I appreciate the way Kathryn Greene-McCreight speaks of and translates God's creation of Adam and Eve. She says, "the human creature adam thus bears a strong relationship to the dirt or mud which it and we in turn come and to which we will return." We hear this point made at the start of Lent in many ways.
She goes on to say that we might translate adam as "muddy one." How often do I feel like a muddy one as I come before God in prayer! My life is muddy, my intentions may be muddy, my vision is muddy. Yet, God created male and female in His image and likeness. What does that mean? And, both male and female share the blessing of being with and for the other creatures and creation in general.
Lent calls us back to this original relationship with creation. With our electronics, our big screen televisions and workplace environments, we are so regularly divorced from creation. We no longer move and have our sustenance according to nature's seasons. We fabricate fruit out of season and see little connection to what we pick up at the grocery store with its original source. We spend so little time in the sun that most of the population is deprived of Vitamin D.
How might God as creator be calling us into greater roles of stewardship and relationship with creation? Greene-McCreight says: "all elements of creation dwelling in relationship find themselves in a position of vulnerability to one another. And vulnerability is one of the key markers of creaturely existence, and, above all, human existence."
Are we vulnerable, muddy, open, and willing within creation and in our relationships? These are important questions in our Lenten journey.
A prayer from Walter Brueggemann:
We will be your faithful people--
more or less
We will love you with all our hearts--
perhaps
We will love our neighbor as ourselves--
maybe.
We are grateful that with you it is
never "more or less"
"perhaps," or
"maybe."
With you it is never "yes and no,"
but always "yes"--clear, direct,
unambiguous, trustworthy.
We thank you for your "yes"
come flesh among us.
Amen.
Oh, mercy! What a wealth of matters to think on this morning! The first one being in the last lines: that with God it is always "yes". That has not been my experience, and I thank God for that. God has closed doors for me ("No, don't go there"), because it was best that I not go there, wherever it was that door opened might have led to. I don't even want to know. --And sometimes God says, "Maybe. Wait a while and see." This is what, to me, describes a personal relationship.
ReplyDeleteI feel so blessed with the teachers I have come in contact with during my long life. In particular today, I am remembering Dr. Hagen Staack, a former chairman of the Dept. of Religion at Muhlenburg College, whose several lectures on Genesis I was privileged to attend at Lutheridge almost two generations ago. From Dr. Staack I first learned that there is more to Genesis, and the rest of the Bible, than meets the eye. --And then there is that, that God created male and female in His image and likeness, and what does that mean? That means that we are given the capability to love, forgive, and yes: create (using "stuff" that God has already created), and what do we do with those gifts? We abuse them, and distort them -- indescribably wickedly. Oh yes! How really muddy we are.