Don't forget about Brother Eli's Spring Pet Blessing this Sunday, May 4 at 3:00 pm in the manse backyard at 220 North Hinde Street. In the meantime, read these quotes in preparation.
Psalm
50.7-11
Hear,
O my people, and I will speak,
O
Israel, I will testify against you.
I
am God, your God.
I
do not reprove you for your sacrifices;
your
burnt offerings are continually before me.
I
will accept no bull from your house,
nor
he-goat from your folds.
For
every beast of the forest is mine,
the
cattle on a thousand hills.
I
know all the birds of the air,
and
all that moves in the field is mine.
John
Woolman:
I
was early convinced in my mind that true religion consisted in an inward life,
wherein the heart doth love and reverence God the Creator, and learn to
exercise true justice and goodness not only toward all men but also toward the
brute creatures; that as the mind was moved on an inward principle to love God
as an invisible, incomprehensible being, on the same principle it was moved to
love him in all his manifestations in the visible world; and as by his breath
the flame of life was kindled in all animals and sensitive creatures, to say we
love God as unseen and at the same time exercise cruelty toward the least
creature moving by his life, or by life derived from him, was a contradiction
in itself.
Fyodor
Dostoyevsky:
Love
all God’s creation, the whole of it and every grain of sand. Love every leaf,
every ray of God’s light! Love the animals, love the plants, love everything.
If you love everything, you will perceive the divine mystery in things. And
once you have perceived it, you will begin to comprehend it ceaselessly, more
and more every day. And you will at last come to love the whole world with an
abiding, universal love. Love the animals: God has given them the rudiments of
thought and untroubled joy. Do not, therefore trouble [them], do not deprive
them of their joy, do not go against God’s intent.
St.
Bonaventure:
The
creatures of the sense world signify the invisible attributes of God, partly
because God is the origin, exemplar, and end of every creature, and every
effect is a sign of its cause, the exemplification of its exemplar, and the
path to the end, to which it leads … For every creature is by its nature a kind
of effigy and likeness of the eternal Wisdom.
Therefore, open your eyes, alert the ears of your spirit, open your
lips, and apply your heart so that in all creatures you may see, hear, praise, love
and worship, glorify and honour your God lest the whole world rise up against
you.
