One of the responsibilities that most ministers feel keenly is that compelling opportunity to try to create in a sermon each week a window into the Mystery. We’re like journalists–always looking for the story…a personal experience, a witness: the sermon illustration, a new idea, the insight. It is sort of a weird inescapable characteristic of our vocation–the search for that nuance that might help oneself or someone in the congregation to access that mysterium tremendum abstraction that is God from a direction that will bring hope or inspiration or awe somehow. And much of the time the search for that image is a joy, but sometimes it can feel heavy and daunting, just like all vocations do some days, and it was a rest from that compunction to say in a sermon what cannot be spoken or seen that Vince prayed for Andy while he is on sabbatical. The “gift of empty-headedness.” A freedom simply to show up and to be the witness in the presence of the sacred.
So it was just the other night after Vince had prayed that when I was thinking about our new theme and what it means to witness the Mystery when like many of you, Diane and I went to the Phillips Center to hear Dr. Temple Grandin speak. She is an animal scientist and inventor who lives with autism. Here’s what she said recently on NPR and it was very similar to what I heard that night, “Because I have autism, I live by concrete rules instead of abstract beliefs. And because I have autism, I think in pictures and sounds. I don’t have the ability to process abstract thought the way that you do. Here’s how my brain works: It’s like the search engine Google for images. If you say the word “love” to me, I’ll surf the Internet inside my brain. Then, a series of images pops into my head. When I think of love, what I’ll see, for example, is a picture of a mother horse with a foal…” Experiencing life as a series of images and sounds.

The idea that her experience of the abstract is concrete got me thinking: What if, beyond all of our religious talk and diversity, there is a way to understand spirituality, concretely, too? Once Meister Eckhart wrote, “Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things. Every single creature is full of God and a book about God. Every creature is a word of God. If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar – I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature.” So, as you can see, since he wrote that in the 1400’s, I’m not the first person to think of this idea, but until Temple Grandin said she thought in pictures the other night, I’d not thought of this particular icon into the holy in quite this way before, and so, I could not wait to share it with you. So, if philosophy or theology are too abstract, then think of the many concrete ways to see the Holy One in this world, and for example, on this day, think about animals. Animals. The word “animal” comes from a Latin root word “anima” that means “soul.” The medieval theologian John Scotus Erigena said “In a wonderful and inexpressible way God is created in the creatures.” Want to see God? An African wild dog, a red grouper, a pelican, a human baby, you, worship in pictures. What about it? How are you blessed to be a witness to the holy embodied in fur or fin or feathers? I invite you to hold a picture in your mind right now, the memory either from today or from long ago of your dearest animal friends or if you do not know any animals personally, then ponder the mystery of the fact that you and I have the privilege of sharing our life’s time with the likes of anoles and manatees and kingfishers.
Legends seem to indicate that many teachers and saints in many different religious traditions had a whole and holistic friendship with other animals, befriending their own creatureliness inside. I suspect it is a mark of our spiritual health or illness, if we are at war with the creatures – outside and inside us. It is hard to say which comes first – peace with ourselves that then leads us to peace with and the desire not to harm others, or whether our practice with other animals helps us to learn and to grow and then we become more peaceful inside. I don’t know, but I suspect it is a swirling mixture, our encounters and interactions forming us, and our presence helping to form others.
Today we commemorate the feast day of St Francis of Assisi, who is often called the patron saint of animals. I’ve always wondered what changed Francis. He didn’t start off saintly and friends to animals. He started out as a rich party boy. His real name was Giovanni, but his mom was French, and so everybody nicknamed him “little Frenchboy…” or Francisco. He had a life-threatening bout with illness, and after that, began to see his privileged life as rather meaningless, and as he recovered, became what I’d call “enlightened.” He gave away all his rich stuff and when people called him a fool, he liked it. He began to talk to the animals – and is often pictured holding birds. He loved preaching to them, and stories are told of the great flocks that followed him and lit on his shoulders and in his outstretched hands, unafraid. He made friends with a wolf that had been ferocious and threatened an entire village until, says the legend, Francis tamed and changed him. Francis wrote poems and songs about the God he understood to be the immanent creator, indwelling in the sun, the moon, the waters, the wind, the trees and the animals. Apparently, though, from the writings of the time, there was a good portion of the folks who knew him before and after his changed life who thought he was obnoxious and a little unhinged. A great hippie movie from the 1970s was made about his life, and even though the actor playing Francis looks kind of stoned and like he’s hanging out at Woodstock, the movie, called Brother Sun, Sister Moon, has some lovely music and some sweet moments.

