Expanding the Circle of
Compassion
Sandra
Larson Gilmore
Good morning!
A number of years ago I was sitting with a Quaker friend
of mine in her office in
“The place God calls you to is
the place where your deep gladness and passion and the world’s deep hunger
meet.”
That quote had a profound
effect on me and I thought, “How true.”
I believe that God calls each of us to satisfy that deep hunger by
expanding our own circles of compassion to include not only human beings but
all of creation. My deep passion has
always been helping animals. I believe
that that is what God has called me to do. Compassion for animals is something
I have felt ever since I can remember. I
recall as a child in third grade taking out my wrath on a sixth grade boy in
our neighborhood who was shooting at doves with a BB gun. I remember my mother and I rescuing an
emaciated stray dog from a parking lot.
I told my mother when I was
four that I wanted to be an animal doctor - - - because I thought at the time
that that was the only way that one could truly help animals. However that belief changed as I gradually
came to new levels of understanding by having my awareness raised by people I
encountered or things I experienced. I
was fortunate to have many animal companions as a child and spent many hours
with them. Later, my college science
education was centered on my getting into vet school. However God had other
things in mind for me. My experiences
during the next 10 years, working for vets, working in labs including research
at
For the next 20 years I became
a national advocate for animals- a voice for the voiceless. I worked as the director of education and
scientific advisor for the oldest and largest animal protection organization in
the country. I also founded Kitty
Angels, my own cat rescue organization.
Through all of this work my own perceptions of the other creatures that
share this world with us expanded greatly.
I saw pain and suffering that I could never have imagined, and saw the
whole of creation through the “veil of
tears” that James Herriot describes in All Creatures Great and Small
during his work at Skeldale House.
At the same time, my
relationship with God dramatically changed.
For many years I had what I can only describe as mind-wars with
Him. How could He allow such widespread,
horrendous cruelty toward innocent beings to exist? Where was this compassionate God? Where was this merciful Christ? For many years I carried around tremendous
anger. And my relationship with God was
buried by this anger.
When I thought that my
relationship with God had ended, my passion for my work quickly faded. He who had put that spark within me had also
sustained it. No matter how I tried to
rekindle that force within me, I could not. Without God directing my life, I
was lost.
Even though I didn’t realize it
at the time, Jesus was still with me. I
eventually came to know that his compassion and love never failed me, nor had
it failed the rest of creation. Christ
on Earth was compassion incarnate. Then
as now he calls us to live a life of compassion - - to expand our circle to include
not only all of humanity, but all of creation.
Because his new covenant is with all of creation, we must ask
ourselves what grounds we have for excluding animals from the proper exercise
of Christian responsibility. No longer
can we justify our behavior with empty rationalizations like, “Well, they
aren’t as smart as we are”, or “They don’t have the same language as we
do.” Because the question is not “Can
they reason?” nor “Can they talk?” but “Can they suffer?”
Yes. They do.
They suffer like us and bleed when wounded. Under the skin, be it smooth, furred, or
feathered, we are all related. Animals,
like us, are living souls. They are not
things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet, they love. They dance.
They suffer. And they mourn.
Pioneering heart transplant
surgeon Dr. Christian Barnard said in his book, Good Life Good Death, “I
had bought two male chimps from a primate colony in
In that one experience
Christian Barnard had his awareness and understanding raised and his circle
expanded.
I’d like to relate to you one other
very moving story that I discovered when writing this sermon. It is from the book When Elephants Weep.
Unlike most other animals,
elephants recognize the dead bodies or skeletons of their own kind. When an elephant encounters another’s corpse,
he or she explores the body carefully and inquisitively with feet and trunk,
smelling it and feeling the shape of the skull and tusks, perhaps in an effort
to recognize the individual that has died.
Even a bare and sun-bleached skeleton will elicit the interest of other
elephants, who inevitably stop to inspect the bones, turning them with their
trunks, picking them up and carrying them from one place to another, as though
trying to find a proper “resting place” for the remains.
Even more striking is the elephant’s
response when a family member dies.
Because elephants live almost as long as people, the bonds they form are
lasting. In 1977 hunters attacked one of
the family groups studied by Cynthia Moss, Director of the Amboseli Elephant
Research Project in
Teresia and Trista tried
frantically to resuscitate the dead animal, kicking and tusking her and
attempting to raise her body from the earth.
Tallulah, another member of the family, even tried stuffing a trunkful
of grass into Tina’s mouth. Tina’s
mother, with great difficulty, lifted the limp body with her mighty tusks. Then, with a sharp crack, Teresia’s tusk
broke under the strain, leaving a jagged stub of ivory and bloody tissue.
