This week I attended my first ever National Youth Gathering in New Orleans. I was impressed with the dedication and enthusiasm of those who played key roles in organizing the event as well as the high energy levels of the youth and and their leaders who came. New Orleans is still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and now the Gulf Spill. While there, I saw a couple very good articles in the Times-Picuyane on “Urban Farming” and Brown Pelicans entitled “Wings and a Prayer: A graphic short story of One brown pelican’s journey.” Well-worth reading.

I gave a presentation for three days on “Together with All Creatures: Caring for God’s Living Earth.” It was a blast. I particularly appreciated the conversations after the presentations. Some of them had to do whether or not one be both a Christian and a conservationist/environmentalist? One young person hoped to major in environmental science in college but her friends had voiced concern that such a route might lead her away from Christianity and toward an extremist environmental position. She was looking for a balanced position that brings a Christian affirmation of creation and our place within it to bear upon environmental concerns. We can provide that!

Toward that end, the Commission on Theology and Church Relations (of The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod) unveiled the smaller version of the booklet that it adopted earlier this spring that was written and designed for young people. I thought that it looked great. Over the course of three days, they handed out over 2000 copies to young people and adults. I believe that copies can be ordered from Concordia Publishing House in the weeks ahead. The full version (over a hundred pages) will hopefully be out in late August or early September.

A few friends have recently brought to my attention that many Christians are perhaps not accustomed seeing themselves or thinking of themselves as creatures. That’s somewhat curious. Do most people use the word “creature” to speak exclusively about nonhuman creatures? By contrast, do we refer to ourselves primarily, if not exclusively, as human beings in order to separate and distinguish ourselves from all other forms of life on earth?

I would like to reclaim and revitalize the word creature with reference to humans. It’s a good word and says a great deal. First, it implies a creator. To say that we are creatures recognizes that we are his handiwork. Second, the one thing that we share more than anything else with all other creatures is the truth that together we are created and together we share a common dependence upon the creator. In that regard, we are fellow creatures.

Luther liked the word “creature” a great deal. He rejoiced in his creatureliness. In his catechetical sermons he exclaimed, “I am a creature!” Having said that, we also affirm that we are particular kinds of creatures. We are human creatures. We are distinctive creatures in that we have been made in God’s image, have been given responsibility for his creation, and have been adopted as his children on account of Jesus Christ.

So we are creatures among other creatures, but creatures who have been given a special responsibility by God. Perhaps our greatest challenge today is to learn how to live as creatures (Ellen Davis) and more specifically as human creatures. After all, it is was the desire to be more than creaturely (to be like God) that led to the Fall. Creature, creaturely, creatureliness. These are all good words.

Norman Wirzba develops the theme of extending hospitality to all of God’s creatures in his book, The Paradise of God. He notes that hospitality in the Old Testament involved in part the inviting of sojourners into the home, in brief, making room for them. God carved out spaces (land, air, water) for all of his creatures. He made room for all of them to live, feed, and raise their young. But can we make room for all of his creatures on this earth and in our lives? That’s one of the things that I would take a way from Peter Mathieson’s book, The Birds of Heaven: Travels with Cranes.

Mathieson takes us on a journey around the world to see all fifteen species of the world’s cranes in their natural habitats. He takes us to Russia, China, India, Korea, Japan, Africa, England, and North America. At each stop, one things seems clear. We don’t seem to have room for such large creatures on earth anymore. Cranes generally live in wetlands and marshes—places that most people do not consider to be particularly beautiful or scenic. Most are being drained for development. As Mathieson notes, “The time is past when large rare creatures can recover their numbers without man’s strenuous intervention” (p. 295).

You don’t have to be craniac to like this book. It does make the case, however, that if you can do one thing, adopt a nonhuman fellow creature and learn about its habitat, its nature, and its life. Mathieson is right. One of the best ways to “grasp the main perspectives of environment and biodiversity” is to learn about the “precious nature of a single living form, a single manifestation of the miracle of existence” (p. xv). So it need not be cranes. There are hundreds of thousands of different creatures from which you can choose!

Honorable mention for exploring all the cranes of the world: The Magic of Cranes, by Carl-Albrecht von Treuenfels. It’s a coffee table sized book with incredible photographs.  I might give it a more thorough review at a later date.

Ok. I know that this is somewhat typical of me. In anticipation of visiting the International Crane Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin (see last post), I decided to read everything I could get my hands on about Cranes. I can’t fit a brief review of all these books into one post. So I’ll do it in two parts. We begin with Cranes of North America (there are only two the Sandhill and the Whooper).

My first choice is a book recently published by Michael Forsberg, On Ancient Wings. Forsberg is a nature photographer in Nebraska and has had his work featured in numerous publications including the Nature Conservancy’s magazine. On Ancient Wings is a coffee table book that is also a great read. Forsberg follows the migration of lesser and greater Sandhill  Cranes from their wintering grounds in Basque, NM to their stopover on Platte River and  up to their breeding grounds in Wyoming, Alaska, and Siberia. The photos are terrific and the text is almost their equal. This is the book that got me hooked on cranes.

My second choice is Janice Hughes, Cranes: A Natural History of a Bird in Crisis. Hughes, a Canadian scientist, provides the best history of the plight of the Whooping Crane from its near extinction in the 1930s (only 29 left in the wild) to its slow and tenuous recovery today. Most helpful to me were her accounts of the various groups and organizations that are involved in looking after the wild western flock that winters in Aransas, TX and journeys north to its breeding grounds in the Wood Buffalo National Park. She also sorted out for me the various groups responsible for the Eastern migratory flock that breeds in Wisconsin and winters in Florida.

Finally, honorable mention goes to Paul Johnsgaard who is is a legend in Nebraska when it comes to cranes. In Crane Music: A Natural History of American Cranes, has written has a small historical-fiction book that follows the Sandhill Cranes across several centuries and the changes that they no doubt saw. The book is elegantly written and a delightful read.

I grew up in Wisconsin but never realized all that was there. I didn’t know that it was home to Aldo Leopold (didn’t know who he was at the time either). I didn’t pay much attention to Horicon Marsh or Necedah National Wildlife Refuge. And I didn’t know that Baraboo Wisconsin was home to the International Crane Foundation. As a child, Baraboo was most famous for being the home of circus museums. But here in the midst of all the commercialism connected with Baraboo and the Wisconsin Dells lies the leading foundation in the world that seeks to protect all fifteen species of the world’s cranes and the wetlands on which they depend.

Last Saturday evening, a wonderfully pleasant and cool Wisconsin evening, I attended a fundraiser, “An Evening with the Cranes.”  For three hours we walked through the grounds and saw all fifteen species of cranes. At each station we were provided with food and wine from the region of the world in which that particular crane can be found. It was a lot of fun.  Until you see these cranes in person, you don’t realize what magnificent creatures they are. There I could see the long trailing feathers of the Blue Crane and compare my height against the Sarus Crane, which stands nearly six feet tall! But by far, the coolest exhibit was the Whooping Crane center where I saw a pair of whoopers both dance and unison call.

Forty five minutes to the north lies Neceda National Wildlife Refuge where the ICF and Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership are trying to establish an eastern flock of wild Whooping Cranes. Five chicks have been born in the wild there this spring. Come August and September, they will begin flight training with Operation Migration in which they will learn to follow an ultra-light aircraft down to their Florida wintering grounds. I may have go back up there to see that this fall. Would this make me a craniac (it’s actually the term used to describe avid followers and advocates of cranes)?  Hmmm.