Sep 13: “Creation as Kin”

Reflection for the Season of Creation, Week 1 - by Rev. Sandra Nixon

There are days when the news seems to arrive faster than our hearts can take it in.

Before we have found our footing with one troubling development, something else has happened. Another warning about the climate. More suffering in places already carrying far too much. Another stark reminder of how rapidly technology is changing our world, and how little certainty we have about where it is taking us.

Recently, in a conversation in the car, my daughter wanted to talk about artificial intelligence. And I found myself not really knowing what to say.

I suspect I’m not alone in that. Sometimes the questions are bigger than the answers we have available. Especially when someone we love is asking about the future they will inhabit.

As I sat with that conversation and some of the news, I remembered a line from the film The Shawshank Redemption: about how, even under circumstances we would never choose, there is still a life to turn toward.

The actual line is: “You either get busy living, or get you busy dying.”

As a person of faith, I find myself wanting to add prayer in there. 

And so my self-talk for the rest of this week has been: “Ok Sandra - get busy living. “

And praying.

Although perhaps we need to spend a little time with what we mean by both.

For example, "keeping on living" doesn't necessarily mean doing more. Because when we are already overwhelmed, an invitation to do more can feel like one more weight that makes life feel more overwhelming rather than like we're truly "living" in the way God wants us to - with joy and resilience and gratitude. 

Perhaps we need to remember what holds us. 

Today we begin our Season of Creation, joining Christians around the world in a particular time of attention to the earth: celebrating its gifts, grieving its wounds, and considering how our faith shapes our relationship with the living world.

We’ll be in this season through Thanksgiving. 

We’ll explore mutual care, truth and repair, the blessing of the animal word, and gratitude. Along the way, we’ll listen to Indigenous wisdom and to contemplative and Franciscan voices within Christianity.

We’ll bring our questions, too. What does it mean to belong to this world? Where might we discover God’s presence? 

How do we live with love and hope when so much feels uncertain?

Can we start with that one? 

I’d like to suggest that one way we “get busy living” - and praying - is by doing what we're doing right now. Worship. 

This community holds us - holds us in the love and grace which God extends in and through what we do here. 

In our particular faith tradition, the liturgical season also holds us. It holds us in rhythm that connects us to the bigger story we are a part of - the story of God's saving love made known in the life and teachings of Jesus. 

So we're going to let this new Season of Creation hold us as we explore the story of that relational love as we see it in Jesus and as we experience it as embedded in God's world.

Today, our starting place is this: creation as "relative".

Not as "relative to" anything but as relation - as family - as kin.

The Indigenous theologian Randy Woodley tells a story about his mother taking him into the woods when he was a child. She would introduce him to the trees as friends.

Think about that for a moment. An introduction assumes a relationship is possible. Someone is already there, living their life, before we arrive.

Often we view things in our environment as, well, things and only in relation to their usefulness to us. For a child, a tree can become a place to climb or somewhere to hide. For an adult, it might become shade, lumber, or a problem when its roots lift the pavement.

Woodley invites us to notice the tree as a living being, and to consider its own place and agency within a living community.

A tree shelters other creatures. It draws nourishment from the soil. It grows in relationship with air and water and light. And we, Woodley says - we who depend on those same gifts, are its relatives.

In the Indigenous understanding Woodley shares, humans are viewed as the younger siblings within the family of creation, with much to still to learn.

That image asks something of us. Younger siblings don’t arrive knowing everything. They learn by watching and listening. Sometimes they need reminding that the whole household does not revolve around them.

There may be something there for humanity to consider. That perhaps we need to consider urgently and intentionally. 

As a church, listening to Indigenous teachers involves humility. Christian communities have often participated in the very patterns of domination colonialism and dispossession we are now questioning. We have learning and repair to do.

We can begin by listening carefully enough to let our understanding change.

There are resources within our own tradition that can also help us with this learning and repairing work.  Franciscan spirituality recognizes divine presence throughout the material world. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan, and Christian mystic and theologian (who founded the Centre for Action and Contemplation), writes about the sacredness of ordinary, embodied life: creatures, land, water, and the air we breathe. 

This wholistic view is rooted in the mystic tradition and the teachings of, among others, Francis of Assisi, among who was later sainted by the RC church. And who we will speak more of later in this worship series. 

From this tradition we learn that the entire world around us can become a place of encounter with God.

We may know something of that already. A few minutes beside the water can settle something in us. Working in a garden can bring us back into our bodies. An animal’s companionship can reach us when words cannot.

Those experiences deserve our attention. They remind us that we receive care within this world, often before we have thought to ask for it. That there is a mutuality that is an inherent part of how the world is created, where all beings are able to both give and receive.

There is a gentle connection here with our scripture reading.

Paul is writing to a community struggling with differences over food and the observance of particular days. People are judging one another’s faithfulness, and Paul asks them to remember whose they are.

Their lives belong to God. So do the lives of the people they are finding difficult.

Paul is speaking about relationships within a human community. But as we listen during this Season of Creation, his reminder opens a further question: if we belong to God within a world God loves, what responsibilities come with that belonging?

Our lives are already bound up with other lives. The food we eat, the water we drink, the very breath we take tells us so.

We live within relationships we did not create and could never sustain alone.

That is humbling. And it's also a relief.

Because the burden of holding everything together - or of trying to control our live and the world was never ours to carry alone.

Which brings us back to prayer. While we get busy living relationally, how and why do we get busying praying as well? 

Richard Rohr describes contemplation and prayer as ways of learning to see more fully. Prayer opens our attention. It helps us become present to what is here, including what we have hurried past or stopped expecting to find.

There is room in prayer for everything we bring: our fear for our children, our anger at injustice, our weariness, our gratitude and our sense of awe at the miracle of our lives and the beauty inherent in creation.

And there is room to listen.

We listen for God in scripture and community, in what careful study teaches us, and in the understanding that grows through experience. We listen within creation, where our lives are continually being sustained.

As we do, something may begin to shift. We may notice a possibility we couldn’t see before. We may become more willing to receive help, or more able to recognize the help we can offer.

Prayer can open us to God’s shaping of our hearts and minds. And through our response, we participate in the future taking shape around us.

Contemplative teacher Cynthia Bourgeault reminds us that our lives are woven into a larger belonging, where our choices and connections matter.

We cannot know every consequence of an act of care. But we can offer it.

This week, I’d like to invite us into a very simple practice.

Choose one part of the living world to spend a little time with. A tree you pass regularly. A plant near your window. The birds outside. Somewhere you can see the sky.

Pause there. Notice what is happening. Allow yourself to be a fellow creature, sharing this place.

For those who were following the Birds of the Bible preaching series, you will have already heard me talking about the value of noticing one small part of God's creation, and how that attention to one thing can paradoxically help us feel more connected to the whole.

And so the invitation is to practice. As you choose your subject and notice and contemplate, you might offer thanks. You might bring a worry. You might ask it a question. It's the beginning of relationship, remember? Or you might simply sit in silence together.

Through our days, and beyond, we are held by God. Here, within this wounded and beautiful creation, we have a place. We have relatives. We have love to receive and love to give.

And so may our leaning into that belonging give us courage for the next faithful step.

Prayer: 

Loving Creator,

As we consider our relationship as kin with our immediate communities of belonging and within your whole family on this earth, help us to contemplate what it means to be a good relative. May your spirit guide us to carry that question with us into the rest of our week, into our choices and conversations, and into the ways we care for others and receive care ourselves. Amen.