| Creation and Prayer |
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To those poems of Creation that we’ve just heard, I want to add one more, if you don’t mind, from one of the most beautiful of all the psalms. It’s the beginning of Psalm 104:
2 You stretch out the heavens like a tent, When I was a child, I lived on the seafront in north Liverpool, looking out across the Mersey to the Welsh hills, and beyond to the Irish sea. My father's study was an upstairs room with a bay window, and there I would sit watching the ships come and go, wondering where they went. And I would watch the never ending weather rolling in from the west. The variety was spectacular: from violent, salt-laden winter storms, to long, clear summer days ending with the enormous sun setting deep red into the sea on the western horizon. I would sit there, sometimes for hours, just watching, my imagination at that far horizon. In talking about "Creation in Crisis" I think it's inevitable that most of the attention will focus on the "crisis" part. And when we do talk about the "Creation" part it's equally inevitable that we will do so in a very practical, almost utilitarian, way - of the preservation of the fields that produce our food; of the rainforests that breathe for the planet; of the clean rivers, clean seas, and clean air needed to sustain all forms of life. And all of that is very proper. But I think to round out the picture, we also need to speak about the spiritual aspect of Creation. An aspect that sometimes gets a little lost in the facts and figures. But one of the reasons, of course, why we don't focus on the spiritual side is that we actually find it a little difficult these days to talk about "Creation" with a capital C. If we look at the Genesis or the Ezekiel passages we heard today, we tend to treat them as purely allegorical - simply poetry. A beautiful story, but not, in any sense a literal truth. And we tend to view with considerable suspicion those who do: fundamentalists, conservative evangelicals, whatever we want to call them. The sorts of people that Richard Dawkins and Jonathan Miller rather childishly enjoy poking fun at. But even if we don't believe in the literal truth of the Creation stories there is a spiritual side - a deeply spiritual side - to the idea of Creation, and as Christians, I believe our spiritual lives will be enhanced if we can reclaim that. Again, I emphasize we don't need to believe that God created the earth in 6 days, or that Adam and Eve first lived in a garden called Eden and were then driven from it. We simply need to acknowledge that God did, in some way we may not fully understand, create the earth and what we see around us. And if we do, how can this help us? Well, let me tell another story. A few months ago I was filling out one of the endless forms that sometimes seem to make up the backbone of my ordination course. It was a survey of the past year, and most of it was fairly straightforward stuff: ‘what did you like most?', ‘what did you like least?' - but in these types of forms there's always one section that I find a bit tricky. Which I completely dread in fact. And it's the section on prayer. You're asked to reflect on your prayer life: what is it like; has it deepened over the past year; and how do you intend to deepen it still further over the coming year. Well, in my case the depressing answers to those three are, respectively: what's it like - shallow; have you deepened it - no; and how will you do so - absolutely no idea. The truth of the matter is, I find it very hard to pray. I can think, I can speak, but I really can't pray. At least not a deep, full, open prayer, a sort of grown-up conversation with God if you will. I find the real problem is concentration. I simply can't stop my mind from continuing to churn. I can begin to read a prayer, or to think about what I should be praying and within 30 seconds [scattering gesture] my concentration has hopped off somewhere else and I'm re-running yesterday in my head, or planning out tomorrow, or rehearsing a conversation, or drawing up a list, or mentally writing a memo. And I'm doing anything other than praying. I just can't stop my mind for long enough, I can't slow it down enough to create the space I need to shut out the everyday, the present, the now. To create the space to instead let God in. At Easter, a little time after filling out that form, we went to Southwest France where we've just bought a house. The house itself is fine, but the view that is truly spectacular. Over woods and hills, past the gorge of the river valley and on down to the plain, you can see to the distant western horizon. As I stood there when we arrived, looking out at the sky, and the distance: the clouds and the sun and the rain and the wind, I had that feeling that I'd had as a child in Liverpool. Of emptying, of the stripping away of everyday cares, of peace. The "present", the busyness of the world, the insistent "now" was somewhere else; the internal voices were hushed. And what did I feel - what had I felt as a child? A sense of space? It was something more than that. A feeling that there was something larger, something more important, something less time-bound than me and our daily lives. I suppose if I were looking for a more religious term, I'd say it was an experience of the transcendent - something larger, more permanent, more complete than ourselves. But, however we describe it, I had there a very real awareness of the presence of God. And, slightly to my surprise, I realized that that - for me - was true prayer. Prayer without words - not the laundry list of requests; not the syrupy thank you letter; not the recitation of any sacred formula. But an opening up of me, to God. For me it is in the vastness of Creation that I can begin to see the splendour and yet the simplicity of God's work - as opposed to the Tower of Babel that we are trying forever to build for our own glorification. It is in the vastness of Creation that I can begin to appreciate the timelessness of God, against that of our own time-controlled and pressured lives. In the vastness of Creation I can appreciate our importance to God, and yet also our insignificance. Let me be clear what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that because nature is beautiful, God exists; or because nature works and is so complex, God exists. What I'm saying - or trying to say - is that there, in those places, I feel that God is somehow present to me. That in the face of the vastness of Creation, we can step outside of ourselves and our time-bound lives. That there are places where the majesty of Creation is clear and we stand in what Celtic Christianity calls the "thin places" - those places where heaven and earth somehow seem a little closer. So that, for me, is the spiritual reason why Creation is important. And why we need to preserve it. There are many good and sound practical reasons for saving Creation. But there are also spiritual ones. Only in the face of Creation can I forget myself and my immediate needs and truly be open to God. And only when reminded of my own very, very small place in a much larger design, can I open myself up and pray. So let me finish, as I started, with Psalm104: a statement at the wonder of the world; a statement of the immensity and majesty of Creation; but also the simple prayer of an insignificant human.
2 You stretch out the heavens like a tent, |
