Another announcement

A Rocha (Portuguese for the rock) is an international Christian conservation organisation which has been established in Aotearoa New Zealand since 2007. A group of people have been working towards setting up a Dunedin branch, and believe this will help them give substance and continuity to their gospel witness through Creation care.

Their first public event will be a visit to the Craigieburn Reserve, one of the earliest conservation reserves in Dunedin, and indeed in New Zealand. Other planned events include visits to wetlands, coastal restoration projects, and Orokonui Eco-sanctuary, all concluding with a shared meal and some kind of creation focused/contemplative worship at a nearby church. In July the group plan a camp at St Martin's Island.

"Do you want to do something for the care of Creation? Do you want to discover others with similar concerns? Do you want to be part of a movement of hope?

Join us for the first Dunedin event of A Rocha at Leith Valley Church, Malvern St, going on to Craigieburn Conservation Reserve, Sunday February 20th, beginning at 12.30pm.

For more information contact Selwyn Yeoman - (03) 4877 167 or mobile 027 357 8459.

A Rocha Aotearoa New Zealand currently has active local initiative groups in:

• The Waikato
• Palmerston North
• Christchurch

• Auckland
• Wellington

Photo of St Martin's Island (Quarantine Island) from flickr.com

A Prayer for the Earth

Brian McLaren and Tim Costello of World Vision Australia have been working together to compose a prayer that could be used by individuals and groups leading up to the Copenhagen gathering on climate change Dec. 6.

The prayer begins:
Most gracious God, creator of all good things, we thank you for planet Earth and all creatures that share it.

Have mercy on us, Lord. Through ignorance and carelessness we have poisoned clean air and pure water. For monetary gain we have reduced verdant forests to barren wastes. In our craving for more we have plundered your beloved creation and driven many of our fellow creatures to extinction. Only recently have we begun to realize the dangerous future into which our current patterns of consumption and waste are driving us, especially in relation to Earth’s climate. Only recently have we begun to see our need to find a wiser and better way of life in the future, before it is too late and our choices are limited by the consequences of inaction.

There are also alternate versions of the prayer for different occasions.

Barbara Brown Taylor

An interesting quote from Barbara Brown Taylor, in her book, Leaving Church, after she finds that life in a rural parish is just as 'busy' as life in the inner city - interesting, as this same 'busyness' is a prime factor in ministers burning out. (page 75, HarperSanFrancisco paperback edition, 2007)

I had moved to the country in order to lie down in more blessed fields, to live closer to the Divine Presence that had held me all my life, but I had once again become so busy caring for the household of God that I neglected the One who had called me there. If I still had plenty of energy for the work, that was because feeding others was still my food. As long as I fed them, I did not feel my hunger pain.

And one other quote, about her visit to Ireland:
Later I would find the Celtic theology...in which God's 'big book' of creation is revered alongside God's 'little book' of sacred scripture. I would also find Christian mystics such as Bernard of Clairvaux and Julian of Norwich, who found heaven on earth in union with the Divine. 'I have had no other masters than the beeches and the oaks,' Bernard wrote in the twelfth century, while Julian recognised the love of God in a hazel nut in her hand. Hildegard of Bingen coined the word viriditas ('green power') to describe the divine power of creation, while Francis of Assisi composed love songs to Brother Sun and Sister Moon.
'You never enjoy the world aright till the sea itself floweth in your veins,' wrote the seventeenth-century Anglican priest, Thomas Traherne, 'till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars; and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because men are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.' Since I had received Christian education that taught me to view creation as both fallen and inert, I was happy to discover these dissenting opinions, but they only confirmed what I already knew to be true. I did not live on the earth but in it, in communion with all that gave me life.

(Page 81-82)

More on leaving Church here.

Wendell Berry

In an essay from 1993 entitled, Christianity and the Survival of Creation, author Wendell Berry writes

I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways; it is a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, etc. This dualism, I think is the most destructive disease that afflicts us. In its best known, its most dangerous, and perhaps its fundamental version, it is the dualism of body and soul. This is an issue as difficult as it is important, and so to deal with it we should start at the beginning.

The crucial test is probably Genesis 2:7, which gives the process by which Adam was created: "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul." My mind, like most people's, has been deeply influenced by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man-making is: man = body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Genesis 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Genesis is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust; by breathing his breath into it, he made the dust live. Insofar as it lived, it was a soul. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. "Soul" here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together, but as a single mystery.

Berry has more to say about God's economy as opposed to economics, about Christianity's willingness to be part of the destructive forces of the world, about its culpability in not seeing this world as Holy, and about a number of other related issues. It isn't an essay that will encourage most of us in the way we presently conduct our lives; that's not Berry's intention. His aim is to give such breadth to our view of Creation and our part in it that we'll deeply reconsider how we behave within this world.

And just to give you a little more taste of Berry's writing, here's a quote from the title essay of his book, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays. It was published in 1998.

"If you destroy the ideal of the "gentle man" and remove from men all expectations of courtesy and consideration toward women and children, you have prepared the way for an epidemic of rape and abuse. If you depreciate the sanctity and solemnity of marriage, not just as a bond between two people, but as a bond between those two people and their forebears, their children, and their neighbors, then you have prepared the way for an epidemic of divorce, child neglect, community ruin, and loneliness. If you destroy the economies of household and community, then you destroy the bonds of mutual usefulness and practical dependence without which the other bonds will not hold."

