Wednesday, April 20, 2011

A Prayer for Our Fellow Creatures

At present, I am reading a book called Dominion, by a former speech writer for President George W. Bush, in which the author, Matthew Scully, makes the case that our society needs to reform its treatment of animals. In it, I found this amazing prayer: 

"Holy God, enlarge within us the sense of fellowship with all living things, our brothers the animals to whom Thou gavest the earth in common with us. We remember with shame that in the past we have exercised the high dominion of man with ruthless cruelty so that the voice of the earth, which should have gone up to thee in song, has been a groan of travail."  

-- Saint Basil, bishop of Caesarea (375 CE)

No comments:

Post a Comment