 Long, long before there were any written words, there were animals—and all the rest of the teeming natural world. Creation is the earliest sacred text given to us. Like Scripture, the natural world, too, opens up an infinite universe of meaning.
Early wisdom seekers gave us a way of reading sacred texts called lectio divina. It’s a way that honors the richness of the text and the dignity of the reader. Reading or listening, we simply ask, What catches my attention? No one gets caught in quite the same way.
Then, if we give that attention-getting bit our best awareness, if we tell ourselves or each other what in the text stopped us in our tracks, and wonder about that, something mysterious happens. A door opens. We sense a path connecting the world of the text to the world of our own experience; we feel a nudge or hear a voice inviting us to explore that path.
The sacred text of the natural world opens its doors—hidden in plain sight—to anyone who “reads” it with an attentive heart. Over and over it happens that one of our creature-kin comes with a word for our unsettled selves. Firefly, loon, chickadee, raccoon—any one of them might be the teacher we need.
What catches my attention? Ask only that as you read the animals’ stories. In your own and others’ responses you may sense a door—often one you didn’t know you were looking for—opening. And through that door, a path, and down that path, the glimmer of a new beginning. |
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Sangha of Auspicious Companions 