Toads Do It In The Water

[T]here is no special "religious knowledge" that can be assigned to a church or synagogue school, while another kind of knowledge is appropriate to the public school. If one fully accepts the thesis that all nature is one and that the spiritual and the material are intermingled and interdependent, if one believes that the Unity and Meaning for all existence is something observable, a fact that can be discerned, or a reality that at least all nature seems to suggest, although none can every utterly grasp, then the phenomena for study are unlimited. It is no longer reasonable to say that the most important data can be gathered from some one Scripture, or that books that talk of God or prayers, Jesus or Moses, are religious books while books that acquaint children with baby animals, or fishes, or snails, with water and fire, concrete things in the child's immediate world, are secular.

The religious way is the deep way, the way with a growing perspective and an expanding view. It is the way that dips into the heart of things, into personal feelings, yearnings and hostilities that so often must be buried and despised and left misunderstood. The religious way is the way that sees what physical eyes alone fail to see, the intangibles at the heart of every phenomenon. The religious way is the way that touches universal relationship; that goes high, wide and deep, that expands the feelings of kinship. And if God symbolizes or means these larger relationships, the religious way means finding God. It is the enlarged and deepening experience that bring the growing insights and that create the sustain ambition "to find life and to find it abundantly" that really count most. When such a religious quality of exploration is the goal, any subject, any phenomenon, any thing, animate or inanimate, human or animal, may be the starting point.

From Today's Children and Yesterday's Heritage: A Philosophy of Creative Religious Development by Sophia Lyon Fahs

Sermon

Our children are embarked on a religious curriculum for the summer that Sophia Lyon Fahs would approve wholeheartedly ­ they are studying water. In particular, three types: ocean, estuary, and river. I invite you to visit their learning centers after church to see the wonderful maps, charts, pictures, and drawings that are part of their study. We are indeed blessed to have a Director of Religious Education and, this summer, eight new volunteer teachers who "get" the Fahs philosophy of religious education. I look forward to going on a field trip with the children next Wednesday when they go to Alexander Springs State Park..

A couple of months ago I arrived at church to discover that the Nova Village maintenance man had undertaken the project of cleaning out the pond in front of the church. It turns out the catfish that were in it had died (or been killed), and he figured this was a good time. For one whole week he and a helper mucked out the pond, taking out all the vegetation that had invaded it, draining the pond, and then pressure washing the underlying concrete. One day as I walked over the bridge I admired the very clean and dry pond and wondered what the next step would be.

That night we had a thunderstorm and heavy rains. The next day as I set foot on the bridge I noticed that the pond was half full of water and that a lot of amphibians were in the pond mating. I mean A LOT. I think about 60 , give or take five. I was AMAZED. I had never seen anything like it. I stood there transfixed, noticing the mated pairs, larger female on the bottom, smaller male on the top, double egg strings flowing out from behind each couple. Bachelors ringed the pond, vocalizing, calling unmated females. Other males and females swam singly in the pond, either on their way to or their way from a reproductive swim.

As I stood on the bridge, a truck drove up and parked where the bridge meets the parking lot. As the driver came around to the back of his vehicle to unload I called out to him, "You gotta see this!" He joined me on the bridge and stood in amazed silence. Then he said, "Those are TOADS! I never knew toads do it in the water!" We swapped some toad stories, then duty called us both away from the pond. We left the procreation festival to proceed unchaperoned.

Every year I preach at least one natural science sermon. I do this because while I believe and am strongly committed to our seventh principle ­ respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. I do this for three reasons.

First Fahs' philosophy is as applicable in this worship center as it is in that space we call our Church School. In fact, for many Unitarian Universalists the natural world (and all its processes) IS God. To ignore the natural world is to ignore their most important source of spiritual inspiration. For others of our religion, the natural world offers important symbolic representations of the divine. They understand the hen and chicks metaphor used by the rabbi from Nazareth and Rumi's poem, reminding us to celebrate the heavenly energy found in nature.

So, I decided that my 1999 natural science sermon would focus on toads.

