19 Apr Kinship With Creation

Dear Westwood Church family,

Last Sunday in the Loft, our band led us in singing words written by St. Francis of Assisi, from the familiar hymn, “All Creatures of our God and King.” It’s wild to think that these beautiful, poetic words are more than 800 years old–they describe how we join the sun and moon, the wind and the stars, in giving praise to God.

This weekend is Earth Day–the 53rd anniversary of a holiday aimed at directing our attention to the beautiful, fragile planet we share.

I love imagining St. Francis in those early years of the 13th century, looking up at the night sky from his cottage at St. Damiano monastery, just outside of Assisi, Italy. Writing in the Umbrian dialect, he used the Italian language of his community to describe kinship with all creation, including his “brother sun” and “sister moon.”

It wasn’t until the 1940’s that humans were able to switch perspectives, and take photographs of the earth from space – and it was in 1972 (two years after that first Earth Day celebration!) that the astronauts on Apollo 17 gave us the now-iconic image of the “blue marble” planet we inhabit. Some of you remember these moments, and have first-hand understanding of how they shifted our thinking, and focused our view back onto ourselves.

When Francis wrote his Canticle of the Sun, I wonder, was it unusual to see the connections between humans and the rest of creation?

I have been thinking of the challenges we were beginning to understand in 1970–after Los Angeles had begun to reckon with smog and regulate emissions, but just before the EPA existed. We could already see the health consequences of auto emissions, but did not yet know the devastating impact that the carbon we were releasing would have on our whole planet.

Science continues to give us more sophisticated ways to describe our connection to one another, and to all creation; it is helping us understand the deadly consequences of our consumption of resources. It helps us see the impact we have–how our actions (or inaction) here affect others who are far from our immediate view. It is helping us imagine and work for ways we might alter our actions, for the sake of the well-being of our planetary system.

This Earth Day, I invite you to join me in practicing kinship with our planet. Go outside, and put your hands or your feet onto the earth. (You can choose where: in the grass, in the soil, in water.) Take a deep breath, and hold space for silence and wonder. Listen, in hopes of hearing our otherwise sensing the connection that Francis named so many centuries ago: that we creatures belong together.

If it’s helpful, you can sing St. Francis’ hymn, too.

grace and peace,
Pastor Molly