Hi everyone. And welcome to 40 minutes of faith. My name is Barbara Cox and I host this weekly podcast to explore God's word and our relationship with God.
Today, we're going to be talking about a few different topics. I have photos of a pilgrimage to the Island of Iona, which is off the West coast of Scotland. I've selected two Bible verses that have references to nature among the many Bible verses that refer to nature and God's creation. I also have some information for you from the Evangelical Lutheran church in America's social statement about care for creation. And finally, I want to offer some recommendations for different learning styles when we're doing a Bible study,
For those of you who have access to YouTube, there's going to be some photos. The first photo that I have is the reflection of a hillside in a still Lake. At the edge of the Lake, a photographer has a camera on a tripod, and we can just see this very small figure of the photographer against the reflection of the clouds in the Lake. Off to the side of the Lake is an old wood boat that looks like it's been there for a really long time time that has some rotted wood it's tipped to the side, but it probably served people for many, many years before it was left at the side of this Lake.
I'm going to read from Isaiah chapter 35, verses one to two and verses six to seven. Isaiah is just in the very middle of your Bible. I'm going to read from the new revised standard version: “the wilderness and the dry land shall be glad. the desert shall rejoice and blossom. Like the Crocus, it shall blossom abundantly and rejoice with joy and singing.
For waters shall break forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. The burning sand shall become a pool and the thirsty ground Springs of water, the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp. The grass shall become reeds and rushes.”
The information that I'm going to share today about different learning styles comes from a book written by Barbara Bruce. I highly recommend this slim volume. The title is “7 ways of teaching the Bible to adults” and the subtitle is using our multiple intelligences to build faith. One of the things I wonder when you hear things about nature, do your fingers itch to draw or doodle or paint? And if so, I welcome that during this podcast. What are ways that we connect the different parts of our listening, our soul, our brain, and our bodies?
I have a photo that I took on the Island of Iona of a wood door. You can see the grains of the wood and the planks that go from top to bottom of the door. And it has what I believe are iron nails and a piece of iron that holds the three pieces of wood together and an iron door handle that's a circle and there's a little bit of carved wood also at the top. And what I wonder is, as we go on our journeys, I don't mean to talk about travel in the sense that, Oh, you must go on a pilgrimage.
In fact, to the best of my understanding in medieval times into the Renaissance, people were told to go on pilgrimage to please God. And I believe that spending time with God does please God, but not that we have to go somewhere to do it. And that if we don't go somewhere that that's displeasing to God, I believe that we can honor God with our time in many different ways.
Especially these days when we have travel restrictions, we can't go to Iona right now, unless you're really close by to there already. So I feel like in our lives sometimes we may feel like there's times when the door is closed and I invite us to use our imaginations and think about times when there may be other ways to get somewhere besides through a door.
And some of us are home bound due to health reasons or transportation logistics. So I just want to offer up maybe a travel in the imagination. I have a few questions for us to consider. So if you're someone who likes to write, these could be journaling questions or just questions to ponder as we go through the day, as we take a look at some different topics today, one question that I appreciated learning from a professor is where is the love?
Where is God's love? Where is our love for each other? And a companion question to that is where is the fear? Where are we afraid and where are others afraid? Maybe we know for sure. Maybe we don't know. Maybe we're trying to understand the situation a little bit better. A different professor asked a really important question that I'm going to try to raise a few times today.
And that is whose voice is missing. So when I talk about going on pilgrimage to Iona, I believe that I have been tremendously fortunate in being able to travel. And I want to acknowledge that many people I know are so busy working two or three jobs, that something like an international trip, may be out of the question at this time in their lives.
And folks may believe that this kind of travel is probably out of the question for a really long time, if not forever. So I just want to acknowledge that we're all in different places. And this isn't only for people who do travel or who love to travel or who have traveled. Hopefully this is for everyone.
Where is God in this story, as we talk about care for creation or any topic? Is there an elephant in the room?
We traveled from the mainland of Scotland (Oban), took a ferry to the Island of Mull and then drove across Mull-that's where we saw this rainbow- and then took another short ferry to Iona.
I include this photo as often as I can on the podcast website, which is 40 minutes of faith.com, because it's important to me to welcome everyone. And I have heard some sad stories about folks who have felt rejected by the church for various reasons. And my belief is that God is it's the final judge and it's not my place to judge people.
Now we do have some pretty clear guidelines. In many instances, for example, I referred to the 10 commandments in a previous podcast that I did about what classes I was learning the first fall semester. And I'm taking another class right now that goes into much more depth about the 10 commandments. So we do have the law.
