LIVING IN REALITY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CREATION AND FAITH
Indigo Bunting, photos by Sr. Madeleine Mary.
Julian of Norwich said: “The fullness of joy is to behold God in everything.” I think that for many people God is not so apparent in their lives. We sometimes find it difficult to remember that God is always present with us, to realize that God still cares—amid chaos, violence, massive unemployment, sickness, and during periods when good leadership is lacking. Similarly, we may struggle to believe that God is acting through us.
Our Community of the Sisters of St. Mary in the Southern Province at Sewanee, Tennessee offers an Organic Prayer Program for young people who want to engage in the relationship between care for creation and their faith. As an Episcopal Benedictine Religious Community, this program represents one of our current ways of trying to demonstrate how we all act for the healing of the world, human and non-human. Although many of us recognize that in our present environment we need healing and reconciliation, we often struggle to believe that God is already active. We may not be accustomed to considering our need for thoughtful discernment about our part in caring for creation (a quality we try to foster among our interns and our Sisters).
Crocuses – notice the texture, and subtle weaving of color and line.
Our interns and our Sisters (especially since the beginning of the pandemic) work in our gardens, learn about organic farming practices, practice daily meditation, and engage in daily worship services. We teach interns to sing Plainchant and to serve as lay readers, acolytes, sacristans, and sometimes, even as preachers. Each intern lives in an intentional, caring community with the Sisters and other interns. Together, they deepen their commitment to community life and a spirit of hospitality that is rooted in the real world. Benedictines care deeply about living in reality; we are incarnational in our theology, in part meaning that our faith must be practiced in prayer, work, and action. Hence, the Benedictine motto: “Ora et labora,” prayer and work. “Labora” includes study, and our interns study the Benedictine Rule, Lectio Divina (a form of meditation), and some ecological or sustainability concerns. As our interns come from a variety of academic disciplines, race, cultural, and religious backgrounds, the topics they choose to study vary accordingly. Whatever the chosen topic, the interns and the Sisters organize and host contemplative prayer services on the subject to help others realize that care for the earth is a spiritual matter with social and moral implications. These prayer services are tailored to inspire people through the use of science, current and ancient knowledge and wisdom, prayer, music, poetry, and images.
We are fed each day by God’s presence even when we cannot receive communion.
I believe that people want to protect what they love and that beauty awakens love in us; it has the potential to connect us with the holy. Of course, beauty attracts us in different ways. An injured Indigo Bunting, a dying faithful pet, an elderly person who bears suffering nobly, a Sister faithfully praying for the world, a peaceful protester who stands courageously against injustice and racism: in my mind, all these images evidence the beauty and goodness of their creator. Often when I’m photographing nature, I sense the reality that Gerard Manley Hopkins called: “the grandeur of God” … “flaming out, gathering us to greatness” and how “generations have trod” the earth and “seared with trade” nature. Yet, as Hopkins also says: “nature is never spent.” In moments of contemplative prayer, as I listen to creation’s voice, I remember that we are a part of nature. Together with the non-human parts of creation, we humans form a community of interdependence that cares for each other and our environment, all created by God. Through our intimate relationship with God in prayer, we’re transformed and become agents of God’s love and care. As Teilhard de Chardin related concerning his concept of the “Omega Point,” the increasing complexity of the evolutionary process culminates in the unification of consciousness with Christ at the center, holding all things in life. We experience a glimpse of that reality in a contemplative view of the world. We also learn more about perspective, context, and perception, and can rejoice in the diversity of species so necessary for life to flourish.
Sr. Elizabeth and Sr. Hannah caring for the berries.
I try to encourage our interns to learn how to look at the world with this contemplative vision. I ask them to ponder what the earth might be trying to teach them while they’re gardening and how they might apply that teaching to their lives. I prod them to learn about their interdependence with pollinators and plants, for instance, and to recognize how dependent we all are on the humble honeybee for the food on our dinner tables. I suggest that they search for biomimicry, the design woven into nature that has inspired artists for centuries, that they breathe in the calming scent of lavender we grow and harvest for an outreach center’s use. I ask them to meditate on how deprived our world would be without the Monarch butterfly, birds, marine animals, even snakes, and bats. I hope that as they sense the relatedness of all things, they’ll begin to feel gratitude and joy within themselves and find God’s—and creation’s—peaceful care nurturing them. And once they feel that love, I hope that they’ll want to preserve and nurture creation out of reciprocal love and find the unity of which de Chardin wrote. Ultimately, I hope that they’ll know they’re not merely isolated individuals, but an integral part of a magnificent community that bears the glory of God and struggles to heal the earth and human society. “For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God … in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19-20).
Summer intern (center) Ansley McDermon, with campers.
These are high hopes, of course, but then we believe in a God that brings strength out of weakness and a Spirit that helps us in that weakness—that is now renewing the face of the earth. Through the organic prayer program, we Sisters also get to know our interns well and recognize their desire to bring about positive change in the world in whatever endeavor they choose to do after being with us. Such high hopes seem well-grounded in our experience of reality.
The coronavirus reminds us to ponder what is essential in our lives and what supports our well-being and that of others. We’re being challenged to review the unworkable and what we need to change personally and corporately. The daily rhythm of the house, the force of nature that we encounter in our work and prayer, and the continuing presence of God in our life together provide stability, energy, and beauty that sustain us here at the Convent. These endeavors enable us to bear the burdens of others, through prayer, hospitality to the stranger, care for the natural world, our offerings of spiritual insights and direction, and our participation in community action. God has called all human beings to be care-givers for all life, and we’ve been given the tools to voice creation’s needs and to help remedy the harm we have done and are still doing to our neighbors, human and non-human. That harm is an affront to God who made all creation, loves it, named it “good,” and desires it to be fruitful and full of life. And we’re privileged to collaborate with God in that effort to heal and reconcile all creation in Christ.
