Sacred Earth As Spiritual Teacher

Apr 19th - Sacred Earth As Spiritual Teacher, with Rev. Dr. Steven Koski. A Spacious Christianity, First Presbyterian Church of Bend, Oregon. Scripture: Matthew 6.28;Genesis 1.31.

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We call this kind of faith “Spacious Christianity.” We don’t ask anyone to sign creeds or statements of belief. The life of faith is about a way of being in the world and a faith that shows itself in love.

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Featuring:

Rev. Dr. Steven Koski, Rev. Sharon Edwards, Becca Ellis, Brave of Heart, Guests

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

You welcome to worship at First Presbyterian Church in Benton, Oregon. My name is Amy, and we are so grateful you've joined us. We are a community shaped by what we call spacious Christianity, a faith wide enough for difference, honest, enough for questions and kind enough for the full truth of our lives. Here, doubts are not disqualifiers, questions are not threats, they're invitations into deeper faith and more authentic connection. Your story matters, and together we seek God with holy curiosity. So today, wherever you're coming from, know this. You are welcome, and your presence is a gift.

Sharon Edwards: 4:49

a prayer from the Uncomgah Gray, also known as the northern ute people Earth. Teach me stillness. Eyes as the grasses are stilled with light. Earth, teach me suffering as old stones suffer with memory. Earth, teach me humility as blossoms are humble with beginning. Earth, teach me caring as the mother who secures her young. Earth, teach me courage as the tree which stands alone. Earth. Teach Me limitation as the ant which crawls on the ground. Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky. Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall. Earth teach me regeneration as the seed which rises in the spring. Earth teach me to forget myself as melted snow forgets its life Earth. Teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep in the rain. Amen. Have

Steven: 7:17

you noticed how vital it is for our well being 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 Judi Dench. Now Judi 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 pulse of my first child, the bump, ba bump of the ultrasound when the obstetrician said, Well, Dad, that's your child's heart. You know, until that moment, I thought I was separate from my child, distant from the mystery inside the womb. 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 well being cannot be separated from the Earth's healing and well being. Jesus said, consider the lilies now, the Greek word, translated 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. 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 sees 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, our tribe, have been around for maybe 200,000 of those years, I mean, a tiny fraction of Earth's existence. And yet we assume, we assume we've always been here. We assume we we will always be here, 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 egocentric 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 all living things. Wendell Berry wrote, we have, 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. 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 Plains. God laughed at the centipede, the tumbleweed, the scampering puppy and 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 Tov my old that's the original Hebrew. Tov Mio, the original Hebrew that we we feebly translated as very good. A more accurate translation is to say that that God. Had paid attention, and God saw all that God had made, and exclaimed, wow. You know, an 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. The Jewish theologian Abraham hissel said, God is not the object of our knowledge, but God is the catalyst for our wonder and awe. We are to live in radical amazement, to get up in the morning, take in the world in a way that takes nothing for granted, to be spiritual, to be spiritual to be spiritual is to be amazed. Does that describe your spiritual life? Maybe that's what we've lost, a sense of reverence and awe, and our souls are poor for it, the Earth is poorer 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 benefit. You know, this is when we treat other people transactionally in terms of how they might might serve our needs, how they might make us happy. And Buber 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 we actually treat others 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 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 holy 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. We belong to the earth. What if we actually asked, 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 spiritual practice. Are expressing gratitude for one aspect of creation every day 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 grace of the birds in the air, the beauty of the flowers, the salmon that swim in the stream, 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 became our spiritual practice to pay attention, 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 with reverence. What might happen if, before we ask the river to heal us, which I don't know about you, it always does, what if we listened for the river's heartbeat, asking how we might contribute to her healing? One more poem to finish, window berries, the peace of wild things, when despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound and fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go lie down where the woodrake rests in the beauty of the water And the great Heron feeds. I come into the presence of still water, and I feel above the day blind stars waiting with their light for a time I rest in the grace of the world and am free. Friends, take a moment open your heart to the sheer goodness the WoW of creation. Let it heal you, and consider what you might do today to Love and heal God's holy earth. May it be so? God looked over all that God had created, And God was speechless. Friends, pay attention. Be astonished, take nothing for granted, recover a sense of reverence and awe for God's holy earth. Let the earth heal you, that you might remember our first and the holiest calling is to love and heal the earth. May it be so.

Unknown: 29:12

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