Tuesday, April 19, E minus 5

to live with respect in Creation,

Surely the next thing that the world asks of ‘church’, our duty and task: ecology. Are we part of the problem, or part of the solution? Are we making the world better or worse, conserving or exploiting resources? Do we love the world and our environment, or do we degrade and pollute it?

The same culture that caused the most environmental damage in history, is a culture that claims a Christian religious identification. Does the one lead to the other necessarily, or accidentally? What if we paused, and made choices to ‘live with respect in Creation’?

Take a moment now, and remember a moment when you have relished God’s good creation. We often speak of the Canadian spirituality of ‘rocks, trees, and water’ – can you recall a time when you have experienced God’s gifts of creation and been moved to respect it?

Many people think that the church is the source of our sins of pollution and abuse of creation. Because we imagine ourselves caretakers of creation, to use it (and abuse it) for our own purposes, we are licensed to make choices that are hardly consistent with ‘live with respect in Creation”.

Remember how we started out: do you believe all that stuff? Do you love all that God made, and stand in awe and respect in the face of the wonders of creation? How did we get distracted to other priorities, to satisfying our appetites and others at the expense of the ‘ecumene’, the inhabited world?

Will Easter be a moment of ecological renewal for you, or a recurrence of the pattern of consumption and degeneration?