CREATION PAST THE SIXTH DAY

Look at the animals roaming the forest: God’s spirit dwells within them.
Look at the birds flying across the sky: God’s spirit dwells within them.
Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God’s spirit dwells within them.
Look at the fish in the river and sea: God’s sprit dwells within them.

There is no creature on earth in whom God is absent….When God pronounced that His creation was good it was not only that his hand had fashioned every creature; it was that His breath had brought every creature to life. Look too at the great trees of the forest; look at the wildflowers and the grass in the fields; look even at your crops. God’s spirit is present within all plants as well. The presence of God’s spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God’s eyes nothing on the earth is ugly. Attributed to Pelagius of Britain late fourth century/fifth century.

“If God were to stop speaking the whole created universe would cease to exist. In the rising of the morning sun God speaks to us of grace and new beginnings, and the fertility of the earth is a sign of how life wells up from within, from the dark unknown place of God.” Born in the early ninth century this is from the teachings of John Scotus Eriugena, John the Irishman, from Ireland. John taught that all Creation speaks to us with the voice of God. He echoed an earlier voice from the island fringes,

And an English Orthodox bishop, Timothy Ware seems to echo the assertion of Tom Cowan, a Celtic shaman that Creation is less a bringing into existence of some “thing” from no “thing” as a reshaping. And that God can no more not create than he/she can cease to exist.

I wonder if this way of looking at the world can be traced back to the area just west of Central Asia where the Celtic tribes and the tribes that overran Greece after the age of Homer are supposed to have originated. It’s a way of looking at the world that seems almost alien. We were and are taught that God created the world. Finito. Believing that Creation is ongoing pulls the rug out of a lot of assumptions. Creation becomes fluid, Infinite. Tantalizing. Blink and the world changes.

Or careful or you might find a Goddess taking up residence in your imagination, keeping watch on the seascape until you finally answer the door. At least she had the grace not to roll her eyes with an “it’s about time.”