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| She Walks in Beauty, by Bette J. Kauffman |
Picture
this: Early morning light streams through the loblolly pines bordering a wide
path inviting us into the forest. The tall, straight trunks of the trees
channel and focus the light, such that the very rays of the sun become part of
the landscape.
Ahead on the left, a small stand of long-leaf pines raises its white-candle growing tips to the sky. The long, graceful needles shimmer and glisten, touched by a light morning breeze.
Suddenly, a white-tailed deer pops up out of the thick brush on our left, and bounds across the path in front of us, all rimmed in early morning light.
Do you see it? Of course, you do!
My camera hung uselessly at my side, but at that moment, I raised it and made a picture anyway. I call it, “She Walks in Beauty,” and it is part of my Creation Considered project.
Today is Trinity Sunday. That means I have the completely impossible task of trying to made some kind of sense of our theology of the Trinity—God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one, one in three. And words fail me!
Of course, exactly what I have on these sheets of paper in front of me are some 1300 words! But if I had my druthers, this sermon today would be a walk in the Kisatchie National Forest. Or around the lake at Camp Hardtner. Or at Black Bayou National Wildlife Refuge.
I can’t explain the Triune God to you. But I can share some thoughts about the God-saturated universe in which we live and move and have our being. I can tell a couple stories about encountering God in and through creation, as well as every human being.
So… another story: Last week Fr. Michael and I got to spend some time at a clergy retreat at Camp Hardtner. When I arrived and greeted the Bishop, he said to me, “We’re going to have a deep encounter with the Holy.”
Ahead on the left, a small stand of long-leaf pines raises its white-candle growing tips to the sky. The long, graceful needles shimmer and glisten, touched by a light morning breeze.
Suddenly, a white-tailed deer pops up out of the thick brush on our left, and bounds across the path in front of us, all rimmed in early morning light.
Do you see it? Of course, you do!
My camera hung uselessly at my side, but at that moment, I raised it and made a picture anyway. I call it, “She Walks in Beauty,” and it is part of my Creation Considered project.
Today is Trinity Sunday. That means I have the completely impossible task of trying to made some kind of sense of our theology of the Trinity—God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, three in one, one in three. And words fail me!
Of course, exactly what I have on these sheets of paper in front of me are some 1300 words! But if I had my druthers, this sermon today would be a walk in the Kisatchie National Forest. Or around the lake at Camp Hardtner. Or at Black Bayou National Wildlife Refuge.
I can’t explain the Triune God to you. But I can share some thoughts about the God-saturated universe in which we live and move and have our being. I can tell a couple stories about encountering God in and through creation, as well as every human being.
So… another story: Last week Fr. Michael and I got to spend some time at a clergy retreat at Camp Hardtner. When I arrived and greeted the Bishop, he said to me, “We’re going to have a deep encounter with the Holy.”
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| Little Blue Dragonlet (Erythrodiplax minuscula), by Bette J. Kauffman |
And we did. Among the tools we used to do that were silence.., yes, silence. A bunch of priests and deacons got together and didn’t speak to each other for about 10 hours!
We read scripture and reflected upon it, both individually and as a group, using a method called lectio (“lexio”) divina—a relatively easy 4-step process for getting our own wishful thinking out of the way and letting God speak to us through the Holy Word.
We used prayer, contemplative prayer—a favorite of our Bishop—audible prayer, sung and chanted prayer—indeed, the prayer our Lord taught us to say.
I was the only one who did it with a camera—and I am completely serious in saying this: I go out into Creation to encounter God. That I do it with a camera makes it no less prayer.
In the few hours I had to walk around Camp Hardtner with my camera, I encountered 5 species of dragonfly—the enameled jewels of the insect world. I caught one fleeting glimpse of the thread-like body of a damselfly.. before it darted off. I fluttered around the pale lavender blooms of narrowleaf mountainmint with a pipevine swallowtail butterfly.
I buried my face in the citrusy sweetness of a magnolia blossom the size of a dinner plate. I smiled back at the sunshine faces of Coreopsis, with their energetic jazz-hand petals.
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| Passion Flower (Passiflora incarnata), by Bette J. Kauffman |
Did
you know that passion flower vine, with its 3-lobed leaves and its equally
trinitarian arrangement of stamens above purple ray flowers, grows profusely
along the top edge of the dike that forms the lake? The Latin name is Passiflora incarnata—referring literally
to God who loves the world enough to come and dwell among us, to live and move
and participate in our being through the life-giving breath of the indwelling
Holy Spirit, as we participate in God through kinship with the Risen Christ.
Brothers and sisters, we live in a God-saturated universe. Humankind has struggled over the centuries to put into words and images our understanding and recognition of the God we simply cannot fully wrap our human minds and human powers of expression around. The scientist who named that plant did better than most!
Here are some less successful attempts. You have seen a zillion pictures. It stands at the end of the Mall in our nation’s capital. It is 555 feet of gleaming marble—itself a marvel of Creation. It is capped with a 4-sided pyramid, which is topped by a 9-inch aluminum tip.
Do you know what is inscribed on the top of the Washington Monument? On the eastern face of the pyramid at the top, projecting a message toward Jerusalem, the rising sun, interstellar space… are the words Laus Deo, which translate “Praise be to God.”
