Signs

“Did you see some sign in the air?” Francis asked me, leaning forward, troubled.

“I don’t know, sir. Everything is a sign- my hunger, the moon, your voice. Better not ask me. I’ll begin to weep.”

“Everything is a sign,” Francis murmured, looking about him uneasily.

-a conversation between St. Francis and Bro. Leo in Saint Francis, by Nikos Kazantzakis
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We watch for signs, pray for them, hope for them. We bargain with God: “Give me a sign, Lord, and I’ll do what you want me to do.”

Stories from the Hebrew Bible have spoiled many people. They read about God’s interaction on a very personal and visible basis with almost all the characters of the Torah. In the book of Judges, Gideon has God responding to several kinds of tricks so that Gideon knows what kind of decisions he should be making.

I think that continuing to challenge God in such ways is both demeaning to God and to ourselves. Jesus not only revealed God’s love in unexpected and new ways; he revealed God’s presence in new ways, too. “Look at those birds,” Jesus said, “and those lilies, and this bread, and these vines, and the fig tree, and the fish, the water, the wine, the grains of wheat, and even the rocks!” Jesus used all kinds of examples from the created world of material things that would help us or enable us to understand God better. They were signs, which pointed to God. They were never defined as stopping places on our journeys toward God, but as signs that we were proceeding correctly.

St. Francis is remembered and celebrated today, almost 800 years after his death, because he recognized those signs of God in ways that they had not been understood before. His thinking about the created world in which he was a part, went something like this:

God is the Creator.
I, Francis, am a created being.
All things in the world have also been created by God.
Therefore, I am a brother to all things created.

That was, and is, a very radical notion concerning God. It is why Francis would at times preach to birds, or dogs; he saw them as brothers and sisters and was responding to Jesus’ commandment to go into the world and preach the gospel to all living things. It’s why Francis lived with no money; he knew he would be taken care of by God just like the Jesus said the birds of the air and the lilies of the field were. Despite the vow of poverty taken by those who joined his order, Francis also insisted that no one ever be called to task for having money or “dainty” clothes, as he called them. They were too beloved of God for Francis or his brothers to regard them with any less love.
Francis would write “Canticle of the Sun” in celebration of the signs and wonders he saw all around him, all the time. Here are a few lines of that poem:

All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;
In the heavens you have made them, bright
And precious and fair.
All praise be yours, My Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
How beautiful is he, how gay! Full of power and strength.

Those contemporaries of Francis who wrote about him during his life or soon after his death, all spoke of what we today would call, his charisma. There was something exciting, humbling, mystifying, and very, very memorable about walking down the road with a man who saw God’s fingerprints and love on and in everything they passed. Francis didn’t need to challenge God to produce special signs just for him; he knew those signs were already all around, in abundance, simply waiting to be seen by anyone willing to see.

A modern Jewish philosopher, Martin Buber, wrote extensively about the concept of “I and Thou.” If we see the world and other people as separate from ourselves, we think of them as “It.” If, however, we see the world- the trees, other people, rocks, flowers, birds, the sun, etc., etc.- as having been co-created by God, with different and similar attributes, we can regard the world as “Thou”, or, “You.”

Many Western Christians have reacted against philosophers like Buber and saints like Francis. Imagine trying to tell Francis why the mountains around his home in Assisi needed to be strip-mined, or why mink and sable are making a comeback on the fashion runways of Paris. It is easier to call some believers “kooks” than it is to see what they are seeing.

For me, Francis represents an ideal. I want to have my eyes, ears, and heart so wide open, so much of the time, that I am constantly and consistently responding to God. I want those times to be less and less that I respond to my own discomforts or desires, and be able more and more to hear God in the wind, see him in the eyes of all persons, feel him in the heat of the sun, smell him in the ocean’s waves, and taste him in the bread he has given us to remember his son.

I pray I have the courage to move each day nearer to the model of his life as Francis himself moved always in and toward the companionship of Jesus, his brother.

It’s good company. Come along..