The Beauty of the Beastly

January 12, 2003

"The world-view of reverence for life follows from taking the world as it is. And the world means the horrible in the glorious, the meaningless in the full of meaning, the sorrowful in the joyful."

--Albert Schweitzer

And yet, as we read of the decline of world-wide fish stocks, and of the degradation of the ocean environment; of the changes wrought by oil-spills and chemical run-off, of over-fishing and of the influences of global warming; my dream no longer seems far-fetched. The world's appetite for seafood has grown to encompass even animals I could never have imagined anyone eating, ever, like the lowly sea cucumber. Who would have thought that the vast riches of the ocean could ever disappear? I have a recurring dream, or perhaps it is a nightmare.

Juxtaposed to my dream is a hope. That hope is reinforced by the continued relevancy of Albert Schweitzer's ethic of "reverence for life," by the groundbreaking work of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, by Aldo Leopold's revolutionary Sand County Almanac, by the writings of Edward Abby, Wallace Stegner, Wendell Berry and of many others, including the author whose title I stole for my sermon this morning, Natalie Angier, science writer for the New York Times.

Angier's entertaining, edgy, and sexy essays (sex is one of her favorite topics) give me hope that we might still save our threatened and diminished planet before it is too late. Besides, anyone who can get me to read about science must be pretty special! As her title implies and the morning's reading confirms, she finds beauty even in the less attractive representatives of creation. She is fascinated by the uglier and more lethal aspects of life--and death. Even parasites find a place in her affections. Her book [The Beauty of the Beastly] is a manifestation of Schweitzer's reminder that "the world means the horrible in the glorious." And as she herself reminds us, and provides ample evidence to support her claim, "We really are the same under the skin."

That may be all well and good, but it still gives me discomfort to accept it. Take snakes, for example. I have always had an irrational fear of snakes. I have no idea where this fear originated, or if it was simply born in me. My son Josh, when he was little and we lived in Maine, delighted so much in snakes that we took to calling him "snake man." He was fearless about hunting them, finding them, picking them up, and bringing them home to his parents for inspection. Occasional bites and skin rashes did nothing to deter him.

I would try to appear nonchalant as he would hold his latest snaky discovery up for my inspection, but I always insisted on one thing: that he never, ever, under any circumstances, bring one of those slithering creatures into the house. Ever. My tolerance had its limits.

It's pretty easy to love a furry puppy or a cute little kitten or even a bear cub if Mama is nowhere in the county: but a reptile? Still, there is something fascinating about them. As Angier writes in her chapter on pit vipers, "I can't stop staring at the serpent's face: its flicking split ribbon of a tongue, its lidless yellow eyes. Where have I seen that face before? I reach for my apple."

But in spite of her own fear of snakes, she later concedes,

. . .The snake is a lover at once gallant and violent; a killer whose brew of lethal and degradative toxins is among the most complex compounds in nature; and an evolutionary exemplar of streamlined design and elegant adaptations. Who but a snake could say, Look, Ma, no hands; look, Ma, no feet; look, Ma, no teeth, and say it with such feeling?

Of course, some of them can kill you, too. But if, as she says, "malignancy has its magnificence," I guess you would have to put scorpions right up there with pit vipers. "If nothing else," Angier says, "the scorpion, as the Methusalah of invertebrates, just may outlast any efforts to tidy up its delicious bad name." Cold comfort!

Neither of these critters, however, can hold a candle to the lowly cockroach. In a chapter entitled "There is nothing like a roach" (one can only imagine the lyrics to that song), Angier writes that "We may feel, if not outright affection, at least a detached admiration of their antiquity, persistence, and resourcefulness." Did you know that the cockroach has been around for 280 million years, or that there are over 4000 species? I used to think every one of them lived in my Cambridge apartment. . . .

But cockroaches, whom Angier refers to not as our bosom, but as our "thorax buddies," have shown themselves to be survivors of most everything, including some of the most potent of pesticides ever developed by humans, such as the very appropriately named "Combat." As Angier writes,

. . .Though Combat works for now, keep in mind whom the odds really favor. Cockroaches have an astronomical reproduction rate and a fast life cycle. They've been living with us for thousands of years. They're patient. So while city dwellers may pray to God that the new pesticides retain their powers for decades to come, we have to wonder whether the divinity we're beseeching has a wise old human face and a long white beard, or whether its head is tucked under and pointing toward the rear.

Rather than being "unfeeling brutes," animals have fears and hopes, loves and friendships, even a capacity for joy. They experience grief and sadness, compassion and shame, are dreamers and occasionally artists. They may even share with us a "religious impulse," and what has traditionally been known as a soul. Can anyone who has had a beloved pet doubt that it is so?

Play is a shared activity of animals and humans, too, but so, apparently and unfortunately, is depression, and even suicide. As Angier says with truth, we share "the community of life and death" with every single living creature, whether horrible ones like parasites, or beautiful ones like Dolphins.

Lest we over-romanticize, it is good to remind ourselves that those Dolphins we enjoy so much, whose intelligence we admire so much and whose ability to communicate intrigues and provokes our imaginations so much, actually have a nasty and brutish side. Male dolphins are "aggressive and demanding" toward females, often "charging" and "biting" the target of their affections, and worse. As Angier writes, they "can behave like sailors at Tailhook." Nature remains "red in tooth and claw" [Tennyson] after all.

And despite the appearance that some species of animals give of mating for life, it turns out that "there is almost no such thing as monogamy" in the animal kingdom. As Angier puts it: "Coupled for life--with just a bit of adultery, cuckoldry, and gang rape on the side." Alas, perhaps we have even more in common than we thought.

All of which brings us back to Schweitzer and his ethic of reverence. "What shall be my attitude toward other life?" wrote Schweitzer:

It can only be a piece with my attitude toward my own life. If I am a thinking being, I must regard other life than my own with equal reverence. For I shall know that it longs for fullness and development as deeply as I do myself. Therefore, I see that evil is what annihilates, hampers, or hinders life. And this holds good whether I regard it physically or spiritually.. Goodness, by the same token, is the saving or helping of life, the enabling of whatever life I can influence to attain its highest achievement.

What would it mean to really love all of creation? As the readings I have shared this morning suggest, it will mean a possibly uncomfortable recognition of all we have in common with every life form which shares the earth with us, and a closer approximation to that reverence for life which was for Schweitzer the beginning of wisdom. Perhaps, most profoundly, we may discover such reverence in the knowledge that every living creature has an ending, that death is the great common denominator of life. May we think on these things with hope and courage, as we give thanks for the life that is, and that is ours on this day. Amen.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock