As Kingfishers Catch Fire
My husband and I like to watch the birds in our suburban garden. We recognise the different species by their shape, size, colour, calls and flight patterns. We have densified our garden with native shrubs and made the birdbaths attractive to them with clean water and well-chosen positions.
I have planted grasses and shrubs that provide nectar, seed, shelter and flowers that attract insects for the birds to eat. We have installed nesting boxes for Spotted Pardalotes and Crimson Rosellas. Our compost provides good food for the soil and we avoid using poison.
As I observe the birds, insects and lizards, I think of Australian theologian Denis Edwards (1943 – 2019). He was a Professor at the Australian Catholic University. Its website states that ‘from the mid-1980s, Edwards’ abiding concern for the life of faith led him to focus on two sets of related questions: the relationship between science and theology, and a theological response to the ecological crisis.’ 1
In his book How God Acts – Creation, Redemption and Special Divine Action, Edwards proposed that there is reason to hope that animals participate in resurrection life in Christ’. 2 He stated that ‘each animal is known and loved by God, is the dwelling place of the Creator Spirit, participates in redemption in Christ, and abides forever in the living memory of God.’ 3
Our hope for the resurrection of animals, he wrote, ‘is not our imagination but the God revealed in Jesus.’4
I am grateful that Edwards had the vision and courage to develop his theology to include animals in God’s love.
English poet and Jesuit priest Gerard Manly Hopkins (1844 -1889) impels us to appreciate this love in his poem As Kingfishers Catch Fire:
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell’s
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.
God creates every ‘me’ out of love. Franciscan philosopher-theologian Blessed John Duns Scotus (1266-1308) ‘… taught extensively on the absolute uniqueness of each act of creation. His doctrine of haecceity is derived from haec, the Latin word for “this.”
Duns Scotus said the absolute freedom of God allows God to create, or not to create, each creature. Its existence means God has positively chosen to create that creature, precisely as it is.
Each creature is thus not merely one member of a genus and species, but a unique aspect of the infinite Mystery of God. God is continuously choosing each created thing specifically to exist, moment by moment.’ 5
Edwards’, Hopkins’ and Duns Scotus’ belief in God’s loving creation of nature and its eternal union with God was expressed by Publius Virgil (70-19 BC) centuries ago in his poem Georgics:
Some find God in all things,
See Him in Earth, in sea’s wide ways, in lofty
heaven’s arch:
All animals, all flocks and herds, yea men from
Him also –
Each (they say) its thin rivulet draws from the
Divine Stream
At birth, and thither each will flow back. 6
I find it awesome that so long ago, Publius Virgil presented the concept that ‘all animals’ are from God and that ‘… each will flow back’ into the ‘Divine Stream.’
This is just as Edwards set out – that animals will ‘participate in resurrection life in Christ’. 7
But there is patchy understanding of ecology and the interests of animals while we share the Earth with them. Yesterday, my husband and I took my eldest sister to a winery in the country to have a coffee out the back. The terraced area overlooks a vast scene below and beyond of naturally wooded hills guiding the Murrumbidgee River in its winding course.
I had remembered the atmosphere as rustic, but a massive change has taken place in the few years since we last visited. The land leading to and surrounding the restaurant is encumbered by countless, oversized rusted sculptures of highly stylised butterflies, deer (an introduced pest of serious concern in Australia), flowers and other huge objects. The view to the river is now mediated by a large white steel circle in the middle of the rear garden. Couples stand in front of it and have their photographs taken against the backdrop of the view.
English box hedges line the long, new concrete entrance road and the narrow garden beds that run beside the paths between the carpark, restaurant and rear viewing area. The only other plant is also an exotic – a flowering blossom shrub that at this time of year in New South Wales, Australia is bare. It has been planted in lines behind the box hedge. When it flowers in Spring, the shrubs will provide a pretty pink backdrop for wedding photos.
However, I longed for a landscape design that used Australian plants and brought the tenor of the surrounding Australian landscape into close view by a careful selection of plants. It could provide flowers, scents, softness, depth, density and structure and ‘marry’ sensitively and aesthetically with the gum trees, shrubs and hills all around the winery.
Such a landscape would be habitat for Australian butterflies, insects and birds and other fauna. A section for box hedge backed by cherry blossoms could have been included as a compromise for wedding parties who want that style for their photographs. But to scrape away all the Australian flora and put in foreign plants – unsuited to the climate – reinforces the message, more than 200 years old now, that Australian fauna and flora are unimportant, unattractive and of low worth.
The winery is a high-end established business that attracts locals and visitors and hosts expensive weddings and other functions. The view is one of its drawcards but the land and its creatures are almost denigrated by the landscaping choices that have been made. This winery with its social status will continue to influence attitudes about plants and consequently animals for years to come.
May all our eyes be open to the kingfishers and dragonflies.
Lucy Bastecky
22 July 2024
- https://staff.acu.edu.au/our_university/news/2019/march/vale_professor_denis_edwards accessed 18 July 2024 ↩︎
- How God Acts – Creation, Redemption and Special Divine Action (2010) ATF Press, Hindmarsh, South Australia, p. 165 ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- Accessed 17 June 2024 Irreplaceable “Thisness” — Center for Action and Contemplation (cac.org) ↩︎
- The Divine Love, A Collection of beautiful and spiritual verse in praise of the Divine love, chosen by Marilyn Stacy (1982) The Currawong Press Pty Ltd, Milson’s Point, New South Wales, p. 11 ↩︎
- How God Acts – Creation, Redemption and Special Divine Action (2010) ATF Press, Hindmarsh, South Australia, p. 165 ↩︎
