Early Spring Abundance

Spring officially began a little over a week ago, and in that short time there has been an abundance of blessings pertinent to creation care for Nebraskans. All of these events took place against a backdrop of typical spring weather, with cold, cloudy, and even snowy weather alternating with sunny days that helped the earliest spring flowers to bloom. A variety of songbirds, including robins, wrens, meadowlarks, and red-winged blackbirds, are making it sound like spring even when the temperature feels more like winter. Here’s a glimpse at some pieces of that abundance.

Dinner in Abraham’s Tent
The Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska has partnered with Temple Israel and the American Institute of Islamic Studies and Culture to form the Tri-Faith Initiative. Friday evening at the Qwest Center in Omaha was Dinner in Abraham’s Tent: Conversations on Peace. It was a wonderful evening to share our worship experiences, make new friends, and hear an outstanding conversation about peace.

The spirit of this event was very much like the spirit I’ve experienced at GreenFaith gatherings. GreenFaith is an interfaith organization that “inspires, educates and mobilizes” people of different faiths for environmental leadership. In working with GreenFaith in their Fellowship program, I’ve found that working on creation care can build bonds among people of different faiths and different Christian perspectives. All of us recognize the Earth as God’s creation, all of us feel closer to God when we experience the wonders of creation, and all of us realize that we have a moral responsibility to help care for God’s creation.

As I described my ministry to our dinner companions on Friday evening, there seemed to be an understanding that creation care would be something that people of faith should be doing. As we Episcopalians become more aware of how environmental issues fit into our religious lives, we might very well find a strong common bond with people of other faiths who are also beginning to recognize the connection between faith and the environment.

Crane Sunday at St. Stephen’s, Grand Island
Our liturgical celebration of the crane migration on March 22 went well. Parishioners brought in beautiful paintings and photos of the cranes to share; we had a crane banner and many, many origami cranes in the church itself; our music director tailored the music to the occasion; a parishioner worked with Rowe Sanctuary to provide a fact sheet about cranes that we included with the bulletin. The sermon articulated some of the connections between this migration that marks the Earth season and what is happening in our liturgical season. People seemed very pleased that we recognized the experience of the crane migration as a spiritual experience.

A Pastoral Letter
Right before the first day of spring – but after the last Green Sprouts post – the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter. It starts out talking about the world financial crisis, then goes on to link it to the environmental crisis. The Bishops say that God is calling us to repentance for our preoccupation with internal affairs and for our narrow focus that has kept us from addressing the concerns of suffering people in our own country and around the world. It’s a remarkable and timely letter, one that speaks clearly about the links between environmental concerns and traditional justice concerns.

Extra bits
Posts to this blog have been biweekly. The plan is to continue regular posts on alternate Tuesdays, but also to supplement these longer posts that often center on the liturgical cycle or the Earth season with “extra bits” as they come along. These will be posts about recent events, or highlighting items culled from the abundance of material related to religious environmentalism -- items such as the letter from the House of Bishops, or environmental news such as the recent report that one-third of all bird species in the United States are endangered. (The report is hopeful since it tells about some things we all can do to help these species survive.)

The Feast of the Epiphany

The Feast of the Epiphany

Today is the Feast of the Epiphany, the day we mark the manifestation or appearance of Jesus to the Gentiles.

The Gospel reading for this day (Matthew 2:1-12) is Matthew’s story of the wise men following the light of a special star, a natural object that they understood to be a sign of the birth of a king. We don’t know the exact location of “the East” that was home for the wise men. Wherever it was, it was a foreign land; Matthew tells us that they returned to “their own country” by a different route when a dream warned them not to return to Herod. We can only guess at what their native religion or belief system might have been. Still, even though the star didn’t point to the birth of new king in their own country, they noticed the star in the sky and knew it signified something of great importance. More importantly, it touched their hearts; Matthew says that when they saw that the star had stopped, they were “overwhelmed with joy”. The star and the distant event to which it pointed had a deep effect on them.

People who pay attention to the sky, the changing seasons, the incredible variety of life on our planet Earth, often experience joy and wonder and wholeness. Spending time outdoors paying attention to God’s creation leads us to open our hearts in gratitude. We don’t need to be able to name these experiences as ‘God’ for them to have a deep effect on us, and for us to know they point to something more. Those of us who do use traditional religious language describe such experiences as ways to connect with God. Being outdoors and taking the time to look around and listen is one of the most accessible doors or openings to the Holy. Such experiences not only give us a sense of God’s presence, but they often change us in profound ways.

As we talk about the light of the Epiphany star and connect it to the light of Christ in the world, the hours of daylight in the northern hemisphere are slowly increasing. On the plains, the angle of the sun and the weather conditions on some days combine to produce beautiful colors in the sky at sunrise and sunset. Cold, clear nights result in starry skies that make it easy to imagine following a special star night after night to see where it leads.

Launching this blog seems to me like a fitting way to mark the Feast of the Epiphany. Environmental issues directly affect the traditional social concerns of the church such as poverty, disease, hunger, and social justice. During Epiphany, the Church talks about bringing Christ to the world, about revealing Christ’s power to bring healing and wholeness. To bring Christ to a world where environmental issues have come to be understood as fundamental to all our economic, social, and political concerns, the Church needs to bring these issues into the center of our conversations and our work.