This is a spirituality that is rooted in prayer for and with creation. It is in prayer that we begin to truly understand the reality that all life is interconnected. We know this intellectually and scientifically, but often the spirituality of knowing this is true is missing.

Do you recall the first time that you felt connected to the Earth? It may have been when you were young, or it may have been during your adult life. You may have been gardening, on a hike, watching the clouds, canoeing, sitting on a beach, swimming in the ocean, having a picnic, sitting under a tree or looking out of a window into nature.

That experience was a spiritual connection of kinship – the web of belonging that defines life on the planet.

Praying for and with creation changes how we understand our relationship with God, with nature and with each other. As John Philip Newell writes in his book Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, it is time to reawaken “to what we know in the depts of our being, that the earth is sacred and that this sacredness is at the heart of every human being and life form. To awaken again to this deep knowing is to be transformed in the ways we choose to live and relate and act.”

This awakening requires restoring humanity’s broken relationship with nature. This is the theme of this year’s ecumenical Season of Creation, “Peace with Creation.” Rooted in Isaiah 32:14, this worldwide movement invites us to see the war that humanity has ravaged on the planet, both on nature and on the most marginalized who bear the brunt of the devastation. And it invites us to work to build peace with creation.

Achieving God’s deep shalom requires praying for the healing of the planet and learning to pray with creation, for it is in praying with creation that we learn to hear God’s heartbeat in nature and are transformed by the experience.

To pray with creation is to become aware that we are not separate from nature; rather we are its kin. We come to know spiritually that we are integrally woven together, and in that knowing we discover the fullness of our humanity. To pray with creation means we seek to deepen our connections with the Earth and to hear deeply both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor. Lastly, in praying with creation we are drawn deeper into God and God’s reality.

I would like to offer the words of an embodied prayer with creation that has been part of my spiritual practice for close to 30 years. (The source of this prayer has long left my memory.) While the physical movements are too challenging to explain here, imagine one’s legs as tree roots and one’s arms as swaying branches.

Let us pray.

Standing like a tree with my roots dug deep
Branches wide and open
Down comes the rain
Down comes the sun
Down come the love to the heart that is open to be
Standing like a tree
(repeat, repeat, repeat, and give thanks)
Amen.

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The Magi fix their gaze on the star illuminating the night sky and they are led to Jesus. In my heart, that star is an agent of the divine, an active participant urging the Magi forward through the darkness. I can imagine that as they travelled, these men experienced a range of emotions – excitement and anticipation, and perhaps anxiety.

When they arrive in Bethlehem, the Magi pay homage to Jesus, and they are filled with peace and joy and gratitude. They give tribute to an infant whose life and ministry would offer the world an alternative way of life. As an agent of God, the star illuminates the way to new life.

This Epiphany season is the perfect time for us to reflect on the followers of Jesus serving as the star, as agents of God illuminating a different path for the world to follow, an alternative path that the world desperately needs.

We are living in a difficult and challenging time in history. Our communities are facing a complex web of interconnected crises: homelessness, addictions, food insecurity and poor access to healthcare, to name just a few. Layered on top of these crises are decreasing environmental protections, extreme weather and the climate crisis. And add an additional layer of war, increasing hate and the largest refugee crisis and displacement of people the world has ever faced.

In his recent article “Calling a Different World into Being,” Walter Brueggemann describes this moment as a world living in “fear, scarcity, hostility, revenge and violence” that leaves us exhausted and always needing to be on alert and on guard.

Many people are afraid of what the future holds. Many people have lost confidence in the ability and willingness of political and government institutions to enact policies and programs that will make people’s lives better and heal the planet. You may be one of those people. And while Christians are not immune to fear, we are called not to let it control us. As Jesus commands us – be not afraid.

Be not afraid because we know there is an alternative way. Be not afraid so that we can be the star that leads the world to the way – to a culture of care grounded in Christ. A culture in which we care for people who are marginalized, for victims of violence and hatred, and for a planet in peril. A culture in which it is safe to bring one’s worries and lamentations. A culture in which hope, real hope, is the cornerstone.

Real hope, Christian hope, deep and abiding hope, is grounded in our relationship with Jesus. It is hard and gritty and it does not make the hard stuff go away, but it gives us courage, as followers of Jesus, to persevere as we do the work we are called to do – to live in communion with creation, to feed the hungry, to give water to the thirsty, to welcome the stranger, to give clothing to the naked, to heal the sick and visit those in prison, to love our neighbours and our enemies. This is the alternative way that Jesus commands us to choose.

