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For Earth Day, I'd like to quote from pages 84-85 of C.S. Lewis' Reflections on the Psalms. Lewis is discussing Psalm 104:
"Of course this appreciation of, almost this sympathy with, creatures useless or hurtful or wholly irrelevant to man, is not our modern 'kindness to animals'. This is a virtue most easily practiced by those who have never, tired and hungry, had to work with animals for a bare living, and who inhabit a country where all dangerous wild beasts have been exterminated. The Jewish feeling, however, is vivid, fresh, and impartial. In Norse stories a pestilent creature such as a dragon tends to be conceived as the enemy not only of men but of gods. In classical stories, more disquietedly, it tends to be sent by a god for the destruction of men whom he has a grudge against. The Psalmist's clear objective view---noting the lions and whales side by side with men and men's cattle---is unusual. And I think it is certainly reached through the idea of God as creator and sustainer of all. In 104, 21, the point about the lions is that they, like us, 'do seek their meat from God'. All these creatures, like us, 'wait upon' God at feeding time (27). It is the same in 147, 9; though the raven was an unclean bird to Jews, God 'feedeth the young ravens that call upon him'. The thought which gives these creatures a place in the Psalmist's gusto for nature is surely obvious. They are our fellow-dependents; we all, lions, storks, ravens, whales---live, as our fathers said, 'at God's charges', and the mention of all equally redounds to His praise."