By all means. And then we also have the gospel, which does not wipe away the law. A lot of people think that some Lutherans have sort of done away with the law because we're so focused on the gospel and grace and God's love and God's forgiveness, but there is a balance to be had.
And I don't embody that balance all the time. There are times when we absolutely need the law and there are times when we really need the gospel, meaning grace and forgiveness and love and care. So I've got this rainbow here and we can talk more about the 10 commandments in another episode, but just for right now, I wanted to show you the beauty of God's creation and acknowledge that there are moments filled with pain for many people around different issues of acceptance and welcome, especially when it comes to God's church.
I have a quote for you from the ELCA social statement, and that's the abbreviation for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. The main website is ELCA.org, and I'm going to include a detailed link on the podcast website that goes straight to the social statements, or you can just search for them.
So I have on page seven of that social statement, a quote that I wanted to share with you:
“the earth in its fullness belonged to the Lord. No person or group has absolute claim to the earth or its product. In a world of finite resources for all to have enough means that those with more than enough will have to change their patterns of acquisition and assumption. Sufficiency charges us to work with each other and the environment to meet needs without causing undue burdens elsewhere.
Sufficiency also urges us to care for arable land so that sufficient food and fiber continue to be available to meet human needs. We affirm therefore the many stewards of the land who have been and are conserving the good earth that the Lord has given us. We recognize many forces that run counter to sufficiency.
We often seek personal fulfillment in acquisition. We anchor our political and economic structures in greed and unequal distribution of goods and services. Predictably many are left without resources for a decent and dignified life. We pray therefore for the strength to change our personal and public life to the end that there may be enough.”
I'm going to talk a little bit more about that statement as we go through the presentation. I have a photo here of a small window surrounded by large stones. This is from inside the Abbey on Iona, and we're looking out onto green grass. And in the foreground right in front of the window inside the Abbey is across.
I found a really interesting prayer by Thomas Merton in a very small book that I have about labyrinths. And I found this right after doing the recording about a pilgrimage to Spain in which we talked about labyrinths. As one way of spending time with God, even if you can't go somewhere, you can build a labyrinth and you can even imagine a labyrinth.
And the reason I have this little book is because there are small labyrinths that you can have in your house that you can actually trace your finger around. Now you can do that just with a piece of paper, but it's also kind of cool if you can find somewhere a labyrinth that has raised ridges for the path and you can trace your finger along it, and it's very soothing.
And the book talks about different ways that we can meditate, spend time with God and include some quotes, poems, and prayers to guide us in that endeavor. This prayer is attributed to Thomas Merton and I'd like to read it for you, especially when we're thinking about closed doors in our lives. And what I just read about in order for there to be enough for everyone, things need to change.
“My Lord, God, I have no idea of where I'm going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following your will, does not mean that I'm actually doing so, but I believe that the desire to please you does, in fact, please, you and I hope I have that desire in all that I'm doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, you will lead me by the right road. Though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are with me and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
That reminded me of the 23rd Psalm: “Yea though, I walk through the Valley of the shadow of death.” And there's lots of beautiful nature imagery in the 23rd Psalm. One thing that I also want to raise is the question of access to nature. So one elephant in the room, and maybe one answer to the question whose voice is missing is not everyone has equal access to nature and or nature that they enjoy spending time in. So I want to acknowledge that the housing situation for some people is very crowded, tall apartment buildings and what sort of access to parks, nature, trees, flowers is available to folks and not just city dwellers, either?
We take nature for granted in many of the places that I've lived before. But I just want to raise up a question that never really occurred to me before I read Sierra magazine, and they've done a terrific job through the Sierra club of just educating and informing people that not everyone does have equal access to nature.
And I thought, well, of course, everybody has access to nature - you just go out your door and go find some. But depending on the realities of life of, working a bunch of jobs or transportation, how far do you have to go to get to nature? And then when you get there, are you welcome or are you not welcome?
Are people rejected? And the answer is yes. Are people suspicious of other people without cause? I believe that the answer to that is yes as well. I bring that up to really invite our awareness and our action in support of all people to have access to nature, that everyone can be welcome and that we consciously provide nature in a way that makes it more accessible to people. And I'm talking even in terms of city parks and things like that.
I want to read another Bible passage. And that's from the book of Joel, which is one of the minor prophets that's found after the book of Isaiah. So it's past the halfway point in your Bible. It's just a very short book and I just have verse 21 that refers to nature. I'm going to read from the message version. Joel, chapter two, verse 21: “fear not, earth. Be glad and celebrate. God has done great things. Fear not, wild animals. The fields and Meadows are greening up. The trees are bearing fruit again, a bumper crop of fig trees and vines.”
