This title is shamelessly borrowed from a wonderful lecture by Stephen Jay Gould on all the complex ways that humans are connected in evolutionary senses to the rest of the animal world to which we belong.
But my (mis)use of it is in a literal and simplistic sense: to consider, at this time when presumably Christians are reflecting on their faith and the state of their souls, the existence and the fates of other living creatures we share the planet with, and that we mostly ignore, disrespect, or take for granted.
Early today there was no ignoring my immediate neighbors’ pig and two goats whose death cries filled the air as they were butchered for a feast in the evening.
But there are happier sounds: a new bird call often heard now — a steadily held high whistle, repeated many times.
Other calls we’re long familiar with: an amazing four-tune song, so musical and lovely, the harsh crowing of a bright blue bird that, in our ignorance, we simply call “blue bird,” the low throaty call of what they call “kukoo” — a large, rust-colored bird that nests in the bamboos, the shrill screeching of tiklings as they march in the garden, seemingly on schedule a few times a day.
Lately, we have to try and drive sayaw-sayaw out of rooms, or watch, horrified, as one of the dozen geckos that live with us, catches hold of one.
Not infrequently, there’ll be a little snake curled up on a mangosteen branch or hanging in a shrub. There are “flying” lizards on the trunks of trees. The dogs, when they’re feeling energetic, give the neighbors’ chickens strolling in the garden a good chase. There are some butterflies, the occasional, thrilling firefly, beetles, and bugs of all sorts.
When, like today, I brushed into a caterpillar while pruning a plant and got red, itchy spots, I thought: how unpleasant, but they’re part of the world, too.
The inventory wouldn’t be complete without a mention of two dogs, rescued, and now firmly family, who roam freely and have a “language” to communicate with us.
What a joy when just walking past one of them apparently asleep on the floor, her tail starts waving, as if to say: I’m happy you’re here….
The neighbors all have dogs, too, but all except one spend their entire lives at the end of a one meter length of rope or inside a cage.
Disregard, neglect, or even normalized cruelty to animals must give way to a renewed awareness and respect of all forms of life, particularly now as we are inevitably contributing to the devastation of the earth.
In this time of spiritual self-absorption that tends to exclude consideration of all other life on the planet to privilege the human, it might be well to hear the words of Catholic priest and eco-theologian Thomas Berry: The natural world is the larger sacred community to which we belong.
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