Like many of us, I take our little dog for her early morning walk, sometimes in pjs, more often dressed for the day. One lot at the corner of our block is enclosed in a dense, green, leafy hedge. As we walk past it, I sense a cooler, fresher air, and fill my lungs. Wonderful!
Just another nice thing out there in God’s good creation? Not quite. Because, as I walked on, I realized that that hedge and I had become connected—physically. It was releasing oxygen molecules which I had breathed in, taking that physical gas into my lungs which transferred it to my blood stream. At the same time, the CO2 that I had released as I passed by, physically entered the leaves of the hedge and became part of its chemistry. The hedge—and those trees and tomato plants—are family to me and to you. We are all physically connected—especially when we eat some of them, of course.
The authors of the creation stories knew that we are of the earth. It is more than our home. All of our environment where live is physically-related family. Giving. Receiving. Sharing. The Gospel message we hear each Sunday re-enforces our Lord’s message that all those human beings around us are our neighbors, to be received as family. And we, as people of faith, believe we are all here to be instruments of God’s love for each other—we to them, and they, to us.
Just so, we are expressions of God’s love, for us and toward all the leafy, green growth, cold, flowing rivers and the Sound, and the sometimes smoky atmosphere we breathe. On the seventh day, God rested and saw that it was all pretty cool! Let us rejoice and be glad in it! ~King Schoenfeld