I read that with joy and also with a heavy heart, because I know that some parts of the world are suffering tremendously with nature at this time. I don't believe that our biblical promises are a guarantee everything will always be like that everywhere because of sin on earth. In part humans have created circumstances that allow for tremendous destruction.
Sometimes we create fires; sometimes how we have cared for the earth could make things worse. Dumping pollution into the ocean, horrific wildfires, climate change and things of that nature. Our stewardship of creation has put us in a position where some people take the Genesis quote that we are to have dominion over the earth to understand that we can exploit the earth. And while we have been exploiting the earth for many hundreds of years, there are other ways of living that don't require such exploitation. So one example that I can think of, a missing voice is actually the earth. And I believe that the earth does communicate with us and animals do communicate with us.
I wonder how easy it is to turn a deaf ear. I believe that some people are very sensitive to the needs of the earth and to animals and to our siblings, our fellow human beings. We can take power- we might say, well, I'm not taking this power. I'm not doing anything personally to these people or these animals or the planet, but just how we live can change the circumstances for all of those different groups, animals as well as the planet.
I'd like to read another quote from the ELCA social statement about care for creation, because I love to have all kinds of different background information. I also like to take action. So one example of using multiple intelligences is with our bodies. Do we like to spend time outside? Some people I think don't really like to spend a lot of time outside, but do we appreciate what we have? And yet we might feel really separate, but I don't mean to kind of say like, Oh, you know that nature over there- it's all around us. Even if we don't feel like it's immediately at hand if we live in a city and there's lots of concrete and buildings and cars and stuff like that. I want a call to action that this isn't just hypothetical, that we have this beautiful place around us, even if we don't see it every day and appreciated every day.
The multiple intelligences suggest that many people have body in kinesthetic joy, going for a run or something like that. And I know that if there's a lot of pollution in the air, then going for a run outside is not really a particularly helpful suggestion to you. I don't like to run myself, but I like to take a walk and I want to be grateful for what we do have. So I'm going to read a quote from the social statement, on page 10.
It says “we will welcome the interaction of different views and experiences in our discussion of environmental issues, such as nuclear and toxic waste dumps. Logging in ancient growth forests, personal habits in food consumption, farming practices, treatment of animals in livestock production, laboratory research and hunting, land use planning in global food development and population questions.
We will examine how environmental damage is influenced by racism, sexism, and classism. And how the environmental crisis in turn exacerbates racial, gender and class discrimination. We will include in our deliberation people who feel and suffer with issues whose economic security is at stake or who have expertise in the natural and social sciences.”
And it keeps going from there, but that's the part that I wanted to share for today. Because as we look at beautiful photos of places, I want to acknowledge that there are horrible photos of places and I've chosen today to not show those, but they are available to see just what is incredibly distressing to me and incredibly heartbreaking photos of pollution of birds, and of people who live with, say, oil.
That's just one example. Oil on water and on shorelines, fish who have died due to factory pollution going into streams and rivers, and the list could go on and on of different horrific ways that we have not cared for creation. And I'll talk about a few more examples as we go, but I want to just acknowledge, I have a photo of a beautiful stone building. That's the Abby on Iona, the grasses, the sea has fish. The birds are in the air. There's no visible pollution, but yet knowing that we pollute the air. Does the rain that comes down, is it still pure? What about different places on the planet? That's what the social statement is talking about in terms of whose voice is missing.
Who is being treated badly? And there is more awareness of this issue right now with places where the drinking water isn't safe or places where people get cancer. And a really important question about where is our love for each other is often those places with more pollution are near our vulnerable siblings.
And we treat people really badly like that. What is the skin color of people whose water is not drinkable or who have more cancers due to environmental pollution? I don't have a list of facts and figures to share with you today, but those are available. And I very much believe that we do discriminate against our black and Brown siblings and also at the animals and the earth itself. But in terms of our fellow human beings who is safe to live where they live, who is able to safely drink the water that comes into their homes?
I have a beautiful prayer that I want to read about our focus on God, because I'm talking a lot about our human siblings, the earth and the animals. I was with a group of pilgrims who came from different church groups to look at a bunch of churches in Scotland. And this was one of them. And our tour guide read us an absolutely beautiful prayer by John Baillie. I wanted to share it with you because our focus can be on lots of different issues around us. And there's other issues that I haven't brought up today that are important to many people, but does our focus start with God? With spending time with God? So I want to give a shout out to the one who prays in many different ways and you've heard me over the weeks of this podcast prefer contemporary translations. So this is a very archaic language, but it really resonated with me. So I wanted to say, thank you to pastor Jim for helping us on our tour and I'll include that information. I'm not getting compensated for the shout out, but it was a wonderful tour and those tours are continuing as soon as it's safe to travel.
