God in the Grass (mid-week Message)

 

 Cosmic Christ, Fr. John Guiliani

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

God in the Grass

March 14, 2018

The seminars and liturgies held last weekend at the Havurah Shir Hadash with the Rev. Matthew Fox focused on our need to seek the deep commonalties between faith traditions on our experience of God in creation and our daily lives as well as on our need to protect and preserve our common mother, the Earth.   All this got me thinking about three Christian texts from far afield that I have encountered over the years:  a hymn from China and two prayers from Africa, that express this experience of God in creation.  I thought I’d share them with you today. 

God in the Grass and in the Bed

I implore You, God;
I pray to You during the night.
How are all people kept by You all days?
You walk in the midst of the grass;
I walk with You.
When I sleep in the house,
It is You with whom I sleep.
To You, I pray for food and water to drink,
and You give it.
Set me free, I implore You with all my heart:
If I do not pray to You with my heart,
How can You hear me?
But if I pray to You with my heart,
You know it and are gracious unto me!

We Drink in Creation and Cannot Get Enough (Ashanti Christian prayer, from Ghana)
O Lord, O God, creator

Of Our land, our earth, the trees, the animals and humans, all is for your honor.

The drums beat it out, and people sing about it.

They dance with noisy joy that you are the Lord.

It is You who pulled the continents out of the sea.

What a wonderful world you have made out of the wet mud,

And what beautiful men and women!

We thank you for the beauty of this earth.

The grace of your creation is like a cool day between rainy seasons.

We drink in your creation with our eyes.

We listen to the birds' jubilee with our ears.

How strong and good and sure your earth smells, and everything that grows there.

The sky above us is like a warm, soft Kente cloth, because you are behind it,

Else it would be cold and rough and uncomfortable.

We drink in your creation and cannot get enough of it.

But in doing this we forget the evil we have done.

Lord, we call you, we beg you: Tear us away from our sins and our death.

This wonderful world fades away.

And one day our eyes snap shut.

All is over and dead without you.

We are still slaves of the demons and earth-fetishes

When we are not saved by you.

Bless us. Bless our land and people.

Bless our forests with mahogany, wawa, and cacao.

Bless our fields with cassava and peanuts.

Bless the waters that flow through our land.

Fill them with fish and drive great schools of fish to our seacoast, so that the fishermen in their unsteady boats do not need to go out too far.

Be with us youth in our countries, and in all of Mother Africa, and in the whole world.

Prepare us for the service that we should render.

Tianshang de Fuqin (Father in Heaven)

(sung to the tune Song of the Hoe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nznxZT0uRGs )

Great are thy mercies, Heavenly Father,

Food and raiment thou dost still bestow. 

Let me praise thee always,

Serve thee all my days. 

Thou, the spring wind,

I the grass:  On me blow!

Grace and Peace. 

--Fr. Tony+