A New Spin on an Old Vision

I received a Christmas gift wrapped in an unusual paper that caught my eye.  The wrapping paper was in the animal category, but displayed an extremely wide collection:  squirrel, skunk, rabbit, panda, peacock, cardinal, miscellaneous birds, butterflies, elephant, giraffe, fawn, frog, and even a small porcupine.  They were all snugly clustered around a Christmas tree half visible among the crowd of animals.  In case this novel, nearly zoo-like menagerie had seemed to take its theme too far from the message of Christmas, there were two animals side by side and touching that spoke an ancient message:  There was a lion lying down with a lamb touching the lion's peaceful head.  It was the artist's rendition of the Bible's Old Testament prophecy that the lion will lie down with the lamb (based on Isaiah 11:6-7). However, a question arises:  Why should all those other animals on my wrapping paper have been conscripted into the scene?

"Peaceable Kingdom"
by Edward Hicks (c. 1834)

The answer is revealed as we explore more about our human psychology, particularly human hopes and possibilities.  That originally Jewish prophetic vision from Isaiah makes no sense if we take it as a literal blueprint for the future.  Any plan for the restoration of planet Earth with a sound ecological basis has to allow for many species of animals remaining predators.  Lions cannot live off of grass, much less "eat straw like the ox.," as imagined in Isaiah 11: 7 (NRSV).  Lions and other predators living naturally off of prey should not be seen as immorality -- a theological insight stated explicitly in Christian thought centuries ago.

Thus, the peaceful scene of a lion lying down with a lamb must, in the very least, be understood not as a literal blueprint but as a literary hyperbole.  However, it is more than that. It is also a vision of wholeness.  When the world we humans have made becomes too distorted, too dark, and feels too closed off from future improvement, we need a vision (even if a literary one) of something that expresses wholeness.

With my Christmas wrapping paper, I indeed held in my hands an artist's portrayal of a kind of wholeness.  It seems as if the artist had been trying to squeeze into the portrait every kind of animal that might make the scene more delightful.  (I did notice, incidentally, that he left out any snakes, which might have caused a conflicted message due to snakes having been used as a religious symbol in other ways.)  In drawing a widely encompassing vision, the artist was joining a long tradition of using the Christmas nativity to express a universalizing theme.  For example, centuries ago, the three wise men frequently came to be drawn as representing a range of ethnic groups, even though there is no mention of various ethnic origins for those gentlemen in the Bible.

What was striking about this particular vision on my wrapping paper was that, except for that Christmas tree, it was composed entirely of animals.  No people!  I wonder if it did not unconsciously express an admittance that our relationship with the non-human world of plants and animals needs special attention -- that it needs to be made whole, and that it can make us whole.

~~~ 

Do you have a vision of some kind of wholeness you hope for?  What is it?

Nature’s Time Machine

"Let's set the Way-Back Machine to the year...."  Many a person in the U.S. of my generation, upon hearing that line, will recall the Peabody cartoons that were part of the Bullwinkle TV show. With that periodic segment, the Bullwinkle show joined the long line of plot-writers (primarily science-fiction) who employed the device of time travel.  It's a literary tradition that can be traced all the way back to H. G. Wells's 1895 appropriately titled novel The Time Machine.

When we look at species of plants and animals, if we have some knowledge of evolutionary biology, we can also be taken back in time.  We Homo sapiens are late arrivers on this planet (150,00 yrs. ago).  And so, knowing other species sets the dial of the time machine farther back.  To use another metaphor, if evolution is thought of as a huge tree of life with numerous levels of branches, as we look at branches that began lower on the tree, we are taken further back in time.

leaf of
a ginkgo biloba tree

Despite many extinctions, most species still around today have endured an incredibly long time.  I remember the day I noticed the unusually shaped leaves of a tree beside the sidewalk in a southern city I was visiting.  The person I was with explained that it was a ginkgo, which, unlike other trees in the U.S., was of a type that dated back a quarter-billion years.  Another example of going way back are some species of marsupials, such as ancient opossum species.  Marsupials (which include kangaroos) represent an early state of mammalian evolution, having no placenta. They bear young that are extremely small, and carry the young in a pouch for the remainder of their early development.

A nautilus,
another ancient species

For those of us who think of God as the Giver of Life and as the Fountain out of which all possibilities come, evolution can be seen as the way by which the Divine manifests its power and wonder.  Although evolution, seemingly paradoxically, requires elements of chance (such as mutations and chance experiences), there is in evolution a discernible direction toward a richer diversity of life.

Although Peabody and Star Trek episodes took the audience back in time (to such periods as Prohibition or ancient Rome), H. G. Wells's The Time Machine actually took the reader forward in time.  That is a harder task when it comes to evolution. No one studying the varieties of species 100 million years ago could have predicted that a meteor would hit the earth off the Yucatan, bringing such thick clouds that plants would die, thus cornering all the great species of dinosaurs into extinction.

We do know however, that we are suffering a loss of biodiversity -- a reduction of the number of branch-tips at evolution's treetop of the present.  The main cause is human:  the stresses of loss of habitats and climate change.  It is not yet determined in what way this plot will turn out.  Whenever we work to preserve the rich diversity of inter-species relationships that strengthen life, we try to write a happy ending for the story of life.

~~~

Does it add something to your perspective or your life to imagine way back in time?

(The photograph of the leaf is by Daniel Miłaczewski.  That of the nautilus is by Lee R Berger.

Both are used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licenses.)

Painting the Universe by the Numbers

Some people are clearly better working with words; other people are clearly better with numbers. All of us, however, have to at some point think about the huge universe that surrounds our lives and planet Earth if we want to add a cosmic dimension to our thought.  And modern science's knowledge of the universe cannot be explained without resorting to numbers in some fashion. That is especially true when it comes to talking about the age of the universe.

