83. On Providence and Wildlife. 

Dearly Beloved

My first intimations of the wonder of creation were evoked as I leaned upon a farm gate with my mother whilst she extolled the beauty of the English countryside. Then there was the Benedicite , omnia opera during Lenten matins, in which, (based on Psalm 148) all of creation joins in celebration and praise of God's providence. In this letter I wanted to celebrate God's providence and write "Consider the lilies of the field... even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6; 28/29) but working with wildlife it became apparent things were not quite so simple; indeed a part of creation is brutal.

Once whilst standing in a river up my thighs in its water, there alighted on my arm the most glorious, large, green, dragonfly whose body sparkled in the sunlight. After I had admired it for some seconds the creature took wing and flew in a circle around me and then alighted back on my arm clutching a horse fly that it had detected with its huge compound eyes and caught in the air using the power and agility of its four, strong, wings. Once back on my arm, it bit off both of the horse fly's wings at the base and let them flutter down into the water. Its prey secured, it then commenced to eat the rest of its body. It was by any standard a highly technical operation carried out with consummate ease and a total lack of compassion.

When I worked in the desert mountains of Oman I was impressed by the food chain at the small waterholes where animals went when desperate to find water. Butterflies lined the steep edges of the rock descending into the water pools, but many of those that drank standing on more level ground had holes in their hind wings where toads had attacked them. At night highly venomous carpet vipers would emerge and eat the toads. In turn the vipers were preyed upon by short toed eagles and furthermore, vipers and eagles shared different life stages of the same gut parasite. The viper, is celebrated in Genesis 3; 14 as the serpent, the great deceiver. Carpet vipers inject a blood poison which produces discolouration and bruises at the only place these small snakes can bite a walking person, the foot. The main victims in Oman were the girls and young women driving goats to the waterholes early in the morning when the vipers would lie, rendered inactive by the cool of the day, upon the gravel which they so closely resembled. The local tribesmen I worked with would kill these vipers on sight so recapitulating the words of Genesis as God addresses the serpent "he (man) will strike thine head and you shall bruise his heel".

On the other hand I still feel a great fellowship with the wasps and hornets with whom I shared the waterholes. Sometimes, to obtain water, it was necessary to scramble across or “chimney” between rock walls echoing with the humming of hundreds of these insects drinking water or preparing to do so. The hornets would take off with a huge whirring of their wings and gradually rise in the air weighed down by the water they carried back to their nests. I was never attacked by these insects, I was just another thirsty creature like them, dependent for my survival on water. Ever since, I have respected them and eating outside in summer in Europe, hornets and wasps are welcome at our family table and our children have been taught to be aware of them but not afraid, and to share food with them, for they, like us, are social creatures. too.

In my youth people still regarded themselves as having to overcome and struggle against "nature". Only recently have we begun to realise how mankind's carelessness has caused depletion of a wondrously varied creation upon which we depend and with which we are infinitely intertwined.

Within God's providence we are one of many types of creature but surely we are all glad to say “Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created” (even if he chose to use the mechanism of Darwinian evolution to carry out his commands!). (Ps 148; 5)

Peace,

Paul.

Completed:15 August 2020.


Photo: Paul Munton.
A Marbled white butterfly Melanargia galathea supping on the glowing cauldron of a knapweed flower (Centaurea sp.).








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