Silence - An Advent Challenge

On Sunday, Dec. 2, Advent begins. Perhaps even more than other times of year, we need to find some silence in the busyness of the Season. What do we celebrate at this time of year when we stand with all creation at the threshold between light and dark? It feeds my heart to imagine myself at the threshold of the “cave” within, peering out from the “mountaintop” of life in preparation for Christmas. 

I am not actually on a mountaintop, but I have been. I have just returned from the mountains in Tagaytay in the Philippines where I attended a 10 day international meeting. Many years ago when I was in the terrritories of the Tsilhqot’in and Lil’wat Nations, I lived in the Coastal and Interior Mountain ranges of British Columbia, Canada. My travels have taken me to Alberta Canada’s Rocky Mountains, the French Alps, and to the foothills of the Himalayas in Darjeeling, India. Mount Kanchenjunga, pictured below, is located at the border of India and Nepal. It can be seen from the hill station of Darjeeling, and is the highest mountain in India. Mountains are magnificent places from which to gain perspective, especially of the insignificance of human beings.

Anyone who has been to a mountain, or even flown over one in an airplane, knows something about what it means to have a mountaintop experience. But, a mountaintop experience is not an experience of having our “heads in the clouds”. Rather, a mountaintop experience provokes silence and provides a new and awesome view of reality. Being at the very top of a mountain within a mountain range is one of the most truly awesome experiences we can have. Feeling wonder and awe filling our whole being with an awareness that we are part creation, a very small part. It can be a truly humbling and spiritual experience of belonging to Life.

The Divine has blessed us with so much beauty, such a wonderful Earth home. May we respect every part of land, air, and water. May we walk gently on this earth together. To do so begins by loving our true nature as human beings, loving ourselves as part of created life with a responsibility to the whole. 

This Advent, watch the marvelous film, Love Thy Nature, and show it to friend, classes, family. The message: the way forward for us as human beings is to reconnect with who we are as part of nature and to allow that awareness to shape the technology and future that we create. 

May reconnecting with nature help us to find silence this Advent, and to respect and celebrate the God of Life, Love, Light, Wisdom, and Peace, the God who created us as part of all creation. Did God not come as Emmanuel, God-With-Us, so that all would have life? In light of this may we allow ourselves to be humbled, to be awed, to be grateful, and in our context to ask that which Chief Seattle questioned so many years ago, “How can you buy or sell the sky, the warmth of the land? The idea is strange to us. If we do not own the freshness of the air and the sparkle of the water, how can you buy them?”

September 23 - Sky Sunday

As summer turns to fall we continue to celebrate the Season of Creation with Sky Sunday. Today the sky is cloudy from where I sit gazing out my window. Yesterday there was a sunny sky and it made me feel happy to be bouncily walking to my destination to be with friends and colleagues. The sky has many moods and the capacity to set the mood of all who live under its quiet influence. Today’s readings are a grim reminder of the reality that all who live under the same sky don’t receive the same respect. There is much inequality and disrespect for people and for the planet. People from all directions belong to the one human race, who with all aspects of creation, live together as Earth community. No one is over the other, all of us live, move and have our being in the Divine. To live with our whole being “in the sky” is not to be flighty or unpractical. Rather, as eloquently put in a reflection on the Let Creation Praise Website, it is “... to live in alignment with the “heavens,” to be people of the “sky,” is to be people who live their lives in harmony and co-creation with the purposes of God—people for whom the “presence” of God is a source of daily joy and awe. To live this way—by grace—is surely a grace itself.”

September 16 - International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer

September 16 - International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer is also called Humanity Sunday. We find this on the All Creation Praise website during the Season of Creation. Humanity Sunday is an occasion to remember our responsibility to humanize the world. This means to ensure that the planet is habitable for human beings and that our communities are welcoming to all. In other words, to create living conditions in which human begins can flourish. But, to be truly human is to also live in harmony with our other-than-human relatives. So, Humanity Sunday reminds us to take our place alongside our relatives of all species and together praise Creator. Yesterday, Sacred Heart Global Service Day was a good example of what it means to humanize the world. How might we continue this work of humanizing the world together?

Sept. 9 - Planet Earth Sunday

Praise God crashing waves! Praise God calm seas! Today I write to you from the New Jersey shore where I have come with my community for the weekend. It is easy for me to be in awe and to praise Creator when I experience being part of Creation so obviously magnificent and beautiful, like the ocean. It’s harder when I’m in the hot, cramped spaces of a big city. But, the reality is that wherever we are, we are always moving in, through, and with God’s Creation. Let all Creation Praise! is a website with several resources for the Season of Creation, including a series of Sunday liturgies for the 2018 Season of Creation. On the website we read: “The Word is a deep impulse summoning forth creation, evoking praise from creation and stirring life in creation. This series (of liturgies) correlates with the Mark series of the church year.” The liturgies are offered for public use, in whole or in part. Each community is invited to adapt them to their context. Pause to join all Creation giving praise! 

Everything is Alive! All is Miracle!

Photo credit: Pilgrim Uniting Church (UC), Australia

In this Season of Creation, I pray to remember in my body/mind/spirit that:

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don’t even recognise: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child — our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”
(Source: Thích Nhất Hạnh, Vietnamese monk)

Why Am I Alive?

My prayer in this morning during the Season of Creation is inspired by an Ojibway journalist, poet and author, Richard Wagamese (1955-2017). In his book of meditations called, EMBERS, he wrote the following:

ME: Why am I alive?

OLD WOMAN: Because everything else is.

ME: No. I mean the purpose.

OLD WOMAN: Thatbis the purpose. To learn about your relatives.

ME: My family?

OLD WOMAN: Yes. The moon, stars, rocks, trees, plants, water, insects, birds, mammals. Your whole family. Learn about that relationship. How you are moving through time and space together. That’s why you are alive.

Take 3 Minutes

For much of North America and elsewhere in the world, this week begins a new academic year. Daily life will pick up a faster pace than we have been enjoying during the warm summer months. How might we continue to cherish and live a gentle rhythm that respects life? Other resources for the Season of Creation come to us from Mercy International Association. Many helpful actions to live in harmony with our Earth community are suggested in the calendar on the website.

Take 3 minutes today to watch the video: Ecospirituality, Clues for Living.