Pen and Ink Reflections - Pen and Ink Reflections

magic realism and earth healing

9/17/2023

Un Mundo, by Ángeles Santo, Museo Reina Sofia

What value does the book of Revelation have for us, especially in the face of ecological crises? My guess is that most of us have not spent too much time on the Bible’s last book. Some people of course have, including those looking for a special secret code to life and history, and those puzzling out different timetables for Christ’s second coming. Such interpreters however typically have little concern for ecology, and some even welcome signs of environmental apocalypse. Faced by the strangeness of John the Divine’s visions, we may therefore be tempted to dispense with the book altogether. Yet that would be a mistake. For, as this morning’s reading (ch.12 vv. 1-9 & 13-17a) illustrates, truth and light can be received in the strangest places…

adjusting the lens to tell a bigger story

9/10/2023

image by Greg Rakozy on Unsplash

In his tender and tantalising work Anam Cara, John O’Donohue wrote that:
“the way you look at things is the most powerful force in shaping your life.”

I want to talk about three ways of looking at things suggested by our readings today – the microscopic that allows us to appreciate our own smallness and uniqueness; the telescopic that invites us to move imaginatively towards universes beyond this one; and the cosmic that calls us to a bigger story. For story is critical and it is only through story that we shall be able to effect the extraordinary changes required by our current ecological crisis...

Earth's Desire

9/3/2023

‘Let justice flow like a river’ is the central theme of this year’s global ecumenical Season of Creation. This phrase comes from the book of Amos, chapter 5, part of which we heard just now. Let us hear how this speaks powerfully today and why people of faith are called to work and pray together….
(Watch the Laudato Sí Movement’s ‘Prepare for Season of Creation 2023’ video here...)

called to be priests of creation, in light and shadow

9/4/2022

photo of part of Tianli Zu artwork in the Where Shadows Meet exhibition, at Casula Powerhouse

One of the puzzles Christians have sometimes set themselves is to work out what light is being referred to in the first few verses of the Bible. For, apart from modern light forms, we are so used to thinking of light from the sun and moon, which, in the Genesis account, are only created later. Various possibilities have therefore been suggested by the great theologians. Some (such as Ephrem of Syria) have thus suggested the light was a pillar of fire, or (like Basil of Caesarea) that the essence of the sun without its actual substance, or even that the light came for the angels (in the case of Augustine of Hippo). However, in so far as we might respond, I think I would go with the Orthodox Church’s understanding of ‘the uncreated light’ of God in Godself. For, when we come to the first chapter of Genesis. we are speaking here of divine mystery, depth, purpose and ultimate meaning, not literal or even limited symbolic explanation of Creation. Rather, like our second reading today (For Light by John O’Donohue), the nature of Genesis chapter 1 is poetic and prayerful, seeking to lead us into sacredness. For above all, such texts are designed to renew our sense of wonder and participation in divine creation and our role as priests of God’s Creation…

WWJD - in the climate emergency?

9/19/2021

WWJD – What Would Jesus Do – in the climate emergency? In the face of the increasing climate crisis, highlighted by the latest IPCC report and weather events across the world, how are we to react? As people of faith, what might guide us in our responses, as individuals and as a community together? This is the challenge which, with Gerard and Vivien, I ask us all to consider today. For, during this Season of Creation, we have rightly given expression, in several different ways, to our wonder at God’s world of which we are a part. We have joined with others elsewhere and received the gifts of Ecopella and other artists. We commit ourselves to continuing to grow more deeply in the soil of God’s love in Creation and to share more deeply in that grace and beauty. What however will we now do to honour that same Spirit of Christ?...

how do we relate to the Earth?

9/4/2021

When you step out of your door in the morning, do you feel that you are stepping into a world of wonder in which you are intimately connected? Or, are you simply stepping into mere location? Is it just dead space which you are crossing so that you can get to where you need to go? Or, do you believe you are walking into a living universe? Those are questions which the great spiritual writer John O’Donohue used to ask and they lie right at the heart of the Season of Creation we have just begun this month. For it matters vitally how we view the world and where we locate God in relation to it. So much of our politics, our business and trade activities, and our lifestyles, are affected. If we believe that matter, material existence, doesn’t really matter to God, then we will end up acting in problematic ways. Or, as John O’Donohue used to say, if we do believe that when we step out we are walking into a living universe, then our walk ‘becomes a different thing’. So let us explore some of the theological paths which can underpin more loving and sustainable ways of living together on the Earth…

seeking the forgiveness of the land - blowing' in the wind?

9/12/2020

When I was young, parts of the country in which I grew up literally blew away. Living in Lincolnshire, one of England’s greatest agricultural counties, I could see this whenever I traveled. For I grew up as a child at the time of the greatest destruction of England’s hedgerows, many of them very ancient. Indeed, hedgerows are, as the Campaign to Protect Rural England has put it, ‘the most widespread semi-natural habitat in England’, and, more poetically, ‘the vital stitching point in the patchwork quilt of the English countryside’.1 They not only provide character, but essential life to all kinds of creatures, and help protect the soil itself without which there can be no sustainable farming yields. As a child however, I would see such features regularly ripped away, and a vast desert of landscape created, with vital topsoil whirling up in dust storms and carried away. Such soil frequently blinded us, reflecting the blinkered industrialised agricultural thinking which had produced it. It was an early lesson to me of how if we mistreat the land out of which we come and are fed, we also destroy ourselves. How then are we to live, without seeking the forgiveness of the land itself, and renewing creation together?...

greeting storms with love not fear

9/21/2019

Storms provoke one of two responses – love (as in “I love a good storm!) or fear. Storms fill our imaginations and our language is populated with metaphors about storms - the calm before the storm; eye of the storm; storm in a teacup; brewing up a storm – I am sure you can think of more. Storms are ambiguous– they are essential to our planet but they are also scary; we love them and fear them, perhaps because those two reactions lie behind so much else in our lives. The great cartoonist Michael Leunig expresses it like this.
“There are only two feelings. Love and fear.
There are only two languages. Love and fear
There are only two activities. Love and fear.
There are only two motives, two procedures, two frameworks, two results.
Love and fear. Love and fear”...

seeking abundant justice: the cross, change and the communion of becoming

9/2/2017

This morning we bring together three important aspects of our lives together: the liturgical Season of Creation which we begin this week; the witness to justice and care for Creation which has been explored in our Abundant Justice conference this weekend; and the Gospel call, which we have just heard, to follow Jesus to take up the cross and follow him. So I want to speak this morning about three connecting things: about three ‘c’s; about the cross, about change and about communion; about how the cross comes when you try to change things; about how true change is grounded in the communion of all being; and about how that communion is founded on the cross of God’s creation…

carefully does it

9/11/2016

'Carefully' - the woman in today's story searches for her lost coin 'carefully'. Sometimes just one word in a Bible passage can really stand out, and for me this week it has been that one word 'carefully'. I have come to realise that for me it expresses something of God's love and care for each one of us. It teaches us something of how we are to love and care for one another in the human community. And it shows us how we are to care for the whole created order of which we are a part - the flora and fauna that we celebrate in this second week of creation season...