Praying with Creation
The last leaves are drifting down
Turning to fire when they touch the ground
When it comes to me
Once again
What is this Love
Our first hard freeze came last night. The leaves have been especially brilliant this fall, reminding me of one of our favorite Jim Croegaert songs. I am also appreciating the theme of loving God through creation in the Center for Action and Contemplation’s daily meditations, especially as they draw on the wisdom of First Nation theologians, including this poem by Choctaw elder and retired Episcopal bishop Steven Charleston:
For all the great thoughts I have read
For all the deep books I have studied
None has brought me nearer to Spirit
Than a walk beneath shimmering leaves
Golden red with the fire of autumn
When the air is crisp
And the sun a pale eye, watching.
I am a scholar of the senses
A theologian of the tangible.
Spirit touches me and I touch Spirit
Each time I lift a leaf from my path
A thin flake of fire golden red
Still warm from the breath that made it.*
In Romans 8 we read today about creation groaning, and we too groan as we await our adoption and bodies that will not decay.
This is what Creator was planning when he set us free by his Spirit. It is the hope of all creation. We cannot fully see this hope yet, for who hopes for what has already happened? So we must be patient and wait for Creator to bring everything to completion. Romans 8:24-25 First Nations Version
Perhaps today you are feeling the groaning, in your body and of creation. It is hard to be patient, sometimes difficult to hold on to the hope of all creation. We long to be set free.
May we today pray with nature, as we groan together. May we be touched by the Spirit in the contemplation of creation. And may we continue to be held by the Love that will not let us go. -Renée
*Steven Charleston, “Scholar of the Senses,” in Spirit Wheel: Meditations from an Indigenous Elder (Minneapolis, MN: Broadleaf Books, 2023), 22.