I'll begin with the truck driver. Until he identified the amphibians as toads, I had assumed they were frogs. I know now that toads have dry, warty skin, while frogs have wet, smooth skin. Toads lay their eggs in strings or chains. Frogs lay theirs singly, although the eggs clump together in masses. Toads hop ­ no further than the length of their bodies. Frogs leap. You can't get warts from touching toads, but they do exude an irritating mucous, and if you touch one, it's a good idea to wash your hands afterwards ­ by all means, before you touch your mouth or your eyes. C.T. Colby cites other differences between toads and frogs:

Compared with his nearest rival, the frog, the toad reacts more promptly and learns more readily. Toads can figure out a maze far more quickly than frogs can. They discover after eight or nine trials that a glass barrier cannot be passed, whereas frogs keep bumping their noses against it. When set on a high table, toads will peer cautiously over the edge, appearing to estimate the drop, and then refuse to jump. Frogs will fling themselves off anything, another indication of the toad's mental capacities is that he is easily tamed. Toads in captivity learn to come out of hiding when called and to feed from the hand. They also seem to enjoy being petted and stroked.

The toads I saw mating were probably Southern Toads, which live by themselves in soft soil. They dig holes with spurs on their hind feet, which act as shovels, and dig themselves in backwards. They get oxygen from the air spaces in the soil. They come out at night to feed.

The scientific name for the toad family is Bufonidae. Every toad has the family name "Bufo", which come first, then its specie name. Southern toads are Bufo terrestris. I rather like the name for the common toad ­ Bufo bufo.

Other toad facts that interest me are that they shed and eat their skin at least annually ­ twice a year when they are young and growing fast. They grow to full size when they are three or four years old. The male reaches puberty at two years, the female at three. A toad can live for 20 to 30 years ­ one is reported to have lived for 31 years.

This being a sermon inspired by our seventh principle, let me move on to our relationship with toads ­ the anthropo-bufo connection.

Toads have influenced human culture throughout time the world over. In Meso-America the toad is a symbol for the Earth Mother. Some Asians see a toad in the moon, which eats the moon at regular intervals, just like it eats its skin.

In the West, toads have represented ugliness and evil; appeared as amiable, appealing creatures; and symbolized positive psychic forces.

In the ugly and evil category, toads have had an undeserved bad "rep" for centuries. Virgil considered toads noxious creatures, along with moles, mice, ants, and weevils. Witches (who also have had unjust sinister reputations) were said to have toads, as well as rats, bat, and owls as familiars. Toads were considered by some to be the incarnation of the devil. In Hieronymous Bosch's tryptich Last Judgment, the king of hell is framed in a doorway, which, in turn, is framed with a procession of toads.

As amiable and appealing creatures, toads have appeared in folk tales and story books. For example, for example, here is a synopsis of a treasure from the Jamaican tradition.

The king sets up a twenty-mile race between a toad and a donkey. The "trickified" toad gets a twenty-four-hour delay before the start of the race, during which time he plants one of his children at each of the twenty miles posts. The confident donkey begins the race slowly, munching grass and peas for at least an hour on his way to the first milepost; but here, when he bawls out "Ha! Ha! Ha! Me more than Toad," he is answer by an invisible toad child, "Jim-ko-ro-ro, Jim-kok-kok-kok." Not too concerned at first, the donkey begins increasing his speed, but as his boast is thrown back at him at each succeeding milepost, he becomes desperate and soon gallops himself out. When he concludes that he has lost the race, we get the moral of the story" "through Toad smartness Donkey can never be racer again."

A toad symbolized positive psychic forces in our Words For All Ages story today ­ a Grimm Brothers story titled "The Three Feathers". In his analysis of the story, Bruno Bettelheim suggests that Blockhead's reliance on the toad reminds us that if we were to rely more on simple and primitive forces within us, such as what he calls our animal natures, we too shall be successful in our life journeys. Not only must we become familiar with our unconscious, says Bettelheim, we must act on what we know. Particularly, we must come to know that love transforms the ugly into the beautiful. Also, when we sacrifice ourselves to that which causes disgust and contempt, we are transformed ourselves. "The Three Feathers", then, is both a literary classic, and a primer for psychological growth. It is also a spiritual allegory, with the toad representing our inner divinity.

In the 1920's Don Marquis, a New York journalist, wrote a series of poems under the nom de plume of archy. One poem, "warty bliggens, the toad" introduces us humans to our arrogant selves, giving us a clever lesson in humility.

warty bliggens, the toad
i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him

do not tell me
said warty bliggens
that there is not a purpose
in the universe
the thought is blasphemy
a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the said
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens

to what act of yours
do you impute
this interest on the part
of the creator
of the universe
I asked him
what is it that you
are so greatly favored

ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me
if I were a
human being I would
not laugh
too complacently
at poor warty bliggens
for similar
absurdities
have only too often
lodged in the crinkled
of the human cerebrum

North American Indian Medicine suggests that each of us has an animal totem. I'm not sure what a first nations person might propose as the properties of Toad as a totem ­ perhaps transformation. After all, Toad begins life as a one-celled egg, which becomes an embryo, and, at one week, a very simple tadpole. On the 10th day a tadpole has gills and at two weeks a longer tail which can be used for swimming. After six weeks a tadpole begins to grow hind legs and two weeks later, its front legs appear. During this time its digestive system also changes, so that it can mutate from plant-eating tadpole to meat-eating toad. When it is about 12 weeks old a tadpole has become a toadlet and is ready to live on dry land. If Toad were to show up in your dreams one day, perhaps he would be calling you to a new environment, or reminding you that as you grow your spiritual food must change, or that you must shed your old "skin" (or way of being in the world) in order to grow ­ more often when younger, less often when older.

