"All Creatures of Our God and King" 2: St. Francis Not a Nature Lover

(Note: The following didn't actually publish in my church's bulletin, because I decided not to play the hymn that Sunday.)

This hymn from St. Francis was a brilliant departure from the pantheism (nature-worship) of his day--instructive for us in a day when paganism is alive and well in parts of the United States, and when we ourselves feel a proper yearning to be in closer harmony with the nature God made.

The original lyrics included addresses not merely to Mother Earth but to Brother Fire and Sister Water, from a Christian perspective. G.K. Chesterton’s marvelous biography, St. Francis of Assisi, brings this into focus ([San Franciso: Ignatius Press, 1986], 81-87; first published in 1923):

“St. Francis was not a lover of nature. … The phrase implies accepting the material universe as a vague environment, a sort of sentimental pantheism.… Now for St. Francis nothing was ever in the background. … He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost a sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man. …

“Though in some ways [All Creatures of Our God and King] is as simple and straightforward as a ballad, there is a delicate instinct of differentiation in it. … It was not for nothing that he called fire his brother, fierce and gay and strong, and water his sister, pure and clear and inviolate. … St. Francis was…the founder of a new folk-lore; but he could distinguish his mermaids from his mermen….

“[When he was going blind, he was told the solution was to cauterize his eye.] When they took the brand from the furnace, he rose as with an urbane gesture and spoke as to an invisible presence: ‘Brother Fire, God made you beautiful and strong and useful; I pray you be courteous with me.’

“If there be any such thing as the art of life, it seems to me that such a moment was one of its masterpieces. Not to many poets has it been given to remember their own poetry at such a moment, still less to live one of their own poems. … For Francis there was no drug; and for Francis there was plenty of pain. But his first thought was one of his first fancies from the songs of his youth. He remembered the time when a flame was a flower, only the most glorious and gaily coloured of the flowers in the
garden of God; and when that shining thing returned to him in the shape of an instrument of torture, he hailed it from afar like an old friend,calling it by the nickname which might most truly be called its Christian name.”

Creator Spirit, as we sing this hymn, minister to us; help us to properly name the many creatures You have made and to understand and rejoice in Your purposes for them. By our seeing all nature in Your light, help us to minister to creation, to care for it in the way You desire; may we have patience with its limitations and happiness in its strengths. May we become living testimonies to the care and delight You take in creation, in all the particular, different things, and to the hope we have in Christ of Your restoring it in the new heavens and new earth. Alleluia, alleluia!