By Rev. Katie Hudak

Just a yesterday we celebrated and remembered St. Francis on October 4, 2023. St. Francis has been called the most loved saint of all history, and the one whose example or ideas have been the least followed! We all know St. Francis because of his love for all animals. In fact, many of us bring our pets and our farm or ranch animals to be blessed at our churches or by our ministers around this time of year because of that great love that Francis had for all animals.

All of us have a great love of our house pets and our working animals. We buy them special food and treats. We take them to the vet when they are not well, or as a preventative measure. We buy them toys to play with. Some of us even buy them clothes to dress up in when it is cold outside or to celebrate the different holiday seasons.

Reflecting on our love of our pets and the love of St. Francis for all of God’s creation got me to thinking about a book that I have recently read. It is called: An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong. It is a book based on a lot of scientific observation of animals, critters, and even insects. Experiments with the animals seem to be non-invasive, so no harm is done to any of the subjects. It is a fascinating work, because it helps us to understand that animals and insects do not see, do not experience, do not feel the world in the way that we do. It makes the critters much less like humans and helps us to experience the world as they experience it. This book has taken my own love of God’s creation to new levels. This work makes me so much more aware of God in everything around me.

In fact, I saw a cockroach a little while back, and because of this book, I let it live, which I normally wouldn’t do! Well, I let it live until I remembered the experience of a cockroach flying into my hair in the middle of the night while living outside of the United States! Forgive me St. Francis!

The point is, however, for us to experience the other creatures that inhabit this planet with us in a new way. It is for us humans to experience God’s creation in a whole new way. Let’s keep in mind this week that the rest of God’s creation doesn’t necessarily see things the way that we do, and what we can perhaps do to honor that creation through God’s eyes, who made them perfectly as they are, and not through our own.