But what of other anthropo-bufo interdependence ­ how else do humans and toads rely on each other?

Yesterday the News Journal announced that 1999 should be called Y6B, because this weekend the world's human population is expected to reach the 6 billion milestone. Assuming there will be no global catastrophe, and our human population does reach this milestone, this means that our population will have doubled in just 40 years ­ the first time in human history this has happened. We were one billion people in 1804, three billion in 1960 (a little more than 150 years later), and now, just about 40 years after that, six billion.

What's happened to the toad population in this time? It has declined ­ so seriously that the Species Survival Commission of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources has set up a Declining Amphibian Populations Task Force. It seems frogs and salamanders, as well as toads are disappearing off the face of the earth. This task force, known by its initials (DAPTF) suggests four reasons why we should be concerned.

First is that the amphibian population is a measure of the health of the environment. We humans have modified the earth's environment for our own ends, destroying amphibian habitats in the process. Our activities have more subtle impacts as well ­ for instance, depletion of atmospheric ozone levels; accumulating pollutants in natural systems on which all life depends; and altering weather patterns. These gradual changes affect our ecosystem. The decrease in the number of amphibians is an indicator of how gravely affected the ecosystem is.

Second, amphibians are important for ecological balance in many habitats. Here in Florida (and elsewhere) amphibians eat insects. Some scientists estimate that a single toad eats from 1,500 to 10,000 noxious insects in a three month period. Even as they are predators, toads are also food for wading, carrion-eating, and predatory birds; red-shouldered hawks, snakes, and raccoons. In fact, when I was having my toad epiphany, I saw this principle in action, as a snowy egret, or cowbird, scooped up a single toad for her breakfast.

A third reason we should care about the declining population of toads is their biomedicinal contributions. For ages toads have been cited as having healing properties, namely for edema and on tumors, both malignant and benign. From a 1959 article by O. Leeser comes this quote, about findings of another scientist named Hencke who lived in the mid-19th century:

Hencke reported on three other cases of mammary cancer treated with Bufo; in two of them the primary tumour and the enlarged axillary glands disappeared, whereas for the third case it is merely stated that the shooting, lancinating pains disappeared almost immediately after a minute dose of Bufo.

The DAPTF says that the full potential of Bufo drugs has not begun to be fully appreciated.

Finally, there is the aesthetic factor. Many amphibians are extremely beautiful, and some, while not beautiful, have great public popularity. Certain among these are toads.

The book which was the greatest help to me in doing my research was this one ­ The Book of the Toad, by Robert M. DeGraaff. DeGraaff says that his book was inspired by a live toad he killed while mowing his grass. Not long after this incident, he discovered a poem by Richard Wilbur, which described DeGraaff's own experience. The author was so moved by this poetic treatment of his experience, that he began researching and writing this book; he also dedicated this book to Wilbur.

Both Robert DeGraaff's book and Richard Wilbur's poem are evidence of a deep spiritual connection between these two men and a simple creature ­ bufo bufo. One others would loathe, discount, ridicule, or characterize as stupid. DeGraaff and Wilbur are our preachers today. They call us to see the toad as the Holy Other. I invite you to look at DeGraaff's book after the service. Here is Wilbur's poem:

The Death of a Toad

A toad the power mower caught,
Chewed and clipped off a leg, with a hobbling hop has got
To the garden verge, and sanctuaried him,
Under the cineraria leaves, in the shade
Of the ashen heart shaped leaves, in a dim,
Low, and a final glade.

The rare original hearts blood goes,
Spends on the earthen hide, in the folds and wizenings, flows
In the gutters of the banked and staring eyes. He lies
As still as if he would return to stone,
And soundlessly attending, dies
Toward some deep monotone,

Toward misted and ebullient seas
And cooling shores, toward lost Amphibia's emperies.
Day dwindles, drowning, and at length is gone
In the wide and antique eyes, which still appear
To watch, across the castrate lawn
The haggard daylight steer.