Green for the Lenten Season

These days the contours of the land upon which we live are more exposed than at any other time throughout the year. Skeletal trees lay bare hills and valleys, swells and ravines. Often I find myself envisioning shoulder flanks and round rumps covered in brown fur. Even after the rain, the shape of the land resembles a big, brown grizzly just emerged from the mountain river resting in a heap. It is as if at anytime the monstrous animal could roll over sending us tumbling and scrambling. And we are reminded this thing upon which we live is living itself, practically heaving with breaths, in and out.

It is a beautiful place this earth, this Hebrew “adamah”. It’s funny…we tend to forget with all our technology that we are essentially of this stuff, graced with divine breath. We, Adams, have been shaped and formed from the Adamah. We earthlings were fashioned from the ground beneath our feet. The Lenten Season invites us to remember our mortality, and hence our dependence on the Creator: “Remember. You are dust and to dust you will return.”

Where do I end, and where does the earth begin? I suppose if I had the patience I could plant my feet in the dirt and eventually we would merge right back together. This is actually what happens just between death and Resurrection. We return to the ground, ashes to ashes dust to dust. Rather than call into question the perimeters of the self, though, this affirmation causes me to consider the responsibilities of the self in light of my solidarity with the rest of God’s creation.

I was pleased to see the city I reside in make an official request that its citizens plant more trees.
We Christians should champion all efforts to practice the mandate God impressed upon the first Adam: “to till and to keep” the land; quite literally, to serve and preserve. Just as my body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, the rest of creation is blessed by the presence of God and deserves my nurture.

Paul says all creation awaits the glory to be revealed in us. “for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21)”

No agenda, no specific charge…just a spirit of gratitude and reverence for the space where God has placed us. It is good to care for the earth. It is good to remember how God wished things had remained. It is good to seek redemption in the present world.
- Tob Adams