This is our daily choice – a choice to live in God’s reality in which all of creation is loved and cared for and in which abundant hope is real. It is a choice not to be complicit in a culture of destruction, exploitation, violence and hatred. It is the choice the Magi make after their time with Jesus. Rather than follow the path home offered by Herod, they heed the warning and choose a different path. They choose to not be complicit and used as instruments of Herod’s destruction.

The planet needs the followers of Jesus to be the star. As you place your Christmas tree in a box or at the curb, commit to being a star and an agent of God’s care in the world.

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During the Season of Creation, Christians around the world celebrate and pray for the creation God has entrusted into our care. It is a time in the church year when we, as the followers of Jesus, rediscover, reclaim and renew our ancient vocation to care for God’s earth.

This September, the Diocese of Toronto will celebrate its first diocese-wide Season of Creation, drawing together parishes from across the diocese into this important mission.

Some of our parishes have been participating in this ecumenical movement for many years, showing us how to live out this mission. They have engaged in creation-focused Sunday liturgies, workshops, book studies, hiking church and creation justice advocacy. We are deeply grateful for their prophetic work.

Grounded in our baptismal covenant, caring for creation is missional work of the Church. One way we live this out in our diocese is through the Cast the Net calls to action. They invite us to “recognize and act on opportunities to participate in God’s healing work in the world” (Call #4), to “make explicit connections between following Jesus and working for justice and peace (Call #5) and to “intensity advocacy and action in response to climate change” (Call #8).

This season will be an exciting and inspiring time as we experience the spirituality of caring for creation as a foundational element of our faith, and as we learn to follow a path of biblical hope in the midst of climate turmoil, anxiety and lament. This will also be an opportunity for the Church to be a prophetic witness to the urgent need to care for the Earth.

The diocesan season will begin with a vibrant, contemporary, creation-centred service at St. James Cathedral on Sept. 21 at 2 p.m. We are excited to hear the voices of youth who will be our preachers at this celebration. The liturgy will embody and bring to life the ecumenical theme for Season of Creation 2024, “To Hope and Act with Creation.”

Parishes from across the diocese – rural, suburban and urban – are invited to participate in the liturgy, bringing prayers, symbols and stories from your particular place, which will be incorporated into the liturgy and shared with the gathered community. Just as the many watersheds within our diocese ultimately flow into Lake Ontario, parishes from every part of the diocese are invited to bring water from their watershed, which will be poured into a fount in the liturgy.

During this season, parishes are invited to befriend creation and to explore their particular place in creation, both the land and water, through prayer, walking, symbol and story. A short resource guide for parishes is available on the creation care webpage, www.toronto.anglican.ca/creationcare.

The season will close with Hiking Church events located in the headwaters of our region on Oct. 5. Hiking Church is a wonderful and simple way to connect with creation. Through prayer, walking and the Eucharist, we will experience God in creation in new and intimate ways.

Creation is groaning and needs the followers of Jesus to embrace their shared vocation to care for and heal the earth (Romans 8:19). Creation needs all of us – those who have been living the mission to creation care, those who are trying to figure out how to get started and those who are simply curious. Let us together love and serve creation. Alleluia!

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The liturgies of Holy Week remind us of our Christian identity that is grounded in a particular place and at a particular time in history. And if we are open to it, Holy Week can ground us in creation, the landscape upon which the original story and the places where we are situated today unfold. It presents us with an opportunity to experience creation as an integral part of our life as disciples of Christ.

In his book A Christian Theology of Place, Bishop John Inge defines place as “the seat of relations or the place of meeting and activity in the interaction between God and the world.” He argues that “God relates to people in places, and the places are not irrelevant to that relationship but, rather, are integral to divine human encounter.” Place not only includes relationships with each other, but also with the land and the natural world. The relationships and activities occur in place, which unfolds in creation.

Place is an integral part of Christian discipleship. It is more than the landscape upon which we worship or the neighbourhoods within which we minister. It is both a physical reality and an internal orientation that longs for relationship rooted in God. Unfortunately, many Christians treat worldly and spiritual matters as distinct and separate realities. This has contributed to us treating our relationships with the natural world as separate and distinct from our relationship with God and our neighbourhoods.

