I hope your Earth Day was well.
As many of us extend Earth Day into a week, here are some things I found myself reflecting upon today, as well as a poem celebrating the gift of Life – the gift of Wisdom – the gift of the Spirit.
Enjoy.
Joel
+ The new creation story speaks of a Super Nova who died in an explosion and gave birth – its Resurrection Power birthed all the elements with in us and the world.
+ We breath the Divine breath.
+ Is the art of savoring lost/buried under consumerism?
+ Revelation comes in two volumes: scripture and nature.
- St. Thomas Aquinas
+ God is the Mind of the Universe – the Self-Organizing Principle
- Eric Jantsch The Self-Organizing Universe
+ Doxa = Glory or Radiance.
+ Everything has it’s own radiance. – Hildegard of Bingen
And the Poem:
And the gift was with God and the gift was God.*Fox writes "This attempt to place Jesus in the context of world religions does not diminish his unique role in Christianity."
And the gift came and set its tent among us,
first in the form of a fireball
that burned unabated for 750,000 years
and cooked in its immensely hot oven
hadrons and leptons.
These gifts found a modicum of stability,
enough to give birth to the first atomic creatures,
hydrogen and helium.
A billion years of stewing and stirring
and the gifts of hydrogen and helium
birthed galaxies – spinning, whirling, alive galaxies
created trillions of stars,
lights in the heavens and cosmic furnaces
that made more gifts
through violent explosions of vast supernovas
burning abright with the glow
of more than a billion stars.
Gifts upon gifts, gifts birthing gifts, gifts exploding,
gifts imploding, gifts of lights, gifts of darkness.
Cosmic gifts and subatomic gifts.
All drifting and swirling, being born and dying,
in some vast secret of a plan.
Which was also a gift.
One of these supernova gifts exploded in a special manner
sending a unique gift to the universe,
which later-coming creatures would one day call
earth,
their home.
Its biosphere was also a gift,
wrapping it with beauty and dignity and just the right
protection from sun’s radiation
and from the cosmic cold.
And eternal night.
This gift planet was set as a jewel
in its most exquisite setting,
in this case the exact distance of 100 million miles
from its mother star, the sun.
New gifts arose, never seen in such forms in the universe –
rocks, oceans, continents,
multicellular creatures that moved by their own inner power.
Life was born!
Gifts that had taken the form of fireball and helium,
galaxies and stars, rocks and water, now took the form of Life!
Life – a new gift of the universe, a new gift in the universe.
Flowers of multiple color and sent, trees standing upright.
Forests arose offering places for all manner
of creeping, crawling things.
Of things that fly and sing.
Of things that swim and slither.
Of things that run on four legs.
And, eventually, of things that stand and walk on two.
With thumbs that move to make still more creativity –
more gift making –
possible.
The human became a gift, but also a menace.
For its powers of creativity were unique in their potential
for destruction or healing.
How would humans use these gifts?
Which direction would they choose?
The earth waited for an answer to these questions.
And it still waiting.
Trembling.
Teachers were sent, divine incarnations
birthed from the soil.
Isis and Hesiod, Buddha and Lao Tzu, Moses and Isaiah,
Sara and Esther, Jesus* and Paul,
Mary and Hildegard, Chief Seattle and Buffalo Woman.
To teach the humans ways of compassion.
And still the earth waited
to see if humanity was gift or curse.
Trembling.
Have you ever given a gift and then regretted it afterward?
Earth wonders and waits.
For the gift has been made flesh
and dwells everywhere among us
and we tend to know it not.
And to treat it not as a gift but s an object.
To be used, abused, trampled underfoot – even crucified.
But to those who do receive it as a gift
all is promised.
All shall be called children of the gift,
sons and daughters of grace.
- Matthew Fox Creation Spirituality. 1-4
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