Gerald
Manley Hopkins (1844 - 89) was a Catholic priest and poet whose work
often focuses on the beauty of creation. In Pied Beauty he writes:
Glory
be to God for dappled things -
For
skies of couple-colour as a brindled cow;
For
rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Freshed-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced- fold, fallow, and plough:
And
all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All
things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With
swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He
fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:
Praise
him.
It
sometimes feels to me that the cyclical lectionary we follow to inform
our Sunday worship celebrations does not give us adequate time to focus
on God the Creator, the biblical call to worship with all creation and
the mandate to care for creation. A Season of Creation, which we will
celebrate for the first time this year is an opportunity for us to
consider the True God as Creator of all things, Redeemer of all things,
and Sustainer of all things and to express our gratitude for creation
and our commitment to care for it.
Given
the centrality of creation in our life as Christians and all the current
threats to it, now is a good time to focus on this significant dimension
of our faith and to do so at the center of our life together, namely in
public worship. We will now, therefore, mark Advent as the season after
Christmas, Lent as the season before Easter, and Creation as the season
before Stewardship, beginning as follows:
Sept 5th First Sunday in Creation: Ocean
Sunday
Scriptures: Job 38: 1-18; Luke 5, 1-11
Sept 12th Second Sunday in Creation: Fauna
Sunday
Scriptures: Job 39: 1-8; Luke 12: 22-31
Sept 19th Third Sunday in Creation: Storm
Sunday
Scriptures: Job 28: 20-27; Luke 8: 22-25
Sept 26th Fourth Sunday in Creation:
Cosmos Sunday
Scriptures: Prov. 8: 22-31; John 6: 41-51
This
series of Sundays is called The Wisdom Series; may God help us
recognize the Creative Wisdom of God in our world and empower us to
celebrate and protect it.
Peace,
Andrew