Nature is Beautiful (Question Mark)

"Nature is the most powerful thing God made.
In fact, it's the only thing he ever made."
-Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

So, there's something on my mind lately. Namely, humanity and our perception of nature.

Most people would say that nature is beautiful, that feeling connected to the earth and all living creatures is a positive thing. 9 times out of 10, I'd agree with that.

After all, who wouldn't agree that this is beautiful?


Sunsets, butterflies, vast coral reefs, polar bears, rainforests, starfish, the great Northern lights - we're generally okay with these things.


But what about the less-than-savory side of nature?



Tornadoes, parasites, earthquakes, viruses, floods, flesh-eating bacteria- these are all part of nature, too. Not exactly what comes to mind when I hear "God's creation," but there you have it.

It begs the question, ought we embrace the repellent side of nature? As squishy, soft-skinned mammals, we're naturally averse to things like, say, the AIDS virus. Or being burned alive in a volcanic eruption. Or sucked into a black hole.

A few months ago, I read something funny on an Atheist website, in an article about neo-Pagan Earth religions.

"Wiccans, though generally more tolerable than Judeo-Christians, are just as happy to be sucked away by a hurricane, praising the gods and thanking the Goddess for the opportunity."

Seriously though, when we thank God for the gift of Creation, do we really mean all of Creation? Aren't we, as squishy soft-skinned mammals, guilty of picking and choosing?

In the collective thought of the Christian think-tank, there are a few answers/opinions which come to mind.

One is of the ultra-liberal revisionist John S. Spong. That is, that there is no loving theistic Creator God watching out for us, that nature is in fact cruel, and that God is better understood as the impersonal Force which comes from harmonious interpersonal relationships. Jesus was a very nice person. (If he was real.)

If that's true, I'm going to be so pissed. Because it means I've been worshiping a 2,000 year old corpse, and taking moral cues from an outdated work of fiction. Quite frankly, I'd get more out of staying home on Sunday morning and watching Star Wars. It has better special effects than the Bible, and Chewbacca is way cooler than King Solomon.

On the other hand, we've got the colonial imperialist thinking of the 17th - 19th centuries. (Also Ann Coulter.) That is, that humanity is superior to nature and as such, it is our birthright - nay, duty - to rape and pillage the earth for all its worth. To subdue all inferior creatures and races beneath our mighty sword. I don't buy that either.

So, where does that leave us? How do we understand God, through the lens of God's creation? Even the less desirable aspects of that creation? What do you think?

Practicing Love

What helps you to love others?

Perspectives

Perspective is a funny thing. I'm thinking about how two people can agree on, or like a particular "thing" - but for different reasons.

For example, I love elaborate vestments (see below!) because they're beautiful and aesthetics help me draw closer to the Divine. Someone else may like them because they're canonically "correct," and what "the Church ought to do," and order helps them see God more clearly. Someone else may like them because they're subversive to the culture around them, and there they find Christ. Yet another might hate them for the same reason.

We think we're all in agreement, but it can be disconcerting to realize we like the same "thing," but for a different reason. We may not be in agreement at all!

And sometimes, we realize that what we thought we liked about it - the aesthetic, the order, the subversiveness - points to a deeper truth about ourselves and our relationship with God. We may have to let go of the reason for liking or disliking something - the aesthetic, the order - in order to see things the way they really are.

Using vestments as an example here - it could be anything. Church-related or not. An object, an ideal, a place, a person.

I know I'm being all highly theoretical and wishy-washy, so if this makes any sense at all to you, bravo :) Just thinking out loud again.

What the Doctor Ordered

I was looking for a certain quote by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, but I found one I hadn't seen before instead.

I can just hear him telling this story, smiling the whole way through. He has such a loping, easy laughter and grace about him - like he knows a great big secret that we don't. I couldn't help but smiling and laughing while looking through pictures of him. I believe he is a Saint, capital S.

Adam is in the garden. And there he was having a great time with the animals and gamboling all over the place, but God looked on and said. uh-uh. It’s not good for that guy to be all by his lonesome.

And God said to Adam, “Well Adam –”

Adam said, “Yes?”

“How about choosing a mate for yourself from the animals?”

So God let animals pass in front of Adam in procession and God said, “What about this one?”

“Nope,” said Adam.

“And what about this one?”

“No.”

“And this one?”

“Not on your life!”

And God say okay, and put Adam to sleep. And as the story goes, out of Adam’s rib, God created this delectable creature.

And when Adam awakes, he looks and says “Wow!” and “This is what the doctor ordered!”

It’s a story that is meant to convey a very profound truth about you and me. That you and I are incomplete, that we can’t, in fact, be human in isolation.

In solitary confinement, as it were.

I wouldn’t know how to be human except by learning it from other human beings. I need you in order for me to be me. I need other human beings in order for me to be human. …

The totally self-sufficient human being is, in fact, subhuman.
…
One of the sayings in our country is … “A person is a person through other persons.”

We are family.

Prophetic Music

This is what it's all about - the Millenium Development Goals, sustainability, rejecting the culture of mass consumption and greed....It's a look at how the world really is; the whole world.




There ain't no reasons things are this way
Its how they've always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way
We do it everyday
Preachers on the podiums speaking to saints
Prophets on the sidewalks begging for change
Old ladies laughing from the fire escape, cursing my name
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing
You can spend your whole life working for something
Just to have it taken away

People walk around pushing back their desks
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and bracelets
Talking 'bout nothing, not thinking about their
Every little heart beat, every little breath
People walk a tight rope on a razor's edge
Carrying their hurt and hatred and weapons
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pin
Or a thought or a word or a sentence.

