During a tedious afternoon in a doctor’s waiting room, I flipped through an old National Geographic — from March of 1988 to be exact. One article contained a remarkable photo of a manta ray surrounded by swimmers. The caption has been haunting me ever since:
Gliding like a stealth bomber, a manta ray is anything but evasive with snorkelers at Flower Garden Banks. . . . When swimmers remain unagressive, manta rays often become curious and even nuzzle up to be stroked.
Manta rays can be huge — up to 22 or 23 feet long — and can weigh up to 3000 pounds. What intrigues me is why this huge, harmless creature likes us — or would seem to. Does it know something we don’t?
There is something mysterious in the relationship between human beings and other creatures. The relationship between people and dogs, of course, is an ancient one. Then there are dolphins, which have been known to save drowning human beings. Plutarch, who lived around 47 – 120 AD, wrote, “To the dolphin alone nature has given that which the best philosophers seek: friendship for no advantage.” He goes on to say that while the dolphin has no need of our help, “it is a genial friend,” and does offer us help in our need.
Our relationship with creatures other than these may be even less fathomable, yet it is not only real but essential. St. Ignatius of Loyola, in his Spiritual Exercises, speaks of the cry of wonder of the person who becomes aware of his or her sin in the light of God’s mercy — mercy seen in this instance through creation: “an exclamation of wonder . . . as I reflect on all creatures and how they have let me live and have preserved me in life.” In fact, I have been surrounded by love, without even knowing it: the angels have prayed for me, Ignatius says, and the saints as well. Then Ignatius adds the phrase: “and the heavens, sun, moon, stars, and elements; fruits, birds, fish, and animals” [Sp. Ex. 60].
What a strange passage! It is as if Ignatius — along with dogs and dolphins and manta rays, too, perhaps — knew something about creation that most of us miss entirely. And maybe what they know is that all of us are in this together. As Paul says in Romans 8, “the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” (By “children of God,” he means us.) And even more, “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God.” The other creatures of God somehow share with us in our imperfection and suffering, and share with us in our redemption.
It seems to me, however, that we too often ignore this kinship when we make decisions that affect the earth and our environment. How sad — sad for our mother the earth (to borrow the expression of St. Francis of Assisi), sad for our sisters and brothers the creatures inhabiting it. Sad, too, for us, since our fate is in some mysterious way tied up together.