Seeing Creation

The Rebirthing of God is the title of John Philip Newell’s new book.  Its subtitle is Christianity’s Struggle for New Beginnings.  This week I will be at the Ghost Ranch in New Mexico  taking a workshop with Newell that focuses on this book.  I am certainly looking forward to that.  In the meantime, I’ve been reading the book itself.

In this brand new book Newell speaks of the death of Christianity as we know it and of the need for “the rebirthing of God.”  He believes that this rebirthing is a good thing “pointing to a radical reemergence of the Divine from deep with us.”  In each of the book’s eight chapters Newell discusses something the church needs to reconnect with. Having read a number of his other books I was not surprised to discover that the first thing he believes we need to reconnect to is the earth.  Newell concurs with eco-theologian Thomas Berry that “we need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world.”

Reflecting on both the Book of Genesis and the writings of Julian of Norwich Newell notes that we are not only made by God but are also “of God.”  He says “We are made of the Light that was in the beginning.  We are made of the Wisdom that fashioned the universe in its glory and interrelatedness.   We are made of the Love that longs for oneness.”  He sees one of our great needs “the desire to move back into relationship with everything else that is of God.”  This means “choosing to move in harmony with the universe again, knowing the rising of the sun and the whiteness of the moon as part of us, seeing the beauty and wildness of the creatures as expressions of what is also within us, the unnameable and untameable presence of the Divine in all things.  It means growing in awareness of earth’s sacredness, knowing that its moist greenness issues forth directly from the ever-fresh fecundity of God.”

If you are a regular reader of Seeing Creation you know that I write often about the sacredness of the earth.  I, too, feel that Christianity has suffered greatly by setting up a false dichotomy between the spiritual and material world.  This false dichotomy has kept many from being open to experiencing God in the natural world.   This is most strange considering the Biblical insistence that God is certainly to be found in the Creation.

I appreciate the fact that Newell utilizes the teachings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  He refers to de Chardin as  “the first modern Christian prophet of the sacredness of the universe.”  De Chardin once wrote “at the heart of matter is the heart of God” and “the deeper we move into the mystery of any created thing, the closer we come to the Divine Presence.”  These are things I believe too. De Chardin believed that the Incarnation of Christ “points to the oneness of heaven and earth, the Divine and the human, spirit and matter” and also “reveals the essential sacredness of every person and everything that has been created.”

In case you’re wondering, in the remaining chapters of his book Newell goes on to talk about how reconnecting with compassion, the Light, the journey, spiritual practice, nonviolence, the unconscious and love will also be important facets of the rebirthing of God.  I’ve not read the whole book yet but already I have found much encouragement about the future of Christianity in it.  If we would just take seriously this first part, reconnecting to the earth, it would make a world of difference.  I plan to keep pointing others in this direction and ask you to do the same.

–Chuck

(I took the images shown above near my home in Henderson, KY.)

I try hard not to sound preachy on this site.  I’m sure there are times I do not succeed but since I am a preacher I guess one could expect that.  If today’s entry does sound preachy there’s a reason for it.  This was part of the message I preached at my church this morning.  The sermon was called “Can God Love Someone Like Me?”  I spoke of three places where we find evidence of God’s love for each of us—the Scriptures, Creation, and in Jesus’ sacrificial death on the Cross.  Below is the section on Creation:

“In addition to the testimony and promises of the Bible, we might also note that the world is filled with signs of God’s love and acceptance.  All around us in God’s Creation are hints and evidence of God’s love for us and His desire for us to be full of joy.  These signs show us that God’s love surpasses what we can comprehend.  If we look at these signs closely and meditate upon them, not only will we find ourselves saying with the Psalmist, ‘What is man that thou art mindful of him?’ but we would also cry out, ‘How great thou art!’

Long ago Meister Eckhart said, ‘Every creature is a word of God and a book about God.’  I’m convinced he is right and that the subject of those books is love, God’s incredible love for you and me.   Another great Christian writer, Julian of Norwich, said ‘Everything is enwrapped in love and is part of a world produced not by mechanical necessity but by passionate desire.’  If only we had eyes to see we would recognize that we are surrounded by a beautiful world which is literally filled to the brim with the evidence of God’s love.  Everything—from the singing birds to the babbling brook, from the tiny acorn to the majestic oak, from the smallest flower to the tallest mountain—yes, everything that God has created reveals His love for us.”

