Moderator Mardi Tindal's blog: Communal liturgy for soul and creation

Posted on: 04/22/2010 16:19

You already know about my admiration for Haitians and their strength of Spirit. You can also imagine how the challenges facing Haitians have been lying heavily on my heart since returning from our visit with partners there.

A special worship service held at Canadian Memorial United Church in Vancouver this week transformed that heavy burden into a hopeful, re-energized response—for long-term partnership with Haitians and for the groaning of all creation.

My soul was lifted on Tuesday evening as 250 of us gathered from varied faith traditions for an Earth Day Sacred Celebration, publicly lamenting the world’s suffering and receiving hope from the wisdom and call of our teachings. It was a humble privilege to share leadership with Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan, Imam Al-Khaliq, Aline LaFlamme (Aboriginal Pipe Carrier and Sundancer), Acharya Shrinath Dwivedi of the Global Hindu Foundation, Maureen Jack-LaCroix of the Multifaith Action Society, and the Rev. Bruce Sanguin, who serves Canadian Memorial United Church. It was also wonderful to be with so many United Church members of the Lower Mainland, both through this service and in worship at West Vancouver United the evening before.

Acharya Shrinath Dwivedi, Imam Al-Khaliq, myself, and Rabbi Laura Duhan Kaplan. Photo by Lucia Beamish.

The Multifaith Action Society creates opportunities for dialogue between faith traditions on issues of common concern and uses its Be The Change Earth Alliance to inspire and connect people for personal and communal response to our sustainability challenges. On Tuesday this work took the form of an inspiring liturgy.

Earth altar. Photo by Lucia Beamish.

Creation spirituality encourages such liturgical expressions. Lest you think this is new to Christianity, I commend to you Eastern Christian mysticism as well as medieval mystical theologians such as Hildegard of Bingen, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Meister Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich. Gifts from creation-based traditions can help us reconnect with awe and wonder, the realities of social and ecological injustice, the evolutionary imperative to co-create with the Divine, and our response to the most urgent moral challenges of today. Blending words, images, and music from our faith traditions helped us reconnect with all four of these movements in worship. The service culminated in a shared meal of gifts of the earth, blessed by a multi-faith thanksgiving prayer and with the Rev. Bruce Sanguin offering these closing words:

May this meal signify for us our intention to enter into a new covenant,

with You, our creator, with all creation, and with one another,

a promise to walk gently upon this planet,

to raise our voice in the service of life,

to love kindness,

and to seek justice.

I hope that you’ve had equally inspiring Earth Week worship experiences, and that your soul, your community, and all of creation have been—and will be—blessed.

What liturgical experiences bless your soul to do God’s healing work?

Want to stay up to date on this blog? Subscribe by e-mail or RSS.

Mardi Tindal's blog

Comments

jojolam

Posted on: 04/23/2010 11:36

Dear Moderator,

Thank you for your sharing of this liturgical experience where the celebration of creation inspired just and respectful presence on our planet. What might be some biblical passages that might be insightful to your experience of this worship service and also to lead us into reflecting more on the topic of lessening our impact on the environment?

As the mention of Eastern faith traditions and liturgical styles, was this worship more of a lamentation or confession? How did the liturgy reveal the resurrected hope with which we come to such situations as the earthquake in Haiti? I am intrigued to hear how you have found hope through this liturgy and also how that translates into more hopefulness from the pulpits to those who are still in pain from the loss and disarray of what they had known as life...

For such injustices as child slaves in Haiti, would the reparations be establishing systems that the vulnerables are not further taken advantage of? It is difficult to find the "silver lining" when we can still smell death in the air.

I am grateful for your strength and courage to bring us into engagment with such issues and concerns...life as a global people, one human family.

Peace,

JoAnne

Mardi Tindal

Posted on: 05/10/2010 09:22

Thank you, JoAnne. Your thoughts and questions are important and provocative. I will respond as best I can in a few minutes:

This was a service of both honest lament and honest hope. We began immersing ourselves in our experiences of awe and wonder in creation, then moved to describing the many reasons we have for lamenting the state of God's world including the suffering of people and other species. I've heard it said that contemplation is "the long, loving gaze on what is real" and I would say we did that, from which we also proclaim and act with hope.

Barbara Rossing, an American Lutheran theologian, (http://www.gracematters.org/interviews/b.rossing.html) presented to us at a World Council of Churches gathering at the COP15 in Copenhagen. Her reflections on the Book of Revelations come to mind in response to your question about biblical passages which speak to our circumstances. Here are four points she made about Revelations, with a view to hope in the midst of God's lament:

1. We need to reconsider the so-called 'woes' of Revelation. These are not God's curse but rahter God's lament. 'Alas' should be translated as 'woe' - a lament. God is mourning on behalf of the earth, not cursing the earth. God laments for the earth's pain.

2. This book is about the end of empire, not the end of the earth. It's not a polemic against the earth but against the exploitation of the earth. Rev. 11:18 describes the destruction of the destroyers of the earth, a proclamation that God will bring an end to exploitation, that God will no longer tolerate the Empire's claims to power that Rome's unjust exploitation of the earth is only temporary, that empires don't last forever.

3. There are parallels here between the Exodus story out of Egypt and Christians' journey out of Rome, out of an industrial empire that consumes everything including itself. The plagues are not predictions but warnings of the consequences of Rome's actions. John's is the vision that can see the trajectory that Rome is on. She likens this to Scrooge's dream of Christmas future in A Christmas Carol. It's not a vision of what will happen so much as a vision of what may without change. God is not punishing us for our sins, but there are physical consequences: "If you do this, that will happen."

4. As Martin Luther King suggested, we must be motivated by "the fierce urgency of now". We must name this as a Kairos moment, a moment of hope and urgency. Revelation makes it clear that there is still time for repentence, to come out of empire. Hearts are never hardened in the Book of Revelation. God's call is to leave Babylon to enter into the New Jerusalem, to be citizens of an earth-centred vision of the future. The biblical vision is not of destruction but of healing (Rev. 22:2)

Thanks again, JoAnne, for raising such good questions. I hope this is more grist for your hope.....