HELLO!

I hope to see you at 10 am on Sunday. If you are with us in-person, as you enter the church you will receive a bulletin and be asked to select “a piece of Creation”, one of the natural gifts God offers us that our children gathered over these last two Sundays. Ask yourself, which of these pieces “speaks to me”, take it with you to your seat in the sanctuary and run your fingers around and through it. How does it connect you to “something larger”, help you feel part of God’s Creation?

This Earth Sunday (Earth Day was April 22^nd) we will be singing, praying, listening, to God’s gift in Creation. Way back, fifteen years ago, a mutual friend of Bethe and I, Samantha, told me about the Congress of the Humanities https://www.federationhss.ca/en/congress/about-congress It is a gathering of academics from across Canada, held at one of our universities and features graduate students offering their Phd thesis on a variety of topics. Given my interest in religion, politics and philosophy Samantha thought I might be interested. She was correct. In 2011 the Congress was held at St. Thomas University on the UNB campus. I stayed with my friend Dominic: https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/heroes-of-the-pandemic-new-brunswick-politician-who-crushed-the-covid-19-curve-is-a-virus-whisperer Two lectures stand out from that week, 1) a Pentecostal Nigerian pastor, offering his thesis on the differences between Pentecostalism in North America and Africa, how the former is suspicious of Creation’s Spirit and the latter embraces it and 2) a young woman, raised Roman Catholic, on how her upbringing had helped her see Climate Change differently than her secular colleagues, and specifically her discovery of Father Thomas Berry and his concept of ecospirituality.

Berry wrote, “We need a way of understanding the Earth-human world in its continuity rather than by its difference." I cannot think of a better opportunity to pause and reflect on how we understand God’s presence in Creation than Earth Sunday. Ecospirituality invites us to look not to the infinite horizon 'out there' or 'beyond' the spaces and places where we find ourselves. Instead, we are invited to 'relate' to God in and through the created world. Ecospirituality is also a way of naming our recognition we are interconnected with all of Creation. As the opening lines in the Book of Genesis make clear, God's Spirit draws near to all Creation and brings life and order. Spend some time outdoors, reflect on the weather that brings life, water and light; reflect on the plants that take our exhaled poisonous carbon dioxide and provide the breath of life in the form of oxygen; reflect on the trees and stones and soil that ground us and provide the foundations for our shelter; and reflect on the nonhuman animal life, both that which we consume so that we might live and that which exists as co-inhabitants and neighbours in our "common home." Ecospirituality invites us to be more fully human and authentically Christian, welcomed deeper into the awe-inspiring magnificence of God's Creation, remembering that we are part of that very same Creation.

Peace, Kevin