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A WGREN Meditation for the Week of December 28, 2008
To begin
to know wilderness,
something in me had to come alive –
my wild side,
the part that knows
that it is impossible to sleep with the dead
without being awakened by them.
In the wild
the animal spirits are for real
they are the shadows in our bones
and they will come to us
as wild gifts.
- Pablo Neruda
“And how shall we find the kingdom of heaven?”
the disciples asked.
“Follow the birds and the beasts,” came the reply.
“They will show you the way”
- The Apocryphal Gospels
Saint Thomas
It is no real surprise that animals have had crucial roles in human beings' moral and religious lives as well as in their mythologies. Animals figure in numerous creation stories, represent tricksters that captivate and beguile the naive, are teachers, companions and even divine messengers. Moreover despite all attempts to domesticate them there remains an unbridgeable Otherness, a wisdom that is incomprehensible to human logic and a wildness that is indomitable. We owe them both our gratitude and our apologies – inasmuch as our best characteristics are due to them and we force our worst characteristics onto them. The biological, cultural and spiritual ties that bind human beings and animals run so deep as to be inextricable. Neruda and Saint Thomas though do isolate essential components – even though we seldom appreciate or deserve them, animals “come to us as wild gifts” and it is through their guidance that we might hope to find Thomas Wolfe's “lost lane-end into heaven”. As human beings our moral status might be a given, but it is a status whose preservation we must earn. In the end what defines us as human beings is the manner in which we treat those who have no voices to bear witness to their own existence and worthiness.
Mark H. Dixon
Department of Philosophy & Religion
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of December 21, 2008
From "Snow Dope"
By Dean Haspiel
The New York Times
December 20, 2008
The character in this comic strip is on his way home from attending holiday parties. He has been walking around Brooklyn and has become drunk on the beauty of Nature. We could all do well to take a break from our round of parties, to step outside and let the magic of Nature's beauty intoxicate our senses and our spirits.
May the luster of the winter stars bring light to your heart.
May the dancing of snow clouds in the wind bring a twinkle to your eyes.
And may the majesty of Nature bring the Divine to new birth in your center.
Bill Fuller
Department of Mathematics
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of December 14, 2008
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
From “A Darkling Thrush”
Thomas Hardy
In these verses Thomas Hardy invites us to reflect upon how we choose to spend our energies in the world. The setting is a bleak, leafless wood at the beginning of winter. Evening is approaching and the gloom of wintry darkness is growing quickly. Alone on a branch of a bare tree, a tiny bird, the worse for age and wear, is perched and chooses to fling its very being into a song of total joy. When we are faced with difficult times, with illness and even perhaps with death, often we can feel as though we have become just too small to face the darkness that has come upon us. We can feel that it’s time to recognize the sway of Nature’s forces of dissolution over us. We can easily surrender to the night. The image of the thrush reminds us that even here we have choices. Every living being is made for joy. Human beings would do well to keep this in mind as a foundation for their actions in Nature. We would do well to keep this in mind for ourselves also. Even in the bleakest of situations we can choose to enter our innermost being to find our essence, our joy, and then to fling it out into the gloom, for joy grows in the sharing. No matter how the wintry blasts of life have shaken us, we can always make the ethical choice for joy. When we do so, we may find that the seeds of joy that we have scattered have grown, little by little, into that most life-giving of virtues, hope. And with hope we are able to cope valiantly.
Bill Fuller
Department of Mathematics
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of December 7, 2008
Counting Eagles Over the Mississippi
We drove north on the west side of the Mississippi in Minnesota.
There were - we think - fifteen eagles
above an open-of-ice place in the river.
There were 15 - floating (in the air); looking (below the water);
fishing (from the sky).
There were 15 - sharp-eyed, white-headed, wing-spanned,
air-lifted, circling eagles
looking each for one fish.
There were15 eagles looking for one near-the-surface, ready-to-eat,
talon-snatching meal;
We counted eagles . . . ; and the eagles counted (surely) . . .
Wayne Albertson, Pastor
Ada First United Methodist Church