The human limitation we run into here is that we humans have not evolved with any instinctive need to comprehend the kinds of immense numbers modern astronomy must employ.  For example, I have a ready, physical sense of any number up to ten because of my having ten fingers.  But how do I have a gut sense of what a million is?  I know abstractly that it is 1000 x 1000, but I have a hard time envisioning one thousand of anything repeated a thousand times over.  The difficulty of comprehension is even greater when trying to truly grasp what a billion is.

Thus it is that some metaphor using words becomes handy.  You may have heard of one often-repeated metaphor of the entire age of the universe fitting into a 24-hour clock. Personally, that common model of a 24-hour clock gets me only a little way towards imagining the immensity of the universe's age.  One problem for me with it is that I don't have a mental picture of a clock containing 24 hours.  (Our traditional circular clock-faces only go up to 12.) Also, on clocks the numbers go round and round repetitively -- but the universe's age stretches out in linear fashion far into the past with no repetition.

the universe's timeline as a row of books

A better model for me has been presented by the contemporary Christian evolutionary theologian John Haught.  He uses the model of a set of books on a shelf, something that I, with my literary bent, can more readily imagine.  Haught explains:  "Imagine that you have thirty large volumes.... Each tome is 450 pages long....  Let this set of books represent the scientific story of our 13.7-billion-year-old universe.  The narrative begins with the Big Bang on page 1 of volume 1, but the first twenty-one [of the 30] books show no obvious signs of life at all....  [L]ife doesn't appear until volume 22....  Even then, living organisms do not become particularly interesting... until almost the end of volume 29.  There the famous Cambrian explosion occurs....  Only during the last sixty-five pages of volume 30 [the last volume] does mammalian life begin to flourish....  [M]odern humans do not appear until the bottom of the final page."

With this picture in my mind, one thing in particular stands out:  That immense gap between the beginning of our universe and when life finally emerges out of formerly inorganic molecules.  Although I know it is my human-centered viewpoint, I cannot help but think of that gap as a time of waiting -- the universe working and "waiting" to make life finally appear.  On the other hand, I can look at that relatively short time in which life on Earth has existed and see graphically the power of life itself.  It only required life to finally get started before it could take off, leading to millions of species in a relatively short time.

~~~

Do you have any thoughts about humans' being such a short part of the universe's history?

(The Haught quote is from

 Christianity and Science by John F. Haught, © 2007, p. xii.)

A Land that Waits for Us to Change

ancient Egyptian farming (ca 1300 B.C.E.)

I remember in middle school being taught the word "delta".  We were in a history class, learning how the ancient Egyptian civilization developed around the delta of the Nile River where it made its outlet into the Mediterranean.  It was explained to us how that area was a fertile area because it was there that the river's branching rivulets created a triangular plain of rich soil built up of sediments from the shifting water.

The importance of that phenomenon was imprinted upon our minds by it being pointed out that in Greek the letter "delta" was a small triangle.  Moreover, the mathematical symbol delta (a small triangle) stood for change, because it was those regular changes of the river delta -- being covered with water and then draining -- that made the soil fertile.  The strength of that Egyptian civilization was thus based on the strength of the natural delta, which supported many forms of life, providing humans both fishing and farming.

William Faulkner

From thoughts of that civilization 5,000 years ago, my thoughts now turn to a story by the 20th-century U.S. writer William Faulkner.  It is a shift in time and place, but there is a common denominator -- the delta.  In Faulkner's story "Delta Autumn,"  a small group of men are making a journey to a wilderness area for their annual hunting.  To get there, however, they have to head towards where the last hill ends and an "alluvial flatness" begins -- a delta!  In his characteristic writing style, Faulkner describes the power that rich land has held for generations of humans in this way:  " [T]he rich black land, imponderable and vast, fecund up to the very doorsteps of the Negroes who worked it and of the white men who owned it; which exhausted the hunting life of a dog in one year, the working life of a mule in five and of a man in twenty."

Although that theme of the vast, sustaining power of the delta is thus described early in Faulkner's short story, the theme of change is also more subtly introduced.  From the conversation of the men in the car on their drive to the delta, the reader is able to pick up that they are living in a larger world that has been greatly changed by forces far beyond the county in Mississippi where most of Faulkner's fiction is set.  The men in the story are living on the brink of the U.S.'s entering World War II, and so some of their banter is about whether U.S. people are more powerful than Hitler.  Their exchanges reveal a degree of uncertainty about what the future might bring.

That theme of change in human society is threaded through with the theme of Nature being guaranteed to change in a rhythmic way.  That is because the story takes place in autumn, a time of change, despite the predictability of fall hunting trips.  Two words, both symbolizing change, are thus paired in the story's title:  "Delta Autumn."

As I re-read the story, in my mind's eye I see a vast, darkish delta surrounding the men.  It would be darkish with the men's melancholy about the unrecoverable past and the shrinking wilderness. It would also be darkish with their uncertainty about the future.  However, as the passage quoted above indicates, it would be Nature, the land, represented by the delta, that could still sustain life, if it was allowed to do so.

~~~

Most of us live in cities, but do you recall a piece of land that provided sustenance?

(The quote is from William Faulkner's "Delta Autumn,"

 which can be found in The Portable Faulkner, ed. Malcolm Cowley, © 1974.)

(The photograph of Faulkner is by Nobel Foundation, and is used by its being in the public domain.)

Are Ravens Spooky?

A fair number of people have heard the memorable line, "Quoth the Raven 'Nevermore.' "  In the poem by Edgar Allan Poe that line comes from, the raven is given the role of bringing the message that a long-lost hope will have to stay long lost forever.  A haunting remembrance of past events hangs over Poe's narrator in the poem. In contrast, ravens have in Western culture usually been considered to bring a message about the future -- particularly an omen of death. Thus it is that in Shakespeare's play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth says:

"The raven himself is hoarse

That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan..."

