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EarthWords - connecting Scripture
and Creation
"Creation flavored" thoughts on the lectionary texts
Date: November 1, 2009 - a
couple of lessons from Nov 1 and a couple from All Saints
(note corresponding EarthWords from 3 years ago archived on the website)
Text: Psalm 146 Trust in God, not humans
(even princes!)
Thoughts
Put your trust in God (and God's Creation), not in humans or even in human contrivances. As we look at carbon and
such, we have a whole lot better chance of things going well if we don't abuse Creation in the first place, rather than trying
to come up with some mechanism for trying to mop up afterwards!
Trust the Creation - to be alive and to take care of itself and endure (even if we push it past the boundaries of comfortable
human habitation. Creation will live on - with or without us!)
God executes justice, and gives food to the hungry by undergirding Creation. So it is not that God needs to come
down on the destroyers - God has fashioned Creation to take care of itself. The way of the wicked will come to ruin
because that's where it really leads, if we just look "long range and carefully" enough. I guess I have more sense of
this happening on a global scale than on an individual one. Individually it seems too often that the wicked (read "polluters")
prosper and the good die young of environmental poisoning!
Text: Ps 24 The Earth is the Lord's
Thoughts
And the fullness thereof - when we destroy habitat, cause species to disappear, create artificial environments and eco-scapes
(from theme parks to lawns to paved over parking lots to mountain top removal to clearcup and mono crop forests to irrigated
deserts) we subtract from the fullness that God dreams. (Nice report about the return of the Aral Sea - http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=8914467 - would have been better to have left it alone in the first place, but nice to have it coming back.)
Those with "clean hands" can get in - that is to be taken morally, not physically. Gardeners, farmers are welcome
even right from the fields!
Text: Ruth 1.1-18 Wherever you go.....
Thoughts
There was a famine when the judges ruled. Does one kind of rule/government/society/economic system make famine
more likely than another?
First Israel had no food and Moab did, then the other way around. What are the opportunities and responsibilities
on each side? First Naomi was an alien, then Ruth. Or Thomas Friedman asks what happens when one country has more capacity
to produce energy (either because they have bought up the oil and gas or because they have developed alternatives)?
These are the reasons why climate change is becoming a concern even to national security people.
Where is the future - in human relationships or in land relationships?
Text: Revelation 21.1-6a New Heaven,
New Earth
Thoughts
New heaven and earth, for the first have passed away. Creation has taken a long and torturous path
to this time and place, having essentially "started over" several times. Again, "Creation lives on - with or without
us!"
The Holy City - do you think of heaven, the hereafter, "whatever comes next", in natural images - forests,
meadows, mountains - on in social images - village, city, temple? I think I tend more towards natural images, though
on reflection, that can seem a little bit lonely! Maybe I'll adjust and try "village of God"!
Making all things new - Creation evolves day by day. There's a wonderful essay by Loren Eiseley, ("The
Snout", it's in The Immense Journey, I don't know if it is reprinted from elsewhere) which starts off - "They (octopuses) are the wisest of the mollusks, and I have always felt it to be just as well for us that they never
came ashore, but there are other things that have....There are things down there still coming ashore. Never make the
mistake of thinking life is now adjusted for eternity. It gets into your head - the certainty, I mean - the human certainty,
and then you miss it all: the things on the tide flats and what they mean, and why, as my wife says, 'they ought to be watched.'"
He goes on to tell about a friend coming back from one of the back-waters of the world and telling about
fish dropping out of the trees and into the boat. "'They did so', he protested, 'and they were hard to catch....What
were they doing sitting up there in bunches? I ask you. It's no place for a fish. Besides that they had a way
of sidling off with those popeyes trained on you. I never liked it. Somebody ought to keep an eye on them.'"
(There you are - Happy Halloween!)
(Here's a link to The Snout -
"It is finished" - God's tinkering with Creation? Creation is fashioned and now it can go on its own?
Or is God tinkering, tweaking day by day?
Prayer
Faithful God,
Creator and Owner of all that is,
Your world continually renews and remakes itself,
confronting the unjust,
providing food and future for those who trust.
"Whither thou (and thy Creation) goest this day,
we will go to
through life and death. Amen.
One Thing to Do This Week
Find something by Loren Eiseley and read it. Actually the "guy tossing starfish" story ("It matters to this one")
goes back to him.
EarthWords is produced by Charlie West
Ink
permission given to copy, share, use, delete, forward, distribute, disagree
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