When the Homily is about Immunology

All Natural Ingredients

There is a war going on around us, everyday. But we never really pay it much attention. More than that...by our own definition, war crimes and all manner of atrocities are being committed, though again we rarely note them.

The war amongst animals is more easily seen when we care to look or watch TV. (8 minute video, worth watching). But the more subtle warfare, while being just as violent, is also taking place in silently around us. A vicious fight for some to absorb more of the sun and dig out more of the earth's resources than others, and the fight often involves strangling, wrestling, and burying one another, a fight to the death. It's brutality in slow motion. I've seen it with an apple tree being attacked by a menacing blackberry bush - a battle we intervened in with far more effectiveness that any UN peacekeeping force.

Nature truly is survival of the fittest, and none of really like that do we?

But I am everyday amidst people who would likely agree to the notion that the "natural" world would be a better place without humans - as if some peace and love utopia would exist without us. I'm here to argue that it most assuredly would not be a better place. Everyday (and indeed throughout all of history), without any human assistance cruelty has abounded. Species have gone extinct (and really, only one other species on the planet ever mourns for such), rape has occurred, molestation has taken place, slow and painful and horrible deaths have happened regularly and have gone utterly unnoticed or uncared about. There is no world court, no war crimes tribunal, no one to work to soften the hardness and cruelty of nature...without you and me. We step into the fray, to bring harmony and to profit from it ourselves.

Humans bring God's grace into the world, albeit imperfectly. Yes the bovines in the video linked above seek to free their calf, but the struggle is one without moral implications save genetics...except when we watch and cheer the escape and then regret the pain and horror of the animal's experience. I suspect only man knows empathy.

We tend the garden and in so doing tame the wild as we similarly tame our own passions. There is no balance in nature without us, rather there is only anarchy. We come to bring fences, like moral laws. We come to bring boundaries, and rows, and we weed and we prune. We feed and we care for and are in return cared for ourselves. We are stewards in the truest sense of the word. And when we dispatch an animal, we do so swiftly and as painlessly as we can because of our empathy - it is a stark contrast to the fate of most animals who find their way onto a dinner plate in the "natural" world (see video again). We tame. And in a way, we baptize the natural world. I suggest it is not dissimilar to the blessing we ask our clergy to bestow upon us and the elements and things around us. Yes, we are priests too, and weeding the garden or caring for the chicken can indeed be an especially sacred duty. of course what in life isn't sacred, save that which we must confess?

Of course, the more responsibility you bear, the more damage you can do. Either through negligence or through abuse. But neither is a good option. The natural world needs the natural priesthood, just as surely as we need THE Church and her Bridegroom.

VDH says it better than me:

Man, like his trees and vines, is not at birth a kind, benevolent, or humane creature...Take away custom, religion, and law - take away his graft - and he is just as liable to eat, torture, or rape his brethren...So, the spiny wild-root stock of the plum, the exuberant underbrush of the peach, the ueless myriad of tiny second-growth grape bunches are like the passions and appetities of man himself, which must at all costs be pruned, suckered, and thinned if he is to remain civilized man...Arboriculture and viticulture teach the farmer that the beautiful and powerful life force is, after all, wild, beautifully and powerfully not nice. Often the wild root is stronger, more impressive in its dash and bold honesty than the cultivated. It even hold a dangerous and perverse attraction for the pampered and the tended. The polished writer, the smooth-handed academic, poet, and actor are especially prone to its allure, and sometimes wish to dabble safely with the weed. Be careful, you refined shoots above the graft, of your wild, strong, alluring - and savage - roots below.

The farmer, as civilization itself, stands foremost, must stand preeminently, between nature and the abyss. The agrarian must view his neighbor, his own kin - himself - with caution, should his pruning and cultivation fail. The graft of refinement onto raw energy is fragile, and it needs our constant surveillance, our steady work, so that it will not break and let our root grow free. And thus we all really do need the farmer, alas, to warn us of the peril of a powerful and beautiful and often not nice natural world that is everywhere - and in us.