Wild Church BC

The cycle of life

Rev LeAnn Blackert

Now the green blade rises

from the buried grain,

wheat that in the dark earth

many days has lain;

love lives again;

that with the dead has been:

love is come again,

like wheat arising green.

This Christian hymn of Easter gives melody to the truth of this sacred holy holiday: Easter is tied very much to the earth – and to the resurrection of life that we see every spring. The grass greens up. Buds emerge on tree branches, leaves waiting to be born again. Bulbs sleeping beneath the soil all winter push new life up through the ground, seeking the solar activation of the chlorophyll to nourish their lives through the summer and into fall.

The date for Easter Sunday also is tied to the cycles of the earth. It is always positioned on the first Sunday after the first full moon after spring equinox, which happens on March 19, 20 or 21^st, depending on the year. The spring equinox celebrates the day the hours of light are more than the hours of darkness.

It is believed the Christian holiday of Easter has associations with Eostre, the Germanic goddess of light and spring. Stories of Eostre tell of her relationship with a hare, sometimes crediting her with saving the life of a bird by turning it into a hare, offering us the origin of the Easter bunny. Another Easter tradition, hot-cross buns, also has ties to the natural world as the four quarters of the buns symbolize the four segments of the moon.

Whatever its origins – and however we choose to celebrate this holiday – Easter is about hope. Hope that new life will indeed emerge after autumn’s season of death and winter’s long dark days of hibernation and stillness. Hope that “love is come again,” or as another Christian song puts it, “love crucified arose.”

And hope that there is deeper meaning to the difficult times of life, such as this current pandemic. The  Christian story of Easter begins with Palm Sunday and moves through the betrayal of Jesus by a friend, his condemnation after an unjust trial before the Roman government and conspiring by religious leaders, his subsequent death on the cross and his burial, and includes the grief of those who loved him. There is a universal quality to this story as all of us, no matter what our faith or lack of faith, likely will experience betrayal, denial grief, injustice, and suffering in our lives. The joyful celebration of Easter Sunday is cry of relief that there is an end to these difficult times – there is hope for something better. It is the same hope that spring awakens in us. After long days of darkness, after the season of death comes the season of life and renewal.

At the heart of this story is the idea of love. Our deepest longing as humans is to be loved completely for who we are, and the Christian story of Easter is about love, holy love from the Great Mystery incarnated in this one named Jesus. Jesus evidences the unconditional and free love offered by God in the many stories that show him loving those most often marginalized in his society. He touches the untouchables. He loves the unloveables. He eats with the unacceptable. He names ostracized women as sisters, granting them status in a familial based culture. He truly was the embodiment of the love that is the heartbeat of this world – and the story of his resurrection gives us hope that this love is available to all – and is a love that cannot be extinguished, killed or buried deeply.

The idea of resurrection means this love lives again. And again and again. Just like the cycle of our seasons, spring always follows winter which follows fall. The cycle of birth, life, death and re-birth is as old as our planet.

Now the green blade rises

from the buried grain,

wheat that in the dark earth

many days has lain;

love lives again;

that with the dead has been:

love is come again,

like wheat arising green.

Perhaps the cycle will continue until everyone gets this message of love – and learns to live it just as Jesus did. Imagine the “Easter” celebration that would set off!

Rivers of life

Rev LeAnn Blackert

It’s morning in our house. I’ve had a shower, filled the kettle with water and enjoyed my morning cup of tea. I’ve filled my water glass and topped off the cats’ water bowl. I’ve showered, and yes, I’ve flushed the toilet. Lots of water has flowed through our pipes already and it’s still early.

Too often I’ve taken my access to water for granted. Now I’m learning to be thankful for the water – and to express my thanks to water directly. I also live with the knowledge that too many Canadians in remote communities live without clean water.

March 22^nd is World Water Day, a day set aside to celebrate and to take action to protect our water sources. Before I turned the calendar page and discovered this date, I had been learning again the value of water. Water is life. It is said we can survive about three weeks without food, but only three days without water. Our bodies are roughly 70 percent water, and they need water to maintain health and vibrancy.