Jamie Oliver as John Wesley

While I was on retreat last year, one of the other men attending mentioned Jamie Oliver on TV teaching young mothers how to give their children decent meals. My friend said he felt Oliver was like a young John Wesley feeding the young Christians.

It's an interesting concept to see Oliver as a Godly figure in the New Creation mode – reviving life in people, renewing the creation. Certainly he's set himself some major tasks in terms of trying to change the way people think about food in Britain (and presumably wherever else the programme is shown). He's come a long way from the days of his early cooking series.

Compare him to Gordon Ramsay. It's hard to get away from the impression that Ramsay, even when he's helping other restauranteurs to repair the havoc they've created in their businesses, still seems to be all about himself. He's constantly competitive; even when he’s helping people get their restaurants up and running the attitude seems to be: if you don’t do it my way you’ll fail. It's not surprising he gets quite a lot of resistance even when he's right!

Or when he invites someone in to cook their favourite meal. It seems that he's only doing it so he can show how much better his version will be.

Incidentally, the link to an article above takes you to the Socialist Worker online. It's quite perceptive about Oliver's role in changing thinking.

Couple of quotes

Show me a dreamer and I’ll show you one of God’s heartbeats for the human race.

- Joan Chittister

Teaching a child to care for a goldfish — learning about its needs, respecting its otherness, delighting in its shimmering colors and swimming skills — is a better education in caring than is a lecture on global warming.

Sallie McFague
Super, Natural Christians

Making It New

In his review of Andy Crouch's new book, Culture Making: recovering our creative calling, Gideon Strauss writes:

[Andy] Crouch argues that American Christians adopted broadly four stances in relation to culture during the course of the 20th century, in each case taking an appropriate gesture toward certain elements of culture and inappropriately expanding it into a comprehensive posture toward the common culture in general. While some cultural products (like sex trafficking) demand outright condemnation from Christians, a posture of condemnation fails to account for the goodness of culture, warps Christian testimony to hope and mercy, facilitates hypocrisy, and—particularly in response to artistic works—comes across as "shrill and silly." Critique, by contrast, is an entirely appropriate response to works of art, the more so the better the art. But a posture of critique diminishes the delight to be taken in many good products of culture, and encourages a certain kind of cultural passivity that overemphasizes analysis and underappreciates participation and production. A pot of tea, a loaf of bread—the best first response to these is savoring consumption. But a posture of consumption limits us to living "unthinkingly within a culture's preexisting horizons of possibility and impossibility." Consumerism is capitulation to the existing culture at a deep level, allowing our very identity to be defined by what we can purchase. Copying from a culture is, at best, a recognition of "the lesson of Pentecost that every human language, every human cultural form, is capable of bearing the good news." But copying as a posture produces inauthentic, dated, and tame results.

Instead, Crouch says, the cultural postures Christians should adopt are those of cultivation and creation. Cultivators are "people who tend and nourish what is best in human culture, who do the hard and painstaking work to preserve the best of what people before us have done." And creators are "people who dare to think and do something that has never been thought or done before, something that makes the world more welcoming and thrilling and beautiful."

Andy Crouch has a blog site, also called Culture Making

The best of creation

Here's a quote some might agree with, some might dispute. I don't know that Mr Marshall is saying he's sure of this, or whether it's something he hopes for.

Our works, here and now, are not all transitory. The good that we have done will not simply disappear and be forgotten. This world is not a passing and futile phase; it will be taken up in God's new world. Our good buildings, our great inventions, our acts of healing, our best writings, our creative art, our finest clothes, our greatest treasures will not simply pass away. If they represent the finest works of God's image-bearers, they will adorn the world to come.

Paul Marshall
Heaven is Not My Home

Vision

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new. 2 Cor 5-17 (NKJ)

Dan Southlerland says that in many churches this verse is presented in the 'Modern Church Perversion'. That is, it goes something like this:

Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is an old creation; new things have passed away; behold, all things have become old.

Southerland says that this version is 'especially liked in those churches who cling to the seven last words of a dying church: "We never did it that way before."

However, he goes on to say that churches who are vision-driven have a 'present-tense version of the verse':

Therefore, is anyone is in Christ, he is a renewed creation; old things keep passing away, and all things keep becoming new.

From Dan Southerland's book, Transitioning, leading your church through change, Zondervan 2000.

More from Tim Keel

Two more quotes from Mr Keel, and then I'll give him a rest:

I am discovering that our postmodern world is consumed with questions of creation—even if they are not framed that way explicitly. We can hear these questions whenever our contemporaries ask, "What does it mean to be human, especially as more and more of life is influenced by and even dependent on technology?" "How do we understand gender and sexuality and how both are expressed?" "How do we live in an ecologically responsible way?" "How might a just economy function sustainably?" Have you had these conversations? Have you talked to the teenagers among you who are verbalizing these concerns? These are the questions our culture is wrestling with.

People are not asking the traditional gospel question much anymore. Asking, "If I died tomorrow, where would I end up?" does not generate much life. But asking people, "If you had just a few years left, what kind of life would you want to live?" generates enormous energy. It is a question of hope, something our balkanized world sorely needs.