“Seasons of Creation - Celebration and Lament”
Rev Dennis Ryle 15/09/2024
Readings - Are within the text
This is most of the service as Dennis intertwined refelction with readings and meditations - enjoy.
Intro to theme – Seasons of creation, a mix of celebration and lament as we pick up on the Genesis mandate of care for creation (when humankind has so often allowed their hubris to exploit creation)
Call to Worship Written by Michael Ramaidama
Creator God,
We come before you as a small piece of your vast creation.
We come in awe at the beauty and wonder of our planet,
and we feel its pain.
Let the embers of our burning bushland
Rekindle the flame of Pentecost
Shine your light in us that we may strive for a greener future.
Let the dryness of the land in seasons of drought
Remind us to thirst for your leading
Holy Spirit, lead us towards the well of hope for a sustainable planet.
Let the waters of our flooded plains and rivers
Drench our hearts with your mercy
Living Water fill us with mercy for your suffering creation.
Let the roaring of raging winds and cyclones
help us hear the cry of Mother Earth
Jesus, give us your peace to calm our storm, and peace to strengthen our calling.
Let the rise in sea levels
raise our concern and love towards our neighbour
Risen Christ, resource us with your love for the world.
Creator God, we are your people, called and purposed to be good stewards of our planet. Bless this day. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The Sensations of Creation
Song of Songs 2:8-13 – the Lover pursues the Beloved with the sensuous poetry of springtime!
8The voice of my beloved! Look, he comes, leaping upon the mountains, bounding over the hills. 9My beloved is like a gazelle or a young stag. Look, there he stands behind our wall, gazing in at the windows, looking through the lattice. 10My beloved speaks and says to me: “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away; 11for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. 12The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land. 13The fig tree puts forth its figs, and the vines are in blossom; they give forth fragrance. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.
Compare with the equally sensate language with which the Noongar nation speaks of the Djilba season (the second rain, the season of conception) beginning to break forth around us.
Djilba is welcomed by the bright yellow flower of many Acacia varieties. Mindaleny (Prickly Moses - Acacia pilchella) is one of the first to be seen. The weather is cold, and birds are taking shelter from the sudden showers, then busy themselves with nest preparation during the mild sunny days. Food is abundant. Animals begin pairing to prepare for offspring. Yonga (Kangaroos) and weitj (Emus) are taking advantage of the new growth and venture further inland as water sources are replenished and food is in abundant supply.
The foraging habit of Emus teaches their young how to survive and helps to deliver seeds to new areas for future growth, maintaining the reliable food source. Possums (Ngwir) are extremely territorial and will venture out during the night but always return to their home tree where the koormal (female possum) starts to prepare a den for new offspring while the kelang (male possum) helps to collect soft supplies. The Galyang (Ridgid wattle - Acacia cochlearis), Kudjong (Orange wattle - Acacia salinga) are expected to burst with colour and gloriously flower mid-season.
As we progress though the Season and the weather warms, we can expect protective koolbardi (magpies) to guard their nest area by swooping upon uninvited guests, the djidi djidi (willy wagtail) dances to distract and chase larger birds and predators away with a swoop and loud clicking sound. The brushtail possum sometimes takes bird eggs for protein and is relentlessly chased away by the djidi djidi. Nearing the end of the Season, the grass tree (balga) will grow magnificent flower stalks and the yellow-green large cone flowers of the poolgarla (bull banksia - banksia grandis) can be seen. Traditionally, the cones were used to start campfires (karla) and were also useful for transporting the hot fire coals to a new location.
It is clear that there is strong spiritual connection in both the Hebrew and indigenous expression of love expressed through sensuality in relation to Creation.
Matthew Fox Daily Meditations
What I call the Via Positiva and Heschel calls awe, educator Tom Fox calls the “wow.” In addition to the ‘wow’ of our universe and its ways of operating, [scientists like Wilzek] frequently express the ‘wow’ of how our minds can imagine and work together to share that understanding….Both of these exuberant ‘wows,’ they say, are why they write for the general public.
But Tom himself recognizes exactly what he has just said and is not afraid to name how we move from science and education to the realm of spirituality. Combining a scientist’s wonder of nature with a deep respect for human intelligence demonstrates that a scientist’s work is a spiritual quest as well as a scientific one.
In his [Wilczek’s] account, all scientific inquiries, past and present, lead the scientist not only to a deeper appreciation of the grandeur of the universe we inhabit but also to a deep appreciation of the mind we humans have developed over eons, the very mind that allows us to recognize the reality of that grandeur and to engage with its mysteries, religious and otherwise. …
Thomas Aquinas employs the term “ecstasy” to name the experience of awe, wonder and the divine. He also talks about getting drunk on the beauty of the universe and employs the term “intoxication” in doing so, citing the Scriptures: “Intoxication is a kind of excess, as the Song of Songs says, ‘my beloved, you are drunk with love’.”
Citing the psalmist, he offers a one word exegesis, “'They shall be drunk with the beauty of thy house,’ that is, the Universe.”
If Heschel is correct that “awe is the beginning of wisdom,” we find ourselves on sacred ground when we pay attention to our awe as we study the facts of our universe and begin the journey from knowledge to wisdom.
