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Unlearning for creation’s sake

 Cate Thorn speaks in the 2017 Season of Creation about how we need to rethink and understand anew our relationship to creation 
Rev Cate Thorn

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Unlearning for creation’s sake

Transcript
This is the second of three Sundays when we are considering things that relate to Creation or perhaps my intention was that we might consider issues of climate change. A responsibility to Faithfully tend to this gift of creation that we receive daily unsought unburden without which we have no life and no home. Because I was considering such issues in the precarious balance of our planet and the impact of this and I very survival. I heard a very interesting anecdote about refugees that I did not know what you to hold the image. This might generate in your mind as I speak today. Apparently, when refugees arrive for resettlement, they're still wearing their house key around their neck even though the home is gone or inhabited by others. Now, They still hold the key. Given today's theme there seemed something powerfully apt in this image in this precariously balanced planet of ours. Climate change environmental destruction, the patient. Scale of this is directly attributable to human acting, despite those with these stat interest, who determinedly argue, otherwise, I think the proof is now pretty incontrovertible. This is the way things are. It is hard to hear this to receive this information to imagine that we have and do participate in its destruction to imagine ourselves as agents of such a thing. We don't knowingly, choose to do this. Yet, here we are. What are we to do? How can we do things differently? Will what we do, make any difference, unless joined to a larger group, a wider Vision, a Consolidated, concerted effort, and intention for change. Who has and holds that vision. It is true that we need to do differently for there to be another way, another outcome and yet there's an intention to do differently enough. If it's just another layer. We add on to the usual way, we do things How resilient is such a veneer? We have learned and had embedded in us through generations. A way of understanding the human place in Creation in the western world. Even for those who do not have a Christian affiliation at the shape, the world is now in has become this way because of an understanding and because of actions that relate to that understanding of particular worldview in its shaped by our Christian narrative, From the beginning, The Story Goes god-breathed and speaks the world into being. We male and female are created in God's image. Or we are formed of the dust and have Divine breath. Breathed into US male, then female. We are created. In the story. The Way We Tell it, we humans Grant ourselves dominion over creation. We assume this role as we described the coming into being of creation, it's almost as if we understand ourselves as co-creating, cooperating with Divine breathing and bringing into being we're not automations. Of course we're not bound to or by a Divine directive. We say no in our storytelling that we are granted freedom to choose how we live, how we live out such creative Yes. How we interpret the mantle. We've divinely bestowed upon ourselves. and as we know the creation narrative continues to tell about flawed and acting of this, so, as we consider our world, Have we brought into being that, which we speak. This creation story that is embedded in us our speaking into being the way the world is all the telling and hearing of the story that dominates seems that human agency has precedence and creation that humans are few like are granted controlling rights. And time it seems to me that we consider ourselves superior to the rest of the created world. Maybe it's something to do with our capacity for self-reflection or self-awareness that we think is unique to us and separates us from the rest of the less evolved creation. Because surely the disorder drawn us of nature. Proves an absence or a diminished presence of God because God is a god of order and reason because we've escaped that chaos of Haven creation, we are tasked with creating order. Order according to our likeness to enact Divine ordering. I wonder whether the Christian Movement has particular culpability for driving the Divine, from the dross of the world to the Heavenly Realms because how many holy people are now tradition were granted this because they didn't slaves that shunned connection with the world. I wonder how different we are though. Even if we might look askance at such example. Now, I wonder how comfortable we are. Generally genuinely giving away a hold of superior power, and knowledge, and thus, created world. Because if he takes seriously, the idea that humans have and are simply a functioning part of creation. It might mean, we need to change how we understand ourselves. There in creation, we are equal Independence and need fullness to plants and animals, and insects and birds, and fish, and land and sea for our lives. We are just as vulnerable. And we are not necessarily more purposed and creation than them. What is more we gain and understand our created completeness fully. When we join ourselves to Creation recognize we are part of a created. Whole not over above more than That we are as needful as not needful of creation. It's not there to serve us How many of you feel a bit uncomfortable with such an idea that we're not necessarily more than animals or insects? Maybe those ideas are fine for tree, huggers for animal lovers. The such people because look at us humans. Look what we have achieved. We Superior in every way we create new and Innovative things. We have