| Every creature is a word of — Meister Eckhart, 14th-century German mystic [Jesus said] I am the light that is over all things. I am All: from — The Gospel of Thomas A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. — Albert Einstein Those first two quotes made it into my December 30 sermon at First Community Church, “Baby Jesus & The Big Bang,” which could have been titled “Baby Jesus & The Cosmic Christ,” The Cosmic Christ Our indigenous peoples understand this if we would listen to them: Terrence Green is a professor of Earth and Environmental Yes, this comes from a particular creation story–a myth like all creation stories–but that doesn’t mean it is not true. We have a new creation story now, from science, that says that we come from 14 billion years of organic unfolding of the universe, from the Big Bang, whatever that was. And we are connected physiologically with every being in the universe. We are all made of the same “stuff.” Every creature is a word of God,” said Meister Eckhart. And as Brian Swimme (a past Spiritual Searcher for The Burkhart Center) said, “We truly are made of stardust.” But the time is now to recognize that all things are made of stardust. Just about every animal species on the planet is diminishing, with many going extinct. For instance, Bear Swamp is a forest of 400 and 500-year-old black gums, some of the oldest trees in eastern North America, along the Delaware Bay in southeastern New Jersey. The trees have begun to die. The cause is the rising sea, which is making the groundwater at the base of the forest saltier. The trees are doomed. Much of the Glades Wildlife Refuge, which contains the forest, eventually will be under water. Studies are also confirming that even our insect populations are dying off: El Yunque National Forest in Puerto Rico is the only tropical rainforest in the US National Forest System: In the last 40 years the insect population including creepy crawlies like spiders and centipedes, has dropped by the very alarming total of 98%! And that’s not all: with that loss of insects, insectivores like birds, lizards That may sound good for summer backyard barbeques but insects are a basic infrastructure of our planet, holding together the biorhythms of life on Earth. That loss starts a change reaction that doesn’t stop before human Martin Luther King said, “We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” And that’s true of the whole planet. Another Native American naturalist that we need to get to know much better is Robin Wall Kimmerer, a professor of environmental biology and a member of the Potawatomi tribe in northern New York state. She says: “We need to understand that we humans are not alone-the Earth is populated by non-human persons [non-human persons!]. How different our world would be if we extended the same respect and compassion and agency to other species as we do to human people. We tolerate governance that grants legal personhood and free speech to corporations, but that denies that respect to voiceless salamanders and sugar maples.” As if to make a point of this disregard, the Department of Homeland Security will substantially destroy our nations’ richest butterfly refuge beginning in July when it builds a 33-mile section of When Jesus, speaking as the Cosmic Christ in the Gospel of Thomas says, “I am the light in all things”, he is the light in the butterfly and the bird, the insect and the lizard, the light in the cat and dog as well. The Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox, another past Spiritual Searcher here, reminds us that the Cosmic Christ also contains within it the Cosmic Cross of Christ. “Christ,” he says, “is not just the Light in all things, the Christ is the WOUND in all things. And there’s a theology of the Cross of Christ here for grasping our ecological crisis: * When a forest is being destroyed the Christ is being crucified all over again. * Or when one out of 4 mammals is going extinct (which is happening today) the Christ is being crucified all over again. The Christ in the polar bear, the Christ in the elephant, in the whale. For Alan Watts would say that we humans often act like we are An erudite journalist named Dahr Jamail says that “In this age of ecological crisis, an Earth-based spirituality is as necessary as water and food, if not even more so. Nothing less than a practice based on remaining attuned to the wisdom of the Earth herself will provide the daily grounding each of us needs to stay balanced and centered as portions of the biosphere collapse around us.” “The wisdom of the Earth”, however, is also the wisdom of our souls, tapping in either case into the Divine Creative Energy as the bond between the world and us, between us and the Divine. Just like that insect and even deeper, the microbial/bacterial world, which are the infrastructures of our physical lives, so our true, divine essence is the infrastructure of our spiritual selves. To be able to rest into this deeper, spiritual nature that we are–this divine, luminous being–is what truly “saves” us, brings us the wholeness and the balance and the energy we seek for ourselves and for those we love, and for the planet as well. Practices that move us out of our heads and into our hearts, into our feelings and inner depths–practices that create more of a not-knowing of our worldly ego-selves–may bring us beyond even feelings and sensation into the mysterious depths of a deeper, richer, more true Reality than our minds can know. Spiritual practices can put us more fully in touch with the Divine Creative Energy, the force that has always been our guidance system anyway, whether we’ve known it or not. We have an We could very simply just set aside a short time each day, for a little while putting down our New Year’s Resolutions, burying our to-do lists, stopping the ongoing self-improvement project (because our superegos all say, “You’re not enough as you are” so we are always trying to be a “better person”)–just setting that project aside for a few minutes as well as all our efforts, wonderful as they may be, of trying to improve the world, to bring more peace and justice and harmony in life, more dignity to all human beings, to overcome oppression–yes, to even set those goals behind as well as all our agendas, and allow another deeper Source than our own puny personal wills to move us and to guide us: a Divine Guidance System as it were. Our ordinary minds cannot grasp this reality, but our souls know this Source as their true home, a Divine, Loving Source that has our best interests at heart, but also the best interests of the entire Creation, if we but trust it, rest into it, allow it to be our Guidance system. Finally, this type of practice may not only be the best thing we cando for ourselves, each other and the world. By this kind of non-doing, we may even discover that it is the most valuable time we ever spend. A Sufi mystic once said this: “The human being is a copy from the great Quran which is the Cosmos.” Christians would translate that as, “The human being is a copy of the Christ, which is the Cosmos.” However you parse it, we are the conscious, living expressions of the Divine in the world, as well as “all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty,” as Einstein said. Rev. David Hett is the Spiritual Director of The Burkhart Center |
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