Scribbles & Pix

You and I worship the God who created all things and who is intimate with all things.  In our wonder, we envision this planet — ‘our island home’ — and our role as care-givers.  We believe that God blessed us with memory, reason, and skill so that we might care for God’s Creation, live in peace and love our neighbor.  While we have managed much of Creation creatively, we also have caused endless environmental catastrophes.  We live on a wounded planet.

Generally we have tried to make this world a better place for our communities.  Repeatedly, however, we have decided that some plan to benefit the planet is impossible or isn’t worth the cost.  We have used our power of analysis and argument to justify our perceived self-interest.  We separate what is good from what is not so good, what is important from what is not so important, what is ours and what isn’t worth fighting for.  All too often we use criteria that suit our convenience.  In the light of that criteria we may dismiss alternative points of view.  We then find ourselves imprisoned by our own assumptions and unable to be realistic about this world about us.  The very gifts we could use the better to discern reality we use to continue our own self-delusion and insularity.  The gusher in the Gulf is continuing evidence of our capacity to delude ourselves, destroy Creation, and offend Almighty God.

When communities delude themselves this way, some people survive; others do not.  Some species survive; others do not.  We find our mobility and personal comfort so important that we acquire oil at any cost.  We tolerate the deaths of many creatures and species.   Although we may be troubled by the extinction of economies, communities, and cultures, we continue our demand for oil and an oil-fueled life-style.  We say, ‘We worked for it.  We paid for it.  We deserve it.  As long as we are able, we will get it!’  We pay the price even when that includes others’ misfortune.  If we can blame someone else for the damages accrued by our own greed and poor judgement, so much the better.

What’s to be done?  This is what I’m thinking….

• First, I acknowledge my addiction to oil.  I understand the worldwide use of fossil fuels to be sure and certain death to the environment that sustains life — at least, ours.  We all know that all of us have to do something about this.   If not me, who?  If not now, when?
• Second, I therefore need to develop new ways of living, even get serious about the specifics of a life in Christ.  That means that I improve — not degrade — my place on the planet.  I can’t say that I’m doing very well.  I still own a car and use fossil fuels, but I know that will have to stop.  What little personal power I have now may be in how I spend my money.  Anyway, when I die, I hope this world will be a better and cleaner place.  I must always hope.
• Third, I am increasingly vigilant about the cost of my lifestyle to those less fortunate than myself — many of whom I will never meet.  Yes, that includes fishermen in the Gulf and children toiling in the Orient.  It includes Native North Americans whose communities are impacted by the Alberta oil sands.  I think of of my own Cree neighbors of a few years ago, who lost their ancestral lands to hydro-electric development.

We are God’s People.  We are in this world, called as ambassadors of Christ, to live and proclaim The Good News.   Creation is God’s Garden.  It isn’t ours.  It certainly isn’t mine.  Rather, I am called to care for the neighborhood and to love my neighbor just as much as I love myself.  (It’s always that neighbor I find so hard to accept who can illuminate God’s Creation for me and provoke me to grow.)

Two months ago, when we heard of the catastrophe in the Gulf, each had our own thoughts.  Many have wondered and worried about what happens next — for ourselves and for those who come after us.  Part of repentance is waking up to the fact that something really bad is going on and that I am responsible for it.  It’s now time to wake up from the dream and to look at what’s happening.  A Turning Point, if you will.  Something has to give.  Really!  Each of us knows that our own journey is subject to change.  None of us can survive the journey alone.  We’d give up or go crazy if we tried.  That’s why we meet together:  God’s People worshipping God — getting back to what it’s all about.  The older I get, the more I think I really need to be doing this.  Not just for myself.  But for the Neighborhood.

In the beginning God created.  As God’s stewards we work with God in the mending of that Creation.  That’s the Journey God called us to.  It’s a never-ending adventure.

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb.  (John 20:1)

It’s the same Story every year, and it’s always new.  That empty tomb feeds ‘Alleluias’ of today and always.  The Story, as we hear it in Scripture, is the benchmark for whatever else we may say on a subject of many dimensions.  That is, while the Story resides in Scripture, it also resonates in our experience and is verified by our lives.  We come to live the Story as the Story lives in us.  The journey of back then is the same journey of today.  Each of us, then and now, is walking somewhere on the same way.  As I journey, I discover others.  As we meet and journey together, we grow together — and continue on God’s way in that never-ending Story.  In this part of the Story, concerning the empty tomb, Mary is our teacher and our guide.

She had come to The Tomb after the Sabbath to prepare His Body with spices for burial, but the stone was dislodged, and the tomb was empty.  Mary hurries to tell the others.  Peter and a friend run to the Tomb.  They verify her discovery; then they go home.  Mary, however, lingers in the Garden near the Tomb — lost, perhaps, in her own grief and with nowhere next to go; lost, perhaps, in her own thoughts.  Then she sees the Risen Lord.  At first she doesn’t recognize Jesus.  When He speaks her name, however, she knows who He is.  Nothing is the same ever again.  All things are made new.

When I was a kid I really loved this story.  (I still do!)  There were times in my childhood when I felt bored or unhappy for some reason.  There’s nothing new in that.  Most of us have some bad memories — some more painful than others; and most are soon forgotten.  However, I remember that, in my imagination (which was always really active) I talked with God.  It seemed so natural at the time.  I didn’t worry about God’s existence or about theology or even about faith.  God was in the daydream.  It couldn’t have been the same without Him, because God made it work.  With God in the daydream, I found refuge for my busy mind.  In the imagined conversation, I might learn something about myself, or about some other person, or about life in general.  The learning was painful sometimes, but not always.  Thoughts and possibilities could appear out of nowhere.  Constant was that security and comfort of talking with a trusted friend, even in the imagination, maybe especially in the imagination.  I could dream of a better world and hope and wait for it to be.

At first the Friend I talked with in my dreams was God or an angel or even a Spirit.  In time, though, more and more, that Friend was Jesus.  Nowadays we might say I was one really crazy kid — or maybe that I was learning something of self-reflection and self-awareness, in my own way — or that I was creating God and Jesus in my own image.  And the daydreams, well, we grow out of them — we hope — or others do, anyway.  But, that conversation with Jesus:  I got used to it.  I was comforted by it.  Maybe it was only a conversation in a child’s imagination.  Maybe I never learned how to pray but got lost in my dreams.  Maybe it was my reaching out to God — or, as I now believe, God reaching in to me.  Things happened.  After a daydream, or conversation, or prayer, I might feel more resolved, less worried, less afraid, more focused — ready to resume the journey.  One way or another I got older and wiser and stronger in spirit.  And that space I created (or discovered) — at first inadvertently in a child’s daydreaming — became a sanctuary: safe for prayer and conversation with God.  It was a quiet garden — commodious and close at hand.

Were those daydreams random and meaningless acts?  Was all of this simply a child’s play?  Perhaps, and over the years, step by step, I have become accustomed to that Garden and to my Friend.  It was in that Garden long ago that I began to hear Him call me by name.  The journey  hasn’t always been easy.  Sometimes I’m lost, but I am never alone.  I have always known where I was headed, and that’s what counts.  Every day all things are new.

“…He gave himself up to death; and, rising from the grave, destroyed death,
and made the whole creation new.”    (Eucharistic Prayer ‘D’)