A season in the Church year recently adopted by Cityside and some other churches to break up the otherwise long run from Pentecost to Advent. At Cityside (we’re in the southern hemisphere) it runs from the Spring Equinox through to the beginning of Advent. During this season, events and services are prepared with issues of ‘Creation’ in mind. This relates to God’s creation of the earth, our relationship with the creation, and our own creativity.
Some services or events that have happened:
Initiating Ritual
The ritual of introduction to Creationtide took place in the context of a normal Cityside morning service. A tall black, wrought iron candle was placed in the centre of the space, with a red candle and with a green vine, wrapped around the candle and around a black bowl. This bowl, lying on the floor, contained a mixture of large green leaves.
The black boxes we use to outline the Church Year (see Introduction to this section 4) were produced to remind the congregation of the shape of the church year. The worship leader introduced a new part of the church year — “Creationtide,” which was written on a box in green chalk.
This introduction was followed by the reading of three creation stories, by three people from various points around the building — a Hopi Native American Indian creation story, a Maori creation story, and the Biblical account in Genesis 1.
People were then asked to come to the centre and take a leaf from the black bowl. They were asked to reflect on Creation, to look at the leaf, and consider their relationship with God and the earth. A track was played in the background: “Karikari” (Crowded House ex Together Alone, Capitol Records, 1993). The congregation shared their reflections.
The worship leader then read a quote from Hildegard of Bingen, which introduced the concept of veriditas or greening power. The greening of creation is a symbol of what the Spirit of God wants to do in our lives. This is in contrast to the sin of drying up, in which a person or culture lose their ability to create. Humans are called to a creative, “greening” work. But, it is necessary that we be as wet and moist as God. This is achieved through the baptism, which is like a commitment to stay wet and green, linked to Jesus, who is called “Greeness Incarnate.”
Then the worship leader taught the congregation a ‘greening’ song/chant.
(Murray Hofmans-Sheard)
Spring Equinox Stations (see section 5, Curators Notes, Stations — Spring Equinox Service)
Hildegard of Bingen
This took place in the sermon slot of our normal morning worship, although some tracks of Hildegard of Bingen’s music were used elsewhere in the service.
The leader spoke briefly, introducing the congregation to Hildegard, giving some biographical details and showing us overhead transparency reproductions of some of her paintings and mandalas. He discussed aspects of her view of creation and creativity, and also the way her writings bring out a feminine dimension of God, particularly in relation to Wisdom and creation. Three women in the congregation read out the texts from the selection below: Proverbs 8:22-31, Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-8.1, and from Hildegard’s Book of Divine Works. Paper, pens and crayons were handed round, with large pieces of paper, and we were invited to make a visual response to the texts, or to the female aspect of God. The following tracks were played during this section: Bjork – ‘Aurora’ ex Vespertine, U2 – ‘She moves in mysterious ways’ ex Zooropa. Following the response period we were invited to share some of the thoughts and insights that had come up for us, and together we prayed the closing prayer/petition reproduced below.
(Andrew Rockell)
Texts:
‘Wisdom’ Texts:
1)
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work,
the first of his acts of long ago.
Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth.
When there were no depths I was brought forth,
when there were no springs abounding with water.
Before the mountains had been shaped,
before the hills, I was brought forth –
when he had not yet made earth and fields,
or the world’s first bits of soil.
When he established the heavens, I was there,
when he drew a circle on the face of the deep,
when he made firm the skies above,
when he established the fountains of the deep,
when he assigned to the sea its limit,
so that the waters might not transgress his command,
when he marked out the foundations of the earth,
Then I was beside him, like a master worker;
and I was daily his delight,
rejoicing in him always,
rejoicing in his inhabited world
and delighting in the human race.”
Proverbs 8:22-31,
New Revised Standard Version
2)
“For wisdom is more mobile than any motion;
Because of her pureness she pervades and penetrates all things.
For she is a breath of the power of God,
And a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty;
Therefore nothing defiled gains entrance into her.
For she is a reflection of eternal light,
A spotless mirror of the working of God,
And an image of his goodness.
Although she is but one, she can do all things,
And while remaining in herself, she renews all things;
In every generation she passes into holy souls
And makes them friends of God, and prophets;
For God loves nothing so much as the person who lives with wisdom.
She is more beautiful than the sun,
And excels every constellation of the stars.
Compared with the light she is found to be superior,
For it is succeeded by the night,
But against wisdom evil does not prevail.
She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other,
And she orders all things well.”
Wisdom of Solomon 7:24-8:1,
New Revised Standard Version with Apocrypha
Hildegard Texts:
“And I saw as amid the airs of the South in the mystery of God a beautiful and marvellous image of a human figure; her face was of such beauty and brightness that I could more easily have stared at the sun…
…from each of her shoulders, a wing extended down to the knee. And she wore a tunic like the glory of the sun and in her hands she carried a lamb like the bright light of day. But beneath her feet she trampled a monster of dreadful appearance…
The figure spoke:
I am the supreme fire and energy. I have kindled all the sparks of the living, and I have breathed out no mortal things, for I judge them as they are. I have properly ordained the cosmos, flying about the circling circle with my upper wings, that is, with wisdom. I am the fiery life of divine substance, I blaze above the beauty of the fields, I shine in the waters, I burn in sun, moon, and stars. And I awaken all to life with every wind of the air, as with invisible life that sustains everything. For the air lives in greenness and fecundity. The waters flow as though they are alive. The sun also lives in its own light, and when the moon has waned it is rekindled by the light of the sun and thus lives again; and the stars shine out in their own light as though they are alive.
