By Sister Doreen, SSJD
The Anglican Church Calendar quote during the season of Creation: “You are … members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone.
“You are no longer wandering exiles. This kingdom of faith is now your home country. You are no longer strangers or outsiders. You belong here … God is building a home.” (Message Translation)
Saint Catherine of Siena wrote: “It could be said that God’s foot is so vast that the entire earth is but a field on God’s toe, and all the forests in this world came from the same root of just a single hair of God’s. What then is not a sanctuary? Where then can I not kneel and pray at a shrine made holy by God’s presence.”
As I pondered Catherine of Siena’s words and the scripture quote for this month, I thought of a song we used to sing when I was a Girl Guide many years ago! It was called “My Country is my Cathedral”.
This is the Girl Guide song sung around the campfire:
“Side by side and step by step our fathers were marching along. They were building a road to the future with a spade and a smile and a song.
Out of the wilderness and out of the sand grew the land that we live in today. Though the job to be done has barely begun, there is one thing I’m proud to say:
My country is my cathedral, the northern sky its dome. They all call it Canada, but I call it home.
The mountains, the lakes and valleys, are friends that I have known. They all call it Canada, but I call it home.
From the Atlantic to the Pacific, from the Pole to the USA we’re one united comradeship and united we will stay.
The people across the border and far across the foam, they all call it Canada, but I call it home.”
The words were always sung with enthusiasm, and we loved to sing it then, and over the years I have come to understand that there was more to the song than meets the eye. Somehow the twin feelings of proud for what we have and a longing for what still will be ahead has lodged itself in my heart, along with a growing understanding that the cosmos is my cathedral – that is what I believe is at the heart of our understanding and longing for during this season of creation. The world we live in is truly a holy place. The cosmos is our cathedral!
In a beautiful children’s book called Just Like Heaven by Patrik McDonnell it tells the story of a little cat called Mooch, who on a misty and very foggy day that covered everything, awakens from a nap and is mystified. He could see nothing and wondered where he was. ”Heaven, he thought – I must be in heaven!” Curious he began to explore and saw and heard and met such wonderful things and creatures, even a huge angry and scary dog whom he greeted with the words ‘hug time’ and made friends … and as the fog lifted Mooch thought “heaven, it seems, sure looks a lot like home”: he discovers heaven on earth!
I was reminded of some of the words of Psalm 36: 5-6: “Lord, your love reaches to the heavens, your fidelity to the clouds, your justice is like the highest mountain, your judgements like the mighty deep; all living creatures you sustain, Lord. How precious is your love, O God!” or as I have quoted before from the Message: “God’s love is meteoric, his loyalty astronomic, his purpose titanic, his verdicts oceanic. Yet in his largeness nothing is lost; not one of us, not a mouse, slips through the cracks.”
In de Chardin’s book Divine Milieu he wrote: “By means of all created things, without exception, the divine assails us, penetrates us, and molds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers … the world, this palpable world, which we were wont to treat with the boredom and disrespect with which we habitually regard places with no sacred association for us, is in truth a holy place …”
The season of Creation gives us an opportunity to remember this, ‘the earth, the cosmos and everything in it is a holy place.’ We discover heaven on earth! And it invites us to spend time nurturing this intimate connection to the earth, the world, the cosmos. It is a gift to ponder God as a great beginner – and the great continuer of life in the world as my cathedral and God’s. it is gift and truth, because God wanted it to be, that God thinks that all of creation and the cosmos are good, and God loves it. It is God’s world and God has never let go of that claim and has never given up on our obligation to take excellent care of it. The season of creation is a time to give thanks and to acknowledge our vocational call to help the cosmos and ourselves and every living thing on earth to flourish. The goodness of creation is the goodness of God, and we are given the call to greet the goodness of God in everyone and everything we meet, in every place we go, day by day. It is a challenge to deepen our commitment to the earth and the cosmos, to recognize the earth and the cosmos as our cathedral, to deepen our understanding of the ground that nourishes us. Where do we each find that sacred spot within this cathedral where we can sit and ponder? Where do you go, what is your sacred spot? The season of creation gives us the opportunity to find a sacred spot where we can go to ponder, to do lectio divina with nature … to learn something more about ourselves and the meaning and purpose of life, about God. It is a time to listen to the call of the Earth, the Cosmos, with an openness to a deeper awareness – a time to rest in silence and simply to savour it all. How is the Earth, the Cosmos a cathedral to you?
