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A WGREN Meditation for the Week of October 28, 2007
". . . the text [Genesis 1:1 - 2:3] has its main interest in telling us that God made the material world as a place for mankind to live: to love, to enjoy, and to worship God. The exalted tone of the passage allows the reader to ponder this with a sense of awe, adoring the goodness, power, and creativity of the One who did all this. It also shows the human reader why his embodied existence is good in itself and is meant to be received as a gift and blessing."
C. John Collins
Genesis 1-4: A Linguistic, Literary, and Theological Commentary (78-79)
Is our embodied existence good in itself? This is a fundamental question whose answer determines how we frame the personal ethics of our bodies. In this text the material world becomes the stage upon which we live and love; even so do our bodies become the vehicles for our living and our loving. As we move along the trajectory of love: from loving the members of our family to loving significant others, to including friends and larger circles of the human family into our loving and finally moving to a loving worship of God, it is only with and by means of our bodies that we progress on the path. How should we treat this enabling vehicle? Is it possible to view it more as a partner on the way? What if, as some people experience, the body grows weak or becomes seemingly a vehicle of unrelenting pain? Is it still a gift and blessing? These are worthwhile questions to reflect upon because no matter what intellectual framework we choose for our personal ethics, when it comes to practice the de facto and often unexamined ethics we adopt about our bodies conditions profoundly our actions. Through these actions every day our bodies ask us: "What then do you say that I am?" How are we responding?
Bill Fuller,
Department of Mathematics,
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of October 21, 2007
I wonder if the ground has anything to say? I wonder if the ground is listening to what is said? I wonder if the ground would come alive and what is on it? Though I hear what the ground says. The ground says, It is the Great Spirit that placed me here. The Great Spirit tells me to take care of the Indians, to feed them aright. The Great Spirit appointed the roots to feed the Indians on. The water says the same thing. The Great Spirit directs me, Feed the Indians well. The grass says the same thing, Feed the Indians well. . . . The ground says, The Great Spirit has placed me here to produce all that grows on me, trees and fruit. The same way the ground says, It was from me man was made. The Great Spirit, in placing men on the earth, desired them to take good care of the ground and to do each other no harm...
Young ChiefThere is no essential separation between human beings and the natural environment. Neither is there an essential tension between our survival and the environment's. As with all other living creatures, we must use natural resources in order to survive. Nevertheless, as Young Chief expresses with such eloquence, human beings also have an obligation as well - to protect the natural environment that nurtures us. The environment has countless voices, though we seldom listen. The environment accuses us, it chastises us and, unless we learn to be more attentive, in the end it will punish us. To believe ourselves separate and superior, to see the environment as no more than the resources it provides, is arrogance at its most dangerous.
Imagine being the one who has to explain to the Great Spirit, (or Allah, or God, or Jehovah) what human beings have done with the paradise we were given.
Mark H. Dixon
Department of Philosophy & Religion
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of October 14, 2007
Eternal God,
Book of Common Prayer (1979)
creator and preserver of all life,
author of salvation, and giver of all grace:
Look with favor upon this world you have made,
and for which your Son gave his life,
and especially upon this man and this woman
whom you make one flesh in Holy Matrimony.
Marriage liturgyIf we read this prayer with "new" eyes, the juxtaposition of ideas might seem startling. At this point in the liturgy where two people form one of the most intimate of human relationships, we first step back and pray for the whole world. Why do we do this? Certainly the prayer for the world echoes both the prologue to and the third chapter of the gospel of John. "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, who was in the world and the world was made by him." In the Greek text the word here translated as "world" is "kosmos" which would have raised in the minds of its Greek readers overtones of the universe as a perfect order. We thus are recalling that all the perfect order of creation is deeply and intimately beloved by God through his Son. The authors of this liturgy want us then to take this loving relationship between God and creation as a model for the relationship between wife and husband.
What if we were to take this modeling a step further? Would it not be possible to see each of our relationships in the context of God's loving relationship with created Nature? During the next week it might be worthwhile to notice, perhaps in a journal, how we interact with the other people in our lives and also how we interact with Nature. At week's end we might compare the notes we've made in both cases. Are there patterns and similarities in how we relate to people on the one hand and how we relate to Nature on the other? How can we model our relationships to mirror ever more faithfully God's love of the "perfect order of Nature?"
Bill Fuller,
Department of Mathematics,
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of October 7, 2007
To God belongs the East and the West;
The Qur'an
and wherever you turn,
there is the Presence of God.
For God is omnipresent and omniscient.
. . .
But everything in the heavens and on earth
belongs to God;
everything is obedient to God,
Creator of the heavens and the earth,
who on having determined something,
simply says to it "Be!"
and it is.
2: XIV, 14, 16b
(The Cleary Translation)
In Genesis the Creator says repeatedly, "Let there be!" Let there be light and it was. In these verses from the Qur'an, the command and the action are in the present tense. God is the continuing Creator who is everywhere and knows all parts of creation. God did not create and then depart. He is creating still and is intimately present to even the smallest speck of the cosmos. What part of our behavior concerning the world around us flows out of our being present to our environment? As images of the Divine are we not called first and foremost to be present to creation before we speak out our command, "Let there be?" Certainly the ethical call requires us to search out and examine the consequences of what we do to our environment. Perhaps that ethical call also requires us to experience directly our milieu prior to action; indeed, prior to determining any plan concerning it at all. The hurried drive to claim parts of the Arctic newly revealed by the vanishing ice cap may well be motivated by contemplation of possible political and commercial consequences, but it seems not to be informed by a prior being-present to the changing polar environment. Without that foundation of presence can such action be called ethical?
Bill Fuller,
Department of Mathematics,
Ohio Northern University
A WGREN Meditation for the Week of September 30, 2007
The heavens tell out the glory of God,
Psalm 19, 1-4a
heaven's vault makes known his handiwork.
One day speaks to another,
night to night imparts knowledge,
and this without speech or language
or sound of any voice.
Their sign shines forth on all the earth,
their message to the ends of the earth.
Revised English BibleIn the note to this psalm the editors of the Oxford Study Bible comment: "All creation reveals God's handiwork. Indeed, nature, law, history, and the personal problems of the individual must be combined in terms of God's kingdom."
The revelation of God's glory is not something hidden from us. Nature itself is luminous with the Divine presence which is communicated to us without need of intermediary words or speech. Nature is a sign of God-with-us. It is a sacrament and as such partakes of the Holy.
Are we open to receiving this sacrament? If we take the sacramental qualities of Nature seriously, will that not influence how we act upon it? Here is a practice that might be worth trying this week: Go out onto campus, perhaps away from buildings and other people, and simply observe what is happening around you: the sounds of the wind in the trees, the play of light and shadow. Let your thoughts and internal dialog settle down, and become quiet. Let the stillness itself teach you something about God present around and through you. After you have returned to the buildings and your friends, take some time out later in the day and ask yourself what effect that experience of the sacrament of Nature has had on you. Is that effect something you could make operative in your actions? Many people who repeat this practice over a period of time find all of Nature becoming a sign shining forth the glory of God to them and the speechless knowledge of the Kingdom informing all their deeds.
Bill Fuller,
Department of Mathematics,
Ohio Northern University