Such a death-connection comes not just from ravens' being black (the absence of light usually being in Christianity a symbol of separation from God).  The stronger linking of that bird with death most certainly developed because ravens sometimes feast on dead carcasses.

Easily mistaken for their cousins crows (both in the same Corvidae family), ravens have larger, stockier beaks, which can given them a patrician air.  Ravens are larger in size too, which, along with their feeding on carcasses, may have led people to conclude that they had big appetites.  Thus it is that our words "ravenous" and "raven" come from the same root.

Scavenging the dead is just one source of food for ravens.  Their diets are varied (from insects to birds' eggs to our household scraps) because they are enterprising and intelligent.  As my Audubon guide explains, the raven "seems to apply reasoning in situations entirely new to it. Its 'insight' behavior at least matches that of a dog."  Their intelligence extends even to their ability to distinguish between individual members of other species and between individual humans. Ravens readily learn which individuals they need to fear and which ones they do not, and are even able to establish at a distance if a human is carrying a shotgun.

It is probably because of that intelligence, along with their playfulness, that native Americans of the West Coast adopted the raven as a symbol upon which they projected human qualities, both good and questionable.  Among such mythological stories are tales of Raven creating the world and acting cleverly, but also tales of  Raven acting in sneaky and foolish ways.

I remember once watching at length a raven that had established itself at a panoramic lookout point in the Rocky Mountains.  It was also, not by coincidence, a place where sandwiches were sold to the tourists who could enjoy the outdoor seating.  The raven had the best of both worlds:  Easy pickings on any food that was not closely guarded, and the bird's natural home in the form of the vast, sweeping downward slope of the canyon. And, unlike us humans, the raven had no trouble taking off into flight at a moment's notice, floating as light as air, on dramatic outstretched wings.

~~~

Do you have any recollections about ravens or their cousins crows, both with their distinctive "caws"?

(Poe's poem can be read at this external link:  "The Raven.")

(The Shakespeare lines are from Macbeth, Act I, Scene 5.)

(The quote re. intelligence is from The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Birds, Western Region, © 1977, p. 686.)

Some Light on Diwali and Us

In the U.S., as soon as Thanksgiving turkey is eaten, people's plans turn to what has come to be called "the holiday season."  That label, although bland, is appropriate because some of the most festive celebrations of a number of faith-traditions all fall in December:  Obviously, Christianity's Christmas.  And Judaism's Hanukkah.  Also the less known but beautiful home-ceremonies of Kwanzaa, out of African-American culture.  However, even before the December convergence of those holidays occurs, the Indian-American community has gotten a jump on celebration with the ancient festival of Diwali.  And that celebration can shed some light on those other holidays, as well as upon our human relationship with the natural world.

The name "Diwali" is derived from the Sanskrit phrase "row of lamps."  In India, there are variations depending in which region it is being celebrated, and whether the people celebrating are Hindus, Jains, or Sikhs.  But it is the lighting of small clay oil lamps that has resulted in its sometimes being referred to as "the festival of lights."

It is hard to express to someone who does not live in a city with a significant Indian population how popular Diwali is, but one Diwali gathering in the suburb of one large U.S. city drew thousands of celebrants.  One autumn, I dropped in for a vegetarian buffet at an Indian restaurant, and found myself in a crowd of people buying sweets for Diwali -- a crowd so focused on one task that it resembled Christmas shoppers.

I cannot help but notice that all four of the latter-fall or early-winter festivals I have mentioned involve the lighting of candles or oil lamps:  The four weekly Advent candles before Christmas. The eight daily-lit candles of the Jewish menorah.  The Kwanzaa candles representing different virtues.  And the oil lamps of Diwali.

No matter which way we celebrate "the holiday season," as we call it, and no matter which way we celebrate the multi-layered meanings of symbols about light and darkness, one thing will certainly remain true.  Tomorrow, the sun will rise; and in the Northern Hemisphere in the weeks following the winter solstice, the days will grow longer again.  That phenomenon has occurred for over 4 billion years, which calculates out to 1.46 trillion days.  Moreover, scientists tell us the sun will pull that trick of rising for billions of years still to come.

Although the return of light and the human need for illumination, both physical and spiritual, are the most obvious symbols of our four late-year holidays, I have come to think that there is another component as well: Namely, beauty.  The candles we light don't merely illuminate the room we are in.  (If that was all we needed, we could just turn on the overhead fluorescents.)  The candles we light, especially if in a dimmed or darkened rooms, are like the pinpoints of stars in a black velvet sky. The contrast of light and dark creates a harmony of contrasts we can experience as being beautiful.  Moreover, when we light those holiday candles, just as when we look out into the depths of a dark, starlit sky, we can feel a depth to our lives, and a depth in all of human existence.

~~~

Do you have a particular, special memory of one of these four celebrations?

(The photograph of Diwali decorations is by Subharnab Majumdar

and is used under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.)

Comedy with Animals

Most people love their dogs.  Also, fortunately, we humans do often display a sense of fun and humor, despite our difficulties.  So I guess it is no surprise that dog owners sometimes dress up their dogs with hats and other costumes, finding the result comic and fun.  I know there is now in the U.S. more than one group of dog-owners who organize Halloween events with dogs appropriately attired.

However, when it comes to finding matters where comedy and animals intersect, I find more fascinating those incidents that were not contrived.  I especially get a laugh out of incidents where animals had the last laugh.

For example, I've read, about an incident when city officials in Paris gathered up thousands of pigeons and transported them into the countryside over 120 miles away.  Little did the officials realize that the urbanized pigeons still possessed the directional abilities, homing instincts, and speed of their ancient ancestors.  When the human officials got back to Paris, they found that the exiled pigeons had beaten them back home.

