In The Star Thrower, the poet scientist, Loren Eiseley, paints a word portrait
of life and death along an unidentified beach called Costable. Personally suffering
a dry emptiness, a massive sense of futility, and a foretaste of annihilation,
he often arose early due to insomnia and walked along the surf. Just before
dawn, especially after a storm, flashlights bob up and down along the beach
like fireflies on the sand as shell hunters scavenge for treasures.
A greed kind of madness often overcomes these collectors. With vulturine activity,
they scoop up living specimens, favoring starfish. Gathering huge bags, they
hurry to outdoor kettles, where they boil alive "the beautiful voiceless
things." One early morning Eiseley discerns an even odder spectacle-a person
called the star thrower. Moving toward him and away from the shell collectors,
Eiseley felt the full blast of the wind as the sun began to rise above the horizon.
Just then he saw a "gigantic rainbow of incredible perfection" with
"a human figure standing, as it seemed to me, within the rainbow."
The man reached into the sand, picked up an object, and threw it into the breaking
surf. As Eiseley walked the half mile across the wet sand toward him, he again
noticed the man kneel, pick up something, and toss it into the ocean. When Eiseley
finally reached him, the man was looking at a starfish raised stiffly on its
legs. Eiseley said. "It's still alive." "Yes," replied the
man, as he gently threw that starfish into the surf. "It may live,"
he said, "if the offshore pull is strong enough." the man stopped
again, picked up another starfish and skipped it gently across the waves. "The
stars," he said, "throw well. One can help them." Eiseley wrote:
I nodded and walked away, leaving him there upon the dune with the great rainbow ranging up the sky behind him. I turned as I neared a bend in the coast and saw him toss another star. . . . For a moment, in the changing light, the sower appeared magnified, as though casting larger stars upon the great sea. He had . . . the posture of a god.
Eiseley noted that this star thrower contradicted everything that he had learned
about evolution and the survival of the fittest. "Death is the only successful
collector." Here on the beach in Costable, the strong reached down to save,
not crush, the weak. The star thrower stands in opposition to the entire inclination
of the universe. Starfish cookers know their victims have lost; they do not
worry about the losers of life. But Eiseley comes to realize that he cannot
accept the evolutionary verdict. "'But I do love the world,' I whispered
to a waiting presence in the empty room. 'I love its small ones, the things
beaten in the strangling surf, the bird singing, which flies and falls and is
not seen again.' I choked and said, . . .'I love the lost ones; the failures
of the world.'
Eiseley joined the star thrower on the beach, spinning living starfish beyond
the danger points, beyond "the insatiable waters of death." He joins
the company of the star thrower, not as a scientist but as a fellow sufferer.
By loving life, even the lost ones, Eiseley points to a God who not only creates
unfathomable worlds of nature but who is also the God of the lost ones. Scientific
language attains religious symbolism as the images of a rainbow and the star
throwers become emblems of divinity. The rainbow metaphor represents for Eiseley
a sign of compassion, perfection, and the ecologic unity of nature. The star
thrower is an image of Christ. As Eiseley hurls starfish, he recalls there have
always been those who have cherished "the memory of the perfect circle
of compassion from life to death and back again to life-the completion of the
rainbow existence." As Eiseley's biographers note:
To choose the way of love requires a risk, the pains of which no science can ease. But if taken, the risk leads to the discovery of a deity also freely embarked on a vast project of reconciliation. Humans are invited to be star throwers, cooperators in a stupendous and perhaps impossible venture. At the same time, they themselves are doomed starfish, rescued by a hurler of stars who walks, "because he chooses, always in desolation, but not in defeat.
Ministry flows from mission. Apostles served as ambassadors, persons who were
called and "sent out" to serve and share the gospel. A missional ministry
is a calling, not a career. Literally, ministry means "to serve."
Thus it is not just another job, occupation, or profession, but a vocation one
accepts in response to a summons from a loving God. The church needs a laity
and clergy who are willing to think, live, and die the life of an apostle of
Jesus Christ. According to Bishop Dan E. Solomon, the church requires a "leadership
that is missional and not just functional."
As Emil Brunner insisted, "The Church exists by mission just as fire exists
by burning. Where there is no mission, there is no Church, and where there is
neither Church nor mission, there is no faith."
Are we a Church that is missional or just functional? Are we a company of star
throwers?
(Adapted from A conspiracy of Goodness by Donald E. Messer)
Pastor Albert Fisher