World Day of Prayer for Creation

by Stacey Hilliard | Aug 31, 2023 | Conversations

(Diana Butler Bass, August 31, 2023)

From September 1 to October 4, Christians around the world mark the Season of Creation, a relatively recent development in the liturgical calendar.

The practice began in 1989 when Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I proclaimed September 1 a day of prayer for the environment. In 2000, a Lutheran congregation in Australia developed a four-week celebration of creation — and the idea spread throughout that nation and beyond. Eventually, the Vatican picked up the practice and the World Council of Churches promoted the new liturgical season.

During these weeks, Christians are urged to recognize the theological centrality of God the Creator, Creation itself, the human vocation of caring for Creation, and doing justice on behalf of the Earth and all of her inhabitants.

All creation is a temple, says St. Gregory the Great.
Every tree, stone, lizard, rabbit, meteor, comet, and star to us is holy.

—Ernesto Cardenal

For all of its struggles internally, especially in the West, Christianity remains the world’s largest religion — and it is incumbent upon people of faith to work for the Earth’s healing and renewal in this time of crisis. Christians bear the burden of being part of the problem as many Christian traditions have badly muddled their theologies of creation and promoted practices that colonized and destroyed the very world we were instructed to “till and keep.”

The Season of Creation is marked by repentance for that past, a call to deepen theological reflection and spiritual awareness of Creation, and engaging justice on behalf of nature and our neighbors. Attending to Creation in liturgy, prayer, scripture, and spirituality may be one of the most significant theological shifts in contemporary Christianity, and is certainly one of the most needed.

The World Day of Prayer for Creation is not a kind of off-handed “thoughts and prayers” dismissal. It is an invitation to experience faith differently, to center Creation and the Creator, and to learn the Bible and theology anew. This day invites us to metanoia — a profound change of heart and life, a genuine conversion toward a Creation-based vision of God, nature, and neighbor.

And, as I hope Cottage readers know, this invitation is not exclusive to Christians. The Cottage is, as always, open. Everyone is welcome to this month of creation reflection — whatever your faith, practice, or tradition. Please contribute insights from your sacred texts, offer prayers from your tradition, and share generously as we join this journey together.

We all need a new heart when it comes to the repair of this hurting, wounded world. And we need each other now — as urgently as the planet needs us.

For the next month, we will continue to explore the Season of Creation here at The Cottage — especially in Sunday Musings.

Read Diana’s post online here, or join Pastor Anne in subscribing to her blog/newsletter (“The Cottage”) for free, here. (It’s not a free trial, it’s free as long as you’d like to receive it.)

The Bell Tolls for Us

by Stacey Hilliard | Aug 30, 2023 | Conversations

(A Message from Bishop Johnson regarding recent hate crimes, published August 28, 2023)

English poet John Donne (1572-1631) penned these words that ring with truth today:

Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know for 
Whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee. 
 
Another hate crime, the murder of three African Americans at the hands of a white supremist armed with an AR 15 semi-automatic weapon, happened on Saturday in Jacksonville, Florida. 

Public outcry seems to be a whimper. We are becoming so used to our culture of violence and hatred that it barely makes the news anymore. I can only reflect on how much more solidarity we need as a nation so that when our own people are murdered our collective voices rise loudly in unison to decry the horror. 

I call all of us to remember these constant shootings are personal. These are crimes against humanity, and that is us. The slain are your siblings, your neighbors, your beloved. 

During World War II as the Nazis were invading Europe and murdering and incarcerating Jews, the American public, for the most part, ignored the Holocaust. The United States turned back a ship full of Jewish people who were trying to escape death. 

Denmark was different; the Danes stood in solidarity and the Jewish people were protected in a national rescue effort. They smuggled 7,000 Jews to safety in Sweden; another 500 who were deported by the Nazis were sent to a ghetto in Bohemia where the Danes continued to protect and advocate for them. 

Why did they do this? They saw their Jewish citizens as their people, their family. We need more of this in our country. 

It was 60 years ago today that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., before a crowd of 250,000 people. 

There was an event in Washington this past Saturday commemorating this, the most important racial justice demonstration in U.S. history.

Yolanda King, Dr. King’s 15-year-old granddaughter, spoke: “Today, racism is still with us. Poverty is still with us. And now gun violence has come for our places of worship, our schools and our shopping centers.” 

The beloved community that we claim to be as Christians needs to speak out (and advocate and legislate) when any member of our human family is being oppressed and murdered. 

Let us grieve the death of each one. It is our own. 

Let us individually check our souls for racism and implicit bias. 

Let us collectively own the racist history of this country and name freely that “liberty and justice for all” is still a long way off.

Until everyone is free, none of us is truly free. 

The bell tolls for all of us.

See the Bishop’s original post as published on neumc.org, here.