The following is a quote from a Mary Colwell article on the occasion of the election of Pope Francis. Please don't switch off. The highlighted quote from St Francis of Assisi is a mantra for all of us who care about wildlife and the environment.
St Francis is known for both his compassion for, and action on behalf of, the poor and for his love of nature. The legends that surround him are many, preaching to birds, talking to wolves, contemplating the stars, rescuing fish, calling an insect his sister and so on. He obviously had a deep passion for nature and one of his famous sayings is: "If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." Now that is worth hearing time and again in our world today. When we see the cruelty, the disrespect and the utilitarian way much of the world treats not just animals but the whole of the natural world, then I wonder if we are just a few steps away from terrible atrocities everywhere. We are so good at de-sensitising ourselves to suffering.
End of preachy bit.
St Francis is known for both his compassion for, and action on behalf of, the poor and for his love of nature. The legends that surround him are many, preaching to birds, talking to wolves, contemplating the stars, rescuing fish, calling an insect his sister and so on. He obviously had a deep passion for nature and one of his famous sayings is: "If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men." Now that is worth hearing time and again in our world today. When we see the cruelty, the disrespect and the utilitarian way much of the world treats not just animals but the whole of the natural world, then I wonder if we are just a few steps away from terrible atrocities everywhere. We are so good at de-sensitising ourselves to suffering.
End of preachy bit.
1 comment:
Never mind 'preachy'. Needs saying. If we stop being altruistic we stop being human.
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