The Captain, Terry and me went to the "A Hundred Not Out" talk at Arundel last night by Mike Mockler, plus wonderful slides of his 100 plus tours of Africa, most of them as a guide.
Highlights: so many, but here are a few:
The caring Meerkat. Mike is lying on the sand in the middle of the meerkat clan, and his wife is filming. The sentry sees an eagle high up and gives her chirring warning cry. All the meerkats look up, warned, alert, in case it is going to come any nearer. Mike of course is watching them watching the eagle. His wife points out that the Meerkat sentry is trying to warn him too! She keeps looking at him and chirring at him. Mike's wife says that she wants him to look up so she knows he is aware of the danger. He does look up, very ostentatiously, and the sentry stops warning him and goes back on general alert.
So he wasn't carried off to the eagle's lair. But only because of a very caring meerkat- who must think that us humans are very slow to get the point, and take a lot of looking after.
Then there was the elephant that suddenly appeared out of the rainforest by the car. It is so big it dwarfs the trees it is charging through - like the enormous head of the Cheshire Cat that suddenly appear to Alice. It charges. They can't get away, it is too sudden. But it stops itself, and goes away without hurting anyone. If only we were as kind to them.
Then there is the horrendous story of the vanishing rhinos, whose horns are now worth more than gold. They, with their innocent Moomintroll faces, are now on the verge of extinction.
When the Book of Revelation was written, I suppose the idea that we could ruin a whole planet would have seemed ridiculous. But since 1914, when the events of Revelation began, nothing has become more clear. But as Revelation promises, Jehovah "will bring to ruin those ruining the earth".
How else are the meek going to inhabit it? And what hope would the beautiful and innocent rhino have?
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