2022-10-21 — A reflection by Christina Brennan Lee.
Canon Casson introduced us all to this Season, and we are one of the few congregations in this country who use it.
It is intended to be a time of conscious reflection on what God’s Creation is to each of us and all of us. The Season of Creation originated in the Anglican Church of South Africa in 2008 and is designed for us to explore our faith from a Creation perspective. We are to realize our place in the order of God’s creating and to see and act upon the need to care for our entire life-support system – the air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil in which we grow our crops – not merely humanity, but our total environment, as it pertains to ALL life.
From the early days of the Season of Creation at SsAM, we established that “the primary aim of the events of the season is to enable adults and youth to celebrate and experience the inextricable link which binds together the destinies of all of God’s creatures.”
It is seven weeks of pause.
As the founding document in South Africa says, we remind ourselves that God calls us to see “what great dangers we are in by our unhappy divisions” and for us to renew our commitment to making real the biblical vision of the earth at unity with itself. It is a vision of human beings of all races, backgrounds, and walks of life in local communities and among the nations of the earth, living together in love and peace with justice for all. “As disciples of Christ, we are called through our Baptismal Covenant, to be instruments for the healing of our broken world,” and with a renewed commitment to personal and communal prayer and action.
We start each Season at the Beginning, with the Book of Genesis.
Professor Wangari Maathai described the Book of Genesis as “the book for environmentalists…. If we had been created on Tuesday, there would have been nowhere for us to stand! God, with infinite wisdom, waited until the last day!”
Professor Wangari Maathai, (1940-2011), a Kenyan environmental and political activist, Member of Parliament as Assistant Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, was educated in the United States and in Kenya. In 2004, she was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize. She was honored for “her contribution to sustainable development, democracy and peace.”
Our Living Planet and The Human Family
Our second theme for the Season of Creation is “Our Living Planet”. This Sunday, October 23, we focus on “The Human Family”. County Councilman Jea Street, Sr. will be our guest preacher.
Through the Season of Creation, each of us can discover a part of creation that speaks deeply to and within us. That search may become a prayer. It may become a thought. It may lead to a conversation with another person or an action, even something as small as a letter or phone call to a legislator. We are individuals in a community of one parish, in one city, in one state, and so on, and we are each and together an integral part of Creation.
As the reading from Julian of Norwich, in our first Sunday in this Season, said… “Everything that is created … has being because of God’s love.” Let us take time to give thanks for our own being, and in turn, extend God’s love in any and every way that we are able.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Every week, Christina Brennan Lee writes the Prayers of the People we use in our worship services on Sundays. She also leads weekday prayer services and serves on the SsAM Vestry. Click here to see her People’s Prayers website.
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