Speaking To Pigs
I’m loving this series of devotionals by Richard Rohr on St. Francis and nature as a mirror – how about you? One of my favorite things to do is pray and meditate outdoors. This practice isn’t something that is necessarily embraced in Evangelical circles and I often feel like an outsider and wonder if I am on the right path. As one of my friends said recently in response to the articles I have written on prayer, “I have no problem with resting in the sweetness and the light. But I don’t call it prayer.” I’m still stinging from that one in spite of the ignorance of that statement.
Unfortunately, when we miss the beauty of all God has created, we miss out on his transforming power and calling (see below).
By Richard Rohr
The Irish poet Galway Kinnell describes Francis as “re-teaching things their loveliness.” In his poem “St. Francis and the Sow,” Francis tells a large female pig through words and touch and blessing that she is indeed beautiful—she just can’t see it. Most of us cannot see it either, unfortunately.
We all have to be mirrors like this, not just for nature, but for one another—and especially for those who cannot see the bud of possibility within them, those who hate themselves, those who’ve been abused, those who’ve been imprisoned, those who think they are no good, those who’ve been discriminated against—anyone who feels unworthy in one way or another.
Those are the ones that we have to positively mirror like Francis mirrored the sow. We must “re-teach all things their loveliness.” That could be your one and only life calling!
From In the Footsteps of Francis: Awakening to Creation webcast
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