Churches all over the world will celebrate his feast day with a service of the blessing of the animals in which folks bring their pets to the sanctuary to receive a blessing from the church. Today is also World Communion Day in which gatherings of religious people all around the world are uniting in the celebration of communion, but ponder this notion: what if we broaden both traditions? What if world communion day includes all of us, and not just the humans? Because we are blessed to be witnesses to the wonder and the mystery of all life on this planet and are charged with the responsibility to protect their habitats and not to take more than our fair share of the Earth’s resources, I wonder if the most holistic blessing we can bestow on the animals is not here at the church, but by having a spacious and humble understanding within our own hearts as we observe and celebrate and are changed by all that we know of them, and then, perhaps, to change our own lives to reject violence against them in any form possible and to become advocates for the just and compassionate treatment of them. St Francis said once, “If you have human beings who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have humans who will deal likewise with each other.” From an ecological and from a spiritual standpoint, the welfare of our winged and furry and scaly, two, four, and many and no-legged sisters and brothers is absolutely, inextricably tied to our own. We are quite literally goners without them, spiritually as well as physically, and though they have lived many centuries without us, we have never been alive on the Earth without them. I don’t want a picture in my head of a world where they are not.
So if thinking about God or spirituality is too abstract, then join me in this adventure that Dr. Grandin describes – shuffle through the pictures in your mind of your experiences with the animals. Black-capped chickadees carefully feeding teetering babies, the alligator mom surrounded by squirming striped young, already pushing against the mud, perfect among the reeds. Have you learned about gentleness and strength from horses and running and jumping for the fun of it from goats, and resilience and perseverance from tortoises? Ponder dogs you may have known, sitting by with unconditional acceptance, never once complaining about the weather or how long you made them wait, who kept running and wagging and swimming and chasing as long as you wanted. Ponder the amazing creatures–who live biologically and evolutionarily adapted and perfect in that nature that is panther or ant or crane or grasshopper, nothing more, nothing less, nothing else. Think of the moments you’ve had that took your breath away because of animals… dolphins at sunrise, bats soaring out of that house at UF just at dusk, the owls speaking from the trees, the snakes, the frogs, the armadillos and koalas, the deer sneezing in your fields, puppies you saw born, the kittens opening their eyes, animals who were family to you, closer, who lived until they died, fully, serenely, aware only in each one and only present day.

I hope we may find our way to a beautiful balance-one in which, refusing maudlin sentimentality, but out of true spiritual awe, our minds jump in delight that we have, all of us, been blessed to be witnesses to the lives of animals of such infinite beauty and variety that had we a hundred lifetimes, we could not know even a tiny bit of all there is to learn about each innumerable and amazing species. And may we balance our thanksgiving and awe with a deep determination to relieve the suffering caused by human encroachment so that our hearts will be united in a world communion that is the result of our deep awareness of who we are in the order of things.

Communion: October 4 is St. Francis’ death day, and legend says that as he lay dying, he asked to be taken outside and laid out on the ground, and as his fellow monks gathered round, he whispered to them, “I have done what was mine to do. May God teach you what you are to do.” Not a little commission was that that he gave them. Not a small accomplishment to complete before we die, to do what was ours to do. I hope we can all say that we’ve done it when it’s time for us to go.
As I wrote this sermon, birds were swirling around the feeder, and it reminded me of that place in Matthew’s Gospel where Jesus talks about sparrows. Sparrows were nothing more than burnt offerings on legs to the people of his day. But Jesus says, “They sell two for a penny in the Temple, but not one falls to the ground apart from God’s gaze.”
I can’t prove this, of course, but in answer to the question that I as a minister have been asked more, maybe than any other, “do animals have souls?” Of course, animals have souls, if anyone has a soul, and the soul of animals is just like ours only purer, for they always accomplish in their lives, short or long what St. Francis told his brothers to do, they do what is theirs to do, all the time. You can call that conditioning or instinct or evolution – it is all those things, but as a spiritual person seeking the abstract within the concrete, I also believe that a large part of what I came to this life to learn, I’ve learned because of the animals I’ve known. I hope you’ll take some time today to let the pictures fill your mind of all that you have learned and enjoyed in your life because of animals. Let us pray together,

Spirit of all creation, loving One, known by many names and embodied in the bread and wine, in the neighbors next to us and those in other nations, and shown to us clearly in the animals we love and in those we fear, we are blessed, indeed. May we take into our bodies the physical and the spiritual food that nourishes us, and may we learn to act in ways that are loving and equitable and refuse to hurt or kill. May we find renewed in our hearts through this world communion day, our unity of spirit, one with others, as we know our place in the great beloved community. Amen.
At this table, all are welcome. You are invited to come and to celebrate the feast. The servers will direct you, and as you come, please fill your mind and heart with the blessed memories of the ways humans and other animals have brought soul to your life and to your experience. World communion is for everyone. And this means you. You are all invited.