Extra Readings

You might like to use these readings one week, to push people's thinking or prompt discussion (I love John Muir's quote near the end).

You can also skip to Uniting Church statements.

I have started putting the short readings on powerpoint (350k).

for some great tree related poems visit http://www.ncsu.edu/project/treesofstrength/poems.htm

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

"The temple I frequent is high.  A turquoise vaulted dome-
The sky, that spans the world in majesty."

Gerald Manly Hopkins 1844-89 adapted

The earth is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do we then now not reck our rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears our smudge and shares our smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs--
Because God’s Spirit over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Francis of Assisi

“My sister birds, you owe much to God, and you must always and in everyplace give praise to Him; for He has given you freedom to wing through the sky and He has clothed you…you neither sow nor reap, and God feeds you and gives you rivers and fountains for your thirst, and mountains and valleys for shelter, and tall trees for your nests. And although you neither know how to spin or weave, God dresses you and your children, for the Creator loves you greatly and He blesses you abundantly. Therefore…always seek to praise God.”

Healing the Earth: Social Justice Sunday 1990

“If we take this call to praise seriously, every time we celebrate the eucharist we are affirming that the whole of life, and all creation, is woven together.  The universe is one.  All is inter-related and bound together.  All things are connected…we join not only the whole inhabited earth, but the whole creation in a cosmic hymn of praise …(Healing the Earth, Social Justice Sunday 1990)”

 “We place ‘the elements’ on the Lord’s table as symbols of the whole creation for which we ask God’s blessing… It is for all people and the whole creation that we ask God’s blessing.  It is not a ‘private’ blessing that we ask for the life of the Church…not only…the bread and wine are affected by the action of the Holy Spirit; the Spirit blesses the whole creation which they represent. …(Healing the Earth, Social Justice Sunday 1990)”

Psalm 8 in the new cosmology: Jason John

O Lord our God, how majestic is your name in all the universe!
We see your glory in suns and supernovas- the oldest of us are just babes in your sight.
When I look at your universe- the galaxies and supernovas and stars and planets that you have established.
Who are we that you even notice us?
How do you ever have time to care for us?
Yet still, we thought you had made us just a little lower than yourself,  that we alone in all the universe reflected your glory and deserved special honour.
We seized dominion over the works of your hands and we plan to seize the universe, in time.
We have trodden the earth under our feet, As have our sheep and our oxen. The beasts of the field, the birds of the sky and the fish of the sea- all groan for salvation-
Remind us that you love them as well.
O Lord our God, how majestic is your name in all the universe!

The first Mother: Jason John

The first mother, of the universe, 15 billion years ago.
The first mother, of life on Earth, three billion years ago.
The first mother, of vertebrates, 600 mya
The first mother, of mammals, 180 mya
The first mother, of primates, 70 mya
The first mother, of Homo, 2.5 mya
The first mother, of every single living human, 150,000 years ago in Africa.
We have a common lineage, from the one Mother of all things, through many mothers.

A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf John Muir

The world, we are told, was made especially for man - a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God's universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves. They have precise dogmatic insight into the intentions of the Creator, and it is hardly possible to be guilty of irreverence in speaking of their God any more than of heathen idols.

He [God] is regarded as a civilized, law-abiding gentlemen in favor either of a republican form of government or of a limited monarchy; believes in the literature and language of England; is a warm supporter of the English constitution and Sunday schools and missionary societies; and is as purely a manufactured article as any puppet at a half- penny theater.

With such views of the Creator it is, of course, not surprising that erroneous views should be entertained of the creation. To such properly trimmed people, the sheep, for example, is an easy problem - food and clothing "for us," eating grass and daisies white by divine appointment for this predestined purpose, on perceiving the demand for wool that would be occasioned by the eating of the apple in the Garden of Eden.

In the same pleasant plan, whales are storehouses of oil for us, to help out the stars in lighting our dark ways until the discovery of the Pennsylvania oil wells. Among plants, hemp, to say nothing of the cereals, is a case of evident destination for ships' rigging, wrapping packages, and hanging the wicked. Cotton is another plain case of clothing. Iron was made for hammers and ploughs, and lead for bullets; all intended for us. And so of other small handfuls of insignificant things.

But if we should ask these profound expositors of God's intentions, How about those man-eating animals - lions, tigers, alligators - which smack their lips over raw man? Or about those myriads of noxious insects that destroy labor and drink his blood? Doubtless man was intended for food and drink for all these?

Oh no! Not at all! These are unresolvable difficulties connected with Eden's apple and the Devil. Why does water drown its lord? Why do so many minerals poison him? Why are so many plants and fishes deadly enemies? Why is the lord of creation subjected to the same laws of life as his subjects? Oh, all these things are satanic, or in some way connected with the first garden.

Now, it never seems to occur to these far- seeing teachers that Nature's object in making animals and plants might possibly be first of all the happiness of each one of them, not the creation of all for the happiness of one. Why should man value himself as more than a small part of the one great unit of creation? And what creature of all that the Lord has taken the pains to make is not essential to the completeness of that unit - the cosmos?

The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

The fearfully good, the orthodox, of this laborious patch-work of modern civilization cry "Heresy" on every one whose sympathies reach a single hair's breadth beyond the boundary epidermis of our own species. Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.

This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation's plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.

Death and resurrection: Michael Dowd

When I think about death being natural and generative at all levels of reality, I am struck by how this essential evolutionary insight, this public revelation born of science, mirrors perhaps the central New Testament insight: on the other side of Good Friday (the death of incarnate divinity) is Easter Sunday (the resurrection of incarnate divinity and the salvation of the world).  This profound similarity between the evolutionary and New Testament insights occurs to me as more than coincidence.  I am convinced that a straightforward reading of the death and resurrection of Jesus, as portrayed in the Christian gospel, is a magnificent celebration of a cosmic truth that could not possibly have been revealed until telescopes, microscopes, and computers were invented.  The truth is simply this: Death is a doorway to greater Life.
I don’t merely believe in the power of the cross.  I know that for billions of years, chaos, death, and destruction have catalyzed new life, new opportunities, and new possibilities.  I know, both from my own life and from Earth’s history, that Good Fridays are consistently followed by Easter Sundays.  The story of Christ’s death and resurrection reminds me of this.

Uniting Church
Basis of Union chapter 3:

[God’s mission is]… that coming reconciliation and renewal which is the end in view for the whole creation. The church’s calling is to serve that end.

Statement to the Nation 1988
We affirm our belief that the natural world is God's creation; good in God's eyes, good in itself, and good in sustaining human life.

Recognising the vulnerability of the life and resources of creation, we will work to promote the responsible management, use and occupation of the earth by human societies.

We will seek to identify and challenge all structures and attitudes which perpetuate and compound the destruction of creation.