When the tsunami swept away people and towns and villages in 2004, it was the animals who knew about it first. Elephants ran for higher ground, flamingos abandoned low-lying nesting arounds, dogs refused to go outdoors. While the technological early warning systems either failed or weren’t there in the first place, it was the animals who knew.
This week I have been thinking about wisdom, because in church we’re reading a part of the Bible known as Proverbs. Proverbs is all about wisdom. What it is, how to get it. And what kind of life one must live, in order to be wise.
It seems to me that animals possess a kind of wisdom, a kind of knowledge, that few humans have access to. Animals have this ability to know, in an instant, and respond. According to one eye-witness in 2004, buffaloes on a beach in Thailand pricked up their ears and gazed out to sea, and then straightaway turned and ran up a nearby hill. Minutes later, the tsunami arrived. The animals knew. Instantly, en masse. And they acted. Surely this is wisdom.
We can contrast this wisdom with the sheer stupidity of humans. The humans who know full well the catastrophic impacts of climate change, which are unfolding around us now in the form of floods and fires, of winds and rain, or drought and animal die-offs. We are not talking about subtle vibrations in the earth’s atmosphere here. We are talking about full-blown climate catastrophe that is happening before our eyes, and an extinction list that has humans on it. Yet it is business as usual for us humans.
Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice.
At the busiest corner she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks.
Wisdom is right there, screaming at us in the street. She is not being subtle; she is not being gentle about it. Maybe it’s in the form of a bird screeching or a dog crying. Maybe the sound of wisdom is a howling wind or a rushing, overflowing storm water drain.
Wisdom is crying out. We are idiots not to listen to her.
Words by Rev Andreana
Image by Juanlu Fajardo from Pixabay
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