Wonder, Mystery & Talking Animals

Judy Bevilacqua

Feast Day of St. Francis

Good morning! And a special welcome to our critters ~ as we continue this week of “The Feast of St. Francis.” And we include those pets who are not here...(“of all the pets we’ve loved before...who whimpered just outside the door...” (you know their names!).

This morning, I want open with a prayer from Jesus, from Matt. 25: that will help to set the tone and maybe the “age group” of this morning’s homily... Jesus prays:

"I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to children..."

To unpack this, I come to you today not so much as your Senior Warden ~ or a lay-preacher! but simply as “Grandma Judy.” And I was so thankful to nab the only service that had animals in it!

...and also ~ because I wanted to wear my shirt! No, this is not an activist shirt ~ or wait, maybe it is? Because I am a radical crusader for “story-books!” This shirt is a replacement of my tattered original ~ a birthday gift from Jack many decades ago... given, because he knew I loved a “certain” children’s book as a child, and in turn, this was read to our 2 girls...over and over and over. I have always read books aloud. Back in the day, when Jack and I led a college-career group over 13 yrs...my role evolved into being the “story-lady!” I only needed a long skirt, an armchair and a lamp. We felt it was part of the spiritual formation of kids leaving home to NOT leave their stories behind! So we included reading stories outloud together! Maybe we were just an early, dorky form of The MOTH – that Public Radio hour? But it’s had a lasting effect: because Jack and I still read aloud every single Wednesday morning ~ since that time, we always have a story going! We are old school....I AM the audio book!

This shirt celebrates how a storybook helped me to understand the Gospel and Jesus’s “greatest commandment!” And how that same story book found me again over 20 years later ~ in a sad, mid-life, spiritual collapse, I was no longer inspired, I was resigned....that was when I needed this story, the most!

And no, it’s not a Bible story...it’s just a cheap 1940’s Rand McNally storybook called “The Little Mailman of Bayberry Lane.” (SHOW BOOK) Even to say that name aloud give me shivers up my spine...because, its’ “simplicity” became part of my spiritual formation...although I just didn’t know it at the time! It helped me discover the beauty and community on Bayberry Lane...because of one Chipmunk who delivered the mail and showed everyone ....especially me, how to love my neighbor....and create a “community” where there was none before! (I considered just inviting all the kids up front to sit on the floor and read it so I wouldn’t have to write this sermon today!) But I knew better. I thought Sara might give me the stink-eye! Hahaha!

To be honest, I am pretty simple,....I’ve always been drawn to parables and myths ~ children’s books! My earliest “influencers” were generally “talking animals.” I grew up with a thick volume of Nursery Rhymes, Aesop’s Fables; later Charlotte’s Web and Watership Down, and when I thought I’d outgrown those books, the Narnia Books by CS Lewis introduced me to the beavers and fauns and a talking Lion named ASLAN, and I was disarmed to find Jesus again within a golden mane! Animals do have power with me. And even today....I still search OPB for the next installment of that Yorkshire Veterinarian, James Herriot! If I had time, I would love to wander through the aisles today to pass the mic and hear your favorite Animal story! And ask Why?

Not being raised in a Catholic or Episcopal faith, I didn’t really “meet” St. Francis until I was an adult. Although I’d run into his concrete statues in parks or a church yard or a garden... ...always holding birds, perhaps a fawn or wolf at his side. I loved him! It was really St. Francis who “saved”me by giving me, (bird by bird,) permission to DELIGHT in every detail of God’s creation and get back my true heart of wonder at the beauty of God...and his amazing creatures.

I used the word “saved” because there existed a theological prejudice when I was a growing up; that people who loved the outdoors or “Mother Nature,” were seen as some pagan forest-mystics, tree-huggers, lovers of spotted owls and sunsets. If if you were a Christian and you loved the beach or the mountains a little too much (and maybe sometimes skipped church to go there!)...you could be accused of worshiping the “creation, more than the creator!” and that was bad! You were nudging the sin of idolatry! Sadly, that shut down my heart for a few years...and stifled the joy and freedom of my childhood where I could find God in all places! All this was before I read Mary Oliver!...or “met” St. Francis! Or (may she rest in peace)...Jane Goodall! This is before we walked into St Luke’s that first morning and looked up and found “Salmon Jesus!” with a little spotted owl on his shoulder! I was HOME!

I learned later, this way of thinking had a name – it was called “Dualism,” a philosophy coined by some ancient and rather short-sighted Greeks ~ and a few other constipated philosophers. Oh, We humans love to make rules! To divide and conquer. To nail down certainty and truth...at the expense of mystery and wonder! It now seems weird that those philosophers with their sad brains, had the super-powers to separate the spiritual from the material worlds, with their bare hands.... into two categories: pulling apart the sacred and holy from what they called the “secular and profane world” which was our actual earthly life!

How silly, when I think about it, because as a child, when I read the Bible stories, my attention was always captured when an animal or bird showed up as part of a parable. And if you’ve read your bible...they do show up everywhere!! Not just Noah’s Ark!

There’s a talking raven, a fallen sparrow, Balaam’s prophetic donkey!

Jonah’s giant whale, and little foxes ruining the grape vines!

There’s an OX stuck in a ditch.

The lost sheep and some very maligned goats!

Nets full of flopping fish, dogs who eat crumbs under the table...

In fact, Jesus describes himself, as a mother hen! (And I love chickens!)

There are whole PSALMS exalting by name, the wonders of animals, birds and sea creatures! the creature cannot separate itself from the Creator!

I remember those parts! Because the “child” in me remembered every story that included animals...and resonated with God’s wonder! But there is also another, more personal reason: Because I had actually experienced “talking animals” and knew they had secret powers! How did I know this? Because for years, Jack and I had a “puppet ministry!” hah!

We started in church with short children’s stories...then moved on to Christmas and Easter specials... and celebrations ~ and over time we took our gear on the road...with Kathy at the piano! to perform for other churches, and venues, retreats, even a Boy Scout Jamboree. We made our own puppets, wrote our own scripts and often songs ~ and after a couple of years, we made a surprising discovery; it dawned on us that our main audience at these gigs, was now, “adults!” How could that be?

Well, y’all can work out that mystery! But we concluded, it was a “hunger for wonder!” To have our childhood imagination sparked, after a long dormancy...or to be tricked into tenderness...for a brief moment can feel like a miracle. Adults are just big kids after all! Maybe “talking animals” are BEST at helping us feel our own feelings and maybe touch our deepest needs...something our own pets can often do without a word!

We recently saw this transformation happen right here at St. Luke’s! At a recent baptism...how one cute little baby, can, turn us all, instantly, into babbling idiots...speaking gibberish, cavorting and making faces ~ losing all dignity...What is this easy response of pure joy that can re-animate a sleeping heart. Maybe it’s because our “imagination” is employed once again!~and imagination is the best friend of FAITH!

Eugene Peterson defined imagination as “the capacity to make connections between the visible and the invisible, between heaven and earth, between present and past, between present and future.” For him, the “imagination” enables the Christian to embody two worlds at once, (a mash-up), the world of God’s kingdom and the world of this present age...and make this “connection!” We have read the wisdom of St. Paul declaring: “FAITH is the “substance of things HOPED for, and the evidence of things NOT seen. THAT takes imagination!

The older I get ~ the more I am becoming a child. A child of God. This old woman exchanging the weight of this life, for the wonder! Slowing down, paying attention. Seeking for less stuff, less pretense, less worry about reputation, more “seeking” the simplicity of St. Francis..... and “finding” the hope and evidence of things NOT seen – and no one hopes better than children.......and talking animals! ☺

Amen.