First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan
July 19, 1998
Scriptures: Psalm 19:1-6, Genesis 9:8-17
On the one and only occasion in my life when fate left me with a couple of hours to kill in Middletown, Connecticut, I made it a point to walk by the house where Annie Dillard lives. Alas, she wasn’t home. Not that I would have known what to do if she was. I probably would have been tongue tied. Annie Dillard is a favorite of mine, quietly admired from afar. As a writer, she is without peer in her employment of the English language. As a naturalist, she regularly uses nature as a launching pad for her observations about life. As a friend of the church, her work is faith-flavored….which is, for me, a delightful bonus.
Some years ago, she wrote a book entitled Teaching a Stone to Talk. It tells of her neighbor, a man named Larry, who lives alone and is something of a crank. Larry is actually trying to teach a stone to talk. I mean, seriously. This is no joke. Especially not to Larry. The stone in question is a beach cobble….oval shaped….dark gray….with a white band encircling it….sized so that it can fit nicely into the palm of the hand. Apparently, this stone is typical of cobbles that can be found all over the beaches of Puget Sound, which was where Annie lived during the time that Larry and she were neighbors.
Larry keeps his rock on a shelf under a swatch of leather. The leather functions like the cloth you put over a bird cage when you want your parakeet to go to sleep. Several times a day, Larry removes the leather and tries teaching his stone to express itself. No one knows what Larry is teaching it to say, what methods he is employing, or whether he is experiencing success. They do know that he has made plans to initiate his son into the task, thus ensuring the work will go on after Larry is gone. His son, however, does not live with Larry, but with Larry’s estranged wife. Her reasons for leaving are not known….but neither are they all that hard to imagine. One could say that theirs is a marriage that is, literally, on the rocks.
But, as is Annie Dillard’s way, the story of an eccentric neighbor becomes a beautiful analogy of the human condition, causing her to ponder: “Why doesn’t nature speak to us with the force it once did? What led to the breakdown of conversation, and to what degree can it be repaired?”
Yesterday afternoon, while breaking bread at Amy Arends’ wedding reception, I was talking with a dear friend about Crazy Larry and his beach cobble. I figured if anybody would view Larry’s effort sympathetically, my friend would. And she didn’t disappoint. In fact, she told me of a recent experience in a dental chair where she was given, not a beach cobble, but a piece of lava rock to hold during some probingly painful dental work. Her dentist is on the cutting edge of new methodologies and told her that this rock, held in her hand, would dramatically reduce her need for novocaine. Which it did. And about which she is eager to know more. As is her dentist….who doesn’t know exactly why it works, but that it works. My friend, who is as intellectually and spiritually curious as anyone I have ever met, promises an update. For the moment, it’s a mystery. Clearly, the rock doesn’t communicate with either dentist or patient. But the rock does participate with both, in some sort of process that manages and minimizes pain.
Which wouldn’t surprise Annie Dillard. For she is quick to point out that there was a time….not so very long ago….when we lived in such harmony with nature so as to make communication a two-way street. In that day, however, we were less in control of nature and more at the mercy of nature. So we had to listen better. Today, we assume we can do anything we want with nature (on most days). Which explains why there are people like Larry who will stop at nothing to get the conversation started again.
Some writers have always believed nature to be quite vocal. “The hills are alive with the sound of music,” wrote one. While another suggested that “every little breeze seems to whisper Louise.” I suppose you could say that such things are simply figures of speech. But why are there so many of them? And why do we keep returning to them?
And why are we so enamored with people who want to put language into the mouths of animals? Once upon a very-long-time ago, I had the chicken pox and had to spend several days in bed. I couldn’t even watch daytime TV. For while there was plenty of daytime, there was no TV. We didn’t own one. So I spent the time reading the Dr. Doolittle books. Some of you are too young to remember that before Dr. Doolittle looked like Eddie Murphy….or even Rex Harrison….he was a character in books (who didn’t look like either one of them). But his claim to fame was not how he looked, but what he could do. And what was that? He could talk to the animals. That’s what he could do. And I wanted to be able to do it too….
To ponder Eastern art and dramas, with intellectual llamas….
And if you’d ask me: “Can you speak rhinoceros?”
I’d say: “Of course-erous.” And I would.
I can’t, of course. And neither can most of you. But sometimes, when I go to your houses, I hear you talking to your dog and cat….which is hardly surprising. But then I hear you tell me what Fido and Fluffy are saying, from their end of the conversation….which gives me pause.
