5 Creation

Contemporary Reading: From Nectar in a Sieve, by Kamala Markandaya

Now that I did not work in the fields I spent most of may time tending my small garden: the beans, the brinjals, the chillies and the pumpkin vine which had been the first to grow under my hand. And their growth to me was constant wonder—from the time the seed split and the first green shoots broke through, to the time when the young buds and fruit began to form. I was young and fanciful then, and it seemed to me not that they grew as I did, unconsciously, but that each of the dry, hard pellets I held in my palm had within it the very secret of life itself. Curled tightly within, under leaf after protective leaf for safekeeping, fragile, vanishing with the first touch or sight. With each tender seedling that unfurled its small green leaf to my eager gaze, my excitement would rise and mount; winged, wondrous.

“You will get used to it,” (my husband) said. “After many sowings and harvestings you will not notice these things.” There have been many sowings and harvestings, but the wonder has not departed.

4 Creation

The Eagle Nebula

Contemporary Reading from Charles Cummings

All creation is a sacrament, a visible sign of the invisible presence. The sacramentality of the creation comes first of all from the fact that the Creator leaves an imprint on every creature, as an artist leaves something of himself or herself in every work. Each fragrant rose or singing bird, every cell or atom, bears some imprint of the divine creative love that brings it into being. Each individual, essentially related to God by its indelible imprint, exists in the divine presence and mediates the divine presence. This relationship to God gives each being its worth and dignity, its mystery. Because of this relationship, the entire universe and each creature in it can function as a sacrament or sign of God. All creation mediates and expresses something of the mystery of God to those who can read the signs.

3 Creation

The Elkhorn Slough

Contemporary Reading: Chief Seattle

This we know.
All things are connected
like the blood
which unites one family. . . .

Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Man did not weave the web of life;
he is merely a strand in it.
Whatever he does to the web,
he does to himself.

2 Creation, October 14

What we need is Here, Wendell Berry

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need

is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.