All Creatures Great and Small
Relations with Animals as Relations with God
Are other animals part of a beloved community? They should be. We are, after all, creaturely kin. They deserve our respect. Any beloved community worth having must include all our relatives. This doesn't mean that we can't protect ourselves from some of them. But it does mean that they are our neighbors in local and global settings. And we are their neighbors, too. We are bound together in a web of life. We are family.
And can we communicate with them? Surely so. Indigenous peoples around the world have done so, and it is primarily we modern peoples, steeped in a dualism between humanity and nature, who doubt or dismiss the possibility.
Some among us, conditioned by dualist assumptions to believe that humans are 'above' animals and that communication between species is impossible, may feel embarrassed to admit that, in fact, we often communicate with animals and feel 'communicated with' by them—whether it's dogs, cats, horses, butterflies, frogs, or whales.
Not Nita Gilger. As a lay process theologian, she understands that we are part of, not apart from, the larger web of life and kin to all creatures. She knows that at some level other animals 'feel our feelings' and we feel theirs as well. Our feelings are not just emotions that lie in side our bodies, they are energies that come from our bodies and become part of the world. The same applies to other animals. In feeling our respective energies, most often in an unconscious way, we are, to use the language of Whitehead, prehensively connected: that is, we prehend our respective prehensions. Usually the prehensions we feel from other animals, and they feel from us, are but a very small and almost infinitesimal part of the whole of our experience, barely noticed if at all, at least by us. And yet sometimes the inter-species communication is more noticeable and, on occasion, more dramatic. It is as if we are talking to one another, albeit in languages more than human. Might God be "talking" to us, too, albeit in a language of God's own, yet mediated by other animals.
Process theologians like Nita speak of God's lures in our lives. These are not abstract ideas, but inwardly felt nudges we receive from God, a companion to all creation. Typically, these nudges are mediated by others: by people and also by other beings like hills, rivers, plants, and animals. The other animals are channels through which we sense God's presence and guidance. They may or may not intend to play this role in our lives. Whether or not they are aware of it, for us, they serve as one way the universal Spirit finds its way into our hearts, creatively transforming and nourishing us. Sometimes the Spirit speaks to us in ways that are almost like I-Thou relations, and sometimes the Spirit speaks to us by inviting us to marvel at animal behavior in its own right, quite apart from us. Nita Gilger offers two examples from her life: roadrunners and whales.
- Jay McDaniel