The peaceable kingdom: Animals as parables in the virtues of Saint Macarius
2003; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 85; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2163-6214
Autores Tópico(s)Religion, Ecology, and Ethics
ResumoLittle animals from cartoons, talking rabbits, doggies, squirrels, as well as ladybugs, bees, grasshoppers. They have as much in common with real animals as our notions of the world have with the real world. Think of this, and tremble. Czeslaw Milosz, Road-Side Dog Blame it on Walt Disney. Our cartoons have sentimentalized-and therefore falsified-the animal kingdom.1 Think of Bambi and Thumper. Even more, think of all the cute little talking animals that serve as comic relief in recent Disney films, tossing off one-liners like stand-up comedians or the grave diggers in Hamlet.2 But, in fact, these animals are not like the grave diggers who, after all, are digging a grave: Yorick's skull reminds us of the ever-present darkness and rotten state of things in Denmark, a condition found all too often in the human soul also. But, we should remember, Bambi's mother gets killed-by a human being armed with a rifle. Although both Bambi and Hamlet end peaceably, it is peace bloodied by murder, and the calm at the end of each seems forced upon the narrative. Lasting peace, it appears, is not to be found, at least not in our secular imaginings. The monks of late antique Egypt, it is safe to say, lived much closer to nature than we do, insulated as we are by concrete and asphalt and suburban sprawl. But the occasional mountain lion attacks in Orange County, California, remind us that wild animals are not as safely removed from us as we sometimes think. Animals, let us admit it, still have the ability to terrorize us. Godzilla and King Kong and the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park are not just figments of the popular imagination but are denizens from our collective unconscious that uneasily remind us of our primeval past. The snake in the garden, then, is many things: real and present danger, archetype, and theological symbol. An event from the Life of Saint Macarius of Alexandria reminds us of this: Another time he dug a well in the middle of some reeds. There was an asp sleeping there that no one knew about. That asp was a killer and it was hiding in the rushes on account of the cold. When the sun rose, the earth warmed up. The old man came and stood on the earth without knowing about the asp. The asp was injured and bit the old man on the leg. He caught the asp alive in his hands and said to it, What harm have I done to you that you attempt to eat me? God has not given you authority to do this; therefore it's your evil nature to do so. I will do to you according to your own evil nature [see Gen. 3:14]. And the old man seized the two lips of the asp in his two hands, pulled them apart, and tore it in half down to its tail. He left it in two pieces and in this way the old man did not suffer at all but was like someone who has been stuck by the point of a reed.3 The violent reaction of Saint Macarius is disquieting, even repulsive: it reminds us of our inherently violent natures.4 Even more unsettling is Macarius's apparent belief that his violence has divine sanction, a creed that has wrought untold misery down the centuries, in all faiths. But we need to keep in mind that for Macarius the asp was not just a potentially lethal adversary; because of Adam and Eve's fall and the serpent's role in bringing about their ruin, and all of humanity's, snakes came to represent the Devil himself. For Macarius, that asp may very well have been the Devil incarnate (see Gen. 3).5 As a child of the fall, Macarius lives yet in a violent world. But other early monastic texts hold out the hope of a different, nonviolent, world, one that restores the prelapsarian harmony between human beings and animals. Within a larger monastic context, what is most striking about Macarius's encounter with the asp is how unrepresentative it is; such violent confrontations between man and beast are very rare in early monastic literature. Although monks lived in close proximity with spiders, snakes, scorpions, jackals, wolves, and lions, most of them appeared to have lived quite peaceably with their animal companions in the desert. …
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