Reconnecting with the Earth
From now until our next Communion, we will be exploring themes around reconnecting with everything from the earth itself to love and many points along the way. This exploratory journey is inspired by the book by John Philip Newell entitled The Rebirthing of God. Its subtitle is Christianity’s struggle for new beginnings. The book is not designed to reinvent God but is designed to help those of us who identify as Christians to discover or rediscover what it is about our expression of faith in God that can be a real blessing to the people with whom we interact intimately and casually. Newell recognizes that there is more contact between people of different faith traditions and he does not seek to discredit any expression of faith but rather wants to help us find that which can be our gift to the world and the experience of God.
We live in a time of great spirituality but one which is suspicious of organized religion. Such a time requires us to reflect on our faith with eyes wide open to where and how God is to be discovered by this generation. Doing so will not discredit the faith of those who have come before us but instead will enable us to enter into a more positive dialogue with those who are searching for God in this time. We need not abandon our history nor deny who we are but we can find the freedom to explore to a new depth the sacredness of our beliefs about God and life itself.
For so many people faith in God skims the surface of their existence and breaks into their lives only in isolated moments. Newell wants us to reconnect with our whole being not only to the God made us but from whose very womb we have sprung. It was Julian of Norwich, the 14th century Christian mystic who first came to this revelation. Julian loved to refer to God as Mother as well as Father. She saw us as coming forth from the essence of the One who is the Source of all things. And so the wisdom of God is deep within us, deeper than the ignorance of what we have done. For Julian, the love-longings of God are at the heart of our being. We have a natural longing for oneness and union with God. To be born anew as Jesus speaks of it in John chapter 3 is not to become something other than ourselves but instead allowing that deep desire to be in union with God come to birth in us.
Getting back to nature – perhaps by going camping or escaping the city – is something that many of us seek for, yet find that the connection to the elements of the earth from which we have been drawn has changed significantly in the last 200 years. Industrialization and urbanization has drawn us away from a more intimate contact with the land, water and sky. Winds, rain, snow, even intense heat have come to be things we fear because of the damage they can do to our homes and other possessions as well as the many ways in which they can play havoc with our times of recreation. We no longer depend on the stars and the moon for lights and guidance. We do not rest from our labour when the sun disappears. We expect to have access to the same variety of foods no matter what the time of year.
But reconnecting with the earth is not just about standing in the rain or taking a long walk on a moonlit night or feeling the strength of a sweeping wind; reconnecting with the earth is about recognizing that we are not just in the world or on the earth but that we are connected to and dependent on everything that surrounds us. We need to remember that everything that lives and breathes is part of this world. We may have been given dominion over the creatures but we were not given the right to decide their fate.
Newell’s vision and hope is for Christians to move back into relationship with everything that is of God. By this he means choosing to move in harmony with the universe, growing in awareness of the sacredness of the earth itself.
Part of that sacredness is recognizing that there is a male and female component to all life. To celebrate the maleness of our existence without celebrating the femaleness is to see only half of who we or any other creature is. While we see ourselves as created male or female, the deeper reality is that we have been created male and female; there is an interconnectedness in usthat needs to find expression. We need to be able to recognize a capacity for birth and nurture in all of us.
But to recapture the feminine expression in creation and in God does not mean letting go of the masculine. It is about rediscovering what it truly means to be human and what it means to be created in the image and likeness of God.
But rediscovering or discovering for the first time what it is to be truly human as a Christian also leads us to focus on where we are. So much of our theology speaks of what will be someday in the future. But as much as we understand our time on earth to be a preparation for that new heaven and earth, we are not to forget that we were created first for this world. If we have found no way to reveal our life with God in this world, we will have missed an important part of our journey. Of course we want to know what the future holds but let us not forget that Jesus spent far more time teaching us about what it meant to be a people in relationship to God here and now. Even the gift of the Holy Spirit after the resurrection was not so much for a future time as it was for the present time.
In the past we often spoke as if we and we alone possessed the truth; and so we have often told others what to believe. In this time we need to exercise a humility that communicates the truth of what we understand about God inviting people to listen and question. We need to allow the love-longings for God to be born in people. As I mentioned earlier, perhaps that is what Jesus really meant when he spoke about a second birth – finding once again that place from which we can find our oneness, our union with God and so feel that sense of new birth, new life. From that place we can engage the world around us in a dialogue of word and action.
Reconnecting with the earth is a first step along the way. Allowing ourselves to discover the masculine or the feminine elements within ourselves, others and God is vital to discovering the human and the humanity that lies below the façade of our outward appearance.
Engaging the world around us in a way that acknowledges the breadth and depth of the created order in which we live will enable us to take those next steps in the journey that Newell invites us to take as we seek for the rebirthing of God in our time.
Amen.