***This is the fifteenth of a series of posts based on a book I’m reading for a class called Connections in Religious and Ecological Education entitled Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. The chapter is “Finding Communion with Creation,” by Anglican Bishop Mark McDonald, whose diocese is Navajoland.
I’m sitting at my desk right now overlooking the parking lot in the back of my apartment. It’s pretty unattractive. There’s the carport, piles of leaf bags, a pretty skeezy looking fir tree, the backs of people’s houses. At first glance, it’s not a gorgeous place to work, to write, to reflect on Creation. But then, when I still myself, I notice that there is a pine tree peeking around the corner of my window sill, with baby pine cones dripping from the tips of the branches, tiny brown baby pods waiting to be born, swaying in concert in the cold wind that started this morning. There are the early royal purple pansies I potted Sunday in honor of my move to this new apartment, an offering of hope for an unknown future. The petals are drooping a bit, rebelling against the necessary move to a new pot. Alot like myself, actually. But they’ll perk up, after they feel the opportunity to stretch. Yes. To stretch and to explore the new air around themselves. Bishop McDonald talks about how we are humanized by this world, by living in it, by noticing and caring for it, by situating ourselves squarely within and upon it. We can not be human outside of Creation. It is our home, whether we are comfortable here or not, whether we recognize how we fit into it or choose to separate ourselves and categorize ourselves as outside it. We are brothers to tiny pine cones, we are sisters to tired pansies… we know ourselves as we truly are only when we familiarize ourselves with them. Familiarize… make-family-of.
Purple pansy
