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“If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”  Hildegard of Bingen

    In the northern part of the state of Utah is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere.   Once it was a prehistoric body of water spanning thousands of square miles.   But over the past decades, the area of Great Salt Lake has fallen significantly.  After years of drought and increased water diversion, it has fallen to its lowest area at 950 square miles.

     With a high salinity that is saltier than seawater, the Great Salt Lake had been referred to as America’s Dead Sea.   Once it had been a haven and habitat for millions of native birds, brine shrimp, shorebirds, and waterfowl.   Now at a record low, it ultimately will become a bowl of toxic dust, poisoning the air around Salt Lake City.   A researcher who’s been investigating its cataclysmic demise calls it an “extinction event.”

  Yet over a thousand years ago, the writer, mystic, abbess, philosopher, and visionary, Hildegard of Bingen, perceived not only ecological peril but saw a way out.   Though it meant adopting a radical counter-cultural approach, the antidote would save the planet and thereby all of us.

  Her remedy?  “If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion,” Hildegard wrote.   However, we must take note that her prescription goes far beyond merely seeking and enjoying the great outdoors, to a radical realignment of what it is we most deeply value.

   Imagine if your child or grandchild was in danger of being hit by a car, wouldn’t you do everything in your power to save them?  Imagine, if your adult child was struggling with alcoholism or drug addiction, or your beloved teenage daughter ran away from home, or your only son struggled with depression; wouldn’t you go the distance?   If the one who meant the world to you was in danger, wouldn’t you do all that you could to save them?

   But children, grandchildren, and members of our extended family are our flesh and blood, we say.  Lush forests and clear streams and huge herds of bison are beautiful even majestic to see but they’re not the same as us.   Nor are they connected to us the way our own children and grandchildren are.

  But what if they are?   What if all of creation is our flesh and blood too?  Such that it not only courses through our veins and inhabits our lungs but is ingested with everything we eat and drink.   What if it is more than just a part of us?   What if we are in creation AND creation is in us?

  What if all of creation is our flesh and blood too?

[1] The Great Salt Lake is shown in the background of the earthwork Spiral Jetty by Robert Smithson Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, on the northeastern shore of the Great Salt Lake near Rozel Point in Utah. Last year the Great Salt Lake matched a 170-year record low and kept dropping, hitting a new low of 4,190.2 feet (1,277.2 meters) in October. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

“We are meant to live in joy, [but]
this does mean that life will be easy or painless.”  [1]

      What if we’re meant to live with joy…not just on occasion but as a means of perception?    What if experiencing joy isn’t a form of denial, a lack of caring or responsibility, or even foolishness…but the path to enlarge and even make holy the framework of lived experience?

Observed the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “You are able to accept anything that happens to you provided you accept the inevitable frustrations and hardships as part of the warp and woof of life.   Yet the question is not, ‘How do I escape this?   The question is, ‘How can I use [this crushing disappointment, this prolonged suffering, this devastating loss] as something positive?'” [2]

Which leads one to ask, “What if acceptance is the polar opposite of resignation and defeat?  What if acceptance is not caving into inevitability but is a quality of recognition that perceives reality is imploring us…even begging us, to continue on?    What if reality, far from being an adversary, teaches us the necessity of living in the moment…while experiencing the joy that comes in knowing that all of life and creation itself, is a gift?

Prayer: Divine Maker, In the wake of so much loneliness, suffering and despair, teach us to embrace the necessity of living each and every moment in joy.    Remind us that reality need not be oppositional to holiness…but can be a means of clarifying the work that you have asked us to do…however difficult and even arduous it may seem at the time.    We ask this in all the holy names of God.  Amen.

[1] from the Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World, 2016 by His Holiness the Dali Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams

[2] Ibid.

 

 

 

 

“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet
sheds on the heel that has crushed it.” [1]

There is no rationale for forgiveness.
It violates every norm of self-justification.
Eludes retribution.
Levels knee-jerk responses.