Meditations
Richard Rohr: A Place of Contemplation
Author bell hooks (1952–2021) describes how her childhood in the Kentucky hills instructed her in the spiritual lesson of interbeing:
Growing up in a world where my grandparents did not hold regular jobs but made their living digging and selling fishing worms, growing food, raising chickens, I was ever mindful of an alternative to the capitalist system that destroyed nature’s abundance. In that world I learned experientially the concept of interbeing, which Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh talks about as that recognition of the connectedness of all human life. That sense of interbeing was once intimately understood by black folks in the agrarian South. Nowadays it is only those who maintain our bonds to the land, to nature, who keep our vows of living in harmony with the environment, who draw spiritual strength from nature…. It is nature that reminds time and time again that “this too will pass.” To look upon a tree, or a hilly waterfall, that has stood the test of time can renew the spirit. To watch plants rise from the earth with no special tending reawakens our sense of awe and wonder. [1] bell hooks, Belonging: A Culture of Place (New York: Routledge, 2009), 118–119.
Writer Felicia Murrell describes her connection with the earth, which began in childhood: I grew up in the south, in rural North Carolina, in a place that had red dirt…. My mom used to tell stories of me eating the red clay…. I feel the ground very deeply and intimately…. When I get burdened with the cares of the world, I often share those with the earth. One of my practices is to go find green space and kneel on the ground. I think that connection to the earth made me care about it in a very deep way. I care about the water sources. I care about the land. So often we can just think about ourselves as humans and how things serve us, but I think there’s a beautiful invitation in the circle of life to see how we’re all joined together…. When we see, just like with people, the sacred dignity, inherent worth, and beauty of something, we hold it with a lot more care, tenderness, and compassion.
[2] Adapted from Brian McLaren, “Bonus: Seeing Nature as Nature with Felicia Murrell,” Learning How to See, season 6, ep. 11 (Albuquerque, NM: Center for Action and Contemplation, 2024), podcast. Available as MP3 audio download and PDF transcript.
Hooks names how the practice of noticing brings her hope and peace:
When I leave my small flat in an urban world where nature has been so relentlessly assaulted that it is easy to forget to look at a tree, a sky, a flower emerging in a sea of trash, and go to the country, I seek renewal. To live in communion with the earth fully acknowledging nature’s power with humility and grace is a practice of spiritual mindfulness that heals and restores. Making peace with the earth we make the world a place where we can be one with nature. We create and sustain environments where we can come back to ourselves, where we can return home, stand on solid ground, and be a true witness.
[3] hooks, Belonging, 119–120.
Talk Part One
When reminded that Season of Creation begins with Wattle Day, I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. Back in the days of Woodville Primary School in Adelaide, Wattle Day was like our little slice of sunshine. The whole school buzzed with excitement.
Assemblies held on the sun-drenched bitumen, speeches that felt both important and slightly mysterious (because we were seven and deciphering grown-up words was an Olympic sport). And then there were the excursions—mini adventures that made us feel like explorers charting new territories (even if it was just the local park).
But the pièce de résistance? The hands-on creativity. Those clag-filled fingers—sticky, determined, busily pasting crumbled yellow crepe paper balls onto cardboard branches. Our makeshift wattle trees stood proudly in the classroom, while outside, the real acacia tree waved at us through the window, as if saying, “Hey, little artists, you’re doing just great, but I’m the real thing!”
And the freedom of engaging with nature – barefoot and wild running through the Glanville dunes with the salty air of St Vincents Gulf on my tongue and the light sea breeze tousling my hair, and shouting with delight on finding a blue tongue lizard – sleepy eyed and sun warmed.
Those dunes are now mere echoes of the past, now filled in with the manicured lawns of the canal side McMansions of West Lakes.
When I finally spread my wings and ventured interstate, a newfound appreciation dawned upon me: my parents were unwitting conservationists all along. Our humble upbringing had quietly instilled values that echoed through our daily lives.
1. Sustainable Living:
o Public transport and bicycles were our trusty steeds. Cars? My father had an Austin A40 for a short while kept for special occasions. Our carbon footprint? Minimal compared to now.
o Our backyard—an unexpected oasis in our housing trust home—lent itself to unconscious green ambitions. My father cultivated vegetables, tended fruit trees, and revelled in the bounty of his own little Eden.
2. Waste Not, Want Not:
o Waste was a foreign concept. Leftovers became tomorrow’s lunch. Broken toys? Repaired with ingenuity, a bit of tape and a dab of glue.
o And my mother—resourceful and thrifty—wrote her weekly letters on the backs of stocking inserts. Those recycled greeting cards from Christmases past? They carried our family news across the miles.
3. Nature’s Legacy or Great Depression Wisdom?
o Was all this environmental awareness passed down like an heirloom from an unknown past, or was it a relic of their own upbringing?
o Perhaps both. My parents, children of the Great Depression, knew scarcity intimately. They’d witnessed resilience, frugality, and the art of making do. Those lessons etched themselves into their consciousness, then flowed not so seamlessly into our lives.
