The BeLoved Community is joining with our sisters and brothers from around the world in celebrating The Season of Creation. “The Season of Creation is a time to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment together. During the Season of Creation, we join our sisters and brothers in the ecumenical family in prayer and action for our common home." www.SeasonofCreation.org
Prayer Time
The following is a summary of our prayer time last weekend. Join us this Sunday on Zoom at 5 PM ET to continue our prayer for creation. I'm grateful to Emily who helped co-create and co-lead this service. We used materials from The Season of Creation resources as well as the chapter on Creation from my upcoming book: Jesus' Way of Love: Catholicim (Re)Visited.
Opening Prayer
Our Opening Prayer is adapted from our Aboriginal sisters and brothers
God of Holy Dreaming,
Great Creator Spirit,
From the dawn of creation
You have given your children
The good things of our mothering earth.
You spoke and the gumtree grew.
In the vast desert and the dense forest and in the city and at the water’s edge,
creation sings your praise.
Your presence endures at the rock
at the heart of our land.
The sunrise of your Son colored the earth anew and bathed it in glorious hope.
In Jesus we have been reconciled to you, to each other and to all of creation.
Lead us on, Great Spirit, as we gather from the four corners of the earth.
Enable us to walk together in trust Into the full day that has dawned in Jesus Christ.[1]
The Two Creation Stories
There are actually two creation stories in The Bible – one in Genesis 1 about how God created the world in six days. The second one is in Genesis 2 about how God took a piece of what we call “Adam” and created a woman – so he would not be alone – so they could be interdependent and together would be a whole.
Important Words and Concepts
To better understand the Creation Stories, it's helpful to know:
“Elohim” is the Hebrew word used for G-d in Genesis 1. Elohim is a plural noun meaning “gods or powers”. Not a singular masculine god.
Heaven and earth. At the time, people believed that the world existed with a clear location for heaven, earth and Hades
The Creation Stories
These are a compilation from three translations of The Bible: The Message, The Inclusive Bible and A Women’s Lectionary for the Whole Church.
When beginning, he, God, created the heavens and the earth. The earth was shapeless and formless and bleakness covered the face of the deep, while the Spirit of God [Ruah[, she fluttered over the face of the waters.
Then, Elohim spoke: “Light!” And light appeared.Elohim saw that light was good and separated light from dark.Elohim named the light Day
Elohim named the dark Night.It was evening, it was morning—Day One.
God speaks, creates, and recognizes that God’s work is good.
On Day 2, the sky – heavens – and the waters.
On Day 3, the ocean and the earth with trees and plants.
On Day 4, sun and moon.
On Day 5, all the animals in the ocean and the sky. Prosper! Reproduce!
On Day 6, God spoke: “Let us make human beings in our divine image,
To be like us, make them reflecting our nature, So they can be responsible for and be stewards for [all living things] and, yes, Earth itself...”
Elohim created human beings; Elohim created them godlike, reflecting God’s nature. Elohim created them female and male.God blessed them: “Prosper! Reproduce! Bear fruit! Fill Earth! Take charge! Be responsible for Earth. Be responsible …
God looked over everything God had made; it was so good, so very good!
Heaven and Earth were finished, down to the last detail.
By the seventh day God had finished God’s work.
God blessed the seventh day. God made it a Holy Day – a sacred day, because on that day God rested from God’s work, all the creating God had done.
This is the story of how it all started. These are the generations of the Heavens and Earth when they were created.
God made the earth and the heavens.
God then made mist to water the earth.
Then using clay, Elohim formed the man and breathed into him giving him life.
Then Elohim made the garden of Eden with trees including the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil – Elizabeth is the tree of life and the tree of knowledge
and created four rivers.
Elohim put the man in the garden to work and told him not to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge.
Elohim thought: It’s not good for man to be alone so God made other creatures which the man named. Then, God made the man fall sleep. God took one of his ribs and replaced it with flesh.
God turned the rib into a woman.
The man said, “This one is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman because she was taken from man.”
This is why a man leaves his father and his mother and joins with a wife, and the two become one flesh.
