Living with Monkeys? No, real capuchin monkeys!!

Ephesians 4:3-4  Always keep yourselves united in the Holy Spirit…We are all one body, we have the same Spirit.

So Yay! for us.  Blessings rain on us because we are loved, guided, protected, encouraged, admonished, cherished…we belong to God and to this Body, the Church – local and universal. But what about all of those outside of the family of God?

Can you imagine being snatched from the bosom of your family as a four-year-old and then being dumped in the middle of the jungle, left for dead?  In The Girl With No Name: The Incredible True Story of a Child Raised by Monkeys, Lynne Barrett-Lee and Marina Chapman, tell Marina’s amazing true story of survival in the jungle and then cities of Columbia.

For four years, Marina actually lived as part of a monkey troop, learning from them how to survive, until she happened upon an Indian woman giving birth.  She followed the woman to a village where she eventually revealed herself, only to be rejected and sent back to the bush.  Remember, for four years or so, she had no contact with humans, had no clothing, no haircuts, no baths, and no one to affirm or build human language.  So she communicated through the language of sounds she had learned from the monkeys, moved on all fours, and ate whatever the jungle and monkeys provided.

From the jungle, her story moves to nightmarish experiences at the hands of other humans until, what she believes was her mid-teens, she was rescued from the house of major criminals by a daring woman.

At the end of the book, the writer gives the name of a charity whose aim is the rescue and help of throwaway children:  Substitute Families for Abandoned Children (SFAC) – family based care over institutional care.  I think that must be a lot like our foster care system in the US.  She also recommends Neotropical Primate Conservation (NPC), a group that strives to protect monkeys and conserve their homes, in response to the illegal wildlife traffic.

I guess today I am feeling too blessed and burdened by the life I have been given…and I wonder how many other church goers feel as I do.  I wonder how it is that we can enjoy our riches when too many have nothing…and I wonder what God wants, expects from us in relationship to the apparent “fatherless.”