Kuan Yin & Francis of Assissi. One from the East & one from the West. They both spoke to the animals & the animals gathered to listen. Who told us two-leggeds we somehow have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the fowl of the air, over the cattle, & over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth? One sentence in a dusty old Hebrew text just does not cut it for me anymore. Alive in the Anthropocene age- the last great extinction underway- my true allegiance is not with my fellow man but with all the myriad creatures in this the living Creation. The right to live of a little red squirrel on a jack pine in northern Saskatchewan is equal- exactly equal- to my right to breathe the blue air of the vast abiding sky. All sentient beings- each and every one of them- will enter into the Kingdom, not just blind, self-absorbed, greed-filled Man. I listened with the snails & the wrens & the elephants to St. Francis & to Kuan Yin. I have ears to hear. I hear.
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