Back to the Basics: Caring for Creation
Genesis 1 (excerpts)
[Four demi-altars have been set up, one each for Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. The earth altar consists of, in part, a large pot of soil. The air altar has a hanging dream-catcher. The fire altar has a burning lantern. The water altar has a small fountain.]
(Go over to earth) Do you know stuff grows from this? Did you know that you could plant a seed as small as this and it could turn into a plant that has bears buckets of these? (Pluck a tomato and eat. Pass around?) Or that a seed put into this stuff could grow into this. (Dahlia) Or that a seed could turn into a tree that can grow as high as a 30-story building? What is in this stuff that is so powerful? We really don't know. We can fly people to the moon and back, but our understanding of the first inch of soil underneath our feet is pretty limited. One teaspoon of forest soil can contain 40,000 species of bacteria and 20,000 species of fungi. The majority of these organisms have not been identified by scientists — maybe 5%. Much less do we understand how these organisms interact with each other. And yet, our life depends on this. Basically everything we eat comes from this amazing substance — whether it is the plants themselves or the animals who eat the plants.
God created the earth and it was good; indeed, it was very good.
(Go over to water) Do you know that this substance flows in deep rivers underneath us, and occasionally comes to the surface of the earth where we can swim in it or use it to wash dirt off our bodies? Do you know that it sometimes pours down from the sky? Do you know that if you are thirsty, you can drink this and feel a lot better? Once, Jerome went on a hike, alone, in the Gila Wilderness of southern New Mexico. He was carrying enough water to get him through the day. He planned to camp where there was a spring, so he could refill his jugs. But there was no spring there. During the night, he kept dreaming of water. He hiked out the next day, delirious, in the 95-degree heat, and finally got to the ranger station where he walked up to a faucet, turned a knob and out came water. We are about 60% water. The Earth's surface is 74% water. As far as we know, no life has ever evolved to exist without it, and wherever there is water, there is the possibility of life.
God created water and it was good; indeed, it was very good
(Go over to air.) We don't think much about air because it's invisible. We can't see it. But astronauts who have traveled above our atmosphere can see it in a new way. One astronaut said, "You see a thin, thin layer just above the surface of the Earth, maybe 10 or 12 kilometres thick. (That's 6-7 miles.) That is the atmosphere of the Earth. That is it. Below that is life. Above it is nothing." The first thing we do when we are born into life is gulp for this air, and during the course of our life we will take about 350 million lungfuls of it. Breathing air is so important that our bodies have taken over this function from our conscious control. We breathe whether we want to or not. You know what happens when you hold your breath. Your body starts demanding it pretty quickly — your heart pounds, blood vessels in your head begin to bulge. And then you breathe the air, again.
God created air and it was good; indeed, it was very good
(Go over to fire). The first words the Creator utters in our Scriptures are: "Let there be light." Fire is the energy of creation. It starts everything up. It gets the whole ball rolling. Every morning, the fiery engine that drives the Earth and all life rises over our heads. Our sun is just one small star in a cosmos that contains billions, and we get just a tiny sliver of its radiation. But it is enough to run a planet. When that sun rises, all life rises, too, so that we can receive its energy. Flowers turn toward the light of its fire, reptiles and cats warm themselves in it, trees and plants start to eat this sunlight through photosynthesis. When we eat those plants (or the animals that ate them), we eat sunlight, too. We take this energy of fire into our bodies.
God created fire, and it was good; indeed it was very good.
Welcome to our world! For fire, earth, air, and water all come together in varying proportions to make up me, and you, and this beautiful garden we call home. They are the building blocks Creator God uses to create life. And they form a garden that is unmatched in its diversity and complexity, in the "gorgeousness of its self-expression" (as one cosmologist put it). So far as we know, there is no other place in the universe like our planet Earth. We are the garden spot of the cosmos.
Thomas Berry, a cultural historian and priest puts it: "Earth seems to be a reality that is developing with the simple aim of celebrating the joy of existence. This can be seen in the coloration of the various plants and animals, in the circling flights of the swallows as well as the blossoming of the spring flowers; each of these events required immense creativity over billions of years in order to come forth as Earth."
This, then, is our Home, this garden that exists simply to celebrate the joy of existence. This is our Original Blessing. Our foundational story, our creation story that we heard today from Genesis reminds us over and over again that the essential nature of this home is good. Sun? Good. Moon? Good. Stars? Good. Oceans? Good. Plants? Good. Creepy-crawly things? Good. Animals? Good. Us? Good.
I wonder if we heard that growing up? I wonder if our families, our schools, our churches, spoke to us of the fundamental goodness of creation, of the fundamental goodness of ourselves. I wonder if they told us that long before there was sin and the fall and Adam and Eve and the snake and the expulsion from the garden, there was Original Blessing.
If we didn't hear that in our churches, well, that's odd, because this blessing is where God begins. In fact, in God's time (which is to say, in cosmological time), sin is a relatively new invention. There were 19 billion years or more of history and God's creative activity before human beings appeared on the scene and invented sin. So, it's hardly original. I'm not saying that sin isn't real. It is. But it's not the place God starts, and it shouldn't be the place we start.
Instead, we begin here, with the unimaginable blessing of creation. And this is where we start as we begin this series together. Many of us realize that big changes are coming. Our First World way of life, made possible by vast quantities of cheap oil and other natural resources, is coming to an end. The Earth just can't handle us anymore. I know that many of us have felt for some time the increasing urgency of the need to make changes, and of the possibility of this unimaginable blessing of creation somehow disappearing, or at least being irrevocably changed.
There's this amazing document called the Earth Charter, which was created by a large global consultation process, headed up by Mikhail Gorbachev, and finally ratified in 2000. It was originally started by the United Nations and it has since been endorsed by thousands of organizations representing millions of individuals. This is what is says in its preamble, "We stand at a critical moment in Earth's history, a time when humanity must choose its future. As the world becomes increasingly interdependent and fragile, the future at once holds great peril and great promise. We must form a global partnership to care for Earth and one another or risk the destruction of ourselves and the diversity of life."
It's a pretty amazing time to be on the planet, folks. We've been born in a rather exceptional time in history. A time of great choice. A time that holds great peril and great promise. While this time presents technical and intellectual challenges for us, it is foundationally, I believe, a spiritual challenge. The consciousness that made possible the destruction of the Earth must give way to a consciousness that sees the Earth as a "communion of subjects, not a collection of objects" to use Thomas Berry's language. (repeat) This movement into a new consciousness and a new relationship with our Garden Home is the Great Work of humanity at this time in history. Yeah, it's really that big.
As we begin this journey together, may we carry in the core of our being the goodness of earth, the goodness of fire, the goodness of water, the goodness of air, the goodness of us, of each other. May we feel their support, their inspiration, their blessing as we do this Great Work together. Amen.