Such stories serve as more than amusement; They also keep us from becoming too arrogant. One ancient example is the Biblical story of a man named Balaam, who cannot see an angel blocking the road ahead, even though the donkey he is riding can.  And so the donkey resists moving forward.  Even though the story is wryly crafted to be comedy for its human audience, the donkey might consider the story to be tragicomedy.  The donkey, beaten by Balaam for its stubbornness, protests to Balaam by saying "Am I not your donkey, which you have ridden all your life to this day? Have I been in the habit of treating you this way?"  (Num. 22:30, NRSV)  After Balaam admits his error, he can see the angel.

Konrad Lorenz

Another form in which our laughter and animals intersect is when visitors to a zoo stand before the cages and laugh at the seemingly peculiar appearance or behavior of some animals.  The animal behaviorist Konrad Lorenz, however, takes a humble stance when he writes:  "It is seldom that I laugh at an animal, and when I do, I usually find out afterwards that it was at myself, at the human being whom the animal has portrayed in a more or less pitiless caricature, that I have laughed."

There are thus different ways that our laughter and the animal world can intersect. Costuming dogs, although unusual, is benign.  Laughing at animals' appearances can be an obstacle to appreciating wonderful biodiversity.  Laughing at ourselves seems to me to be the safest approach.

There must be many contemporary stories from backyard-birdwatchers who tried to keep squirrels from raiding birdfeeders.  But recording all those stories would mean that the humans involved would have to admit they were outwitted by a squirrel!

~~~

Have animals helped you lighten the burden of life in any way?  How?

(The quotation by Lorenz is from

King Solomon's Ring, by Konrad Z. Lorenz, © 1952.)

Lines from a Not So Ancient Poet

Although public-school curricula has now, fortunately, expanded to include a wider variety of authors, my own generation (as well as that of my parents and grandparents) inevitably had to read a famous poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.  Titled "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the poem told the story of a sailor who, because of his disregard for God's non-human creatures, was punished by having to carry around his neck the albatross that he killed.  As students, some of us felt that a heavy albatross was being hung around our own necks by our being required to read and maybe memorize part of the 15-page poem written in a now out-of-date style.  Despite the poem's strange plot, the poem did conclude with a sentence I thought was strikingly beautiful:

"He prayeth best, who loveth best

All things both great and small;

For the dear God who loveth us,

He made and loveth all."

The phrase "All things both great and small" in that stanza was probably the inspiration for the line "All creatures great and small" in Cecil Frances Alexander's 1848 hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful." That hymn in turn inspired titles for the set of books by the 20th-century writer James Herriot.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I now wish I had been exposed to Coleridge's insights that ranged far beyond that poem.  In more recent years, as I have encountered small quotations from Coleridge's prose in other writers' books, I have come to recognize his philosophical contributions.  Although his personal life had many setbacks, Coleridge stayed on course with his interest in exploring human attentiveness, sensibilities, and imagination, and the role they play in our relationship to Nature. Such as his observation that "To think of a thing is [as] different from to perceive it as 'to walk' is from 'to feel the ground under you.' "

The significance of his philosophical work can be better understood against its historical background.  Coleridge lived from 1772 to 1834.  It was a time in which Western intellectual culture was struggling through transformations resulting from the expansion of modern science. Many scientists were saying that we can only truly know the world if we draw a sharp dividing line between human reason and emotions.  In contrast, Coleridge argued that "Deep thinking is attainable only by men of deep feeling."

northern royal albatross

Besides the metaphor of "an albatross around the neck," Coleridge has left our English discourse with other phrases.  It is also from his "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" that we got "Water, water, everywhere... Nor any drop to drink."  (Sometimes rephrased to "... and not a drop to drink.")  And it is from his analyses of the craft of writing that we got our description of readers' "willing suspension of disbelief."  I think it would be nice if Coleridge's legacy to us would also include a kind of thinking that was a deeper feeling and a deeper loving. Not just for other humans, but for all creatures great and small.

~~~

Do you think Coleridge was right in the idea expressed in the verse quoted from  "The Rime" that there is a link between praying and loving?

(The Coleridge quotes re. perceiving and re. deep thinking are from his Notebooks.

His phrase about suspension of disbelief is from his Biographia Literaria, Ch. 14.)

The Moon Over the Gate

Fluorescent lights.  Halogens.  Energy-efficient LED's.  Even incandescent bulbs.  When I go to the hardware store to purchase some light bulbs, I'm offered a mind-numbing selection.  What kind of coloration do I want?  If I can figure it out, I have myriad choices, ranging from icy white to imitations of sunlight to traditional warmth.

"The Harvest Moon"

Despite all that variety, there is one type of light that people in cities rarely experience today.  It is what a love song in the early 1900's called "the light of the silvery moon."  All the artificial lights of our cities, although making life safer in some ways, prevent us from enjoying full moonlight. That is unfortunate because moonlight is a form of illumination that people have considered to be a nearly transcendent experience.

I did once experience totally undiluted moonlight.  It was when my wife and I went to one of the star-gazing "parties" held at the isolated McDonald Observatory in remote west Texas.  Our ability to observe stars through the two small telescopes set up for the public was impeded by there being a brilliant full moon.  What interested me more than the stars was walking about outdoors using the illumination of nothing but the moonlight.  And how strange that light was!  I can only describe it by saying it was as white in coloration as a halogen, while at the same time being as soft as still air.

Given the uniqueness of that light, it is no wonder that writers down through history have seen moonlight as an aid to coming to a transcendent awareness.  Frequently, it is depicted as a transcendence that returns us to a state of feeling being loved in a way we forgot about.  For example, take this poem by the 8th-century Chinese Li Po:

"So bright a gleam on the foot of my bed --

Could there have been a frost already?

Lifting myself to look, I found that it was moonlight.

Sinking back again, I thought suddenly of home."

The moonlight is so strange that Li Po does not recognize it at first, mistaking it for frost.  And yet, it brings him back to a place expressive of being loved -- "home."

Experiencing moonlight thus becomes a passage into a kind of transcendence.  Such movements into transcendence are sometimes expressed by poets' using some symbol for an opening. Thus, it might be a symbol such as a window, through which the moonlight enters, and through which the poet's heart can be transported out beyond its ordinary limits.