I established the pillars that support the whole circle of the earth. I made the winds, and subject to them, the wings of the winds…
I am concealed in things as fiery energy. They are ablaze through me, like the breath that ceaselessly enlivens the human being, or like the wind-tossed flame in a fire. All these things live in their essence, and there is no death in them, for I am life. I also am rationality, who holds the breath of the resonant word by which the whole of creation was created; and I have breathed life into everything, so that nothing by its nature may be mortal, for I am life…
…not the life struck from stone, or blossoming from branches, or rooted in human fertility, but life in its fullness, for all living things have their roots in me.
Reason is the root, through which the resonant word flourishes.
Therefore as God is rational, how could it be that he did not act, since he allows all of his works to flourish through the human being whom he created in his own image and likeness and in whom he marked out all creatures according to their measure? But it was in eternity that God wished to create his great work – the human being – and when he had completed that work he entrusted human beings with all creation so that they could create with it in the same way that God created his work, that is, humanity …”
Hildegard of Bingen,
The Book of Divine Works
Words across languages for feminine dimensions of God:
Shekhinah (Hebrew)
Sophia (Greek)
Sapientia (Latin)
Other Biblical Texts on the feminine and associated aspects of God:
- Genesis 1:1-2, NRSV, variant reading.
(Note: The Hebrew word for ‘spirit’ or ‘breath’ is ruach, a feminine noun)
- Genesis 1:27
- Isaiah 46:3
- Isaiah 49:15
- Sirach/Ecclesiasticus 24:1-2; 3-12,
NRSV with Apocrypha
- Judith 16:13-14,
NRSV with Apocrypha
- 2 Esdras 1:30a, NRSV with Apocrypha
Closing Prayer/Petition:
O Eternal God:
Now may it please you
to burn in love
so that we become the limbs
fashioned in the love you felt
when you begot your Son
at the first dawn
before all creation.
And consider this need which falls upon us,
take it from us
for the sake of your Son,
and lead us to the joy
of your salvation.
Hildegard of Bingen, ‘O eterne deus’, Antiphon from Symphony of the Harmony of Celestial Revelations. Based on Ephesians 1:22-23; and Psalm 110:3.
MORNING
This morning
I see the bright, waking sun
feel the fresh, clean air wash me
smell the fragrance of wet leaves
as winking dewdrops sparkle and dance
like a cluster of stars
diamonds sprinkled on foliage
rainbows shivering in tiny globes
falling, flashing
splashing to the rich, dark earth
soft and moist and pungent.
This morning
I hear the music of fan-waving fronds
in the breeze
the hum of a million insect hymns
microcosmic bustling world hidden
amid profligate green and brown
and a score of birds sing
bold and companionable
as they flit from branch to twig
and one small butterfly
spark of white flickers against dappled
backdrop.
This morning
I walk beneath the rich blue canopy
of fathomless sky
magical white clouds softer than snow
and below
an eel-twisting stream ripples
lazily
clear crystal
with tiny silver needles darting
the playthings of water.
And this morning
I feel I know the God of earth and sky
and sun and sea and wind and rain
who gave the birds and trees and insects
their lives and songs and matchless beauty
and made them for us
so that in them we could see him
and through them he might bless us
and together we would know joy.
(Mark Laurent)
EARTHSONG
In the morning when I rise
And the first daylight touches my eyes
Earthsongs sing upon the breeze
And your love is flowing around me
And I will praise you Lord
With all my heart
At the ending of the day
As my weary mind is drifting
I see your face among the clouds
As the evening shadows are shifting
In the silent cloak of night
Your sweet spirit soothes my soul
And I will never fear the darkness
Because under your wings
Is my shelter from the storm
And I will praise you Lord
With all my heart.
(Mark Laurent – music available on request. Originally recorded on ‘Kindness in a Strong City,’ 1986. See www.kiwilink.co.nz/~hippies for contact details)
SACRAMENT
Tell me
what would you pay
for a blade of grass
or a rainbow?
How much
is a breath
of fresh air
worth?
Living here
in this fertile land
it’s easy
to take the sun
and rain
for granted.
The earth
lies robbed wounded
at the feet
of our greed
and neglect.
Our children
stand impoverished
and uncertain
the inheritors
of our greed
and neglect.
We have taken
and not given
We have said
neither please
nor thankyou
We have fallen
a long way short
of our caretaker
commission
Yet Creation
blesses us
regardless
God gives us
his sacrament
of love
in seed and leaf
flower and fruit.
Rain and sunlight
fall the same
on the innocent
and unjust.
But like tears
and burning fever
on the face
of an unwell child
the earth
cannot hide
the symptoms
of her pain
(Mark Laurent)
Sermons and services have included the usual range of possibilities around the areas of ecology, food, creation care, use of resources etc.