a deep understanding of the way, the world works so we can learn to manipulate it. We've extended life improved health is many good things that we humans do. So surely we are more I don't believe that we have to be a tree hugger or a person who likes to get their hand in the soil or intimate with the natural world to live and to understand that we need to live in humility as part of creation aware that every single thing that we do mindfully or unmindful, a thoughtfully, or thoughtless lie. Makes a difference reverberates through creation, because we are intimately connected with her. But to understand this in an in dwelt, really deep way, I think we need to do a bit of unlearning. I think we need to recognize this narrative that we speak. That is embedded in US of our human part in the scheme of things. I think we need to see it and recognize it for what it is and to see how we interpret and enacted. Because it's only one way of telling a story of creation. Recently I've been reading a book by a woman called Sharon Blackie who is a writer mythologist? That's the thing, you can be a psychologist and she's also got a PhD in neuroscience. She uncovers her experience of indwelling, this creation narrative. We have in this way. Before they was the word, there was the land. And it was made and watched over by women stories from almost every culture around the world. Tell us that once upon a time, it was so women the creators of Life, the bearers of the cup of knowledge and wisdom personifying the moral and spiritual for authority of this fertile, green and blue. These stories are also in our stories. We don't tell them much though. Proverbs last week, spoke of wisdom which was feminine being with Creator, is creation. Came into being today and Psalm 104 all that which was created of the earth is feminine. But Blackie continues. Do you remember those days when the stories of feminine wisdom were told? Me neither. She says other indigenous cultures around the world may still respect and Revere the feminine but we women, We Stand women lost that story long ago. The story which I was given. She says to carry as a very young child, the story, which both defined me and instructed me about the place. I occupied in the world accorded, no significance to women. In this story, women was an afterthought created from a man's body for the sole purpose of, pleasing him in this story. The first woman was the source of all Humanity suffering. She brought death to the world, not to life. She had the audacity to speak to a serpent wanting, the knowledge and wisdom, which had been denied her by a jealous father, God, she did eat the fruit of a tree even worse. She shared the fruit of knowledge and wisdom with her man. So that angry and implacable God, cast her and her male companion, out of paradise and decreed that women should be subordinate to me in Forever afterwards. the stories we tell about the creation of the earth and the origins of humankind, she says, show us how our culture views the world, our place in it, and our relationships with the other living things, which inhabited, And the key consequence of this particular creation story as a belief. That women are naturally disobedient and must be firmly kept in their place. The story of Eve and the Book of Genesis is the underpinning for countless measures, which have limited the action rights and status of women. No matter what one might achieve in the world, she claims the fundamental message of our sacred texts of the largest religious, grouping in the world. Is that means should not trust women and women. Should neither trust themselves, nor each other. And she claims the slunk the same kind of Acts that are perpetrated against our daughters and our mothers are perpetrated against the planet, the Earth which gives us life the Earth which women have for. So long. Been identified that our patriarchal growth and domination based culture has caused runaway climate change, the mass extinction of species and the ongoing destruction of wild and natural landscapes in the Unstoppable pursuit of progress. I spent three days feeling brave enough to read that to you. I think that says quite a lot. She's not actually ain't email, she's been married. But what she sees us were out of balance. There's a domination here which is not, okay. It might make us uncomfortable to hear the narrative interpreted this way, perhaps indignant and a resistant to her assertions because we does that leave us. Well, you know what? We're the ones who are telling the story now. We know the world differently from the time, the story was created, we speak into being what we know. How can we tell the story of creation that honest, this tradition, but also honors our knowledge of the impact of our words and our actions. even though we know a lot, I think like, Nicodemus, and we teach from what we know, But we do not understand, we experience this world, we do not know it fully our willing to listen to and learn what we think. We know so that we can learn from creation. That who wisdom May emerge, can we direct our self for flicked of attention to unmask a nun? Bun are embedded practices that are destroying creation and act. Yes, we need to act deeply aware of our interconnected dependence upon, Action. And our part in restoring her wholeness. Those refugees right at the beginning, their image, they flee from their homes for fear of losing their life. The key to their homes within grasping reach The ways we are, living will destroy our only place of Home in soon. We soon will be made refugees, and we have nowhere to flee. No place for resettlement. We do hold the key to retaining our home. It is still within our grasping Rach. But will we take a hold of it? Will we Act?