Another symbol for opening -- a gate -- is employed by the 8th-century Zen Buddhist writer Yung-Chia Ta-Shih. In his poem, he suggests that the greater consciousness the soft moon brings can not only make us feel more loved, but also make us be more loving.  Some key lines from his poem have been translated in this way:

"One moon is reflected in every expanse of water.

Every reflected moon is the one moon....

The great gate of love is wide open."

~~~

Have you ever experienced how brilliant soft moonlight can be?  Where was that?

(The Li Po poem is from The Jade Mountain, by Witter Bynner and Kiang Kang-Hu, translators, © 1929.)

(The excerpt from the Yung-Chia poem is taken from Blue Mountain:
 A Spiritual Anthology Celebrating the Earth, ed. F. Lynne Bachleda, © 2000. p. 88.)

A Pair of Puzzling Virtues

The entrance of the building is iconic .  So much so that many people feel they have seen it in a photograph or a movie, even if they cannot name the building.  It's no wonder its appearance is easy to remember:  Two large statues of lions, one on each side of a wide set of stone stairs that lead to a formal entrance in a style that says "government building."  It is the New York Public Library in the heart of Manhattan, built in 1911.

Even people who find the entrance a familiar image  -- especially with those two lion statues -- are not likely to know that those lions have names: Patience and Fortitude.  The statues thus exemplify an older era, one in which human virtues were frequently commended to people by symbolizing each virtue with an appropriate animal.  I confess to being a bit puzzled by the choice of lions, especially representing Patience and Fortitude.  True, some children climbing those stairs, upon seeing the lion, might think of the noble lion Aslan in C. S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia.  However, what Aslan displayed, contrasted to the people around him, was wisdom. Moreover, the New York Public Library, with its formal reading room, is primarily aimed at adults, not children.

I was also a bit surprised upon discovering the statues' names because, during my own lifetime in the U.S., most people's first thought about lions has been that they are frightening predators -- seemingly the "top of the food chain" in Africa.  However, when I recall recent TV nature documentaries showing how lions are successful in getting food in only a fraction of their attacks upon prey, I can admit that real lions do require both patience and fortitude.  But that is a contemporary association.  The statues are a century old.

The more puzzling thing to me about those two imposing beasts on each side of the library's front staircase is what message it might convey to a prospective library-user who is about to enter the building.  Is that person being warned off by two animals that could tear a person apart?  Even knowing that the lions symbolize patience and fortitude does not solve the puzzle for me.  Why have those two qualities been chosen as virtues that someone exploring and reading books will need?

I would have held up a different quality (even for a time period before computers, when locating a particular book or periodical required more time and patience than today).  I would have recommended Curiosity.  When I look back both upon my discovering books before I could even read, and upon what has kept me reading throughout my life, I would have named Curiosity as the primary quality that has kept me going.

But then, if I try to imagine some alternative statue  -- one symbolizing curiosity -- I have to admit that a life-size statue of a house-cat would not have provided the grandeur the entrance of a great library deserves.  Not to mention the problem that some people, upon seeing such a cat-statue, might be frightened off by recalling the old warning that "curiosity killed the cat."

~~~

What quality has motivated your reading?  Is there any animal that expresses that quality?

(The photo of the cat statue is used under a

Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by Frank Vincentz.)

Rising Above a Narrow Vision

My wife recalls a day in her teens when she helped shingle the steep roof of her mother's Michigan house.  My wife says that being on such a high slope was so scary that by the end of the afternoon she had worn off most of the fabric of the seat of her jeans, having never dared stand up.  I know myself that sloped roofs can be scary.  However, in many cultures down through time, and even today, a flat, level roof has been a means to rise above the pressures of life, to lift one's spirits, re-connect with Nature, and even expand one's vision.

I have experienced myself that occasional desire "to get away from earth awhile," as Robert Frost put it in his poem "Birches."  However, because I grew up in U.S. suburbs, I did not experience firsthand how claustrophobic living in a dense city can at times become.  So, I think it was through the R & B song "Up on the Roof" that I first heard testimony of how healing to the human spirit getting up on a roof can be.   People living in dense cities, and especially in ghettos, do not have pliant sling-like birches to lift themselves and their spirits above the ground when life's burdens get too heavy.  A roof can help.  As the songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King conveyed, getting "Up on the Roof" can enable a person to rise above the street noise, and above walls that are too close, and even above life's troubling cares.

rooftops in Athens

In many countries of the Mideast, houses have been traditionally built with flat roofs, in part because of the hot climate.  Unlike that wintry climate in which my wife's mother's house was built with a steep roof so snow would not accumulate, Mideastern peoples have had to deal with heat.  A cave-like house is protection against the daytime sun. But once the sun has been down awhile, being up on the roof -- even sleeping up there -- can be a relief.  So important has been the roof as one living space that ancient Jewish law in the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament) included a building code requiring that "When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof.. [because someone might] fall from it." (Deut. 22:8, NRSV).