This nostalgic trip down memory lane explains some of my uneasiness in addressing where I fit during this month that is set aside to celebrate the season of creation.
What a delicate dance there is between our intentions and our actions—the eternal tug-of-war between environmental awareness and the tantalising call of convenience.
My journey mirrors that of typical wanderers through the challenges of creation care. Sometimes, it’s the mundane—a pile of spent batteries, a flickering light globe—that nudges me toward eco-consciousness. We squint at recycling bins, wondering if we’re doing it right. And ink cartridges? They’re like tiny containers of our consumer choices, waiting for their next life.
But then come the grand moments—the ones that yank us from our everyday orbits. A headline screams about melting glaciers, and suddenly, we’re standing on the precipice of planetary grief. Or a sunset paints the sky in colours we can’t name, and our hearts swell with wonder. Raindrops kiss our skin, and again we’re part of the Earth’s ancient song.
Our hearts are cosmic cheerleaders. They high-five the universe, twirl in stardust, and celebrate existence itself. But our wills—the quiet architects of change—often lag. They sip coffee, scroll through online stores, and whisper, “Maybe tomorrow I will put my intentions into play.”
So here we are, caught between delight and duty. The creation applauds our enthusiasm, but it also nudges us toward consistency. Can we reduce our consumer footprints? Perhaps. One reusable bag at a time. One conscious choice after another. It’s not always easy; the siren call of convenience sings sweetly.
But fear not. Awareness is the first step. And the insertion of the Season of Creation on the church calendar helps us along the way.
What are the texts that are on offer this season that encourage us to get our enthusiastic hearts and faltering wills dancing in step.
Let’s throw some burley on the water.
Genesis 1: 26-30 God saw that creation was “very good” and set humankind the task of managing it. Managing is a loaded word – especially in this resource rich state of WA - exploitation or stewardship?
Using and developing resources under responsible management and control by those created in the “image of God.” – implies care, love, compassion, beauty. Perhaps the oft translated word “subdue” is more faithfully translated “tend.” When, collectively, we are tending the earth rather than exploiting it, controversies around mining and fracking take on a different cadence.
The World Council of Churches observes the month of September as the 'Season of Creation', inspired by the initiative of Ecumenical Patriarch Demitrios I of Constantinople in 1989.
“In the letter of Paul, the apostle to the Romans, the biblical image pictures the Earth as a Mother, groaning as in childbirth (Rom 8:22). Francis of Assisi understood this when he referred to the Earth as our sister and our mother in his Canticle of Creatures. The times we live in show that we are not relating to the Earth as a gift from our Creator, but rather as a resource to be used.
And yet, there is hope and the expectation for a better future. To hope in a biblical context does not mean to stand still and quiet, but rather groaning, crying, and actively striving for new life amidst the struggles. Just as in childbirth, we go through a period of intense pain, but new life springs forth.”
It’s the gospel from the opening of this Season of Creation that I’ve chosen to linger on. Jesus is tearing strips off the Pharisees for their hypocrisy. At first, I wondered what this has to do with celebrating creation. Eventually, I realised that Jesus’ words were challenging my own lukewarm behaviours towards environmental care.
Mark 7:1-23 Our default – human tradition vs way of Shalom
Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, 2they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. 3(For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; 4and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) 5So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” 6He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written,
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
7in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
8You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.”
9Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! 10For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ 11But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— 12then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, 13thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.”
14Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: 15there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.”
17When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, 19since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. 21For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, 22adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. 23All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Talk Part Two
“Missing the mark” comes from within us, that’s what defiles.
The corollary is that it’s the good with us that defines.
Jesus calls us to go deeper than our ideologies, be they the rigidity of the ritual cleansing laws of the Pharisees or (might I suggest) the cold harping of the noble self-correcting systems we set up for ourselves, even in the name of healing the environment.
Max Arnold author of The Salt Project reminds us:
Jesus calls us to beware the traps our own sacred practices can set for our hearts, as well as the ways judgmentalism can defile from within. But the fundamental problem here isn’t with sacred practices, or with tradition, or with careful attention to the law or creation care practices.
If anything, Jesus’ argument is that his opponents aren’t pure enough (rather, they are hypocritical); not traditional enough (rather, they violate one of the Ten Commandments); and not careful enough in their attention to God’s way of Shalom (rather, they overlook and distort). No, for Jesus, the heart of the problem is the heart (Mark 7:21). That’s where the emphasis belongs, where our focus belongs — and that’s where the good news of the Gospel this week is, too. For the prophets don’t only condemn, and neither does Jesus. They also declare the consoling, encouraging promises of God, including the promise that God will soften our hearts, transform our hearts, unmask our hearts, and in the end write a new covenant on our hearts. And little by little, by the merciful grace of God, our life together is this pilgrimage of transformation, this journey on which we are invited, again and again, to embark. For God loves us fiercely and deeply and has promised to give us new hearts for a new day, so that we might increasingly become not only hearers but also doers of the Word!
And it is with this awareness and from this stance that we find ourselves best equipped to celebrate and serve the creation which is our heart’s delight.
Reflection: Ukuthulah recording (Lament and Assurance)
Amen