Pastor's Message
Spirit Steps
Reflection on Earth Day
We are all travelers in a sacred land. All we touch has spirit and is deserving of our respect. We are just one part of the sacred circle of life. We must touch the world in a physical way, as we are physical beings. But we need to touch it in a gentle manner and with beauty. Nicolas Wood
It is early in the morning and the sun is rising in a hazy sky as Earth Day dawns upon us. Sitting at my computer seems a far cry from sitting on a rock at the water’s edge and writing with paper and a pencil. In my head I know that every thing that we have comes from the earth but a computer seems so far removed from the elements. Couple that with the busy-ness of our lives and it makes sense to me that we have lost touch with the beat of the earth, the rhythm that allows for an order in our lives. It seems to me that it is not so much that we don’t care about the earth, as it is that we have lost our connection with the earth. In our consumer driven society we take from the earth without thought of what we are doing, without a sense of gratitude for what we are receiving. Those who till the soil know that you cannot keep taking from the earth without giving something back, without providing nutrients back into the soil. Sitting at a computer, removed from the earth, it is easy to take without thought of giving.
Scripture tells us that God reached into the earth and with God’s own hands formed us from the soil. “From dust you are taken and to dust you shall return,” might well be our hymn of connection to mother earth. We need to relearn to honor her, to respect her as our mother.
We do not have to be scientists in order to see that we have severely mismanaged the earth and it’s resources that were entrusted to our care. Scripture tells us “the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation …” I now understand that in a whole new way. It is our children and our children’s children that will inherit a planet with all the problems that we have created.
Scientists tell us that it may already be too late stop much less reverse some of the damage we have done to our planet, yet we are the Easter People, a people given new life through the resurrection of our Lord. If God can raise Jesus, if God can give us new life, cannot that same God bring life back to our planet?!
We need to do our part. We need to learn to live in touch with the beat of the earth, to give back for what we receive, to live with gratitude, and to rejoice in a God who gives and forgives in such abundance.
Peace,
Pastor Bob