Untitled Outdoor Worship Meditation

Crestwood UCC at Lower Tuthill Park

July 30, 2006

Scripture:  Genesis Creation Text

Rev. Jean Morrow

Before I went on vacation, I was visiting with my best friend from college, Jan.  Jan directs the outdoor education programs associated with the Morton Arboretum just outside of Chicago.  She is an educator by vocation and a naturalist by avocation…she is one of those people who is totally at home out of doors.  If you take a walk with her anywhere…in the woods…on the prairie…by a lake shore…she will undoubtedly point out some little plant, call it by its real name and then tell you how the Native Americans used it medicinally or how such and such a weed isn’t indigenous to this area, but the settlers brought them along because they thought they would be beneficial.  She can scoop up dirt and make intelligible comments of what it’s composed of and whether earthworms are doing their job.  She is just a walking, talking encyclopedia of nature.

Well, anyway, as Jan and I were visiting, I asked her if she was familiar with someone I had run across in my ongoing study of Global Climate Change and the Environment…biologist and naturalist Dr. Edward O. Wilson, a distinguished member of the Harvard faculty…I say distinguished because he has received the National Medal of Science and has twice received the Pulitzer Prize and, as if that weren’t enough,  in 1995 he was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people in America.  The piece that I was interested in was that fact that he coined and popularized the notion of biophilia, referring to humans love of living things – our innate affinity with nature.

Well, when I mentioned his name, Jan reacted like a slightly shaken champagne bottle that had just been opened.  She rattled on merrily about this somewhat controversial hypothesis put forward by Dr. Wilson that humans evolved as creatures deeply enmeshed with the intricacies of nature, and that we still have this affinity with nature ingrained in our genotype, that humans feel more human when they are able to be in nature or with the natural world in some way…that because at some cellular level we as humans are connected and interconnected with the natural world, our spirits are actually depleted when we are denied opportunities to interact with the natural world…we are part of and not separate from nature.

Jan really does get excited about this stuff and she gets me all fired up too…what she was saying sounded so reasonable and relational and spiritually appealing…so in my enthusiasm I interrupted her and asked, “Why is this controversial?”

That made her chuckle.  She laughed and said, “Give me a break, Jean…it disagrees with the dominant religious view.” 

Oh, oh, I thought.  There it is again.  Science vs. religion.

Most of us are aware that there are two creation stories…and in the first one, God gave “man” dominion over the earth and all her creatures.  And many of our early church fathers and theologians have interpreted this to mean that all other beings on earth are here only because of the role they play in our salvation story…and unfortunately many modern church fathers and theologians continue to ascribe to this understanding of the universe.  And if you aspire to this theological understanding, then you believe that God gives humans life so that we can choose salvation, which is the path of return to God.  And everything around us…this beautiful earth, the trees…the salamanders and the butterflies…and the dogs…are merely props that reside on the stage of our salvation story.  With this theology, there is not enmeshed interconnected web of life…there is a clear hierarchy and we are arguably at the top.

But, you know, the problem isn’t religion.  It is one particular view of things from within one particular faith tradition.  Let me elaborate just a little bit.

Some of you may remember back in the late 80s, when NASA scientist James Lovelock theorized that the Earth is a living organism; he harkened back to mythology to express the interconnectedness of all living things.  He used the ancient mother-goddess, Gaia, as a metaphor to describe the embodiment of earth…the giver of life and source of fertility for plants, animals, and human beings.  Lovelock’s Gaia Hypothesis posits that Gaia is the total planetary being.  Gaia cannot be discerned by simply studying an individual species or organism…no single insect…no single plant…no single animal…no single person.  NO…all things are interconnected.

That’s ancient Gaia theology, but let’s fast-forward.  Contemporary theologian and eco-feminist Carol Christ suggests that, “There are no hierarchies among beings on earth.  We are different from swallows who fly in spring, from the many-faceted stones on the beach, from the redwood tree in the forest.  We may have more capacity to shape our lives than other beings, but you and I will never fly with the grace of a swallow, live as long as a redwood tree, nor endure the endless tossing of the sea like a stone.  Each being has its own intrinsic beauty and value.”

To my knowledge almost all indigenous cultures hold such a theology.  Paul Gunne Allen of the Pueblo nation writes, “…the Indian sees human intelligence as rising out of the very nature of being, which is of necessity intelligent in and of itself.”  In other words, our intelligence does not separate us from other beings, but is a part of the very nature of life. What is at the heart of this theology is the belief that at the deepest level we are all one.  Any separation, of our selves from creation…any separation of the divine from the earthy realm…is only illusion.

These ideas are common among indigenous religions, but make their appearance in Jewish Kabalistic theology, where fragments of the divine are hidden in all beings.  It connects with the threads in Hinduism, since the divine oneness “Brahman” is the indivisible essence of all that is. 

Buddhists implore us to wake up to the interconnected nature of all things.  The Buddha means the one who has awakened.  The Buddha woke up from the malaise of existence to see how precious and special each thing and each person is.  He understood that his existence depended upon the existence of all other beings.  It is said that the Buddha experienced the interdependent web of life at the core of his being.

Zen monk and peace activist, Thich Nhat Hanh, is perhaps the most eloquent Buddhist writer about our interconnectedness.  In several of his books he outlines the following exercise.  Take for example this piece of paper.  Nhat Hanh claims that there is a cloud that floats above this piece of paper.  Paper, as we all know, is made from trees.  Trees require earth, sunshine, carbon dioxide, and water.  The water comes from an aquifer in the ground that is fed by rain water.  Rain comes from clouds.  When we look at a piece of paper, we should see the tree, the water, the rain and the cloud.  All of them are necessary in order for the page to be printed and the sermon to be delivered.  Without the cloud there would be no water, no tree, no paper, no page, no sermon. Even this sermon is part of an interconnected creation.

Hmmm.  From my perspective, when looking across faith traditions, religion has a great a lot to say about biophilia…and most of it actually supports the hypothesis that we are a part of an intricately enmeshed natural world.

Well, it wouldn’t be fair to you if I concluded this sermon without bringing it back to our own particular religious calling…that of Christianity...because, I suspect, Christianity is the culprit in the biophilia controversy.  And I want you to know that a hierarchical understanding of humans within creation is only one historical way of understanding where we fit in.

There is a simple truth that remains unwavering in the long tradition within mystical Christian thought…and that is that God is everywhere…and if God is in fact everywhere, then God is in all things, and all things are in God.  Modern mystical theologian Matthew Fox says it this way, “As the ocean is in the fish and the fish are in the ocean, so it is with God.  God is in everything and everything is in God.”

The Bible states that the heavens are alive, declaring the glory of God and that Christ is the One who “holds all things together.”  Jesus presented this constant presence of God with Creation as being proof of God’s love.  In the Sermon on the Mount, he urged us to see that God is not distant, but is so intimately involved with the world that even the beauty of the lilies of the field and the food for the birds of the air comes directly from God’s magnificence.

The Gospel of John reveals that Christ is identified not only as Jesus on earth, but as the whole creative and redemptive movement of God throughout space and time. 

Our interconnectedness with creation is a faithful understanding…across traditions and within the Christian tradition.

I would like to close with these worlds from 13^th century Dominican priest and mystic, Meister Eckhart:

“Apprehend God in all things, for God is in all things.

Every single creature is full of god and is a book about God.

Every creature is a word of God.

If I spent enough time with the tiniest creature – even a caterpillar,

I would never have to prepare a sermon…so full of God is every creature.”

May we continue to hear and see the Word of God in the multitude of sermons that surround us this day on this patch of our beautiful earth.  Amen.