Our current liturgical framework for Holy Week has its origin in fourth-century Jerusalem. Called the Great Week, the final days of Jesus’ life were shared and embodied through stational liturgy. Each day worshippers walked from place to place, church to church throughout Jerusalem, marking the moments of Jesus’ final days. On Palm Sunday, worshippers began their day at the Anastasis (the place of the resurrection), moved to the Martyrium (the tomb), returned to the Anastasis, gathered for a vigil at Eleona (Mount of Olives), walked to the Imbomon (the place of the ascension), then walked from the summit of the Mount to the city and from there through the whole city to the Anastasis. On that day alone, worshippers moved between seven places in and around Jerusalem. As they walked, they prayed, sang, fasted, held silence, held all-night vigils, and walked by candlelight. This level of activity reached a climax on Good Friday with 10 stops.

As they walked, worshippers were formed by the story and became physically, emotionally and spiritually connected to the place of the story. In addition to seeing the buildings, markets and people, they became aware of the natural world in which the story unfolded. They walked on rocky and hilly ground, felt the daytime heat and the chill of cold evenings, their eyesight adjusted to the brilliance of the sun and the sparkling of the stars, and they took refuge from the sun under trees and shrubs. The geography of Jerusalem was a formational part of the liturgies of Holy Week.

The Jesus story extends beyond Jerusalem into our places. Our identity as followers of Jesus is deeply connected to the place of Jesus’ life, as well as to place in which we live and move and have our being. Holy Week is an invitation to connect the Jesus story to our experience of God in the places in which we are each situated.

What if we remembered Jesus’ torture, death and resurrection as we walked in our places, while being mindful of our green spaces and their connection (or disconnection) with urban spaces, of the broken and wounded parts of nature and our communities, of those who call our places home?  Perhaps this may help to recapture the significance of place, of the natural world. Perhaps our identity as disciples becomes grounded not only in Jerusalem but also here and now.

This Holy Week, I invite you into a sacred walk. If you can, walk each day of the week. As you walk, recall Jesus’ final days and pay attention to the ground under your feet, to the buildings and roadways, to the trees, the grass (or maybe snow or rain), any creatures, the birdsong, to the people you pass. Notice how this place and the creation upon which it sits connect to the Jesus story. Notice how God is speaking to you in this place.

Blessed walking.

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There is a deepening awareness that there is more to the Incarnation than a focus on the historical Jesus. There are a plethora of theologians and clerics from across Christian denominations (Niels Gregersen, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Sallie McFague and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, to name just a few) who invite us to ponder how creation itself is enfolded into the Incarnation.

In the Word made flesh, we see the embodied expression of creation. Elizabeth A. Johnson puts it this way: “the Word of God’s embodied self became a creature of Earth, a complex unit of minerals and fluids, an item in the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles, a moment in the biological evolution of this planet. Jesus carried within himself ‘the signature of the supernovas and the geology and life history of the Earth.’”

In the Incarnation, science and faith intersect. The Gospel of John invites us into the deep mystery of the Incarnation in which creation is embedded into Christ’s nature. Creation emerges through him, “all things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being” (John 1:3). In addition, Christ is made of the material of creation, “and the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14a).

Can this understanding of the Incarnation can help us to see and experience the Earth as sacred? Can it help us to respond differently to the challenges facing the planet? Can it foster the emergence of an ecological ethic that transforms us into a voice of the planet and into good stewards of the Earth?

Advent is the perfect season to ponder these questions as we prepare to celebrate the inbreaking of God into the world over 2,000 years ago, and as we wait for Christ to break into our lives and the world in new ways.

One of our travelling companions during Advent is the prophet Isaiah. Speaking to the Israelites who have lost their way and are on the brink of catastrophe, he reminds them that idolatry is a path that leads only to self-destruction. Isaiah attempts to redirect them to the alternative path of hope and justice promised by God. For him, God is a God of hope, compassion, justice, peace, mercy, consolation and comfort.

During the second Sunday of Advent, we hear Isaiah say, “Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term, that her penalty is paid, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins” (Isaiah 40:1-2).

Isaiah calls out to us to turn to God and all will be well, because God who comforts us is with us.

Does God’s comfort include the Earth and its burning forests, its drying lakes, its endangered species, its flooded communities, its arid soil, its rising sea levels, its warming climate, its marginalized and vulnerable people?

What if the mystery unfolding for us in Advent is a new awareness that creation is enfolded into the Incarnation? What if this Advent we prepared our hearts to enter into the mystery of a deepening incarnation in which God’s breaking into the world extends into material existence?

What if in the Incarnation we see God’s love imprinted in nature? Might we begin to see that we are called to be a consoling and comforting presence to the Earth as Jesus is to us?

This Advent, may we awaken to a new awareness of the sacredness of the Earth.

Creation Matters is a new column in The Anglican.

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