"And a Little Child Shall Lead Them."

Good Friday Questions

“The meaning of events in the moment of their happening is rarely the meaning that survives intact.”

Marion Woodman (Bone: Dying into Life)

          Today is Good Friday in the Christian Liturgical Calendar—the day of Jesus crucifixion. Most churches would be enacting the stations of the cross or singing the Requiem mass if we were not required to stay home. But today is quiet. If services are to be seen, they will be on-line. Mother Nature slammed on the breaks. I think she’s had it with human beings going about their business while the world burns as though they are somehow sanctified and above the frey.

          We can’t say we weren’t warned. There have been massive die-offs of animals going on for the last ten years. The honeybees we know about, because they most directly affect us through our food supply. But there have been so many others—massive die-off’s of fish across the world; multiple pandemics have killed hundreds of thousands of birds, pigs, bats, and every type of amphibian. I can’t remember when I have seen the little brown toads that used to show up by the thousands in the South in summer. Literally billions of animal deaths have occurred because of climate change.

          Mother Nature hoped that we humans would see this and take notice. She thought that we would connect the dots and see that these animal deaths were not accidental, not happenstance, or isolated. But we didn’t. At least, not enough of us sounded the alarm to counter the massive gas and oil industries interests and all the mountains of money to be made from them. In fact, Canada just announced last week, in the middle of this pandemic, that they would go ahead with the Keystone Pipeline. And our own president ordered the EPA to roll back all the environmental regulations that might protect us and the animal world.

          And so, we find ourselves in the middle of a human pandemic. And it came from— you’ve got it—bats—one of the many species decimated in the last ten years. The irony is inescapable. So far as I can tell, only the Pope has spoken out about this coronavirus pandemic as linked to our misuse of the earth. Certainly not the “leaders of the free world.”

          Do you remember the Bible story that says, “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, the calf and the young lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6) That is a description of the Messiah’s kingdom, and the little child who has tried her very best to lead us is Greta Thunberg. That's same messiah whose resurrection we so grandly celebrate at Easter. The question is, Will we listen this time? Now that the pandemic is ours, will we listen?

                                                  In the Spirit,

                                                  Jane