There is a church….a rather large church on the west side of the state….which holds an annual service where people bring their domesticated animals to worship. I kid you not. I get their bulletin. The service is held in the summer when, I would assume, they get a smaller crowd. But, as far as I can tell, the service is in the sanctuary. At least there is nothing in their bulletin that suggests otherwise. In fact, there is nothing in their bulletin that tells me what they do in this service, save for a purpose statement suggesting that the service is designed “to celebrate the unity of God’s creation, and the blessing that any one part of that creation can bring to every other part.”
As purposes go, that makes sense to me. But I’m not yet prepared to issue an open invitation to every member of your family with four legs, wings or fins….who you would gladly bring to the Lord’s house caged, leashed, harnessed, bridled or running free. Actually, I’m fronting for Doris Hall on this one. After years of putting up with two-legged parishioners who chat through her prelude, I’m not about to subject her to would-be worshipers who bark, meow, chirp and moo.
Over the years, I have had a few requests to baptize a dog or a cat. Some of those requests have come from the likes of you. I’ve never actually done it. But I’ve talked with folk about it. Most people who bring it up have a definite concern in mind, having to do with matters of death and afterlife. It is a concern rooted in an understanding of baptism that views the sacrament as an essential prerequisite to heaven (“no water on the head….no entrance into the Kingdom”). Since that’s not my understanding of what baptism is for….or how the Kingdom opens or closes….I have generally been able to address the concern without having to wet the head of any four-legged creature.
Actually, I have had a couple of cats I hope have made it on to glory. But I can’t say I know how such things are going to work out. What I do know is this. In the first eleven chapters of Genesis….where the Bible is talking about God’s covenant with creation….there are seven different references to the fact that God’s covenant is not with male and female alone, but with “every living creature.” And the rest of the Old Testament serves as a continual reminder that, as covenantal partners go, God has no plans to go back on his word. But the fact that this matter troubles you suggests that you are hungry for a closer camaraderie with the totality of creation…. even beyond the point of death and earthly extinction.
* * * * *
But let’s move on. There is much religious literature suggesting that nature, in its own way, possesses the capacity to speak eloquently of God. Charlie Beynon used to love to sing the hymn “Great Is Thy Faithfulness,” the second verse of which reads:
Summer and winter and springtime and harvest,
Sun, moon and stars in their courses above,
Join with all nature in manifold witness,
To thy great faithfulness, mercy and love.
On other occasions….employing other lyrics….we sing: “In the rustling grass I hear him pass; he speaks to me everywhere.” Which is clearly echoed in the hymn we sang this morning, just prior to the sermon, “God of the Sparrow, God of the Whale.” And in this morning’s text we read that grandiose language about the “heavens declaring the glory of God.” That’s from the 19th Psalm which, in the 18th century, gave birth to the poem by Joseph Addison, which was then set to music by Franz Joseph Haydn in his oratorio, “The Creation.”
Meanwhile, writers of Catholic spirituality like St. Francis of Assisi (whose likeness is often found in garden statues, always with an outstretched hand holding a bird), rephrase the 19th Psalm and personalize the heavens, to the point of calling the two great heavenly bodies “brother sun and sister moon.”
Indian (or Native American) culture probably understands this better than any other, offering up a spirituality which sees nature as brimmingly alive, and as a primary means by which God speaks to his people. A favorite title of mine is “I Heard the Owl Call My Name,” suggesting that we can be spoken to (and claimed by) a conversation that originates with one of God’s lesser creatures.
What am I trying to get you to see? Simply this. That all of these people aren’t crazy. That even Crazy Larry isn’t as crazy as he seems. That they are onto something important. That nature speaks….and is spoken to. And that the conversation, if worked at, could be beneficial for everyone concerned.
Which is not an idea that comes easily to me. I am not what you would call a “nature lover.” I am city bred and people fed. I like natural beauty as much as the next person. But I have never had much understanding as to how the natural world operates, let alone speaks. I know that I am somehow connected to this great web of life, yet have spent precious little time exploring the ties that bind. At times I have even preached….rather unflatteringly….about nature’s “mean streak,” gathering examples of nature’s viciousness under the umbrella of Carlyle Marney’s great axiom: “Nature means to kill us, and may yet succeed in the end.”
