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Summer 2010
June 30, 2010
June 16, 2010

One of the small mementos of my childhood that I found among my mother’s things after she died was a little booklet on the Creation story that I had done in first grade. Seven pages with one picture on each page made it all seem so simple. And, of course, the creation of human beings was the grand finale - God was able to rest after that.

Now I have come to know the God of 100 billion galaxies, the Ultimate Mystery which gave birth to the great Flaring Forth (which some call the Big Bang) 13.7 billion years ago, creating the first stars and 1 billion years later, the first galaxies and 8 billion years after that, the oceans. The gradual unfolding of new life forms continued. Just 200,000 years ago, the first homo sapiens appeared on Earth in Africa. Scientists in the past century have come to understand that the universe is continuing to expand at an accelerating rate caused by a force of energy which is constantly at work. Up until the beginning of the 20th century, we thought that our own Milky Way was the only galaxy. Now we know there are billions of galaxies with billions of stars.

How can we not be awestruck by the immensity and complexity of this universe, particularly when we come to understand how seamlessly interconnected it all is? Every cell in our bodies has come from the stardust created in that initial “Flaring Forth.” A native elder whom I heard speak recently explained it this way, “We feed the grass, the grass feeds the antelope and the antelope feeds us.” It is a continuous cycle of mutual give and take. Chief Seattle says, “We did not weave the web of life, we are but a mere strand in it.” All forms of life in the universe have emerged from the same source, from the same energy, and thus are all connected in a single, sacred community of life.

All modes of being in the universe, not just the human, reflect the Divine Mystery which is the source of the life and energy which gives the universe its coherence. One mode of being or form of life can make up what is lacking in others. It is the intricate web of life which is thus woven which reflects the Divine in a way that no single form can. That creative energy that is God flows through us and through all of creation.

We need to return to that sense of the sacredness of all creation and the interconnectedness of all life that our ancestors possessed. Over the centuries, humans have moved away from that, believing that human life is primary and all else was created for its benefit. It is because of that mindset that we began to exploit and harm nature for our own purposes. The result of that kind of thinking is that millions of species are disappearing each year at an ever-increasing rate and we have endangered the environment to a point from which some believe there will be no return.

However, our hope lies in the mystery of the cycle of life, death and rebirth which is the Christian story. People all over the world are reclaiming that consciousness of the sacredness of all creation. We know that we cannot make decisions for the future of humankind without taking into consideration the effects of our ecosystems upon future generations. Indigenous people believe that we should make no decision nor take any action without considering how it will effect the next seven generations. It is increasingly clear that, if we want to survive into the next millennium, we must find new ways to live in a mutually enhancing relationship with all of creation. We must continue to widen our circles of care, concern and compassion to include all dimensions of the life of the universe which continues to birth and nurture us in return. Our charism of reconciliation must extend to Mother Earth and all of her creatures in ways we are just beginning to understand.