I find it totally endearing that our ancestors did that! But it’s poor theology. It was their deist tendencies coming through. The deist notion is that God is out there somewhere. The Creator ignited the big bang, but then sits back at a remote, safe distance and watches us hapless mortals duke it out here on Earth.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, God is out there. But God is in here, too (indicating self). God is in the person sitting next to you. God is in this church, but God is just as present outside the door and down the street as well.
Brothers and sisters, we live in a God-saturated universe. Humankind has struggled over the centuries to put into words and images our understanding and recognition of the God we simply cannot fully wrap our human minds and human powers of expression around. The scientist who named that plant did better than most!
Here are some less successful attempts. You have seen a zillion pictures. It stands at the end of the Mall in our nation’s capital. It is 555 feet of gleaming marble—itself a marvel of Creation. It is capped with a 4-sided pyramid, which is topped by a 9-inch aluminum tip.
Do you know what is inscribed on the top of the Washington Monument? On the eastern face of the pyramid at the top, projecting a message toward Jerusalem, the rising sun, interstellar space… are the words Laus Deo, which translate “Praise be to God.”
I find it totally endearing that our ancestors did that! But it’s poor theology. It was their deist tendencies coming through. The deist notion is that God is out there somewhere. The Creator ignited the big bang, but then sits back at a remote, safe distance and watches us hapless mortals duke it out here on Earth.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Of course, God is out there. But God is in here, too (indicating self). God is in the person sitting next to you. God is in this church, but God is just as present outside the door and down the street as well.
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| Wrong Way, by Bette J. Kauffman |
Did
you know we have our own, homely little example of Washington Monument theology
right here in Louisiana? Next time you drive to Alexandria, pay attention to
the blond brick church on the west side of the highway going through Pollock.
Notice: On top of the steeple, a hand points skyward.
Amusing! Endearing! But bad theology. You want to point at God, point at yourself, point at each other, point at the homeless, mentally ill guy standing on a street corner saying, “I’m Jesus…” because he’s right! He is! Jesus told us that in plain language!
God comes to us disguised as our life. That was said by author Paula D’Arcy. I remind myself of that often, especially when circumstances or tragedy or senseless violence or… whatever, tempt me to believe that God has run off and left us to struggle alone.
God does leave stuff up to us. Sometimes I hear people say, “Why does God allow that… awful thing—poverty, sickness, loneliness, violence—why does God allow that to happen?
The answer is not very comforting. God doesn’t. We do. WE are in charge of that. The Triune God would never be happy with being loved by mindless creatures who have no reason, no heart, no soul, no ability to get things done, no agency and no autonomy to choose to do what is right.
We are wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God, which means we have all those things. And God expects us to use them. God calls us to be co-creators of God’s Kingdom here on Earth, and endows us—ongoingly—with the life force to do it!
And now I really need to run out of words. So I leave you with two things: 1) We really MUST take better care of this planet. It is the dwelling place of God. God put us in charge and we are doing a pretty abysmal job of it! I have dozens of suggestions, but here’s one easy one: Swear off plastic straws. They are the bane of the Earth. They end up in the gills of fish and the gullets of birds. They KILL. And we dump billions of them into the environment on a daily basis.
2) We must take better care of the human family. We are all bearers of God within us. And the ones the Bible tells us over and over again must be our top priority in caring for the human family are poor folks and immigrants, for by so doing, some… have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. That’s Hebrews 13:2.
Last word: if you ever want that “let’s go for a walk in Creation” sermon, it can be arranged. Probably not on a Sunday morning, but… I’m game. It can be arranged.
Amusing! Endearing! But bad theology. You want to point at God, point at yourself, point at each other, point at the homeless, mentally ill guy standing on a street corner saying, “I’m Jesus…” because he’s right! He is! Jesus told us that in plain language!
God comes to us disguised as our life. That was said by author Paula D’Arcy. I remind myself of that often, especially when circumstances or tragedy or senseless violence or… whatever, tempt me to believe that God has run off and left us to struggle alone.
God does leave stuff up to us. Sometimes I hear people say, “Why does God allow that… awful thing—poverty, sickness, loneliness, violence—why does God allow that to happen?
The answer is not very comforting. God doesn’t. We do. WE are in charge of that. The Triune God would never be happy with being loved by mindless creatures who have no reason, no heart, no soul, no ability to get things done, no agency and no autonomy to choose to do what is right.
We are wonderfully made in the image and likeness of God, which means we have all those things. And God expects us to use them. God calls us to be co-creators of God’s Kingdom here on Earth, and endows us—ongoingly—with the life force to do it!
And now I really need to run out of words. So I leave you with two things: 1) We really MUST take better care of this planet. It is the dwelling place of God. God put us in charge and we are doing a pretty abysmal job of it! I have dozens of suggestions, but here’s one easy one: Swear off plastic straws. They are the bane of the Earth. They end up in the gills of fish and the gullets of birds. They KILL. And we dump billions of them into the environment on a daily basis.
2) We must take better care of the human family. We are all bearers of God within us. And the ones the Bible tells us over and over again must be our top priority in caring for the human family are poor folks and immigrants, for by so doing, some… have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. That’s Hebrews 13:2.
Last word: if you ever want that “let’s go for a walk in Creation” sermon, it can be arranged. Probably not on a Sunday morning, but… I’m game. It can be arranged.
In the name of the Triune God, Father, Son
and Holy Spirit, AMEN.
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