So this is a prayer by John Baillie: “Eternal Father of my soul, let my first thought today be of Thee, let my first impulse be to worship Thee, let my first speech be thy name, let my first action be to kneel before Thee in prayer. For thy perfect wisdom and perfect goodness: For the love wherewith Thou lovest humankind:
For the love wherewith thou lovest me: For the great and mysterious opportunity of my life: For the indwelling of Thy Spirit in my heart: For the sevenfold gifts of Thy Spirit: I praise and worship Thee, O Lord. Yet let me not, when this morning prayer is said, think my worship ended and spend the day in forgetfulness of Thee. Rather from these moments of quietness let light go forth, and joy, and power, that will remain with me through all the hours of the day; Keeping me chaste in thought: Keeping me temperate and truthful in speech:
Keeping me faithful and diligent in my work: Keeping me humble in my estimation of myself: Keeping me honorable and generous in my dealing with others: Keeping me loyal to every hallowed memory of the past:
Keeping me mindful of my eternal destiny as a child of Thine. O God, who hast been the refuge of my fathers through many generations, be my refuge today in every time and circumstance of need. Be my guide through all that is dark and doubtful. Be my guard against all the threatens my spirit’s welfare. Be my strength in time of testing. Gladdened my heart with Thy peace; through Jesus Christ my Lord. Amen.”
I had another really wonderful faith moment in this same journal that I just read from. We were in Scotland exactly one year ago. It was just between when we moved away from Germany back to the United States.
And I had been really stressed out because many military moves involve tight deadlines. Even if you know a long time ahead that this is going to happen. And we were waiting for orders and a lot of things can't happen until you get those orders and I like to control things. And I think, well, if I work really hard, then everything will be okay, which is completely contrary to what this prayer is about.
We work hard. But where is God's timing in all of this? And I was participating in a journal club activity. I'll put those details on the website too. And one of the questions during that journaling meeting was what is it that I can really control? And what do I need to leave to the universe?
And to me, that means to God. So what can I do to be responsible in my life? And what do I just need to leave with God? And the person who led the journal clubs said, why don't you make two columns? She sent this out to everyone. What is it that I have control over? You know, I can do the laundry- that's terrible example. And what do I need to leave to the universe? Or what do I need to leave to God? And I thought, okay. Oh, that's a really great idea because I had my to do list was like five pages long. And it's a good thing I started with my list of what can I leave to God, because it was only one word long and that is EVERYTHING. And yeah, once we get the orders, then I can spring into action and do all these things on my checklist. But ultimately in my life is my control pushing for things to be done?
And I say that there's another example of our Lutheran belief of justification and sanctification. And what that means is that we have a free gift of salvation. Grace is free. And then we act out of love with our behavior, and we're not trying to earn points to get into it. I have, and I say this in almost every podcast and the reason I bring that up at the same time that I have these two lists, what can I do?
And what can God do? Yeah, God can do everything. But then we react with God's love to love for others. Love for animals and creation and our human siblings. So I don't mean to be talking out of both sides of my mouth. Like on the one hand I'm saying I don't need to do everything because it's all on God, but my trust is in God.
And then when the time is right, then I can take action in response to that. So I hope that doesn't sound confusing. I wanted to talk about another elephant in the room, even though this picture is of cows, as an example of what we can do to honor God's creation. We have stewardship of the earth and what's on the earth and what's in the earth. And I really liked this picture because I had never seen Scottish cows before. And they're very, very hairy. They have bangs that go into their eyes and they're furry like dogs. We thought that they were really neat. And my question about stewardship comes to how we treat animals. Because I know that many people earn their livelihood from the land that this is very real - people don't have the luxury of just money growing on trees. So I know that there are people who depend on livestock for their own livelihood.
And then I also believe that people are making a tremendous profits from poorly treating animals, overcrowding-that's a whole other podcast on how animals are treated as they are raised for slaughter and for human consumption. But it's just a question that I'm opening up, where is our love for creation?
Fear could be, we're not going to have enough money for our family to survive. I think there's also a fear of, I don't know what my life would be like to live with eating a lot less meat than I eat right now. What would that be like?
I know that some people love the animals and take good care of them and even process the animals in a humane manner for human consumption, but by and large, that's not the case with millions of chickens and pigs and cows and other animals that are consumed, even fish, unfortunately. I am not giving a historical account of agribusiness or even the Island of Iona. This is not just another Bible study.
