Homily prep 28OT-C: St. Louis Zoo!

    A spiritual director recently instructed me to go to the zoo... it's a long story, but I finally did it today.

   It seemed like a wise thing to do in preparation for this weekend:  the first reading from 2 Kings 5 retells the story of Naaman,an Aramean general who came to Israel at the advice of a humble slave girl to seek healing from his embarrassing case of leprosy.  He encountered a very suspicious king upon arriving in Israel, who thought that Naaman was using his visit and this cover story to simply reconnoiter the land for an upcoming invasion.  Elisha intercedes before the king and takes up the case, however.  Elisha tells the general to wash in the local waters--a piece of advice the general takes badly, for "are not the rivers of Damascus, the Abana and the Pharpar [all rivers back home], not better than all the waters of Israel?  Could I not wash in them and be cleansed?"  It seems foolish to do follow what appears to be arbitrary advice of this prophet (ironically, in ancient Israel the word for 'prophet', nab'i, is sometimes translated as 'madman').  After all, Naaman went through all the effort and risk to trek across the desolate lands with his retinue to come to this 'man of God', and he expected some razzle-dazzle.  But he was simply given the instruction to wash?!

   But God had a particular plan for Naaman in that particular time and place, which could not be satisfied elsewhere or in another context.  Maybe it was rooted in this response to that little slave girl (the most insignificant of figures measured against the glory of an accomplished general).  God was not looking for 'faith' so much as perhaps merely his humble 'openness' to the little slave girl (a symbol of the vulnerable nation of Israel?) whose encouragement to see the prophet was simply an invitation to an encounter with the living God.  From this encounter, Naaman found healing, he came to encounter the God of Israel, and he even found the desire to cart home some of the local soil that he, too, could worship this new-found God righteously in his own land.



A capybara!  See a previous reference
to their 'non-meat' status here.

   And so, I went to the zoo today.  There are pictures of me having been there as a little one... way before I even really have any memory of it... so it's been more than 35+ years since I have been at the St. Louis Zoo.

   My trip today was yet another step in simply learning how to 'be'.  To encounter the world on its own terms, and marvel in the glory of all that is around, without carrying my mental or written checklists of things to do everywhere I go.  The goal was not to see the whole zoo, or even to be particularly 'productive' today, but to be amused with whatever came up, to observe the behavior of all the human animals, to enjoy some ice cream, to simply to 'be' and let that be praise to God in itself.  I would never have gone out and done that on my own when busy with a parish and an office.  There was always something that needed to get done there--something that needed to get checked off or taken care of.  But I went to the zoo today.  And I did it at the advice of another 'man of God' who was not looking for another blood-letting demonstration of faith, but a simple 'openness' to what the time and space and environment might provide.

Rhinoceros

   I'm not sure how successful I was in my 'non-mission' 'mission'.  Very quickly, I was noticing that I was going by every pen and trying to find and take a picture of the animal... it was the middle of a warm afternoon, and most of the animals were laying around looking dead.   But once getting a photo, I found myself efficiently moving on to the next pen, and the next, and the next.  In time, I found myself also becoming annoyed by parents who were dragging their (usually little) kids from pen to pen to pen also, not allowing them to simply 'be', but instead appearing to be running on an invisible, mental checklist or schedule.  You see, kids, even when there is a giant elephant 50 yards away in all its glory, will still tend to sit down on the ground and play in the dirt, or pick at wads of chewed gum, or kick rocks along the walkway, or such.... and when they are distracted from these simple joys, that's when they cry and fuss, making their parents all the more pushy, and so on and so on.  Kids are the 'pro's at 'simply being', except that they have parents who tend to slowly beat it out of them from a very early age--much as I would probably do with my nephews, and much as my parents probably did for me, and their parents did before them...

Hyena... but is it dead?

   So I went along, from the big outdoor exhibits to the primate house to the herpaterium.  It was a good afternoon, doing what I would not have otherwise done for myself in another place or time.  As much as I tried to be 'open', my heart was just not settled enough to encounter a great epiphany today.  But I suppose that's excuse enough to go back maybe in a week or two.  I need to practice this "simply being" thing quite a bit more.

  I suppose I could look up a professional photo of an elephant on the Internet or read about the comparative physiology of salt-water fish in an old textbook I have (it is quite interesting how they regulate osmotic balance in their tissues), I could sit in my easy chair and go anywhere in time and space with a good book, but today was simply a day at the zoo.