The Creation Spirituality Lineage Calling All Social and Environmental Activists, Mystic Explorers, Justice Makers, Cosmic Thinkers, Earth Keepers Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox |
Wisdom From Jane
Goodall:
Some Teachings, Actions & Stories By Matthew Fox 10/13/2025 |
Last week I wrote of how blessed we were to share a planet with two stalwart lovers of Mother Earth and her creatures, Joanna Macy and Jane Goodall, both of whom died recently. I shared some of the teachings of Joanna Macy, and promised to share some from Jane Goodall. |
Here is one from late in Jane’s life: “Herein lies the real hope for our future: we are moving towards the ultimate destiny of our species—a state of compassion and love.” This echoes the dream of Teilhard de Chardin very vividly; and also, of course, that of Jesus |
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and his promise of the arrival of the “kingdom/queendom of God.” In my book, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ, I propose that the “second coming” is not about Jesus coming on a cloud, but about humanity waking up and becoming its better self, such as Jesus called us all to when he called us
to compassion and justice. Are we any closer to that “second coming” now than we were 2000 years ago? One would hope so. One would hope that healthy democracies properly adapted to 21st century realities might make that possible. As always, its arrival depends our our inner and outer work to bring it about. A recent article with an appropriate title of “The Indomitable Jane Goodall” contains reflections and stores from a book published on the occasion of her 90th birthday. Called Jane Goodall at 90: Celebrating an Astonishing Lifetime of Science, Advocacy, Humanitarianism, Hope, and Peace, it is edited by Marc Bekoff, a professor of
ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Colorado in Boulder, and Koen Margodt who both knew her well.* |
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| They call her a
Jane-of-all-trades—globe-trotting, eclectic English woman—that is how diverse she truly is. She was a magnet who easily attracted diverse people of all ages and cultures into her global umbrella of caring, compassion, empathy, dignity, wisdom, and hope. One of the “astonishing”
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she employed toward animals was her habit of naming each chimpanzee she studied. “She felt that every individual counts” and each chimp had their own unique personality. She was criticized of course by the scientific establishment, who numbered the chimps they studied and refused to acknowledge that they had their own personalities. Naming them was considered “unscientific.” Of course, the scientists’ research was taking place in various kinds of captive
settings. The authors tell us that “the most important thing that Jane did was to narrow the gulf between us and animals,” and she changed science in the process. Thanks to Jane’s work, “we are now allowed to consider animals as subjects, not objects, and to recognize that their individual personalities are extremely important to
study.” Pete Singer, author of Animal Liberation Now, said that she “has changed forever the way we think about ourselves and other animals.” |
Jane evolved from scientist to activist by her own admission. When she visited SEMA, a laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, and saw how chimps were treated, she responded: “I shall be haunted forever by…the eyes of the infant chimpanzees I saw that day” in cages behind bars “above, bars |
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below, bars on every side.” She made a pledge “to speak out for the hundreds of chimpanzees who, right now sit hunched, miserable and without hope, staring out with dead eyes from their metal prisons.” Her prophetic voice on their behalf eventually put an end to the use of chimpanzee experiments
in the US. Singer and songwriter Dave Matthews tells of how he and Jane were part of a Live Earth concert broadcast from Giant stadium, with about 100,000 people in attendance. Confessing that she wasn’t used to speaking to so large a crowd, she began with sounding the call a chimp makes to greet its fellow chimps across the jungle. The
crowd hushed and then “some primal response rose to a deafening joyful roar.” She “blew the roof off a stadium with nothing but her voice.” Peter Biro, past chair of the Jane Goodall Institute, says, “Jane is possessed of—indeed, defined by—what Hannah Arendt called “amor mundi”—love of the world….She makes all the difference in the
world.” |
Queries for Contemplation How do you remember Jane Goodall? Are you also possessed of “amor mundi,” love of the world? How
do you keep it alive? |
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