Spiritual Practice - Creating or Uncreating?
This morning I opened another of Macrina Wiederkehr’s books The Song of the Seed: The Monastic Way of Tending the Soul. Why am I doing that you may wonder. Well as I get ready to head to Australia on Monday I want to make sure that I have the right book in my hand luggage for reading on the long…. flight - 15 hours from San Francisco, 25 hours door to door as long as there are no unforeseen delays.
I didn’t get past the introduction of The Song of the Seed before I was arrested by a quote from Bruce Chatwin’s book The Songlines, which he wrote about his time in Australia. As you can imagine I am a little obsessed with things about Australia at the moment. My brain is already adjusting. I almost got in the car on the right hand side to drive yesterday. However I think this quote would have caught my attention no matter what. This book is a guide for a retreat and so she uses this quote in that context:
Because the Word of God is to be your guide during this retreat, you will be given a Scripture passage to pray with each day. I invite you to approach each text as a songline, that has the power to lead you back to the original wisdom the angel whispered in your ear (at your birth).
Songlines are part of the sacred belief of the Australian aborigines. These people believe that the wisdom and knowledge of their ancestors are like invisible footprints, sacred tracks through their land, which they call longlines. By finding the right singling, they can connect to their ancestors.
In the beginning, the Great Ancestors sang the world into existence. Thus, these people believe that part of their task in life is to help keep the world created. All of their songs, their works of art, their tending to creation is their way of making real what is already present. Their lifework is to continue singing up the country.
Wow! What if we Christians believed that part of our task in life was to help keep the world created?
It seems to me that our world is unravelling, in some ways being uncreated. The hurricane that swept through Haiti then pummelled Jamaica with such devastation then swept through Cuba, the last of a long stream of such devastating storms that they are thinking of adding a Category 6 to the ferocity scale, is a great example of this. It has definitely unmade much of the beauty, peace and abundance of these places. In Gaza, Ukraine and other places of conflict we see a different kind of unmaking as innocent people have been killed, crops wiped out and infrastructure destroyed. Here in the U.S. many of us feel this uncreating too. The loss of SNAP could send 40 million Americans spiralling into hunger.
My question for all of us to ponder today is:
How much of what I do helps the world continue to be created in the ways that God intends it to be? How much of what I do contributes to the unravelling, the uncreating of greed, self centeredness, violence and fear?
Recently I spent four weeks in Alice Springs and attended the Uniting Church. During the service I was delighted, each week, to share the Lord's Prayer in both English and Pitjantjatjara. Each service also concluded with a sung blessing in English and Arrente (the local language of the Alice Springs area). The ceremonies that sustain the land are still shared by the communities of the central desert and the Christian Faith is part of that experience for many indigenous folk. See the wonderful collection of art in "Our Mob, God's Story" (Bible Society).
I, too, have read The Songlines, and I go by way of SF when visiting my Australian family. Last week, I pulled out a 2002 copy of PRISM to reference a small article I'd published in that edition, only to see your by-line there. Because I journeyed with my husband through Dementia, our mutual friends in England suggested that we get to know each other -- honestly, at this moment, I feel we already do! Safe travels.