First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

The Easter of the Old Gods

There are some stories that you just know aren't going to end well. Kamunyak's story is like that. It is such a strange, improbable incident that it has the quality of myth, and like any real Easter story, the tragedy is built in from the start. It came to me, as such provocative, transformative moments often do, in the context of a vision quest, though I didn't realize that's what it was at the time. Silly of me, because the traditional ingredients were there; I just didn't recognize them.

Several weeks ago, I went to Florida, to preach at the installation of my good friend and seminary classmate, Kate Rohde, as the new minister at the UU Congregation of the Palm Beaches. It was a beautiful event; the climate was what they called "chamber of commerce weather," Kate, newly married as well as newly installed, was glowing; the folks were delighted with her and with me; the music was exquisite; the installation ceremony was moving, everybody meant what they said, and my sermon was well received. When the evening was over, Kate and I grabbed a quick bite to eat, and she dropped me back at the hotel, where a member of the host committee was to pick me up the next morning and take me to the airport. Tired and happy, emotionally and physically replete, alone and feeling just a tad homesick, I thought about the music Sunday I had missed here at FUS, realized that I had no computer to access my e-mail, and decided to turn on the TV and check the news before I went to bed. I came across the midst of a program about elephants on the Animal Planet channel, and thought I would watch the rest and see if at the end I could buy the tape for my father, who loves elephants. By that time, I knew, it would be quite late, and I would be ready to go to sleep. Thus it was that in a state of lingering spiritual arousal, in an unfamiliar setting, slightly lonely and drowsy, I was presented with a mythic vision, by way of TV, on Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom. The program that followed the elephants simply captivated me, from the opening teaser to the final credits, and left me shaken to the core, wakened, transported, opened, filled with that wonder and sorrow that is not for one's own little life, but a response to the whole terrifying bargain of existence; weeping with what some have called 'lacrimae rerum'; the tears of the universe, the tears that are in all things.

The episode of 'Wild Kingdom' was about Kamunyak, a young lioness in the Samburu wildlife reserve in northern Kenya, and it was both compelling and unbearable to watch, because from the very beginning, I said to myself, "This has to end badly," - and yet, I could not bring myself to look away. The name "Kamunyak" means "the blessed one," a name given to the lioness by the local Samburu natives, who first noticed her. Lions, as you may know, are the most social of the big cats; the females in particular both hunt and raise their young in cooperative communities, usually of relatives - mothers, daughters, grandmothers and aunts - with males guarding the pride's territory, sharing food, and mating, but not generally participating in the day to day intimacies of care or joint hunting. Kamunyak was young - barely a teenager in lion terms, too immature to have had her own cub - and she was alone. Later there would be speculation that perhaps the other members of her pride might have been poisoned or killed by ranchers on the borders of the preserve, if the lions had been preying on their livestock. No one knew for sure, but clearly something traumatic had happened to separate this lone female from her community, and make her an isolated nomad.

What first caught the attention of the natives, and caused them to name Kamunyak, and to report her to the park rangers, was that she appeared to be caring for a baby oryx antelope. Together in perfect peace, the lioness and the oryx calf wandered the plains and grasslands of Samburu, resting together in the shade during the heat of the day, occasionally nuzzling one another, trusting and trusted, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. No one who had the barest acquaintance with the poetic prophecy of Hebrew scripture could fail to be reminded of Isaiah's lyrical description:

Then the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

And leopard shall lie down with the young goat,

And the calf and the lion and the yearling fawn together;

And a little child shall lead them.

Do you not believe me? I promise you, it is there on videotape, an impossible, mythic image from western religion's oldest scripture, captured by the incurious camera in living color. The park rangers came, the naturalists and wildlife experts came, eventually even the tourists came, and they all saw, and all who saw wondered, and were strangely moved. Do you still doubt the tale? Then let me tell you one thing more, that perhaps will make it more real: They were both, slowly but surely, starving to death. Preoccupied with her small companion, Kamunyak would not hunt, and too young to digest anything but mother's milk, the calf had no source of nutrition. There is no way this story ends well.

