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EarthWords - connecting Scripture
and Creation
"Creation flavored" thoughts on the lectionary texts
Date: Sept 7, 2008
Text: Psalm 148 All Creation Praises God
Thoughts
Heavenly beings praise God - who created them. Sunrise, moonglow, stars twinkling. The waters above the heavens
- would those be "stored away waters" kind of like ice caps? What does it mean that God "fixed their bounds"?
Earthly beings praise God - sea monsters, fire and hail, Gustav, mountains, peach trees, beasts, bugs, birds - and us!
But in a season of extreme wildfires, how does fire praise God? Could it be that when "what is" acts the way it was
designed/created to act (ie., in dry seasons with high heat - burn!) that is a praising of God, who created and is intimately
connected to and embedded in "what is"?
Text: Exodus 12.1-14 First Passover
Thoughts
Any time we touch on animal sacrifice it leads us to think about how we treat animals - from issues of medical testing,
to experimentation, to genetic modification, to habitat reduction and destruction, to "confined animal feeding operations".
(We are getting "free range eggs" through Seeds and Spores, our local Community Supported Agriculture farmer!) Now there
is a report of Chronic Wasting Disease in deer in the Lower Peninsula. Will other deer need to be "harvested" for testing?
(In truth, I don't know exactly how that works.)
I do like the idea that if your family/household was small, you could share a lamb with your
neighbor. We could perhaps learn to have "libraries" of a variety of things besides books - gardening tools, bikes,
"once a year" clothes. We could develop practices for sharing cars, charcoal grills, etc. It takes a little more
planning, but would use less resources.
Text: Matthew 18.15-20 Conflict resolution,
group prayer!
Thoughts
The value of witnesses, community. Behavior, especially behavior that affects the environment, is
not just an individual issue, but communal. One person's, city's, company's, country's actions affect us all.
Even the actions of two or three together can make a difference - for good or for ill. How important
it is for us to remember and be aware of all those others who are "with us" in the effort - who are working for peace, or
to prevent poverty, or to increase education. Thomas Berry notes that you can not save earth "piecemeal". Earth
is an integral whole and our work is all connected, all essential.
What we do on earth has repercussions in heaven. Could that mean that as we trash earth we
are also trashing heaven? I hope not, but I'm not too sure.
Prayer
God of Creation -
sunset and moonrise and all the stars twinkle your praise;
powerful storms and crashing waves splash with joy;
beasts and bugs and birds trumpet and whine and chirp the song.
Thank you for the gift of peach and apple and blueberry - pies.
By two's and three's and million's
we join the chorus of praise.
Help us join also the community of care for all things created. Amen.
One Thing to Do This Week
Find one item that you use occasionally - tent, barbecue grill, camcorder, wheelchair, snowblower, truck(?) - that you
could possibly arrange to share with someone else. Who might that "someone else" be?
EarthWords is produced by Charlie West
Ink
permission given to copy, share, use, delete, forward, distribute, disagree
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