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EarthWords - connecting Scripture
and Creation
"Creation flavored" thoughts on the lectionary texts
Date: December 4, 2011
(note corresponding EarthWords from 3 years ago archived on the website)
Text: Psalm 85.1-2,8-13
Thoughts
Lord, thou wast favorable to thy land" - humans, on the other hand, have despoiled/degraded 25% of earth's surface, according
to the UN. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/un-warns-25-pct-of-world-farmland-degraded-but-production-must-rise-70-pct-to-meet-demand/2011/11/28/gIQAlI4e3N_story.html God may even "pardon all our sin", but the consequences will remain! According to James Gustave Speth in The
Bridge at the Edge of the World, "In recent decades, Americans have protected as area the size of California as 'forever
wild' wilderness, an extraordinary accomplishment, but since 1982 the country has also paved over, built on, and otherwise
developed thirty-five million once-rural acres, an area the size of New York State. Each year the United States is losing
about two million acres of open space - six thousand acres a day - and about 1.2 million acres of farmland." See this
on Walmart - http://www.grist.org/business-technology/2011-11-29-can-you-say-sprawl-walmarts-biggest-climate-impact-goes-ignored
What needs to happen for "God's glory to dwell in the land"? (vs9) Is it something God needs to do, something humans
need to participate in, something Creation will do/is doing all by itself? How do you read it? And along that
line, what would it look like for "God's glory to dwell in the land"?
Love, faithfulness (twice), righteousness (twice), and peace all need to come together for "the land to yield its increase".
I think of love for the land and its inhabitants that would discourage large-scale changes - wide areas of clear-cutting forest,
mountain-top removal coal mining, acres and acres of one crop. I think of faithfulness to Creation's original intent
for the land - to be wetlands, or forest, or plains. I think of righteousness towards the inhabitants - particularly
such things as not siting polluting industry in low income areas (well, I guess not siting polluting industries anywhere,
when it comes to that, but in particular, not in low income areas, not in developing countries), such things as honoring the
rights of animals to have a livable habitat including access to other animals in their food chain, other members of their
own species for reproducing. I think of peace - the feeling of wellbeing that comes from wandering in a well-respected
environment; the kind of thing that leads some people to say "My church is the woods." Now - if all that were to happen,
what kind of "increase" would the land yield?
Faithfulness will spring up from the ground - I think of water wells or springs that are always there, even in the middle
of summer. At least until pollution infiltrates, or irrigation pressure alters the water table. Where is faithfulness/unfaithfulness
in that picture?
"and make his footsteps a way." What do God's footsteps look like? I've seen tracks of deer and rabbits and
last weekend some that could only have been a beaver dragging it's tail in soft, wet snow, but what would God's footsteps
look like? What "way" (pathway? way of life?) would they show?
Text: Isaiah 40.1-11
Thoughts
"Speak tenderly to Jerusalem" - how would this passage sound differently spoken to the people of Jerusalem or spoken
to the land on which Jerusalem is built?
Depending on the punctuation, either a voice in the wilderness is crying, or a voice is crying "In the wilderness..."
If a voice cries in the wilderness and no one hears, does it make a sound?
As wilderness shrinks and disappears, where would a voice cry out and not be lost in the noise, confusion, busyness,
sprawl of today's market-oriented consumerist life? What passes for wilderness in your life? Is it a place - perhaps
a park or a lakeshore? Is it a time - early morning before anyone else is up or late at night after life has settled
into the darkness and quiet? What do you hear in such places, at such times?
"Make straight in the desert" - well, the desert would be a good place to make something straight. As
would a swamp! Check out the Seney Stretch, a 25 mile stretch of straight highway 50 miles east of Marquette.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-28_(Michigan_highway)#Seney_Stretch Note that it forms the northern border of a wildlife area. And they say "it's a boring stretch of highway"!
Valleys lifted up, mountains brought low - sounds a little like constructing an Interstate Highway. What's positive
about that? What's problematic? I'm finishing up a course on Native American Experience, and the professor (a
Lakota/Sioux, people of horses and buffalo) says that before the transcontinental railroad there was one huge buffalo herd;
after the railroad there were two. (And by 1900, the largest group left was 39 animals in Yellowstone Park. In
1800 there were an estimated 40 million.)
"All flesh (humans and other-than-humans?) shall see it together". What things do we all see? Sunrise?
Moonlight? Birth, growth, death? Laughter, tears?
"Grass" - probably more like the prairie grass, various ground covers, or woodland flowers than the manicured carpets
we have planted and mowed around our houses. (Along that line, about 2/3 of our backyard is settling in for the winter
under its blanket of leaves, compost, cardboard, woodchips - waiting to become a food-producing garden come spring!)
"He will feed his flock" - although as more and more land is degraded, depleted, or washed away, as fish stocks
get depleted or laced with toxins (the Co-op was showing the movie The End of the Line http://endoftheline.com/ but we had a conflict and didn't get there), we are going to have more and more difficulty feeding God's flock.
Let alone climate change issues. Let alone transportation issues as our food chains stretch from coast to coast and
back.
Text: Mark 1.1-8
Thoughts
So for Mark it's "the voice" that is in the wilderness, not "the way". Making a way straight through the woods,
through the mountains, through the city - much harder than through the desert! I think of railroad trestles and roads
through rock cuts and tunnels. We've got this mine that is starting up north of here - and they are trying to figure
out how to transport the ore. They're looking at building a road straight through a fairly undeveloped area. Many
of us are not sure that's a good idea! In fact we're pretty sure it's not really a very good idea at all!
Here's John in the wilderness, and all the city folks go out to hear him. Kind of like Woodstock?
John wore camel's hair and leather, and ate locusts and honey. (I've got some alpaca yarn I need to knit up into
something!) But as for eating the bugs - was that because he wanted to, or because that all that was available, of for
some other reason? What would make you eat bugs instead of beef (or chicken or pork or lake trout!)? If it was
cheaper? (Gotta suspect it would be!) If it was better for the environment? If it was more nutritious?
If it was all there was? I remember reading something about how the biomass of ants compares to the biomass of humans
world-wide - they are apparently about the same! And even more so for termites! Would you be more likely to eat
bugs as a snack food with cheese dip? Or in a casserole? (Rice, mushrooms, onions, and ants?) Or ground
up as filler (instead of "pink slime"?) Or would you simply finally turn fully vegan? I think maybe I could eat
them if they were ground up and I didn't know it!
"I baptize you with water' - we'll come back to baptism again in a couple of weeks - issues like what happens when the
water itself is polluted? What happens to the people living downstream? Hey - and who am I living downstream from?
Prayer
God of earth and sky,
of meadow and mountain, woodland and prairie, and ocean;
God of past, present, and future;
God of wilderness desert and crowded cities;
God of the Land -
Help us hear the wilderness voice
and find the way
that leads to peace.
(OK, sorry AJ Muste, http://www.ajmuste.org/ I know "There is no way....", but this once "that leads to peace" just seemed to fit in.)
One Thing to Do This Week
Let's start thinking about Christmas. How will you make this year's celebration an example of "living better with
less"? Would seeds or plants be an appropriate gift?
EarthWords is produced by Charlie West
Ink
permission given to copy, share, use, delete, forward, distribute, disagree
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