Now the man and the woman were naked, but they did not feel any shame.
12 Invitations from the Creation Stories
1. Expand our names for God beyond male terms and Lord. Consider the titles from our opening prayer... God of Holy Dreaming and Great Creator Spirit.
2. Cultivate a relationship with Ru-ah - which is the Hebrew word for the Spirit and Breath, also called the Holy Spirit.
3. Words matter so choose them carefully. God names things into being. “Woman” is a compound word from “womb” and “man” – a person with a womb. Let us choose our words carefully. Morphogenetics fields validates what Lao-Tze, the father of Taoism wrote in the 6th century BCE
Watch your thoughts, they become words.
Watch your words, they become actions.
Watch your actions, they become habits.
Watch your habits, they become character.
Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.
4. Affirm the goodness in all. “It” is good. We often judge – good and bad. Day is good. Night is bad. Light is good. Dark is bad. Chicken is good. Wolf is bad. NO! God created and named all – and it was all good! It is good. We are good. Do we choose to focus on the positive or the negative… in us, in our days, in the things we make? In deciding what is positive and what is negative, we make judgements! Some judgements are necessary – but many are not. It is what it is.
And – by the way – God named us good before we did anything. By our very being, we are good. Like a newborn baby. We are God’s precious newborn babies! Do we know that in our hearts? Can we give thanks to God in all things, as St. Paul encourages us to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18? “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”
5. Respect that all is sacred – nothing is profane. So often the Church has separated but God is interwoven in it all.
6. Celebrate that we are created in God’s image way beyond gender. God’s graces are our graces. We can mirror our Creator if we allow ourselves to do that
7. Procreate and co-create. There are so many ways to procreate beyond children. How do we bring God's goodness into the world? Cultivate beauty? Build God's kin-dom of love, peace, equity, justice and freedom? We are invited to co-create with the Divine Beloved and with the people in our lives.
8. Bless. God blessed what God had created. Let us go through our days blessing.... channeling God's energy and grace.
9. Be in community. We were not meant to be islands alone. There is so much research on the importance of being in community.
10. Recognize God is in nature – in all of creation. One of the mnemonic for God is Go Out Doors.
11. Honor that we are interdependent with all of creation. We are not better than creation. Some translations of the Creation stories use the phrase "have dominion over..." It's helpful to think of "dominion" as protecting assuring that those in our care have the resources they need to flourish. One of the terms for Mother Earth is Gaia.... let us treasaure Gaia the way we treasure our human mothers.
12. Rest and “honor the Sabbath." It's clear in the first Creation story that God rested. We need to rest also. We can practice the Sabbath and cultivate a spirit of Sabbath. For more information on this, please reach out to Rev. AndreaGrace.
Holy Silence
Psalm 78 begins:
Listen well, O peoples of the earth
To inner promptings of the Spirit
Let silence enter your house that you may hear.
For within your heart Love speaks spiritual truths
to guide you upon the paths of peace
Teach your children about the inward Voice
And help all generations to listen in the Silence
That they may know the Beloved and be free
To follow the precepts of Love.
(From Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness by Nan C. Merrell)
Enjoy a minute of silence –
I invite you to breathe in the Spirit
Using Her name: Ru-ah
Breathe in on the "Ru" syllable
And breathe out on the "Ah…" syllable.
Reflection Questions
· What touched you in the stories
· Which invitation do you want to accept – step into – practice this month?
Blessing
Please open your hands as a sign that you are receptive to God’s graces. Our final blessing comes From the Pacific Conference of Churches
God of Truth and Justice ,
Fill us with your Spirit of compassion
so we may live and act with
and in solidarity with creation.
Guide us in the paths of righteousness that help us to tread softly on the land and sail gently on the sea.
Give us wisdom and courage to care for our earth
Give us strength of heart and arm to be agents of the ecological conversion that the world needs.
Creator God – bless us that we may act and hope with creation. Amen.[2]
The prayers came from the Season of Creation Resource Guide for 2024.
[1] (Resources, 2024, p. 35)
[2] (Bagwan, 2024, p. 39)
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