The Divine Life of Animals [Part 1]

To my long-lost readers, I offer my deepest and most shameless apologies. We are rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of my last posting. In an attempt (yet again) to eradicate what--to anyone who has sought after any semi-regular writing regimen--seems to be an unyielding tendency towards silence and failure, I have decided to undertake a book review of sorts. My ultimate goal however is not critical, but conversational. After a period of digestion (or gestation, as the case may be), I will simply dump my thoughts into the void you and I, dear reader, currently occupy. Onward:

The Divine Life of Animals: One Man's Quest to Discover Whether the Souls of Animals Live On

Introduction

Disregarding its title, my purposes in reading this book have nothing to do with the kind of New Age, All Dogs Go to Heaven, Hollywood Hinduism it seems to imply. I picked up this book because it has long been my conviction that something is missing from the standard way of talking about animals and the created world we share with them. Even as I say that, it strikes me that in typical contemporary discourse on any topic related to nature, the idea that we actually share anything with animals is a foreign one. By this I mean more than the human choice to share one's household with an animal, or tossing seeds and breadcrumbs at a few of the wild ones, or even our moral obligation to protect their natural habitat. What I am interested in exploring is the spiritual identity of all created things; an identity we share in communion with as co-participants in the self-revelation of God. This book may or may not go into these things, but I hope at least it will be a springboard.

In this opening chapter, Tompkins brings up two interesting points of discussion. The first is a very brief exploration of the word nephesh as it appears in the Hebrew scriptures. This word is a rich, multi-faceted word which, when translated into English, is flattened out as the fairly generic word soul. He illustrates that, for the ancients, one's nephesh was not an etherial thing or essential meta-self which goes away to Heaven when we die. "Indeed, our nephesh is what makes each of us who we are" (9). In Genesis, God breathes nephesh into the nose of Adam, creating the first human. Tompkins is fairly successful here in helping break down our cultural resistance to an idea such as the animal soul. I also think this enriched conceptualization of what soul is can be helpful in our own self-understanding as image-bearers. Scripture is very clear that God is not simply interested in 'soul-winning' or taking us away from our bodies. Our physical bodies are to be redeemed, as they themselves are essential to our identity. Nephesh, the soul, is not a removed spirit that eventually flees elsewhere; it is the breath in our lungs, the blood in our veins, and our eternal identity as living things. That being said, I think more discussion is needed in regards to whether or not there is a distinction between our identity as created (living) things, and personhood.

The second point brought up in the introduction I found noteworthy addresses the transition between the child's innocent emotional/spiritual connection to and sense of wonderment towards creation--particularly animals--and the removed, informed coldness of adulthood toward the same. "'Children often identify with animals in ways that amuse and frustrate us...spending emotion with an abandon that adults, with their thrifty investments and prudent decisions, cannot afford'" (11). Tompkins gives several examples of ways in which children, who know about death, and see it in various forms in media frequently, are often struck by the horror of death seemingly for the first time when it is related to animals. As a child, the author was moved by an experience attempting to feed a starving dog in Mexico and being met with reproach by his mother who saw his actions as wasteful. He had surely seen hungry people before, but I think most of us would agree children have a unique relationship with animals and seem to have an intuitive inclination towards sharing life with them in a way that is lost with age. I resonated with this discussion myself. I don't recall the name of the movie or much of what it was about, but the important point is that the story revolved around a real, not cartoon otter. As I remember it, the otter is accidentally killed in a creek by a human digging with a shovel. For months afterward, maybe even years (my parents would know better), my bed-time prayers included, "Help me forget the otter movie." There's no doubt in my mind I had encountered death before in movies or playing cowboys and Indians, but there was something about an emotional connection I made with that animal that made the reality of death hit me for the first time: Things die. When they die, they're not here anymore. When I, with my child's mind tried to see where they would be after that, all I saw was a blank space. The idea of nothingness scared me more than any monster or nightmare.

Potable Quotable: 

"We patronize [animals] for their incompleteness, for their tragic fate of having taken form so far below ourselves. And therein we err, and greatly err. For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendor and travail of the earth" (12). -Henry Beston