The elephants refused to leave
the body, however. They began to dig in
the rocky dirt and, with their trunks, sprinkled soil over Tina’s lifeless
form. Some went into the brush and broke
branches, which they brought back and placed on the carcass. By nightfall the body was nearly covered with
branches and earth. Throughout the night
members of the family stood in vigil over their fallen friend. Only as dawn broke did they leave, heading back
to the safety of the Amboseli reserve.
Teresia, Tina’s mother, was the last to go.
I’m sure Bruce has witnessed
many times family members staying at a graveside after everyone else has
gone. They too, as the elephants, linger
to say their final goodbyes.
Can we open our hearts to the
animals? Can we greet them as our soul mates,
beings like ourselves who possess dignity and depth? To do so, we must learn to revere and respect
the creatures who, like us, are part of God’s beloved creation, and to cherish
the amazing planet that sustains our mutual existence. We must join in a biospirituality that will
acknowledge and celebrate the sacred in all life. The Jains have accomplished this. In Jainism non-injury to living beings is the
highest religion. All beings hate pain;
therefore one should not kill them. This
is the quintessence of Jain wisdom - - not to kill anything. According to Buddhism all beings seek
happiness. One must let one’s compassion
extend itself to all. Because he has
pity on every living creature, therefore is a man called “holy”.
On the other hand, I believe
many Christian clergy have shown almost total indifference toward infliction of
suffering on other species, present company excepted. They have gone to great lengths to justify,
using biblical references, our diabolical treatment of nonhuman life.
But what matters most in a
society less bemused by doctrinal abstractions, is the conviction that cruelty
is negative, evil, and self-defeating, whereas pity and compassion is positive,
humanizing, and life enhancing.
Christ was the embodiment of
compassion. He gave his life for
us. He taught us “no greater love has he
than to give his life for a friend.”
It’s interesting to see this concept reflected in the behavior of
monkeys. In an experiment two monkeys
were put in cages side by side. One had food,
but the other could only obtain food by pressing a lever that gave a painful
shock to his companion in the next cage.
The unfed monkey would starve rather than press that lever. The same cannot be said however of students
in similar experiments in psych labs.
What is significant is not the
differences between creatures, but their common origin. In the long course of our moral and spiritual
evolution, says
Animals, like us, are
microcosms. They too care and have
feelings; they too dream and create; they too are adventurous and curious about
their world. They too reflect the glory
of God.
Jesus was power expressed in
powerlessness, strength expressed in compassion. If selflessness and walking in love are the
hallmarks of true discipleship, then we use Jesus as our example for
living. Our actions should be as
Christ-like as we are capable of making them.
Christ challenges us as Christians to be a light in a dark world. Paul expresses this by saying, “You will know
them by their fruit.” We are called upon
to shine brightly by doing all that we can do to develop kindness and mercy in
our lives.
Sometimes when I’m in our cat
shelter doing chores in the evening I turn the radio to WJMJ. They broadcast a series of prayers and
chants, which often include, “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have
mercy.” We call upon Him to be merciful
toward us. Should we not model this
attitude in our dealings with the animals if we are to be Christ-like? The cats even react to this portion of the programming. They become very quiet and peaceful, lie down
on their beds, and actually bow their heads and close their eyes. It looks for all the world as if they are
praying.
Writer Henry Beston concluded
in The Outermost House that, “We need another and a wiser and perhaps a
more mystical concept of animals. Remote
from universal nature, and living by complicated artifice, man in civilization
surveys the creature through the glass of his knowledge and sees thereby a
feather magnified, and the whole image in distortion. We patronize them for their incompleteness,
for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err and err greatly. For the animal shall not be measured by
man. In a world older and more complete
than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the
senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never
hear. They are not brethren; they are
not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of
life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth.”
I will close, therefore, with
this prayer by Virginia Fuller:
Almighty God, we entreat Thee
on behalf of Thy animal creation. We ask
Thy protection for all creatures that dwell upon the Earth. Help us to know before it is too late that in
destroying them we diminish the beauty of Thy handiwork, the fullness of Thy
world, the sanctity of all life, and most of all, ourselves. Bless all who work for the common cause of
protecting those of Thy creatures, who have no voice, but cries of pain, no
words but those spoken on their behalf.
O Lord, teach us gentleness and peace, and spread the mantle of Thy
compassion over all Thy creatures, that they may be refreshed and
comforted. Amen.