I wish more people realized just how much God loves them.  I say that because so many people do, in fact, wonder if this could possibly be true.  For me the evidence is overwhelming; God does indeed love each of us more than we could ever imagine.  That love is not based on our behavior at all.  It is instead a gift bestowed upon us because it is God’s nature to love.  You and I can love others but we can also choose not to love.  God, however, cannot not love us.  Why?  Because “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)  Furthermore, the apostle Paul declared “I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39)

I am very grateful for God’s love.  We all should be.  I hope each day you will open yourself up to the unconditional love of God.  Julian of Norwich said “The greatest honor we can give to Almighty God is to live gladly because of the knowledge of his love.”  With that in mind I encourage you to embrace the love of God and live gladly.  Recognizing that we are lavishly loved by the Maker of heaven and earth, how could we not?

–Chuck

(I took all four of the images above over the past few days here in Henderson County, Kentucky.)

Writing several centuries ago, the Christian mystic, Julian of Norwich, wrote “Nature and Grace are in harmony with each other.  For Grace is God and Nature is God.  Neither Nature nor Grace works without the other.  They may never be separated…  That Goodness that is Nature is God.  God is the Ground, the substance, the same that is Naturehood.  God is the true Father and Mother of Nature.”  I read these words a few days ago and have been giving them some thought.  They are certainly deep words.

I cannot help but wonder if someone during her time was making the claim that nature and grace are not in harmony with each other.  I assume that is possible.  If so, I like how Julian addressed this claim.  I think she is correct in seeing the source of both grace and nature in God.  The Bible is clear in noting that we would have neither apart from Him.   Since they have the same source it makes sense that nature and grace would be “in harmony with each other” and that neither “works without the other.”

What all this seems to be saying to me is that we can expect to experience God’s grace in Creation.  Certainly we experience that grace first and foremost in Jesus Christ but it is also to be found in the world Christ has made.  And just as we must open ourselves up to Christ in order to know and feel his grace, we must likewise open ourselves up to nature if we are to know and feel the grace that is to be found there.  Matthew Fox once said, “When we can no longer feel the grace of nature we need to pause and allow grace to bless us again.”  That is good advice.

Have you paused lately to allow the grace of God that is found in Creation to bless you?  Last week my wife and I went to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park to celebrate our anniversary.  We spent a good bit of time in those wonderful mountains and beside the streams that flow from them.  I must say that in those misty mountains I felt God’s grace.  And like Julian, I realized “that goodness that is nature is God.”  That is not to say that I see God and nature as one and the same, just that the One who is “the true Father and Mother of nature” has a wonderful way of bestowing grace upon us through Creation when we realize that the two truly are in harmony with each other.  I encourage you to live in this realization so that you might experience even more of God’s amazing grace in the days to come.

–Chuck

(I took the pictures shown above last week on our anniversary trip to the Smokies.)

Twice recently I’ve come across an interesting story about Julian of Norwich, a Christian mystic born around 1342.  Julian tells the story herself in the following words. “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 I 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.”

Part of me would love to know what the little round thing was that Julian found in her hand that day but in the end that’s not important.  What is important is what God revealed to Julian of Norwich.   I cannot speak with authority on the meaning of what God said to her but it appears to me that He was making it clear that every single thing He has made is important and that the basis of everything He has made is love.

You and I exist because of God’s love.  The trees of the forests and the birds in the air exist because of God’s love.  Likewise, rocks, flowers, streams, hills, and all creatures great and small owe their existence to the love of God.  There is no part of Creation that cannot trace its origins to the same source.

None of this should surprise us when we recall the Bible says “God is love.” (First John 4:16)  Since love is God’s essence or nature it only makes sense that love is the force behind everything He does.  John 3:16 declares, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”  Just as love was the basis for God sending Christ into the world, love was the basis for the creation of that same world.  It truly is all about love!

Knowing that I was created and exist because of God’s love brings me comfort, purpose and meaning.  It should you as well.  We must, however, take it a step further.  Knowing that everyone else and everything else also have as their basis for existence God’s love, this forces us to look at them differently.  It challenges us to look for and find God’s love in them.   Are you up to that challenge?  Am I?  I hope so because there seems to be a whole lot riding on the outcome.  The world itself will continue to exist as long as God desires for it to, but what kind of world it will be shall be determined largely by how we look at people and things, and by what we do.  By loving all that God loves it truly can be a better place!  It doesn’t take a mystic to see that.

–Chuck

(I took the top picture at Redwood National Park; the middle one at Acadia National Park; and the bottom one at Olympic National Park.)