Greenblade - creation - faith - justice

More thoughts from the Garden

Since I began my sabbatical, my reflections keep bringing me back to the Garden of Eden. On Tuesday evening, I went to see Avatar with my family. The plot is simple – good over evil, profit versus stewardship of the land, false entitlement and disregard versus living in concert with others. For all intents and purposes, the movie is a futuristic retelling of Disney's Pocohantas awash in phenomenal special effects.

As I watched this movie however, I kept asking myself the proverbial “what if”. What if the writer of Genesis had substituted ‘caretaker’ or ‘stewardship’ for the word ‘dominion?’ My reference is to the end of the creation story, after humanity has been created and God gives them ‘dominion’ over the created order. For years I have tried to convince myself that the correct translation of the original Hebrew had to be something different, but my transliteration searches keep coming up as ‘dominion.’
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Icons and Idols

This past week  I have continued my preparations for Israel.  I finished reading Karen Armstrong's book, Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths. Ms Armstrong's book chronicles the over 3000 year history of the City of Jerusalem, the good, the bad and the ugly.  What impressed me was how history kept repeating itself, no matter what faith group or nation occupied the city.  What often times started out with the best of intentions, over time quickly disintegrated into the oppression of the conquered.  Armstrong comments that it  was when domination of the land became more important than what the land represented that the core values of the faith groups were lost and human life became devalued.  I think Madeline L' Engle describes it best in her book, Penguins and Golden Calfs, Icons and Idols, In this wonderful sharing of her faith, Ms L'Engle notes that  icons are windows that allow us access to the Divine and idols are things that become the ... MORE

We Are But Dust

On the 17th, much of Christendom will be celebrating Ash Wednesday, the official start of the forty days prior to Easter that many call Lent.  In the Episcopal tradition, participants in the ritual for  Ash Wednesday are invited into a Holy Lent of prayer and fasting with the words, “you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  Mind you this is an odd statement of invitation in today's world, but as we enter this time of reflection, these words bring us back to the second story of creation found in Genesis, when God forms Adam from the dust of the earth.  And then, these words bring us to the end of the creation story, when God discovers that Adam and Eve have disobeyed God's command not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and as punishment death becomes part of the human experience and to the earth from which we are created, we return. ... MORE