The Feast Day of St. Francis of Assisi on the 21st Sunday After Pentecost
The Rev. Nigel Taber-Hamilton, Rector
Anyone remember Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young? No, it's not a law firm! They were a singing group. And today I'm reminded of one of their songs (actually written by Joni Mitchell). The chorus went like this:
"We are stardust, we are golden; We are billion-year-old carbon; and we got to get ourselves back to the garden."
These are not just 60's flower power lyrics - or maybe I should say "they're not only 60's flower power lyrics"! Talk to any astrophysicist and they'll tell you the same thing - that we are, in fact, made of stardust.
As these astrophysicists (and I looked up some of them at the NASA Goddard Space Center) like to remind us, everything in the Universe comes from the "Big Bang": all the elements in existence, including carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen which we not only depend on for living, but are also what we are made of, "were synthesized, were cooked up as it were, in the nuclear furnaces that are the deep interior of stars." When a star explodes at the end of its life - just like the "Big Bang" - all the elements of the universe are released, and subsequently incorporated into a new generation of stars, and into the planets that form around the stars, and into all forms of life that originate on those planets......
We are, quite literally, made up of stardust.
And this is not a scientific description. Theologians Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry underscore that this view is profoundly theological - though they have a dislike of the phrase "the Big Bang", preferring the Primordial Flaring Forth.
And Berry has a wonderful way of re-defining the language I just shared with you around how we are all stardust. He says "The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects."
Why, you might ask, am I taking you on a tour of the universe when we're supposed to be thinking about Francis of Assisi?
Because this view of creation would resonate deeply with Francis.
We all think we know about St. Francis. He loved animals, right? Our statue out in the Columbarium underscores that view of Francis - the coyote a reminder of the story of Francis and the Wolf, the birds a reminder of his sermon to them.
All-in-all Francis is the right choice to be the patron saint of animals. And rightly so.
But if we confine Francis to that role - a lover of animals - we not only fail to understand what lay at the heart of his spirituality but we do ourselves a disservice as well.
Francis wasn't just a lover of animals. In fact, in the greater scheme of things, animals were no higher on his list than anything else.
Which is not to denigrate animals but to elevate everything else.
Everything else.
There's a reason why one of Francis' writings is called the Canticle of Creation - it's in the Hymnal #406 - the reason is because Francis wrote and spoke about all of creation as sacred, not just part of it, echoed most especially in a phrase that was used for a movie title: "Brother Son, Sister Moon".
Francis stands in a long line of Christian mystics who have seen and continue to see the presence of God in all of creation and so understand all creation to be holy.
The way that this respect for and valuing of creation in Francis' thought has been expressed comes out most clearly in the way he treated animals - which is another way of saying that what we remember about Francis we remember because it's the place where we are most touched personally and emotionally - by the living creatures we share this planet with, and, most closely, we share our homes with.
Our pets - our four legged family members - are, in other words, living and breathing and moving metaphors for us - they convey the sacredness of creation - and they remind us of the hallowed and sacred way we are called to respect and treasure the Created Order - all creation - in the same way we respect and treasure them.
This is a starting place for us. For many folk it's an ending place too - they don't make the connection between the responsibility they have for their pets and the responsibility they have for the universe - or, at least, for the part of the universe we can take responsibility for - "this fragile earth, our island home".
Why don't we make the connection? Because of the Enlightenment!
One of the gifts of the Enlightenment was scientific method. When you were faced with a post-Reformation world that had two competing parties - Catholics and Protestants - both claiming to be able to define Truth with a capital "T", then it turned out to be very handy to have a method of defining reality that could be done by anyone. Two plus two will always equal four. The great success of science is predicated on the proposition that, as a biologist friend once said to me, "any fool can do it." It's much easier than theology!!
That, however, is also one of the curses of the Enlightenment - that "anyone can do it". Rather than being but one way of defining reality, scientific method, because of its simplicity, has come to dominate the endeavor of defining human knowing. Scientists like Richard Dawkins, who recently wrote a book proving (he claimed) that God doesn't exist, are simply unaware they are using only one tool in their attempt to offer ways to understand reality.
For us as people of faith this is a challenge. Religious faith proposes a different way of knowing that is complementary to scientific method. We don't claim that "science is wrong"; we claim that "science is an incomplete way of describing existence. We claim, as Berry said, that "The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects."
Francis would agree.
So where does that leave us? Wanting to have some engagement with science in an in-between place where scientific and theological language are complementary.
And it leaves us with Francis' vision of a creation that demands our respect and responsibility because it's profoundly sacred. As Berry has said elsewhere: We are living in a time of "cosmological and historical urgency" that calls forth a response "from the entire [human] community.
We can no longer endure the continuing damage that a solely objective understanding of our planet has imposed on us, allowing for all sorts of abuses that have created an environmental crisis that threatens human existence. We can't endure it because it has severed us from the profoundly spiritual understanding of creation as a gift from God, imbued with the Spirit of God, a presence that gives both our Earth and its human community their true grandeur....an understanding that demands we do something to protect our world because is it sacred.
Francis would agree with that, too.
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