"Creation flavored" thoughts on the lectionary texts

 

Date:  October 2, 2011  (Second Sunday after the September equinox - hope you were a little more on the ball about that than I was!)

(note corresponding EarthWords from 3 years ago archived on the website)

 

Text:     Psalm 19   The heavens are telling....

The heavens are telling the glory of God - sunrises and sunsets, blue skies, towering thunderclouds, lightening, Northern lights, full moons, starlit nights....

 

Speech and knowledge pass from day to day, night to night. Here's the thing - Creation has been going on for millions and millions of years.  While the last couple thousand years have been fairly stable and in the comfort zone for humans, that stability is by no means guaranteed as we go forward.  Earth's climate has varied wildly, and in ways that have taken it out of the human comfort zone - ice ages, hot and muggy tropical ages, and so on.  Can we hear the words and learn the knowledge that each day and night shares in order to understand enough about how Creation works in order to avoid the potentially disastrous times ahead before it is too late?

 

What are the words this daybreak is proclaiming to you - "beauty"? "hope"? "joy"? "peace"?  Or is it "thirsty"? "hot"? "flood"? "despair"?

 

A tent for the sun - coming from a time when "the sun went around the earth"!  If we think of the tent as a protective cover around the sun, could we extrapolate to the atmosphere as a nicely balanced "tent" around the earth, allowing a nicely balanced heat transfer that keeps Earth in a comfortable, livable temperature range?  And then what happens as we alter the heat transfer properties by raising CO2 levels way above the "magic 350"?   www.350.org

 

There is nothing hid from its heat.  Starts to sound kind of ominous.  Some of the things "not hid from its heat" - Texas, glaciers, Artic ice, backyard gardens!

 

On the other side - sunshine on our solar panels makes us electricity.  Wasn't that a John Denver song?  Unfortunately I can't get the display that shows how much we are generating, using, selling to work!  And when you stop to think about it, ultimately sunlight energy powers everything that happens here on earth.  Thankfully the wheat fields, the apple trees, the pumpkin plants are not completely hidden from the sun's energy! 

 

Then, "the law, testimony, precepts...are perfect, right, enduring" - The Creation is designed to be a whole, self-correcting, enduring system.  If humanity is becoming a blight within the Creation, then Creation itself includes the powers and processes that will heal itself by dealing with humanity.  (A little more on this idea below.)

 

First, let's take a break for honey and honeycomb!  Nothing much better on toast, biscuits, cornbread, although apple butter, strawberry jam would run a close second.  And I guess honey would be a close runner up to maple syrup on pancakes, waffles, and French toast!  (OK, I gotta take a break - I'm hungry!)

 

Now, back to "by them is thy servant warned, but who can discern his/her errors?"  I just finished reading Balance Point  (http://josephjenkins.com/books_balance.html, $3.85 used at Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Balance-Point-Searching-Spiritual-Missing/dp/0964425858)  a book by Joseph Jenkins the Loveable Loo guy  (http://humanurehandbook.com/store/home.php and make sure you click on the Lulu and the Loveable Loo video!) about how humans on Earth are like microbes on a grain of sand, and how we are becoming "a disease organism" exhibiting behavior similar to "hive robbing frenzy" in honeybees (http://cookevillebeekeepers.com/06/how-to-prevent-honey-bees-from-robbin), with some of us making outlandish withdrawals from the natural resource bank account without regard to justice or future generations.  ("How can a few people claim the Earth's non-renewable resources, extract them, and then sell them for their own personal profit?...The future generations are going to look back at us and shake their heads in disbelief.  Why would a couple of generations of Americans want to spend everyone else's resources?  Why would they want to waste them so flagrantly?  What conceivable rationale could there possibly be for that sort of behavior?"  Sounds almost "Native American Seven Generations"!)  If you finished reading all that you probably need a break - if you don't get Doonesbury in the Sunday Funnies, yesterday's was worth the price of the paper -   http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/archive/2011/09/25!  Anyway, the book's a little long and "expository" in the middle, but the beginning and ending are pretty good!  So - finding a personal balance point would be something like having the words of your mouth and the meditation of your heart (well, ok, "mind") and actions of your life be in harmony with "the Great Mystery" (how he refers to Creation.  And a heads up - it's a little "new agey"  Not really what you'd expect from the humanure toilet guy!)

 

Text:  Exodus 20.1-4,7-9,12-20     The Ten Words for Life

The Pharisees perceived that he was speaking about them.  Who in contemporary life might this parable be about?  (OK, let's be a little blunted - could this be about the fossil fuel industry and the climate deniers?)  Whoever it might be about, to "they" ("we"?) perceive it?

 

Creating, Redeeming, and Sustaining God,

your world offers us such wonders,

from sunrise to sunset to sunrise again,

from wheat fields to honeybees to maple syrup,

from ancient oceans to fossil fuels to solar panels.

Help us understand that these blessings are for all people,

for all generations,

and not to be used greedily or carelessly.

Help us discern our errors and discover our hidden faults

that we might be a symbiotic blessing and not a parasitic blight.