Roofs can be a place for cooling off, both literally and figuratively.   They can even be a place for raising one's sights as we re-connect with the healing touch of Nature.  A light breeze.  The sight perhaps of a distance shore.  And seeing the stars.

stars wider than our vision

The most expressive testimony I have read to that fact was by a twelve-year old black urban girl, as recorded by the psychologist Robert Coles.  In the girl's own words:  "I guess I'm doin' all right....  A  lot of time, though, I wish I could... find myself... a place where I could walk and walk, and I'd be walking on grass, not cement....  At night, sometimes, when I get to feeling real low, I'll climb up the stairs to our [apartment's] roof, and I'll look at the sky, and I'll say hello there, you moon and all your babies -- stars!  [U]p there, I feel I can stop and think about what's happening to me-- it's the only place I can, the only place."

~~~

Have you experienced Nature's ability to lift spirits?  Has that ever involved expanding your vision?

(The quotation by the girl is from Robert Coles's introduction in

The Geography of Childhood, by Gary Paul Nabhan and Stephen Trimble, © 1994. p. xxii.)

Tested by Toads and Frogs

I feel sympathetic toward children, with the multitude of tests they have to endure.  Not just those academic standard tests that have been so much in the news in recent years, but also the tests that come in the form of taunts and insults from other children.  Name-calling is the quickest way to insult.  And among the animal epithets one child can lay on another is, "You toad!"  How the toad got into the childhood lexicon is not hard to discern.  After all, what child would want their face to look like a lumpy, bug-eyed, warty animal?

There were other ways that toads were part of the tests of my childhood.  When one child did catch a toad, it could be a challenge to pass it from one pair of cupped hands to another without the toad escaping -- especially when the animal's strange, leathery skin could feel distasteful ("yucky," to use a child's word).

illustration for
"The Frog Prince"

Whether or not toads or their near look-alikes frogs were more prevalent in your childhood would have probably depended upon the dryness or wetness of the habitat that surrounded you.  (The categories "toad" and "frog" almost blend one into the other in the great variety worldwide, especially when tree-toads and tree-frogs are included.)  The similarity of shape and appearance between toads and frogs has meant that both entered folklore and fairy tales as a distasteful test to be overcome.  Would you want to kiss a frog?  Even if it might turn into a prince, thus fulfilling your heart's desires?

The fact that some frogs and most toads do have a toxic, protective liquid in the bulging sacks behind their eyes could make putting one's face too close to the animal a real fear.  People could be wary of approaching toads even if they believed the legend that a toad's body might hold the wondrous toadstone that could grant magical powers.  Shakespeare captured the tension about toads in these lines from As You Like It:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head."

The ways toads and frogs test us extend beyond childhood and even beyond the pages of fiction. Today, the populations of frogs are truly in perilous decline.  Their permeable skins mean that they are early indicators of the spread of our human-made chemicals, especially when compounded by viruses and habitat loss.

When frogs are plentiful, it can also be a challenge for us humans to put up with the loud choruses of frogs finding mates in springtime.  One story from the Christian tradition, however, might inspire us to tolerance.  The story tells how St. Benno, searching outdoors for a place for prayer, was at first tempted to bid the frogs to be silent.  But then, Benno recalled a Bible passage expressing how animals too praise God.  And so, the saint commanded the frogs to "praise God in their accustomed fashion; and soon the air and fields were vehement with their conversation."

~~~

Do you have any childhood memories of toads or frogs?  Adult memories?

(The Shakespeare quote is from As You Like It, II, i.)

(The quote about the St. Benno story is from Beasts and Saints by Helen Waddell, © 1995, p. 66.)

Softening a City's Hard Edge... and Ours

He received the Pulitzer Prize more than once, compiled folk songs, wrote an acclaimed biography of Lincoln, and was a poet. His name is Carl Sandburg. He is pretty much forgotten now. Three of his poems, however, have retained some recognition for their enduring evocativeness, and one of them for its perceptiveness.  And two of those three poems have to do with the healing power of Nature.

In "Chicago," Sandburg portrays that city as it was a century ago. He describes it as a "City of Big Shoulders," but this is not necessarily an attractive bulked-up city.  Along with references to gunmen, whores, and hunger, the poet says to the city, "They tell me you are wicked and I believe them...."  The only way Sandburg is able to defend this city is to admire its brashness as being "the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of Youth."

A quite different atmosphere is evoked by the very brief poem "Fog."  In the center line of this poem, a city is again referred to, with the simple phrase "harbor and city."  But there is no roughness experienced this time.  That is because that line of the poem -- and the city itself -- become surrounded by softening fog.  That gift from Nature is so quiet and gentle that it "comes on little cat feet."

A third poem (and one with greater depth of thought than the other two) is Sandburg's "Grass." Here, the healing power of Nature is made explicit.  It is a power that can not only soften visibly the sharp edges of a city but also heal human grief.  Published in 1918, the opening lines of "Grass" mention cities that were the sites of large battles in the just-ended World War I, in the Civil War, and in the Napoleonic Wars.  The poet knows what was the shared consequence of all those wars, because before each place-name, the instructions are given:

"Pile the bodies high....

Shovel them under...."

However, there is also that element of Nature -- the element not created by those human hands that made war.  That other element speaks:

"... let me work --

I am the grass; I cover all."

The poem predicts that in ten years, when the train passes by, the passengers will no longer be able to recognize the spot, because the grass will have done its healing work, covering all.

