Fifth WCF Interfaith Celebration of Animals

Fifth WCF Interfaith Celebration of Animals.
Sermon at Golders Green Unitarian Church
By Rev Dr Marcus Braybrooke


First, I would like to thank Golders Green Unitarians for their hospitality this afternoon and especially Revd Feargus O’Connor for taking so much care in arranging the service. Thanks to all the readers for their inspiring contributions

Animal Welfare has long been a concern of the World Congress of Faiths. In fact a whole session was devoted to this subject at a conference as long ago as 1951. Many of us will remember that Edward Carpenter, who was Dean of Westminster and President of the World Congress of Faiths was also an active campaigner foranimal welfare
Are you a man or a mouse? If you look at our DNA, I gather there is not much difference. This should remind us that we are part of animal world and not masters of it. As the Qur’an puts it:
No creature is there crawling on the earth,
no bird flying with its wings,
but they are nations like yourselves. (6, 38)

Accepting the theory of evolution does not necessarily lead to the atheistic conclusion that Richard Dawkins was recently advocating on television. For many people of faith, the theory of evolution has confirmed the Psalmist’s words that ‘we are fearfully and wonderfully made.’ (Ps 139, 13). We are part of a chain of being that stretches back for millions of years and we need to recognise our interdependence with all life.

Mary, who is very sorry not to be here, and I are just back from a wonderful pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Some of you will be interested that we spent our first night at Neve Shalom/Wahat Al Salam – a Jewish/Arab village that I know you as a church support. We also went to Eilat in the South, where there is a coral reef and an aquarium that allows you to go under water and observe the amazing variety of brightly coloured fish. I felt part of the ocean life and recognised again that every creature - ‘water-beings, fire-beings, plants, animals’ (to quote from the Jain scriptures) from the simplest to the most complex share the wonderful gift of Life.

My friend and great spiritual teacher Donald Nicholl – some of you may know his book Holiness - wrote of his experience one morning climbing down the steep path into the Grand Canyon in America. Seeing the different layers of fossils, ‘You feel a true kinship with all those beings knowing that you and they trace their existence back to the first moment when life appeared on earth. And then you start to reflect that the very eyes with which you are observing these wondrous evidences are the result of millions of years of striving for light… We are who we are thanks to the striving and sacrifice of innumerable living beings who have helped to make possible the life we enjoy.’

You may yourself have had a moment when you felt part of all that lives and that all that lives is part of you. Recall, perhaps, Vaughan Williams’ ever popular ‘A Lark Ascending.’ The mystic Forest Reid wrote nearly a hundred years ago of a time when, he said, ‘I lay down on my back in the warm dry moss and listened to the skylark singing… It was a passionate joyous singing. It was a leaping, exultant ecstasy… the whole world seemed to be within me.’ It is the sense of Presence of which William Wordsworth wrote. As a Native American said, ‘When w elook around, we see part of our Mother Nature everywhere.’

The story of evolution as writers such as Teilhard de Chardin and Sri Aurobindo have emphasised is a growth in consciousness, which in human beings becomes self-consciousness. The pattern of sacrifice, of life through death, which in the Natural world is involuntary, now becomes a matter of choice. As Jesus said, ‘He who loses his life will save it.’

Are we willing to lay down our lives for others? Too often we refuse and history is the repeated tragic story of killing rather than being killed. But spiritual teachers, such as Jesus who chose the way of the Cross, and the Buddha or Mahatma Gandhi who preached non-violence recognised that sacrifice is the way to live.

That sacrifice, happily, for many of us does not involve martyrdom, but it is the choice to live for others – the parent caring for the child, the child tending frail elderly parents. There is an African saying that we look after our children till they have their full set of teeth, so that they can look after us when we have no teeth.

And we should practice this way of respect, non-violence and self-giving care in our dealings with all living beings and with Nature itself. The dangers of global warming and environmental damage require nothing less than a spiritual revolution.

Self-consciousness is both a precious gift and a great responsibility. Because we have choice, can help to shape the future of weal or woe. Fr Thomas Berry, a leading environmental theologian, has explained that ‘the universe is now experienced as an irreversible time-developmental process. Not so much a cosmos as a cosmogenesis, by which I think he means the world is not ready made but still in the making. Indeed the first verse of the book of Genesis in the Bible which is usually translated ‘In the beginning God created the world’ can also be translated, ‘When God began to create the world.’ We are part of an on-going cosmic process which each of us in our little ways can help to shape. As we become transformed by Divine Love and reflect that love not only in our dealings with other people but with all life we are in harmony with the Divine purpose.

Pictures of the earth taken from space have been called a symbol for our age. Astronauts David Brown and Kalpana Chawla, who both died in the Columbia spacecraft disaster, spoke of the magical beauty of our planet as seen from space. ‘If I’d been born in space,’ David Brown said, ‘I would desire to visit beautiful Earth more than I ever yearned to visit space. It’s a wonderful planet.’ Kalpana Chawla said, ‘The first view of Earth is magical… in such a small planet, with such a small ribbon of life, so much goes on. You get the feeling that I need to work extraordinarily hard along with other human beings to respect that.’[1]

Mystics who have explored inner space proclaim the same message of unity. The French Jesuit and palaeontologist Teilhard de Chardin said, ‘I live at the heart of a single, unique Element, the Centre of the Universe, and present in each part of it; personal Love and cosmic Power.’[2] Fr. Thomas Berry has written ‘We are earthlings. The Earth is our origin, our nourishment, our support, our guide. Our spirituality itself is Earth-derived.’[3] As the environmentalist Jane Goodall says, ‘We are moving toward the ultimate destiny of our species – a state of compassion and love.’[4]

It is an awareness of our oneness with all life and with the Source of Being that will inspire our compassion and energy to rediscover the way to live in harmony with Nature, ensuring that it is protected for future generations and that all beings are valued and their right to life is respected. To share in shaping such an earth community in which all life is held precious is today’s exciting and challenging call to all people of faith.

[1] Quoted in Marcus Braybrooke, 265 Meditations for a Peaceful Heart and a Peaceful World, Godsfield , 2004, p. 380

[2] Teilhard de Chardin, quoted in ‘The Cosmology of Religions’, p. 97,

[3] Thomas Berry quoted in ‘The Cosmology of Religions’, p. 98. See also, Thomas Berry, ‘The Spirituality of the Earth’ in Celebrating Earth Holy Days, Ed. Susan J Clark,Crossroad, 1992, pp. 69-82.

[4] Jane Goodall, Reason for Hope, Warner Books, 1999, p. 267.