For sixteen excruciating days, the camera crews followed Isaiah's vision brought to life around Samburu park, as the principals in the drama grew progressively weaker. Lions often do not eat every day; sometimes three or four days elapse between successful hunts, and that is built into their natures, but more than ten days with nothing but water is a dangerous hardship. Calves, of course, would be expected to nurse on their mothers' protein rich milk every few hours in the wild. At last even the disciplined naturalist observers could bear it no longer, and the park rangers left a piece of freshly killed meat within a few feet of Kamunyak. She ignored it.

Oryx antelopes are natural prey to lions; young calves, especially, are common meals on the plains of Samburu. Every once in a while, Kamunyak's nuzzling and licking of the little oryx would seems as if it might take on a sinister character, as if she had all this time been engaged in an elaborate game as a prelude to her instinctive kill. Lions will sometimes preserve prey alive so as to get it off alone somewhere, where they will not need to share the results of their hunt with other members of the community quite as soon. This underlying tension was never absent from the peaceful scene; at some point of hunger, would The Blessed One revert to the instinct of her kind, and fulfill the natural order by devouring her small companion? Or would some strange mutual devotion triumph, that in a kind of reciprocal sacrifice, they would die of hunger together? There is no way this story ends well.

It never came to that. On the sixteenth night, with the cameras running, while Kamunyak stood only a few feet away from the little calf, a strange male lion bounded out of the darkness, seized the oryx, carried it away, and ate it. For one incredible moment, while the small creature yet lived in the male lion's jaws, it seemed as though Kamunyak might challenge him, try to rescue her friend. But weakened by her own long fast, she was no match for him, and she quickly realized it; moments later, the calf was simply a strand in the web of survival that is the way of the natural world. The next day, Kamunyak killed and ate a warthog, ending her own semi-starvation.

What is there in this story that should so move us? Why should I have lain, sleepless and weeping, for hours afterwards, caught up in a profound alchemy of fathomless marveling and sorrow? I knew from the beginning that this story ends badly; not how, exactly, but badly for certain. It was fleeting, and altogether tragic, and quite literally unnatural, and yet in some way that was universal beyond even culture or language, it was a sign; something momentarily holy, something recognized by all who witnessed it as briefly blessed. The tradition of the vision quest invites us to have precisely that kind of experience; a glimpse of the natural world that holds transformative power, that marks us, and makes us forever different than we were.

As I wrestled with this awareness in my solitary retreat there at the Hampton Inn, I tried to come to some rational understanding of why these images were affecting me so strongly. "I knew it ended badly," I thought, "then why am I weeping? I weep for the tragedy that is existence, for the way that the world is set up. That lions, by the necessity of their evolutionary structure, must have flesh to live. I am sorry for the oryx, but glad about the warthog - why should that be? Warthogs have lives and fears and young to care for too; why should the warthog die that the lion may live? Yet why should the lion starve, or the wolf, or the shark, merely because nature has made them predators? I know the story ends badly; that is the truth of mortality, the way of the world. I weep because even though I know that, still in some deep, impossible, inescapable way, I want a different ending. I know there is no way the whole story doesn't end badly, and I want a different ending." And then the voice inside my head, that is sometimes wiser than my head, said distinctly, "It has another ending - in your heart." And that was when I thought that this is, oddly enough, an Easter story. For Easter is about the tragedy of the way the world works, and the stories that you know in heart-sick fascination from the beginning must inevitably end badly, and the different ending that we always want.

