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.

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