Love Your Neighbor As Yourself

Recently we hosted my friend and mentor, Laurel Dykstra, who did a program for us related to their book Wildlife Congregations (you can read a review of the book here). Laurel spent a year immersing themself in local wildlife gatherings to connect more deeply with nonhuman kin and to become more conscious of these deep inter-species relationships and their writing about it is powerful and compelling. (The video of the presentation will be up on the Spiritus YouTube channel soon, and you can always order their book if you’d like a deeper dive!)

The nonhuman world. Interspecies relationships. What do you think of when you hear these words?

Once I started paying more attention to words like these, I found that the nonhuman world shows up A LOT in our scriptural tradition.

Take our first reading from Hosea 14. In a very short passage, God starts by inviting Israel to return to their roots and says, “I will heal their defection…I will love them freely.” The scripture writer then goes on to tell us that those who return will:

blossom like the lily; strike root like the Lebanon cedar and put forth [their] shoots. [Their] splendor shall be like the olive tree and [they will have] fragrance like the Lebanon cedar. They shall blossom like the vine, and [have] fame like the wine of Lebanon.

God concludes by saying, “I am like a verdant cypress tree – Because of me you bear fruit!”

The lily. The Lebanon cedar. The olive tree. The vine. The cypress tree. All of these are given as examples as what we might become like when we “return” to God’s ways. These are what we will be like when our defection is healed.

I am sure that back in the time of Hosea, the amount of plant life and wildlife was so great that people could easily relate to all of these references. We know, however, that by the time of Jesus, for example, most of the Lebanon cedars had already disappeared. Maybe the same was true for other trees and plants that Hosea mentioned.

Part of what Laurel spoke to us about was the phenomenon called the ‘shifting baseline syndrome.’ This is the phenomenon that each generation is living with less biodiversity and that we are growing accustomed to fewer and fewer species. In a post on X, @BiodiversitySoS says, “Unless you have the time to read lots of scientific research, it’s easy to not realise just how much has been lost, so you accept what you see as normal. This is called ‘shifting baseline syndrome’ and it’s one of the biggest obstacles to widespread & urgent action” on behalf of climate change and species loss.

Laurel also talked to us about the word “eremocine” which was coined by biologist E.O. WIlson to name the age we are living in as the “Age of Loneliness” where our dominance as a species has led to a decimation of other species and an existential loneliness.

Our way of life costs other species their lives – leaving us more and more alone in a less complex world.

In today’s gospel from Mark 12 one of the scholars of the law came up to Jesus and asked him what the greatest commandment was. The man seemed genuinely curious what Jesus might say. Jesus, of course, first quotes what is known in Judaism as the “shema” (from Deut. 6:4), “Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is Lord alone! You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.” Jesus then says that the second greatest is, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” These are the two greatest he says.

I was always taught to read passages like Mark 12 from a human perspective. My “neighbor” was a person. I was never taught to think of Lebanon cedars as my neighbors. Or white tail deer. Or dragonflies. Or salamanders. There are a lot of reasons why this happened, but the reality is that our neighbors have been disappearing at alarming rates for decades, and many of us are just waking up to this reality.

There is still much that we can do about it – individually and collectively – but we’ve also already crossed some thresholds that we may not be able to recover from. Part of the “work” of this age is letting the grief we feel urge us to meaningful action and reconnection with our world in ways that let us truly recognize and respect our “neighbors as ourselves.”

Hosea 14 concludes today by saying, “Let the one who is wise understand these things; let the one who is prudent know them.”For today, just sit quietly with God. Reflect on our world and all of the species that you come into contact with – just in a single day. These are our kin and we are theirs. God CAN heal our defection but only if we commit to a return. What might it mean to love them with all our heart and soul? What in our life might need to change to make this so? Just let God and our world speak to you.