The story of Jesus is like that, if you read it first without the triumphal epilogue, but as it must have unfolded for the participants. The Blessed One, who seemed to offer a new possibility of human community founded upon compassionate kinship, who said that rules were meant to serve human beings, not human beings to serve rules, who advocated an ethic of mercy, forgiveness and love - for a moment, this man, this teacher and leader, seemed to be transforming the world; seemed to be bringing to life the ancient images of prophecy that no one had ever seriously expected to see in the flesh. For one shining instant, he appeared to have the moral power to outface both religious corruption and political oppression. And yet, even in the midst of his palm-strewn entry into the city, acclaimed and honored by the multitudes, you think to yourself, 'This ends badly, I just know it.' As his closest friends assure him of their enduring love and commitment at dinner in the upper room, you can only despair, for him and for them. As the betrayals and the trials unfold, you know, even if you never heard the tale before, that there is no way this can end well. Yet every year the story is told again, and every year, as the poor, broken body is finally brought down from the cross, the human spirit protests. This is the way of the world, yes; this is how power always operates; this is the human condition, and if it were not, we would be some other kind of creature altogether. We know that; and yet we cannot help wanting the ending to be different; cannot escape the lacrimae rerum that arise out of the world's tragic inevitabilities. Indeed, so compelling is that wish for an alternate outcome, that the centuries have offered one. After all, as I was assured, there is another ending, in your heart. And that promise, it seems to me, lies at the very heart of Easter.

Lions are so made that they must have meat; that is part of what it means to be a lion. Baby antelopes must have mother's milk; that is what it means to be a baby. And human beings... human beings are the kind of creatures who have a different ending in our hearts - an ending that forever defies the way we know the world is; an impossible, unnatural vision in which care and justice, sympathy, compassion, and fellow-creaturehood transcend the structures of power and even the imperatives of evolution, to open a brief image of an utterly other sort of existence. No matter how unreal we know that world to be, it is a real vision, and the longing of the heart that sees it is real enough to bring us to tears; that is what it means to be a human being.

Dearly beloved, understand me; there is not a thing to be done about it. We are not called upon to set out for the plains of Samburu, and strive through modeling and instruction and conditioning to persuade the species of lions to adopt Kamunyak as a patron saint and renounce its carnivorous heritage of violence. We didn't design this universe, and we are not running the show. Nature feeds upon itself in a cycle of which we are but one integral part, as the shifting seasons may serve to remind us. We are participants perforce in a story where death has the final word - everywhere except in our hearts. When we live fully, we live both stories; the real world in which lions eat oryx calves at every opportunity, and the resisters of oppression end gasping upon the cross, and that other realm, the kingdom of the heart, where love and innocence arise from the tomb, and the lion lies down with the lamb.

I shall never hear that passage from the book of Isaiah in the same way again, for I have seen it brought to life with my own eyes, at least on videotape, and it has changed me. I do hope that some day the power of this vision will fade a little, and I shall be able at least to read the words without once more weeping. But I am glad for the transcendent power that has grasped and shaken me, if only for a moment; I am glad to have seen, even at second hand, Kamunyak and her baby antelope, lying down together in comfort and confidence, the unknowing fulfillment of a poetic imagination now dust for lo these thousands of years. I am glad that the story of the prophet from Nazareth still holds a place in the human imagination, forever demanding another ending from the all too familiar and frequent crushing cruelty that is the common fate of impertinent idealism. I am glad that the realm of the heart is as inescapably a part of our human heritage as our mortality is; that we live and move and have our being necessarily in both worlds.

In the closing years of the 18^th century, the radical poet and theologian William Blake made a remarkable claim about the human experience of the divine; when we seem to be praying to god, he said, we are actually calling upon the qualities of what I have named this morning the realm of the heart. Mercy, pity, peace, and love, he wrote, is god, and moreover, each of these comes to us with human face and dress, in human form. The closing stanza of his poem, which is not included in the text presented in our hymnal, makes his fundamentally humanist claim even more explicit. If these qualities are what god is, and if we come to know them through their human expression, says Blake,

Then all must love the human form,

In heathen, turk or jew.

Where Mercy, Love and Pity dwell,

There God is dwelling too.

Or perhaps even, as the earlier poet/theologian suggested, not only the human form; perhaps even among the creatures of wilderness and instinct, in some odd, impossible moment, where mercy, love and pity dwell, maybe even there, god is dwelling too.