What Animals Can Teach Us
Genesis 1:1, 20-25
Emmanuel Baptist Church; Rev. Kathy Donley
October 29, 2023
Note: A recording of the worship service in which this sermon was preached may be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOLeZhriUTY
There’s an old video of a beaver on the internet. This young kit is named JB, which is short for Justin Beaver. Orphaned as a baby, JB was brought to a wildlife rehab.[1] In the video, he lives temporarily in a regular human house where he hangs out in the bathtub a lot. JB is a busy guy. He chews on doors and table legs. He moves around the human house, gathering things. In the video, we see him pushing the front door mat and lugging the recycling tub and gathering a stream of objects like mop handles, stuffed animals, and shoes – all to build a dam which blocks the hallway. JB is a beaver and this is what beavers do.
What might we learn from JB? We might recognize that somethings are deeply ingrained and not likely to change. If we press that insight for people, we might realize that instead of trying to get someone to change what we don’t like about them, we might just try to appreciate them for who they are. That’s what I was thinking as I reflected on JB.
But I mentioned it to Jim and he had a different take. He said that some behaviors are essential for survival in one situation, but completely wrong in another one. The beaver might not be able to read the situation, but we humans need to do so. Sometimes we have to change, even to change something really deeply ingrained, in order to thrive.
Perhaps trying to learn life lessons from animals is really more of a projection test. Watching JB led to very different conclusions for Jim and for me. But maybe that is also part of the learning.
Genesis 1 proclaims that God created animals – the birds of the air, everything that swims in the sea, and the ones that creep or crawl on the ground, wild and domesticated. God pronounced them good. We note that the animals were created first. Before God created the first humans, the planet was populated with all kinds of plants and animals. In fact, God felt that animals were so important that the first task God assigned to Adam was to name the animals. Naming creates relationship. From the beginning, we were intended to be in relationship with the other animals. And that is good.
We are gathered here today to honor and bless our beloved animal companions. We are here to thank them for the gift of their friendship; their unconditional love. But we are not only here for the animals that we live closest with—we want to praise all animals that exist in our world and affect the ecosystems we all exist in. The apex predators, the smallest rodents, the annoying gnats and mosquitos and the creatures that feed on them. All life is linked. It is our duty to protect it in any way we can and help it to prosper, because its prosperity is ours as well.
Entire books have been written about human interactions with animals. Let me just lift up a few.
Pets teach us about companionship – the cat that winds around our feet every morning on our way to the coffee pot, the dog that requires us to stop whatever we’re doing and go for a walk or play a game of fetch. There is joy in those relationships, a wonder at the ability to love across species when sometimes loving members of our own species seems beyond us, and also a strong reminder that life on this planet is not all about us. It includes all of creation, which is full of the love and goodness of God.
We’ve heard the stories of pets making journeys of hundreds of miles in order to find their humans after the animal got lost or the humans relocated. We’ve seen the uncontrolled exuberance of a dog reuniting with its human after a long absence, like a deployment or a long illness. Those bonds are incredible. Animals can teach us about loyalty.
I am amazed at the ways that animals protect humans. There are highly trained service animals that guide their humans safely through busy intersections and crowded shopping malls. Others that respond to the triggers of a seizure or a dangerous change in blood sugar and use their own bodies to ensure the human’s safety. Even more amazing is when this happens in the wild. You might remember several years ago, a scientist was in the ocean observing whales when a humpback started pushing her around with its pectoral fin and ultimately swam her back to her boat. It could have easily hurt her, but didn’t. She believes it was trying to protect her from a nearby tiger shark.
Sam-I-Am was the dog in our lives when Erin was born and Molly was 4. Erin learned to walk holding on to Sam’s tail for support. When Sam developed epilepsy, they learned how to spot the signs of an impending seizure and how to comfort her afterwards. When Sam died at age 9, we all cried together. That was their first experience with real grief.
Francis of Assisi, perhaps the most well-known animal lover in Christian history, said that people who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, will deal in similar ways with people. I think that he is right, people who mistreat animals also mistreat people, but the reverse is also true: people who can be taught to love animals can also learn to love people. I think of various kinds of animal-therapy programs in prisons or rehab or with those suffering from PTSD.
Jesus told a lot of stories about animals. In Matthew 6, he tells people not to worry, saying “consider the lilies, look at the birds.” If he walked among us today, he might say “Quit doomscrolling, go take a walk. Attend to the birds, the squirrels. Learn about monarch butterflies or earthworms or beavers and be open to new insights about yourself and God.”
Yesterday we put out some pumpkins and mums in our yard. Last night, Jim took our dog Memphis out front for his final walk before bed. When they got to the mailbox, Memphis sounded the alarm, barking his most urgent bark. Those pumpkins had never been there before. They did not belong there and people needed to be told – the whole neighborhood, apparently.
This is what I have learned from my dogs. They are fully present in the current moment. They really notice their environment. They pay attention. They encourage me to do the same. To see. To be present. To leave the worrying behind.
Let me close with these words from the poet and priest John O’Donohue
Nearer to the earth’s heart,
Deeper within its silence:
Animals know this world
In a way we never will.
We who are ever
Distanced and distracted
By the parade of bright
Windows thought opens:
Their seamless presence
Is not fractured thus.
Stranded between time
Gone and time emerging,
We manage seldom
To be where we are:
Whereas they are always
Looking out from
The here and now.
May we learn to return
And rest in the beauty
Of animal being,
Learn to lean low,
Leave our locked minds,
And with freed senses
Feel the earth
Breathing with us
May we enter
Into lightness of spirit,
And slip frequently into
The feel of the wild
Let the clear silence
Of our animal being
Cleanse our hearts
Of corrosive words.
May we learn to walk
Upon the earth
With all their confidence
And clear-eyed stillness
So that our minds
Might be baptized
In the name of the wind,
And the light and the rain.[2]
[1] https://youtu.be/DggHeuhpFvg?si=lYb5wSZot5im2Jdh
[2] John O’Donohue “To Learn from Animal Being”
In To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings (New York: Doubleday, 2008), pp 73-74