"Mowgli's Missionary"
Brother Jude is an unlikely missionary to a boy lost in the wild. He doubts himself, at times doubts his faith, and the American city boy has never set foot in an Indian jungle. Yet something drives him to search for an orphaned boy rumored to be living among wolves. His jungle guide Arun, a former Hindu and now an atheist, becomes his unlikely spiritual mentor. (The only one he has, since Brother Jude ran away from his order to pursue this unauthorized mission.) Twelve-year old Mowgli is both a kind human boy and a fierce jungle beast, and lives in the tension between his two natures. Five-year old Sabu, whose family fled to the jungle to escape the savagery of man, bears the scars that evil sears upon childhood innocence. Rudyard Kipling’s Bagheera, Baloo, Hathi, Kaa, Chil the Kite and Mang the Bat are all here, as are new animal characters. They include the monkeys Shunta B. Sookin and Yaya, who try to protect Sabu and his family, and Shere Chor, the sinister brother of Shere Kahn, who seeks revenge on Mowgli for his brother’s death.
Brother Jude confronts questions he never expected to face on this journey: Does Mowgli already follow a creed that serves him well, and should Jude interfere? Can the boy be saved by Christ without becoming a Christian? As an adolescent in the jungle should he teach Mowgli the difference between human sexuality and how animals mate? Can Jude come to terms with his own childhood trauma when he, like Mowgli, lost a father to an animal’s violence? Can he show mercy in the face of violent vengeance? And can he survive the jungle and discern God’s true call for his life?
Brother Jude is an unlikely missionary to a boy lost in the wild. He doubts himself, at times doubts his faith, and the American city boy has never set foot in an Indian jungle. Yet something drives him to search for an orphaned boy rumored to be living among wolves. His jungle guide Arun, a former Hindu and now an atheist, becomes his unlikely spiritual mentor. (The only one he has, since Brother Jude ran away from his order to pursue this unauthorized mission.) Twelve-year old Mowgli is both a kind human boy and a fierce jungle beast, and lives in the tension between his two natures. Five-year old Sabu, whose family fled to the jungle to escape the savagery of man, bears the scars that evil sears upon childhood innocence. Rudyard Kipling’s Bagheera, Baloo, Hathi, Kaa, Chil the Kite and Mang the Bat are all here, as are new animal characters. They include the monkeys Shunta B. Sookin and Yaya, who try to protect Sabu and his family, and Shere Chor, the sinister brother of Shere Kahn, who seeks revenge on Mowgli for his brother’s death.
Brother Jude confronts questions he never expected to face on this journey: Does Mowgli already follow a creed that serves him well, and should Jude interfere? Can the boy be saved by Christ without becoming a Christian? As an adolescent in the jungle should he teach Mowgli the difference between human sexuality and how animals mate? Can Jude come to terms with his own childhood trauma when he, like Mowgli, lost a father to an animal’s violence? Can he show mercy in the face of violent vengeance? And can he survive the jungle and discern God’s true call for his life?
How This Story Came to Be
It started here, with this brief scene from the 1997 film “Rudyard Kipling’s Second Jungle Book: Mowgli and Baloo,” which I happened to come across one day while channel-surfing. I had never read any of Kipling’s Mowgli stories, nor I had I seen any of the films (not even the 1967 Disney animated feature). I knew of the story because it was famous, but it had never caught my interest.
Then I stumbled across a scene in this film where Mowgli (played by Jamie Williams) growls--quite convincingly--like a wolf in the face of a threat. The sight of a human child instinctively behaving like the animal he was raised to be hit me between the eyes, as did the theological implications of a child of made in God’s image living as a beast.
It was then I sat down to read all of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories, and I became intrigued. The idea of writing a story about a missionary going to search for him, to try to teach him that he’s a child not of wolves but a loving Heavenly Father, immediately came to mind. I was amazed by how much of a foundation for such a story was right there in Kipling’s pages.
I hope you read it, and I hope you’ll enjoy and be inspired by it. Thank you for visiting the site.
As the Master Word of the Jungle proclaims, “We are of one blood, you and I.”
In Christ,
James Penrice
Then I stumbled across a scene in this film where Mowgli (played by Jamie Williams) growls--quite convincingly--like a wolf in the face of a threat. The sight of a human child instinctively behaving like the animal he was raised to be hit me between the eyes, as did the theological implications of a child of made in God’s image living as a beast.
It was then I sat down to read all of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories, and I became intrigued. The idea of writing a story about a missionary going to search for him, to try to teach him that he’s a child not of wolves but a loving Heavenly Father, immediately came to mind. I was amazed by how much of a foundation for such a story was right there in Kipling’s pages.
I hope you read it, and I hope you’ll enjoy and be inspired by it. Thank you for visiting the site.
As the Master Word of the Jungle proclaims, “We are of one blood, you and I.”
In Christ,
James Penrice