I do look forward to having a conversation about what is it that we're putting into our bodies. But right now, when we're looking at the beauty of creation and the care of creation and the stewardship of creation, and to a small extent, also the exploitation of creation. Let's just introduce this, touch on a few different things, and lifted up in prayer, and not just abstract prayer. Absolutely praying about this topic. And then also asking what is it that I can do to connect attributes to the wellbeing of the planet, to animals, to my fellow human beings, to those near to me, as well as those who are far from me, that I don't have any contact with- people who work in meat packing plants or people whose livelihood depends on the land.
This is one of the crosses outside the Abbey on Iona. And when we go back to the multiple intelligences. I want to honor that some people have different senses of what they're able to do, what they want to do. And one of the things that's much more difficult for me is the logical and mathematical folks. Perhaps someone might enjoy taking the word Iona or any other word and just doing an acrostic.
And that could be writing the letters down instead of right next to each other, writing the letters down in rows underneath and then writing another word that could say, start with the letter I, or the letter I could be somewhere in that word. That is a spiritual experience for you that you're thinking about either just this one Island off the coast of Scotland or care for creation.
And if that's something that would be fun and meaningful to you, or it could be any other word in any of these Bible passages, or maybe looking up a map of where in the heck is Iona after all, and finding the West coast of Scotland, which has lots and lots of different little islands.
Or if you'd like to talk with other people about how can we care for our creation together? What can I do as an individual? And then can I get a group of people together to try to make a difference in a positive way?
I do have one more prayer written by Reverend George McCloud, about our sense of a place and our sense of the world and how can we contribute to the world?
I want to talk for a moment about new journeys - before I talked about what if a door feels closed to you? And now I have a question of what if there is a door and you're not sure if you should go through it? There's new opportunities and new endeavors for your life. So let me read the prayer written by Reverend McLeod. It's called, send us an angel.
And part of this talks a little about the Christmas season, but I really liked everything else in the prayer. And even though it was written decades ago, I feel like it's really applicable even in our day and age. And there may be one line when you think, Oh, I kind of have a sense on when this may have been written, but I find it still very relevant today.
“Lord God. Some of us are a little like the shepherds, just carrying on with our jobs. Despite the turbulence in the world scene, give us a message, send us an angel that will start us seeking a new way of life. Lord God, others of us are like the wise men from the East. We can see the need some power to come and to give us direction, but we don't know in which direction to go. Give us the wisdom to see that it is not in physical power that our salvation lies, but in love and humility, Lord God, a few of us are like Herod.
We don't want a new power to enter the world. In case it might threaten our own power. Give us the humility to be ready for a quite new form of power to fit the dangerous age in which we live, where atomic power is beyond our capacity to control. We ask you to make us expectant. Instead of planners, we ask you to make us seekers, rather than know-alls.
We ask you for grace so that we are ready to receive. We ask you for humility so that we are prepared to accept Your way of doing things, we ask you for faith, and faith is a gift, really to believe; that in this dark day for our land, we can accept the gift of Christmas: and bring our wealth as a land to serve the Christ, to bring our incense to worship him: and our myrr, the symbol of burial, to be ready to die for him. Thus we shall be able to receive the gift of love and light and life, when Christmas day shall Dawn.
When I see this photo of the shoreline, I think about where are we going? I think about the expression that we have in the United States, “from sea to shining sea”, in one of our national songs. I feel with great regret the concept of colonialism that we've stolen, this land, that our concept of manifest destiny resulted in the death and displacement of so many souls, because other people felt that they deserved this land. And again, there's a whole history lesson here. How did this even start? Why do people think this way? But here and now we have a time of reparation and of apology that this was wrong behavior. And there are probably still people who don't think it was wrong behavior, but I believe it was. And I want to offer in a capacity that I am able to, my apology for that behavior.
So again, back to the 10 commandments. Was where we live stolen from who was here first? And how do we share what comes from the land, the food that we eat and the animals that we raise in the natural resources that we use to power our lives? How can we create a sense of connection to the universe, to creation, to God?
Isaiah 35
Psalm 23
Joel 2
7 ways of teaching the Bible to adults: using our multiple intelligences to build faith by Barbara Bruce
https://www.sierraclub.org/people-and-justice
Thomas Merton in “The Sand Labyrinth- Meditation at Your Fingertips” by Lauren Artress
A Morning Prayer by John Baillie
Send Us an Angel by George McCleod, in “The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory - Iona Prayers”