Be Like Francis

The stories about Francis are extraordinary. He is endlessly fascinating because of all the seemingly very odd things he would constantly do. In a giant protest against his father, he strips off all his clothes and wanders off into the countryside. What does he wear? Nothing more than a brown tunic tied with a rope. He owned nothing. Why? If you own things, then you have to hire guards and have laws to protect them, but if you don’t own anything, you’ve got nothing to lose. So, he would wander around and talk to all the beggars and lepers. People would see Francis roaming is his little brown tunic and they’d give him a coat when it got cold. It gets cold up in the mountains. Francis with his new coat would see a beggar who didn’t have a coat, and immediately give away his coat.

And that isn’t even the craziest story. One day he’s wandering down the road with a bunch of his followers and he sees the birds and says, “Oh, I need to go preach to the birds.” So he did. He gave a sermon to a bunch of birds. The story notes that not a single bird left during his sermon because they were all so enamored with hearing him preach to him. Francis looked out at all the animals and they were all like his brothers and sisters. There’s also the great story of Brother Wolf. There was a town in Italy in which a wolf was marauding and killing people. Francis went out, found the wolf, made the sign of the cross, and called the wolf to him. He then brought the wolf down to the village and told the villagers that Brother Wolf here was just hungry. That’s why he was eating people. It wasn’t malice. If people would just feed Brother Wolf, then Brother Wolf would stop killing people. It was great and they all lived happily ever after. 

We look at Francis and say, “This guy is crazy.” On the one hand, it’s impressive. He is a fun guy to read about. But do you want to go live like that? Do you really want to just drop everything and go wandering around talking to Brother Wolf and preaching to birds and having no possessions and not worrying if you meet a robber in the road because you’ve got nothing to steal? Is that what you want to do?

How do we make sense of Francis? That is where Chesterton comes in: 

St. Francis was not a lover of nature. Properly understood, a lover of nature was precisely what he was not….In a word, we talk about a man who cannot see the wood for the trees. St. Francis was a man who did not want to see the wood for the trees. He wanted to see each tree as a separate and almost sacred thing, being a child of God and therefore a brother or sister of man….He did not call nature his mother; he called a particular donkey his brother or a particular sparrow his sister. 

There’s the key to thinking about Francis. He walks out and he doesn’t see trees. He sees that tree right there. That one oak tree, that one maple tree. Francis realizes something amazing about that maple tree. That maple tree right there is totally unlike every other maple tree that was ever created. God didn’t make maple trees. He made Brother Maple right there. He made that one particular rhododendron, Sister Rhododendron right there, and Sister Rhododendron is unlike every other plant that ever existed, a unique and amazing plant. Francis realizes that just like God created him as a unique individual person, God also created that sparrow as a unique and individual sparrow. St. Francis wasn’t preaching to the birds. He was preaching to Sam and Sally Sparrow. He was preaching to Robin Red Fellow. He was preaching to actual particular living entities.

You walk down the street and you see the trees and the bushes they just blow by because you’re not thinking of them and saying “Wow! That bush is amazing. Look at this one bush. Look at how amazing it is.” You think about animals and they are also just there. Except, of course, your pet. Your pet has a name. Your dog, your cat, your goldfish, is unique. If somebody were to come along and say, “Your dog is just like every other dog,” you know that person is wrong. Your dog isn’t like every other dog. Your dog is a special dog. It’s an amazing dog. It’s got a personality. You know what else you do? You talk to your dog, you tell your dog stories, you laugh at your dog. You think your dog is cute. You think your pet is an amazing little creature. You are so happy that this amazing little creature is living with you. You might even be thankful to God for your dog or your goldfish. What Francis realized was every plant you see and every animal you see is just like your pet. They’re all unique, they’re all individual, and they are all amazing. 

It’s not just all the plants and animals. What else is unique and amazing? People are unique and amazing. Chesterton again:

I have said that St. Francis deliberately did not see the wood for the trees. It is even more true that he deliberately did not see the mob for the men….He only saw the image of God multiplied but never monotonous. To him a man was always a man and did not disappear in a dense crowd any more than in a desert. He honored all men; that is, he not only loved but respected them all. What gave him extraordinary personal power was this; that from the Pope to the beggar, from the Sultan of Syria in his pavilion to the ragged robbers crawling out of the wood, there was never a man who looked into those brown burning eyes without being certain that Francis Bernardone was really interested in him in his own inner individual life from the cradle to the grave; that he himself was being valued and taken seriously, and not merely added to the spoils of some social policy or the names in some clerical document. 

Imagine if every person you saw, not just the people you know or the people in your family, but literally every single person you saw, prompted you to exclaim, “Wow! There is a unique creation of God. That person is amazing.” Moreover, Brother Oak is amazing. And Brother Wolf is amazing. Imagine going through amazed at every part of creation, not just creation as a whole, not just the broad categories as a whole, but every single entity from the person you see to the birds to the trees to the rocks. God, in his infinite abilities, made that rock right there, not just the subspecies rock. It’s shaped different than every other rock. It’s in a different location. It’s got a story different than every other rock out there. That’s what Francis saw when he looked out at the world. He saw all of these individual things and they excited him and every day was amazing. 

To experience the joy that Francis felt every day, the first step is to look out at Brother Oak and go talk to Brother Oak. Ask Brother Oak, “How are things today? Does the sun feel good today?” Ask Sister Lowly Worm, “How’s the soil?” Then you could tell Sister Worm all about your day or about Jesus. Let the worm tell you how great it is to dig today. You learn something about God by thinking about that worm as an individual created by God. 

Imagine going through your life like that, surprised and in awe at everything you see. God created every plant, every animal, every person, every rock. Imagine seeing every one of them as another glimpse of God. Another little representation of God right there. If you could do that, imagine the joy you would feel all the time. What do you need to feel all that joy? Absolutely nothing. Just need to look around and it’s all there. Suddenly you realize if you had that kind of joy all the time, why do you need all the stuff you own? St. Francis wasn’t depriving himself; he just found the magnificent joy all around him. 

Related Posts
Chesterton, G. K. The Ballad of the White Horse “Yea, Faith Without a Hope”
Nouwen, Henri The Way of the Heart “Solitude, Silence, and Prayer”