From our vantage point today, we know that the brash, adolescent Chicago of Sandburg's 1914 poem "Chicago" did not grow into a model of beauty.  About a half-century later, it had become devastated by the legacy of racism, white flight, massive decaying ghettos, and riots after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Nevertheless, in recent years, a new generation of city leadership has led the way in the creation of rooftop gardens on the top of city hall and downtown buildings.  Those people apparently knew -- as did the poet Carl Sandburg almost a century before -- that plants can have a healing touch for body and soul.

~~~

Have you experienced a way that Nature eases a city or human roughness?

(Sandburg's poems can be found in various anthologies.  I took them from

 The Harper American Literature,  ed. Donald McQuade, et al.  © 1987.

  You can read them on-line at Selected Poems of Carl Sandburg [1926].)

Bananas: It’s Not All Elementary

Most people know of Charles Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, and of the scientific discovery that was it's outcome.  Few people, however, know how that journey was the result of parental care and concession.  Charles's father first objected to Charles's joining the voyage, but soon gave in, even paying his son's way.  Two sentences in a letter of the father to his son on the journey caught my eye.  From England, the father reported to his son some thousands of miles to the south, "I got a Banana tree.  I sit under it and think of you in similar shade."  It might seem an unusual topic, but knowing, as I did, how Charles was not especially close to his father, I heard in those lines an expression of the father's love for his son by means of sharing news on a topic that would interest the young Charles -- Nature.

Exotic in England and the U.S. in Darwin's day, imported bananas are now common in the U.S., and are an easy means for parental care.  Being soft and sweet, a banana can be more appealing to a small child than an apple or an orange might be.

I got a kick out of seeing some banana trees when, as a child, my family moved to the South, but I was disappointed to find that its variety of fruit was not the kind we bought in stores. Grocery-store bananas, despite being now so commonplace, are nonetheless oddities of Nature.  Just to start with, a banana "tree"  is not actually a tree.  The definition of "tree" is usually a plant with a woody stem, but a banana plant's stem is instead formed out of the stems of leaves, and made strong by the pressure of water.  (A banana plant is really in a way a giant herb, being in the same group of plants that produce cardamom, ginger, and turmeric.)

A second thing that makes the matter of bananas not so elementary is that the banana fruit we eat is sterile and seedless.  The sterility is caused by cultivated banana plants having three sets of chromosomes.  That violates the normal course for sexual beings, by which a species is usually perpetuated by each parent contributing one set of chromosomes, the offspring having two sets, and thus being fertile.  Long before the word "cloning" captivated our popular imagination, banana growers had figured out how to, in a sense, "clone" new banana plants from the suckers of an old plant.

The seemingly simple banana is thus an example of the long story of humans' lives being intertwined with the lives of domesticated plants.  Although we in the U.S. encounter banana plants mostly through their fruit, in other countries, the banana plant's leaves are used in a variety of ways, from making a plate for a meal to creating shingles for a thatched hut.

That parent lovingly feeding her small child bright bananas probably has no idea that she is also introducing her child to a word that will eventually allow the child to expand its vocabulary in multiple ways.  That child, besides learning the simple, rhythmic word "banana," might in time graduate to "banana split," "banana seat," and "banana republic."  Not to mention the colorful exclamation that a person "has gone bananas!"

~~~

In what way is food you share or eat along with others a way of caring?

(The quotation from Charles Darwin's father's letter is

 dated 7 March 1833, and is No. 201 in the on-line Darwin Correspondence Project.)

Seeing More than Seashells on the Seashore

The ones I see in the natural world are rarely as beautiful as the ones I see in photographs in books.  Seashells, that is.  Almost invariably, the shells shown in books' photographs are shiny, smooth, whole, and brightly colored; whereas the shells I find on beaches are often worn, dulled, or even chipped.  Of course, that can be part of the fun in collecting shells -- the challenge of finding one that is nearly perfect.

The story of our human fascination with shells, however, has involved more than merely collecting shells. Seashells have become a part of human culture in both tangible and intangible ways. In some tropical locations, because numerous, small, almost identical shells can be found, they have been turned into such things as currency or necklace beads.  Even when fewer shells or only less spectacular ones can be found, they can still be turned into a child's art project.

Our intangible relationships with shells are less obvious, but more intriguing -- in particular, the way that shells have become vehicles for reflecting about who we are in the world.  The modern classic in this regard was Anne Morrow Lindbergh's 1955 book Gift from the Sea.  In that little, beautifully written book, Anne Lindbergh primarily used the outward shapes of different shells as metaphors for aspects of her own life.  Different shell-shapes become springboards as she reflected upon the question, "What is the shape of my life?"  Her book, reprinted in numerous editions, has been an inspiration to many, especially those who have felt the burdens and restrictions of society's not allowing equal roles for women.

However, as I look at and think about seashells, I would like to think of them as more than a physical shape that can be an analogy for some contour of my life.  I want to keep in mind that those shells have been part of the body of living creatures -- creatures who have had interests and endeavors of their own, sometimes endeavors quite different than mine.  Although I am interested in relationships between those shells on the beach and my own life, it is not so much a metaphorical relationship as it is the actual relationship between our human lives here on land and the lives of creatures in the ocean.  (In this way, I am influenced by a later generation of nature writers who have been affected by the modern environmental movement and by the science of ecology.)  A snail-like spiraling shell might be a special object of beauty to me, but to the animal who lived in it, that spiral was just a side product of the way it added to its shell as its body grew.

Therefore, as I study those shells and look at pictures of them in books, I also look at the diagrams of the strange bodies that once lived within those shells.  I do not see anything we might think of as a "normal" animal shape in the strange body, but I can recognize the diagram's words labeling parts such as "Mouth" and "Intestine." And, in some cases, even "eye."  As I read those labels, I am forced into remembering that in this shell was once a living, breathing being!  Maybe my delight in thinking about all those other beings can be for me a different kind of gift from the sea.

~~~

Have you ever picked up or gathered shells on a beach?  What made it enjoyable?

(The brief line by Lindbergh is from Chap. 2 of

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, © 1955.

  Twenty years after its 1955 publication, Lindbergh wrote an afterword,
 looking back at the book, which can be found in many editions.)

Turning Our Brains to Birds

In the book To Kill a Mockingbird (adapted into a movie). Atticus Finch tells his children that they are allowed to shoot some birds with their air-rifles, but that "it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."  That directive resembles many laws in the U.S. when it was a rural society. Shooting birds such as crows in defense of one's crops was allowed, but killing "songbirds" (such as the versatile, melodious mockingbird) was prohibited.

Fortunately, birds have not been so discriminatory toward the human race.  They have blessed us in many ways, whether or not their calls have been labeled "songs" by us.

Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds (based on the Daphne du Maurier book) is an unforgettable movie in which birds attack humans for undetermined reasons.  The trailer for the movie, instead of showing frightening clips from the film, presented Hitchcock himself drolly giving a mock lecture about the history of the bird-human relationship.   As he speaks, Hitchcock casually picks up a quill pen, letting the viewer make the connection to our use of birds.  He then escalates from picking up a hat with a feather to picking up a hat with an entire stuffed bird decorating it.  Finally, he sits down at a dining table with an entire roasted chicken before him.  Throughout the trailer, his "lecture" feigns a naive innocence, wondering why birds, would ever be unappreciative of us humans.

A Pheasant and
a Bird Called Tabut
(1717  C.E.)

I was once given an insight into how critical birds have been for some cultures.  I found myself in a conversation with a group of people comparing their families' plans for the upcoming Thanksgiving.  Most people were opting for turkey, but a few had in the past sometimes eaten chicken instead.  One person then asked a member of the group who had been silent -- an immigrant from Haiti -- what kind of birds his family had eaten in Haiti.  His unhesitating and quite earnest reply was, "Any kind we could catch."  His reply revealed how, for some people living in poverty, birds have been life-savers.

Today, in highly technological societies, almost all the birds we eat are domesticated animals (which we distinguish by calling them "fowl" or "poultry.")  We virtually never see them when they are alive, even as the protein from their bodies gives life to our own bodies.

Despite that disconnect, there might be a way that the living birds singing all around us can add more life to our spirits.  That way is captured by Lisel Mueller in her poem "Why I Need the Birds."  Mueller imagines birds with their songs as traveling ahead of her throughout the day as they follow the arc of the sun.  Part of the poem reads:

"... the birds, leading

their own discreet lives

of hunger and watchfulness,

are with me all the way...."

