Dedicate ourselves to demand every voice is heard

One of my stepdaughters recently sent us a heartopening video of her and her now-five-year-old daughter, Willa, singing Bill Staines’ song, “All God’s Critters Got a Place in the Choir.” At one point when her mother forgot the start to the next verse, Willa prompted her. Clearly, Willa has the words written on her heart. But not just the words.

Willa has embraced the sentiment. God’s critters have found their way right into the center of her heart. You can see this, for example, in the tenderness with which Willa holds Sparkle, one of the family’s hens, cuddling Sparkle in her lap and gently stroking her feathers, calling attention to the downy ones. She gets it, as most, probably all, young children do. All God’s critters do have a place in the choir, not just some, or the most colorful, or the smartest, or the richest, but all. Not just twolegged, but four-legged, and eight-legged. All. Yes, even no-legged snakes. All.

There is wisdom in that understanding, and there are these profound truths: we are created interdependent; there is a need for and value to all things now living; and the choral song of creation requires diversity.

St. Francis, whose feast day was a week ago, got this, too. In his Canticle of Creation, Francis writes, “Praise to you, My Lord, for all your creatures.” Francis celebrated all critters, famously preaching to the birds, for example. He also recognized kinship as our defining reality; for him the sun was brother, the water sister, the wind brother, the moon and stars sisters.

If kinship, diversity and inclusion are the plumb line for God’s choir, or to use Dr. King’s image, “the beloved community,” our current social reality is dangerously off-kilter. It is characterized not by kinship but by estrangement: think refugees around the globe, immigrants cruelly held in U.S. detention prisons, and children separated from their families. It is characterized by a loss of diversity as climate disruption imperils more and more species, and alarming numbers of them, such as the blue whale, the Galapagos penguin, the hawksbill turtle, are now endangered, and others like the West African black rhino, the Pinta Island tortoise and the Dutch butterfly are now extinct.

Our current social reality is characterized not by inclusion but by exclusion: think racist policies denying access for so many Black and brown people to equal education, health care, justice, employment and more. It is characterized by forces of domination and economic suppression: think white supremacy and the onepercenters.

The theologian Walter Wink distinguishes between two world orders: the domination system and what he calls God’s domination-free order. There are many practices, red flags if you will, that characterize the domination system: greed, privilege, hierarchies, power over, violence, a mindset that is we/they, either/or, win/lose, winner take all. Position or place is assigned by ranking: up/ down, ahead/behind, inside/outside, center/periphery.

We are all too familiar with these practices, woven, as they have been, into our country’s history and in these past few years dramatically exposed and exacerbated. Prophets like Jeremiah, Isaiah and Amos of old and the Rev. William Barber today, rail against such conditions of domination, and rightly so. Those conditions are the antithesis of God’s domination-free order.

God’s domination-free order offers a dramatic contrast. It is characterized by sharing and equality, nonviolence, power with, harmony, mutual respect, cooperation, and a mindset that is we/we, both/and, win/win. Position or place is assigned by linking, unbroken circles of connection, much like a Möbius strip, with no inside or outside, just full inclusion.

Yes, God’s dominationfree order is aspirational. Of course it is. But isn’t our mission and our responsibility as people of faith precisely this: to aspire to and work for a just social order, inclusive of all, where, in the words of a communion prayer, “sharing for all will mean scarcity for none,” where, to adapt a recent prayer of Pope Francis, “we ... discover anew that all are important and all are necessary, different [facets] of the one [creation] that God so loves.”

Like Willa, may we take to heart that, “All God’s critters got a place in the choir.” And may we dedicate ourselves to demanding and ensuring that every voice is heard and respected, every “critter” is valued, and all are included, without exception.