But I am coming around. I am listening better. I am recognizing my dependencies. And I am coming to terms with the realization that my own “return to nature” is getting closer rather than further away. Whatever be the case, I am willing to work harder at the conversation than I once did, in expectation that a pair of benefits might be forthcoming….the first being ecological and the second, spiritual.
Ecologically speaking, I have not been on the forefront of those working to save the planet. I have not even worked that hard to save my own small slice of the planet. Other issues have commandeered my attention. I can only spread myself so thin. But it has occurred to me that my slowness in climbing aboard the ecological bandwagon can be traced to a deeper issue than that of personal time and energy. For I have not always been willing to reconsider my own agenda in the light of nature’s agenda….or even concede that nature’s agenda might speak with an authority that approximates my own.
Occasionally I find myself backed up in traffic because some highway that might have eased the flow hasn’t been finished. It remains incomplete because it’s right-of-way is being contested in court by folks who fear the damage that might be done to some nearby wetlands. At such moments I find myself more than willing to sacrifice a swamp….any swamp….for my right to get from here to there via the shortest possible distance, in the fastest possible time. I can even be quite noble about it, saying: “Look how much more of the Lord’s work I could do if I didn’t have to sit in traffic.” But even while making my complaint, I know that there is a claim to be made for the swamp….which (were I to understand it) would probably swamp my claim by comparison.
It takes awhile to learn. But I learn. I have a home up north on a small harbor. The harbor is cut out of Grand Traverse Bay. Like most of my neighbors, I prefer gazing at the harbor across a lush green lawn. So I fertilize. As do my neighbors. Then the rains come and wash some of the fertilizer into the harbor, where it produces a rich crop of water weeds. The weeds clog the harbor and choke the engines of my neighbors’ boats. The harbor weeds can be killed. There are chemicals that do the job. But the DNR types monitor every chemical application because nobody, not even the DNR types, knows what the chemicals will do to the fish in the Bay. Suddenly, my “green lawn agenda” is a minor player in a major conversation. But I didn’t know that until I entered the conversation.
But not all of the conversational benefits are ecological. Some are profoundly spiritual. For while nature cannot tell us everything about God, it can tell us many things about God. And were we to sing every hymn in the hymnal that makes that claim (at a rate of three per Sunday), we’d hardly be able to finish them in time for the carols of Christmas….Christmas of 1999.
But I’m not here to debate nature’s role as a teacher (where God is concerned), but nature’s role as a midwife (where God is concerned). In short, can nature occasionally pull us into the presence of God?
I don’t think it’s accidental that two of the more uplifting films of the last decade (Field of Dreams and Dances With Wolves) involve a pair of men who come to terms with themselves and their worlds only after they submit to the claims of nature (either as field or wilderness) upon their lives. I don’t know that either of these men would necessarily call their awakenings “spiritual.” But so many of you have shared nature-inspired experiences with me to which you have attached the word “spiritual,” that I believe something is going on that involves God, natureand your soul in a three-way conversation. Which is surely no substitute for a conversation with Jesus Christ. But neither is it antithetical to it.
When I was a teenager and a friend said he was “going out to commune with nature,” I knew that he was really going out to empty his bladder. Today, when a friend tells me he is “going out to commune with nature,” I suspect that he is going out to fill a hole in his soul. I suppose it depends on the kind of relief each is seeking.
Wendell Berry, in some lines entitled “The Peace of Wild Things,” says it about as well as it can be put into words:
When despair for the world grows in me
And I wake in the night at the least sound
In fear of what my life and my children’s lives may become,
I go and lay down where the wood-drake
Rests in his beauty on the water,
And where the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
Who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.
I come into the presence of still water
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
Waiting with their light,
For a time, I rest in the grace of the world and am free.
And did not Jesus, himself, say that much could be learned from a careful consideration of the lilies….and that if mankind should ever fall silent, even the very stones would cry out. Which may explain what Crazy Larry is listening for. Not a stone that merely jabbers. But one that preaches.
Note: I am indebted to Mark Trotter for Wendell Berry’s lines and for some of the conceptual thinking that undergirds this sermon. Annie Dillard’s book speaks for itself. And I continue to appreciate persons who have staked out passionate positions on all sides of the “nature and spirit” issue, including Frank Clappison with whom I once enjoyed a most vigorous debate on the issue on whether nature was capable of revealing a God of mercy.