~~~

Do you ever hear the songs of birds during the course of your day?  When?

(The photograph of the manuscript is used under a Creative Commons license,
Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, by the Walters Art Museum.)
(Mueller's complete poem can be read on-line at this external link:  "Why I Need the Birds".) 

A View Without a Price Tag

The two things I remember most about the incident are a color and the movement of the people.

The color was beautiful and intense -- a pinkish, slightly purplish red.  I had never seen a sunset in which the color was more vivid.  Nor a sunset that covered such a vast portion of sky as this one did.  It felt as if it filled the entire western half of heaven.

The other thing I remember about the incident is the people.  I saw them silhouetted against the sky.  There were at least a dozen of them, and they were walking.

But here is what struck me:  Not a single person paused or even turned their head to look at the sunset.  They were instead all intent on their shopping expeditions as they walked from their vehicles to the mall, or from the mall back to their vehicles in the parking lot.  To all of them, it was if this gorgeous sunset -- a surge of redness with rippling clouds -- simply did not exist.  I do not mean to judge the people; I do not know the details of their shopping errands.  But I felt as if they were missing something that was more valuable than what is usually in most of our shopping bags.

Our society in the U.S. today seems more and more to tag us as consumers.  We may be hopelessly divided along Democrat-Republican lines, but we all shop.  Even during a recession, a question frequently asked on the news is whether or not we have begun shopping more again so as to stimulate the economy.

However, there seems to me to be a tension between basing one's sense of self on the ability to buy more desirable products, and placing ones trust and sense of wonder upon a divine Power that was around before there was human civilization.  This is why I am revived by turning my attention to Nature.

garden at
Wordsworth's childhood home

The poet William Wordsworth detected the negative connection between consumerism and an attention to Nature when, in his poem "The World Is Too Much With Us" he wrote:

"Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

Little we see in Nature that is ours."

Some of my happiest childhood memories are not of being in a shopping mall, but instead sitting with my family on a high lookout in Madison, Wisconsin, watching the sun slowly set.   Simply doing that provided something valuable my parents could never have bought.

~~~

Do you have a childhood memory of Nature?  Do you think there is a relationship between our society's attitudes towards Nature and toward consumer goods?

(To read Wordsworth's complete poem,

 click here: "The World Is Too Much With Us")

I’m Not a Car

"The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely, or unhappy is to go outside,

 somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God.  

Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and

 that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature."

It's not that remarkable a statement.  What makes it so remarkable, and poignant, is knowing whose words they are:  They are words from The Diary of Anne Frank.  They are the words of a teenage girl who would never be able to go freely outside again, her Jewish family having hidden themselves behind an upstairs wall in a neighbor's house so that the Nazi's would not arrest, imprison, and execute them.

The family chose to try to escape death by imprisoning themselves -- by forcing themselves to never go outside.  Anne Frank's diary entry, however, expressed how deadly it was to the human spirit not to be able to go outdoors.  No -- that's not quite what she has done.  She has not expressed it in negative terms but in positive terms!  Her words are not a lament but instead a celebration of the wonderful benefits that can result from going outside.

Unfortunately, many U.S. cities today are not as congenial to the restoration of the spirit Frank describes as they might be.  (The twentieth-century author Albert Camus once complained that he would feel at home in the city if he were a car.)  Some cities are trying to make improvements, however, under pressure from joggers, walkers, bikers, and people with dogs, which rejoice even more in the word "out."

outside Franks' hiding place today

But what will I find when I do go out?  What will I do, and see, and think about as I take a walk? Will my mind still be chewing on the worries I had indoors?  Will I be focused just on the concrete and cars, or will I take time to look about and see a bush blooming or a bird flying up into a tree?

Will simply taking a walk be sufficient to cure what ails me?  Will a walk be enough to enrich me?  Or do I maybe need to find a place where I can quietly sit in order, as Anne Frank says, to be "quite alone with the heavens, nature and God... amidst the simple beauty of nature"?

Yes, we do need an awareness of Nature for our spirits to be fully enriched.  Because, as the environmentalist Bill McKibben observed:

"We live, all of a sudden, in an Astroturf world, 

and though an Astroturf world may have a God, 

he can’t speak through the grass, 

or even be silent through it and let us hear."

~~~

Do you have a favorite place to be outside?  What is it like?

(The Frank quotation is from  The Diary of a Young Girl, by Anne Frank, © 1972.)

(The McKibben quotation is from The End of Nature, by Bill McKibben, © 1989.)
(The second photograph is used under a GNU Free Documentation License.)