Hammarskjöld, UN Secretary-General and Unitarian, who died on this day in 1961