For you and for me understanding that the Earth, the Cosmos, offers us sacred space, an act of love and reverence, and the way God is revealed through creation, it may also raise a question. Standing in the midst of our world, the earth and the cosmos today, surrounded by news of destruction, climate change, and environmental sickness and human brokenness and anger, really often cause uneasiness that may fill us with distressing questions and despair. I do believe though that the season of creation calls us to remember that at the heart of all that is and that seems to be broken is the heart of God standing in this sacred cathedral, faithfully reaching out to draw goodness, compassion, mercy, and love into the midst of all of this. Sally McFague says it clearly: “Since for the Christian, God is always incarnate and present, there is no place on earth, no joy or wish that any creature experiences, no need of despair that they suffer, that is not a possible route to God. Wherever reality is seen as hopeful, joyful, and loving, God is there; wherever reality is experienced as despairing, cruel, and hopeless, God must be there also. If God is love, then where love is God is, where love is not, God must needs be. In nature’s health and beauty, I see God; in nature’s deterioration and destruction, I see that God is here also. In the first case as a Yes and in the second as No. In the first case as a positive affirmation of God’s glory through the flourishing of creation; in the second, as a negative protest against whatever is undermining God’s creation.”
During this season of creation, it is an opportunity to see creation, the cosmos, as a book of nature in whose living pages we can see signs of the spirit of God, a sign and a revelation, a moment of grace revealing God’s presence to us. Julian of Norwich’s words are full of this deep wisdom. “I saw that God is everything that is good and energizing. God is our clothing that wraps, clasps, and encloses us. God showed me in my palm a little thing round as a ball about the size of a hazelnut. I looked at it with the eye of my understanding and asked myself, ‘what is this thing’. And was answered ‘it is everything that is created.’ I wondered how it could survive since it seemed so little it could suddenly disintegrate into nothing. The answer came: ‘it endures and ever will endure, because God loves it.’ And so everything has being because of God’s love.”
This is an opportunity to become more alert to finding God in the cathedral of the cosmos, in nature, in each other, in the world around us, in ourselves. It is the opportunity of stepping into a mystery of praise and discovering what Frederick Buechner said: “Using the same old material of earth, air, fire, and water, every twenty-four hours God creates something new out of them. If you think you’re seeing the same show over again seven times a week, you’re crazy. Every morning you wake up to something that in all eternity never was before and never will be again. And ‘the you’ that wakes up was never before and will never be the same again either. “ It is so amazingly and miraculously a mystery …new every morning is the love …! The cosmos is my cathedral, some call it the world, I call it home!
May the God who dances in creation, who embraces us with human love, who shakes our lives like thunder, bless us and drive us out with power to fill the world with her justice, Amen.
Hymn “We’re Bound on a Journey” Sing a New Creation, Anglican Church of Canada #95 to ponder as meditation.
We’re bound on a journey across the wide waters; we sail in the dark to a harbour unknown.
The birds and the beasts and all God’s sons and daughters, our ship is a planet and we are alone.
Take heart and good cheer though the floods are arising, we hear the rain fall and we hear the storm roar; but beyond are the hands that the whole world relies on: our Maker, Redeemer, and friend evermore.
Our sailing companions are all living species – we’d have to make room if the dinosaurs came – and neither for them nor for us is it easy together so cramped in this shakeable frame.
Take heart and good cheer you poor panther and bison, poor woodlouse, and shewmouse, tho’ trials be sore. Our Captain we have to the furthest horizon, Oue Maker, Redeemer, and friend evermore.
God gave us a garden so carefully planted its fruits should sustain us for ever and aye; Oh! Never again will take it for granted or needlessly gamble our birthright away!
Take heart and good cheer while the floods are arising; we’ll join heart and hand on Mount Ararat’s shore. This world is for cherishing, loving, and praising, our Maker, Redeemer, and friend evermore.
Yes! Yes! “Arise shine for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.” Isaiah 60:1.