Recently I’ve been reminded that our Indigenous neighbours consider water as more than a commodity to be pumped into bottles and run through pipes into our homes. As Denise Nadeau summarizes in her book, Unsettling Spirit: A Journey into Decolonization, “water is alive; it is sacred; it is part of a holistic system, a greater interconnected whole; and we have obligations, responsibilities, to water as a relative with whom we are in relationship.”

In the Christian story, water is present from the very beginning. Our creation story tells us: “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.” St Francis names water as sister.

Several years ago, I had the privilege of hearing a talk given by Grandmother Aggie, one of the 13 Indigenous grandmothers who worked together for the good of all creation. Grandma Aggie’s focus was on water and she encouraged us to develop the habit of thanking and blessing the waters in our world and in our neighbourhoods. She shared the work of Dr Masaru Emoto, who believed in blessing the waters we enjoy. Recently a water blessing song was shared with me. It was a song written by Beatrice Menase Kwe Jackson, Migizi Clan of the Anishinawbe Nation. The Ojibwemowin words are far more beautiful than the English translation of “Water, we love you. We thank you. We respect you.” (to hear Beatrice Jackson sing her song: http://www.motherearthwaterwalk.com/?attachment_id=2244).

Today I live beside a pond and wetlands area. This area is filled with life. Red-winged blackbirds trill from tree branches. Mallard ducks laugh at life all day long. Owls nestle into tree branches between hunts. Yesterday I watched a hawk perched high in a tree surveying the scenery. An eagle flew overhead. Eventually turtles will emerge from their winter hibernation and sunbathe from atop fallen logs. Hidden beneath the surface of the land and the water are myriad other life forms. All of us are dependent on these waters for life, fact that speaks of our own interconnectedness.

Water truly is sacred. Water deserves our gratitude and our blessing. Imagine if the translators of the creation story had chosen the alternative meaning for the Hebrew verb translated “have dominion over.” Our encouragement would then be to “be responsible for.” Being responsible for water suggests being in relationship with water.

Today I will walk through the wetlands and around the pond, thanking and blessing the water. Today when I access the water in my home I will try to remember to say thank you. And to thank the Source of these waters. No, not the local water treatment plant and the city that controls it. I will thank Creator, the Great Mystery, for the gift of water.

Sister water, we thank you. We love you. We respect you.  

#worldwaterday

It’s all about love

Rev LeAnn Blackert

One of my favourite books of 2020 was Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, has helped to shift my perspective on loving the natural world. In her book, Kimmerer raises an interesting question:

I sat once in a graduate writing workshop on relationships to the land. The students all demonstrated a deep respect and affection for nature. They said that nature was the place where they experienced the greatest sense of belonging and well-being. They professed without reservation that they loved the earth. And then I asked them, “Do you think that the earth loves you back?” No one was willing to answer that. It was as if I had brought a two-headed porcupine into the classroom. Unexpected. Prickly. They backed slowly away…

So I made it hypothetical and asked, “What do you suppose would happen IF people believed this crazy notion that the earth loved them back?” The floodgates opened. They all wanted to talk at once. We were suddenly off the deep end, heading for world peace and perfect harmony.

One student summed it up: “You wouldn’t harm what gives you love.”

Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.

It is interesting to consider that question: Do you think the earth loves you? The Christian story teaches about a God who loves us. The same God who spoke or breathed all of life into existence. Science tells us this world as we know it began with a big bang when a different sun than ours died, giving birth to our sun. Big bang, expulsion of breath or word, all that we know is this planet and the cosmos were birthed by a large “explosion” of energy, suggesting the Creator’s essence is contained in the creation.

Panentheism is the belief that God/Great Mystery/Holy One is present in all creation, and also extends beyond time and space as we know it. I’ve come to understand this God as the God of here and now and the God who moves ahead of us, pulling us into our highest best selves (hence evolution). Many times it feels like wrestling with jello to try to understand God/Great Mystery!

