Aug 30th: Listening to the Earth, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski.
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Listening to the Earth, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. Series: Standalone Services. A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon.
Do you feel disconnected from the natural world and wonder if caring for the planet could also soothe your own heart? This Sunday Rev. Dr. Steven Koski invites you to explore how paying close attention to the pulse of creation can bring healing, gratitude, and a deeper sense of belonging. Join us in person or online for a gentle reminder that the earth’s wellbeing and our own are intertwined. If you’d like to talk more, feel free to reach out to a pastor or a friendly member of the congregation.
Transcript:
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Have you noticed how vital it is for our wellbeing to spend time outside in nature? I mean, nature is our best therapist, physician, teacher. Nature is our healer. I mean, how ironic that, that we turn to God’s holy earth for healing when God’s holy earth is in crisis, crying out for healing. Healing both ourselves and the earth involves healing our relationship with the earth. There’s an exquisite documentary celebrating the wonder of trees called My Passion for trees with British actress Judy Dench. Now, Judy Dench walks among the trees on her large rural property in Sussex, and she’s with a scientist who uses a special instrument that that allows her to listen to the gurgling, rushing sounds of water moving up through the trunk of a tree, nourishing its branches and leaves a sound. The film actually allows us to hear as well, have you ever heard the sound of a tree drawing water up through the veins of its noble body? Probably not. The earth breathes. The earth has a pulse. How might it change our presence on the earth if, if we actually were able to hear the earth’s pulse? I vividly remember how I was profoundly changed the moment I heard the, the pulse of my first child, the Babu Babu babu of the ultrasound, when the obstetrician said, well, dad, that’s your child’s heart. You know, until that moment I, I thought I was separate from my child, distant from the mystery inside the womb.
Speaker 0 00:02:20 But I tell you, once I heard the heartbeat, once I, once I heard the pulse, everything changed. I was, I was connected. My, my heartbeat was one with my child’s heartbeat. And to this day, 30 years later, when my child’s heart breaks, my heart breaks. When my child’s heart bursts with joy, my heart bursts with joy. Our healing and wellbeing cannot be separated from the earth’s healing and wellbeing. Jesus said, consider the lilies. Now, the Greek word translated, a as considered literally means pay attention, give the fullness of your attention. And in that same passage of scripture, Jesus links paying attention, paying attention to nature, to reducing our anxiety. The poet Mary Oliver, wrote a poem called Instructions for Living a Life Pay Attention, be astonished, tell about it.
Speaker 0 00:03:53 We are so, so, so focused on ourselves that sometimes we miss the sheer goodness and wonder of nature. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote, earth is crammed with heaven and every common bush a fire with God, but only she who seeds takes off her shoes. The rest of us sit round and pluck blackberries. We are a human centric race, aren’t we? I mean, the earth, the earth is 4.5 billion years old, billion years old. Homo sapiens are trying, have been around for maybe 200,000 of those years. I mean, a tiny fraction of Earth’s existence. And, and yet we assume, we assume we’ve always been here and we assume we, we will always be here.
Speaker 0 00:05:08 And unless we’re wise and unless we heal our relationship with the Earth, we may not be. I’m not so sure we can be. I’m not so sure we can be so human centric and actually survive as a species. We’ve got to move from being ego-centric to becoming eco centric, from seeing this incredible earth as a commodity for our consumption to seeing God’s holy earth as a sacred community, a living web we get to share with, with all living things Wendell Berry wrote, we have, uh, we have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the earth. We have been wrong and we must change and live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the earth is actually good for us. And that requires rediscovering and recovering the sacredness of God’s holy earth. The description of the beginning of creation in the Book of Genesis, in the Bible by the way, is not science, but it’s actually beautiful poetry.
Speaker 0 00:06:45 The poet wrote that on the sixth day of creation, God surveyed the earth. God examined the skies, the oceans, the mountains, the forests, the streams, the high desert, the rolling planes. God laughed at the centipede, the tumbleweed, the scampering puppy in the platypus, God rejoiced in the apple blossoms, the tadpole, the glacier, and the glorious configuration of wrinkles and neurons that make up the human brain. And the poet says, God saw all that God has made and saw that it was to, that’s the original Hebrew, to the original Hebrew that we, we feebly translated as, uh, very good. A more accurate translation is to say that, that God paid attention and God saw all that God had made and exclaimed. Wow. You know, and even more accurate translation is that, that when God took in the majesty, beauty, beauty, sacredness, the sacredness of creation, the beauty of creation, God was so overcome with awe that God was speechless.
Speaker 0 00:08:55 Maybe that’s what we’ve lost a sense of reverence and awe. And our souls are poor for it. The earth is poor for it. The environmental crisis and it is a crisis, is a spiritual crisis. We will not cherish and protect what we take for granted. We will not save what we do, not savor and hold sacred. We will not restore and renew what we do not revere. We will not humbly serve what we arrogantly assume exists to serve us. We will not heal what we don’t recognize as essential for our own healing. Jewish philosopher Martin Buber said, there are two ways of relating to one another. I it where the other is an object to be used for our be benefit. You know, this is when we, we treat other people transactionally in terms of how, how they might, might serve our needs, how they might make us happy. And Bber says the other way of relating is I thou where we see and treat the other as holy, sacred. I mean, what a difference it makes in our relationships when we are able to see others as beloved children of God. When, when we actually treat others
Speaker 0 00:10:50 With respect and even reverence. The most important question we ask, we can possibly ask. The, the question I believe that would, would transform every relationship you you have is simply asking yourself, do people feel important and valued in my presence? Now, just imagine, just imagine if we treated our relationship with God’s fully earth with the same humility, respect, reverence rather than an it, seeing the earth as existing to serve our needs. What if we saw God’s holy earth as a sacred thou to be revered? As chief Seattle said, the earth doesn’t belong to us, to us, we belong to the earth. What if we actually ask? Does, does God’s holy earth feel valued, respected, revered in our presence? You know, in the sacrament of holy communion, Jesus holds up the bread. The bread, a gift from the earth. And the first thing Jesus does is he gives things. I think gratitude inspires reverence. Imagine adopting a, a spiritual practice expressing gratitude for one aspect of creation every day for for a whole year, every day for a whole year. One aspect of creation, the rising of the sun, the wind in our hair, the, the grace of the birds in the air, the beauty of the flowers, the salmon that swim in the stream,
Speaker 0 00:13:08 The stillness of the trees, the steadiness of the rocks. Our reverence will deepen and we’ll be reminded how deeply intimately connected we are to creation. You know, I love to kayak one of my favorite things in the world to do. And I wonder what would happen if before we got in our kayaks. It it became our spiritual practice to pay attention. We really, really pay attention to come, to come to that place of wow and then give thanks for the gift of the river. What would happen if we didn’t see the river as simply there to serve us and our pleasure, but made it a spiritual practice to bow to the river
Speaker 2 00:14:15 With
Speaker 0 00:14:16 Reverence? What might happen if before we ask the river to heal us?