Hollowing out preconceived ideas of right and wrong,
it challenges exaggeration,
dispenses with easy answers,
daring to move into dimensions of ourselves we’d prefer to forget.

Forgiveness neither insists on its own way
nor does it condemn the path that others choose to take.
Instead, it creates what may not have existed previously:
the willingness to let go of grudges’ satisfaction
while knowing that what you’re undertaking may not be understood.

Yet you are not left empty-handed.
Nor does the bereavement that had held you tight in its clasp last.
Rather, having chosen a different way and
a new frame of reference…

A spaciousness emerges,
and the violet within that had given up its fragrance,
now flourishes, infusing your senses.
And what had been only loss and even humiliation,
can become a place of freedom and newfound joy.

[1] Mark Twain

Divine Interuper, what were you thinking? Surely you knew that having Gabriel show up unannounced and speak openly to an unchaperoned fifteen year old girl would place her at risk? You knew, did you not, that she was already betrothed to another? You knew that the society Mary inhabited was rigidly patriarchal and would never tolerate any deviation from this norm.

Yet when Gabriel informs her that she will be impregnated outside of the only acceptable option at the time, she responds by saying, “I am a servant of the Lord,” But then this is what sets her words apart. Given a frightfully risky endeavor, a ‘mission impossible’ nevertheless, she consents. “May your word to me be fulfilled,” she then adds.

Have you ever regretted saying, ‘no?’ Have you wondered if your life would have take a different path if you had not clung so closely to the expectations of others and yourself? Have you pondered what it may have been like, if you took that ‘leap of faith’ and in spite of everything put your trust in God?

Holy One, we are a people mired in the land of mourning. Not merely hundreds or hundreds of thousands have perished, but almost two million globally. Many, who only weeks or months ago were making plans for the morrow, were consumed by a predator virus that shows no sign of abating. Fear has overtaken us, invading our waking hours and haunting our dreams.

Yet you have promised your people beauty instead of ashes, the balm of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of stumbling and faint spirits. In reclaiming those who are bent down with grief, torn asunder by fear, consumed by anxiety – you transform weary souls into mighty oaks of rightfulness. You do this, so that all may see this as revelation of your radiance.

So in your mercy, in your steadfast love where the fullness of grace in Christ Jesus abounds, deliver and restore us, we pray. So that through your Spirit, we may build up whole communities torn asunder by contagion, and raise up a people devastated by hatred and division. By your audacious Spirit, equip us once more to repair what was devastated and even ruined:

rundown urban centers and neglected national parks,

decimated reservation outposts and ravaged inner city neighborhoods,

struggling small towns and migratory farmhands,

fragments of civil discourse and frayed legislative bodies,

vacant seats at the dinner table and traumatized families,

overrun hospital wards and exhausted care providers.

In this Season of Advent, hear our prayer, O God. In your mercy, let your light once again shine in our darkness. In your steadfast love, let your garland of gladness brighten our days. Amen.

From Isaiah 61:3-4, “…to provide for those who mourn…to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit. They will be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, to display his glory.

And they shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations; they shall repair the ruined cities, the devastations of many generations.” Isaiah 61

A Prayer for the First Sunday of Advent

Advent One, awaken us from our self-induced slumber, we pray.  Numb from uncertainty and isolation, our senses have dulled. We confess it is easier to nurse diminished hope, than respond to the suffering of our neighbors, or the hurt lodged deeply within.

Yet we know that just as you came before, you will come again.  You who seek to awaken our innermost self. You who come to us in the inconspicuous, the marginalized and the forgotten. You who know our fear of being released from this numbness. Yet in love you urge us on, saying, “My children, keep awake!”

So, God of All Awakening, in your mercy awaken us, we pray. Rouse us from this deadened slumber. Sharpen our senses and set us on our feet. For we want to prepared when we see you – be it in glory or in the least of these.  

So we may be counted, as blessed, once more. Amen.

[1] Image from Kekovacs.blogspot.com

[2] Based on The Gospel of Mark 13:37, “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”