... island home.
... island home.
Yesterday a Facebook friend shared a video titled “Some Strange Things Are Happening To Astronauts Returning To Earth” that, aptly describing itself as profound, shows pictures that are -- the only word is profound -- profoundly moving. Pictures those explorers and pioneers took of our planet from space, from the moon a generation ago, from a space station window, by one or other of them dangling, floating cabled as we have seen them cabled to prevent drifting off into the infinite -- pictures -- with the beautiful earth hanging in black space, vulnerable -- stir one’s emotions incomparably.
My adult Sunday school class is reading and discussing Bereshith, Genesis, our sacred creation myth about our Beloved Creator’s beginning with us. Not tomorrow, but perhaps the following Sunday, we will be into its story of The Flood, in which a disillusioned and brokenhearted Creator becomes punishing Destroyer, returns Earth momentarily to primeval darkness and chaos of the deep,
and starts over.
In the news yesterday was a U.N. scientific report attributing global warming to human doings, which inexplicably we have twisted into political ranting. Chemical gassing of humans by their political leader. Gunning down of other humans in a now-collapsed shopping mall in Africa by religious madmen and calls from their spiritual overlord for similar attacks within the U.S. One might think we are too far removed to be concerned, but a look, not only at two imploding, crumbling skyscrapers but at our island home from space shows that we are but specks on a speck hanging in blackness.
Why do colonies of ants fight to the death instead of coexisting -- they are not as -- important as they -- non-think. And I, the landowner too tall and distant to be seen by them, will be eradicating them in time anyway.
Comes to mind his book title that James Baldwin took from the Negro spiritual line, "God gave Noah the rainbow sign, no more water but fire next time". And Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. We don’t really need God -- to destroy us, that is: as a race we are sufficiently suicidal unto ourselves, a leukemic body bound on self-destruction, red against white. Eons hence, some Noachian successor to God’s failed experiment will look back and see that we did it incompetently and irrevocably.
From our Book of Common Prayer, a eucharistic prayer
God of all power, Ruler of the Universe, you are worthy of glory and praise.
Glory to you for ever and ever.
At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.
From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.
Glory to you for ever and ever.
At your command all things came to be: the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.
By your will they were created and have their being.
From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.
Have mercy, Lord, for we are sinners in your sight.
We don’t really believe this, and we have been beyond learning since the day we were turned out of the Garden and cherubim with flaming swords took station to guard the gates.
TW+