What I do know is that if God’s presence permeates the natural world – and God is the source of Love – then it is possible for the earth to love us back. The question that emerges for me as I contemplate this is “what if we learn to see all beings as containers of divine life/holy energy and understand kinship that way?” Truly then we would understand Love and perhaps we would understand the sacred bond and interconnectedness of all life in such a way that we would no longer harm one another and the natural world.

I think this month I’ll send Valentines to brother Sun and sister Moon, Brothers Wind and Air and Fire, Sister Water, and Mother Earth. I wonder if they’ll send something back!

This new year

Rev LeAnn Blackert

This new year began before January 1^st. This new year began on December 20^th – with the arrival of the winter solstice and the turning again of the earth toward the sun. That is when the light began creeping back into our days.

Perhaps this new year began with the arrival of the Covid vaccines and the thought that the end is not yet here but is in sight. That is when the light emerged at the end of the tunnel.

As we turn the calendar page to expose a new month in a new year and make promises and resolutions about how we ourselves will be new again, it is good to remember that each morning the light nudges gently over the horizon offering us a new day. The light emerges each and every day, and like it does in the natural world, the sun warms us and the light pulls out our best and truest selves. Each day we turn a calendar page on a fresh start.

The darkness holds gifts, and its work is important to the birth, life, death and new life cycle, but it is the light that pulls new life from the dark of garden beds and forest floors. As we know from December, light is celebrated in many faith traditions.

This new year begins with the dawn of a new day. It begins today. And it will begin again tomorrow. And the day after and the day after that. As a beloved friend says, “we see the radiance of light everlasting – its source is the lustre in the lantern of faith.”

Faith plays an important role in the lives of many. In the long cold days of January we do well to remember the wisdom of Natalie Sleeth, who wrote words to a popular contemporary hymn:

New life might be unrevealed until its season but faith knows the seasons never fail us. Fall pulls us into the ever darkening days and winter holds us there. The earth tilts away from the sun and darkness fills our days, and every year the earth tilts back and the sun reclaims control of sky. The light returns and with it comes the heat that slowly pulls the spring of new life from the earth. Tiny buds pop up on darkened branches, tender shoots push up through the soil of yesterday and the light paints the world in greens – then pinks, purples, reds, yellows – a rainbow of colours. New life matures into the fullness of beauty and prepares itself to give birth yet again: flowers and fruits and vegetables emerge – source of life and seeds of future life. The never ending cycle of life is dependent on the radiance of the light. Faith believes – faith knows – the cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth.

Light from the sun, light from the Source, begins each new day. My friend, who was also a poet, expresses it magnificently:

out from the ebony edges of the night sky

the promise of the Maker flew softly down,

parting the shadows, warming the weary,

revealing the elegance

of a Luminous Day

we see the radiance of the light everlasting

its source is the lustre in the lantern of faith

Lanni Shupe, beloved friend

This new year begins today. My hope is that the light offers you a Luminous Day today. And tomorrow. And beyond.

a reflection on the Great Mystery

                Smoke
                from wildfires far to the south
                fills this valley,
                hovering over the waters.
                Across the lake
                I can see the western shore –
                reflected in the water –
                but dimly.
 
                That One
                of many names
                is here –
                not as burning bush –
                this time as
                the last fine
                   pieces
                of lives extinguished
                by flames.
 
                Paddle in hand
                I breathe
                deeply
                of sky and
                of what once also
                breathed
                this same sky.
 
                Kayak moves softly
                across smoke-fogged lake.
                Beneath the surface
                clear water
                reveals boulders – rocks
                once standing tall
                on mountain top –
                now tumbled,
                lying silent below.
                Each point I pass
                unveils more
                of this place, now
                falling into autumn,
                vast greenness with
                pockets full of gold.
 
                Along the shore
                squirrel offers shrill staccato
                warning
                of my arrival.
                Osprey flees his
                charming lakefront view
                to move farther inland.
 
                Surrounded by the dead, the dying, and
                the living,
                I paddle on
                through the smoke,
                sensing but
                not seeing
                the northern shore
                with her hidden channel
                to another world.
 
                From somewhere
                beyond sight
                a loon calls,
                inviting me
                   on.
 
 
                                LeAnn Blackert
                                Whatshan Lake
                                September 15, 2020