There ain't no reasons things are this way
Its how they've always been and they intend to stay
I don't know why i say the things i say,
But i say them anyway.
But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free
I do believe
Love will come set me free
I know it will
Love will come set me free
Yes

Prison walls still standing tall
Some things never change at all
Keep on building prisons,
Gonna fill them all.
Keep on building bombs
Gonna drop them all

Working your fingers bare to the bone
Breaking your back, make you sell your soul
Like a lung is filled with coal, suffocating slow
The wind blows wild and i may move
But politicians lie and i'm not fooled
You don't need no reason or a 3 piece suit
To argue the truth
The air in my skin and the world under my toes
Slavery is stitched into the fabric of my clothes
Chaos and commotion wherever i go
Love, i try to follow

But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free
I do believe
Love will come set me free
I know it will
Love will come set me free
Yes

There ain't no reasons things are this way
Its how they've always been and they intend to stay
I can't explain why we live this way;
We do it everyday.


-

Eternal God, in whose perfect kingdom no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness,
no strength known but the strength of love: So mightily spread abroad your Spirit,
that all peoples may be gathered together and reconciled under the banner of the Prince of Peace,
as children of one Father; to whom be dominion and glory, now and forever.

Amen.

Oscar Romero

I've been reading about Oscar Romero lately, the former Catholic bishop of El Salvador who was eventually murdered on March 24th, 1980, for his outspoken criticism of the Salvadoran government's human rights abuses. He was shot just after delivering a sermon, the final words of which were, "May God have mercy on the assassins." His blood spilled out onto the altar.

At his funeral, over 250,000 people came to pay tribute. Salvadoran death squads set off bombs and fired shots into the crowd at Cathedral Square, killing at least 31. Still, more and more people came every day to pay homage to the deceased prelate.
I'm absolutely in awe of this man. He is in the process for being canonized as a Saint in the Catholic church, and is already a Saint in the Anglican Communion. In his early life, he was conservative and rather blindly obedient. He was placed in El Salvador by church hierarchy so he wouldn't "make trouble." But witnessing firsthand the suffering of the people brought about his transformation into a prophetic voice of peace, as one who lives completely without fear.

This is why I firmly believe that religion should be subversive. If you're not doing your part to ruin the unjust status quo and piss people off, make people uncomfortable - then you're not doing it right. If your pastor drives a luxury SUV with $400 rims, you're not doing it right. If religion is a crutch and makes your life easier, rather than harder, you're not doing it right.

The word repent in Greek (metanoeo) literally means "Stop! Stop what you're doing! Go back! Think differently!" Our leaders and politicians have tried to convince us that "the way to peace is through war."

It has become a way of life for this country to be at war. That, my friends, is sickening. We need to stop. We need to go back and think differently. In a world of mind-numbing violence and fear, it's hard, if not impossible to hear the calm, quiet, voices of peace. Those voices belong to women and men who live boldly, and without fear. They will not be silenced.

"We must not seek the child Jesus in the pretty figures of our Christmas cribs. We must seek him among the undernourished children who have gone to bed at night with nothing to eat, among the poor newsboys who will sleep covered with newspapers in doorways. "

Speechless

Sometimes you're speechless because you don't have anything to say, or you feel that what you have to say is somehow irrelevant or inadequate, or sometimes you are speechless because silence will say everything.

But right now, I'm speechless because I have so many things I'd like to say, and they're all piling up in the back of my throat and I simply can't speak. So, I will write about this past weekend later, once I've had time to "unpack" all my spiritual baggage.

"Let old wounds be reopened and exposed,
so that a new life and a new Resurrection may begin."


...

Life: The Living Icon

"Every day is a special day, every place is a special place as it is."
-Bernie Glassman

We have this notion that certain things, relics, people, places - are holy. Notre Dame, most would probably agree, is more sacred than the ladies' room of an interstate gas station.

Really?

If God is truly omnipresent, then isn't every place, as part of Creation, sacred in some way?

Wasn't God birthed into the world surrounded by dirty, smelly animals in a barn? Isn't that basically the biblical equivalent of a truck stop bathroom? To compare the two seems like borderline sacrilege. But scripture is full of God working in filthy, lowly, unworthy places, and through filthy, lowly, unworthy people. Even a toilet seat bears beneath its white, porcelain exterior the stamp of divine craftsmanship.

Contemplate that.

On the other hand, there exists a paradox. Some places are, in fact, more holy than others, because we, as communities, have channeled divine communion - the loving connection between two or more people - into them, consecrating them as sacred, as special.

When two people fall in love beneath a certain cherry tree, that tree becomes sacred for them. It absorbs and holds and protects the memory of that moment. In turn, it too gives something of itself to that memory.

A long time ago, there was a certain man condemned to die. At his final meal, he told his friends to hold and protect the memory of that moment. And so they did. And it was holy.

So, accept that there are moments of particular holiness, although everything is and has the potential to be holy. It'll drive you nuts.

We place icons of holy moments in our scared spaces, along with images of Jesus and the Saints and martyrs and angels...But when we're out in the world, who are the Saints and martyrs? Who is Jesus? Anyone. Everyone.

What would the world look like if we saw all moments as icons? All people as divine creations?

Every now and then, stop.
Look at your surroundings, the
people around you, and admire the work
of the artist.