The Priest and Prophet in the Anthropocene
What follows is a poetic exploration around the subject of the Anthropocene, laid out following Brueggemann’s three part structure of reality, grief, and hope, including a psalm, a song, and finally, a prayer. Part 1 is available here
Part 2: Grief
In the Anthropocene,
there is much to grieve.
While the United States seals itself in a global penthouse suite situated high above the world below, thoroughly convinced that it is isolated and removed from the goings on on the ground floor below, the prophetic minister must name our connection to the ecological disasters which have already begun, and which will only increase.
We grieve the displaced refugee affected by climate change, whose own situation is intimately and intricately linked to our own, as our own lungs fill each day with the same ruach and the same poison.
We grieve the genocide of creation itself, and for convincing ourselves that steal and asphalt would somehow improve 4.5 billion years of meticulous, detailed, trial and error.
We grieve that we have forgotten that we are creations and not Creator; that we have denied being a part of God’s masterpiece, hoping we are somehow above that humiliation.
We grieve what we know must come to pass, even while we do not know how it will come to pass.
However, it is also the minister, the prophetic priest, during this long season of grief, who must voice the reminder that through life and death, order and chaos, God is with us. Surely, a priestly witness in the time of the Anthropocene embodies the words of the psalmist, proclaiming that while truly we live in the valley of the shadow of death, God is with us.
The minister invites the community to look at the bleak future of the Anthropocene from a place of compassion, and not of anxious, compulsive, self-protection.
The minister fosters compassion for creation, compassion for the subaltern, and even compassion for those seated on the throne of power as the empire crumbles around them.
The minister cries out, “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”; And then, the minister tries to help them see with new eyes the reality of the world around them:
A Song of the Garden of Weeds – based on Isaiah 5
Let us sing on behalf of God
A song concerning Her garden:
Her garden was just a rough plot of dirt
A small speck in the vast universe
In an unremarkable galaxy
A few million miles from the nearest sun.
She tilled the soil of Her garden
And dug deep trenches for water to flow
She planted flowers of every kind
And watched as Her small garden
Began to grow and flourish
And She loved it.
And one day, a particularly beautiful flower
Grew out of the soil where She had planted it.
The Gardener saw it and loved it
And saw that it was good.
The flower was stunning and radiant,
and it grew, and it blossomed, and it flourished.
Soon another beautiful flower grew out of the soil,
and the Gardener saw that this one was good too.
Then another, and another,
And another, and another emerged from the earth below.
The Gardener loved each flower in all its beauty
But She soon noticed that these flowers
Would not stay where they were planted,
And they began to spread out,
To crowd out and cover over
the other flowers in the garden.
For the garden of God
Is the entire planet,
And the beautiful flowers
Are all of humanity;
She planted beautiful flowers,
But got a bed of weeds,
She expected beauty,
But got horror!
Woe to those flowers
Who have turned into weeds
Whose roots grow long
And stretch to the far corners of the garden
Who horde the nutrients in the soil
Who guzzle water from the bed
Until the dirt dries and cracks
Like a great salt flat.
Woe to those weeds that grow unrestrained
Forming an expansive canopy
Blotting out sunlight
For the grasses, the shrubs, and the lilies below
Those weeds who in their own arrogance
Consider themselves fortunate
Thinking themselves to be the prettiest flowers
In all the garden.
Woe to those weeds
That call themselves mustard seeds
But whose branches are lined with thorns
So that no passing bird can find rest among them
And from whose broad trunk seeps
poisonous sap into once fertile soil below.
Therefore, when the last drop of living water
is finally poisoned
When the last blade of grass
is finally choked out
And when the garden
Is nothing but a pile of weeds
Do not cry out to the Gardener
As if She is to blame.
She planted beautiful flowers,
But you became a bed of weeds
She planted life,
But you grew only death!
And on that day,
The Gardener and the weeds will weep together.
And the weeds will cry out,
Surely it would have been better
For us never to have been planted
Never to have sprouted from the soil.
For this garden
once full of life
Is now nothing
But a graveyard.
Click here to read Part 3 – HOPE.
[…] CLICK HERE FOR PART TWO: GRIEF […]