Invitation:
Listen… Land is inviting us in. She asks us to join in her song deep within the earth. Land cries out from the ground. There is grief in her song but there is a rhythm of hope. Listen… We are not separate. Our hearts beat together as one. Where could we go from Spirit? Nowhere. Nowhere. God is under our feet. God is over our heads. God is here. Listen….
Used with permission from “Fusion” seasonsonline.ca
Voice of the Day: For the Earth: The Earth is My Witness,
by Aryadrishti from thebuddhistcentre.com
When Mara challenged the Buddha on the verge of enlightenment on his worth, he called the earth as his witness. The earth now is a witness to all the greed, hatred, and delusion of centuries of human occupation. Just as the Buddha saw waves of human suffering unending, it goes on. And the earth also witnesses the good done by all beings everywhere everyday. The good that heals and awakens.
How do we face the suffering of the world with an open heart and act with aware kindness. How do we keep it up in the face of overwhelming odds? How do we stay connected with the good in ourselves and each other to inspire a way of being worthy of the earth’s witness?
The Hebrew Scriptures: Genesis 3:14-19; 4:8-16
8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let’s go out to the field.”[b] When they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him.
9 The Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?”
Cain said, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s guardian?”
10 The Lord said, “What did you do? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground. 11 You are now cursed from the ground that opened its mouth to take your brother’s blood from your hand. 12 When you farm the fertile land, it will no longer grow anything for you, and you will become a roving nomad on the earth.”
13 Cain said to the Lord, “My punishment is more than I can bear. 14 Now that you’ve driven me away from the fertile land and I am hidden from your presence, I’m about to become a roving nomad on the earth, and anyone who finds me will kill me.”
15 The Lord said to him, “It won’t happen;[c] anyone who kills Cain will be paid back seven times.” The Lord put a sign on Cain so that no one who found him would assault him. 16 Cain left the Lord’s presence, and he settled down in the land of Nod, east of Eden.
Reflection: “East of Eden”
As you read this passage from Genesis, you may have shared some of my first reactions when I read it last week with my morning prayer group on Zoom. First of all: that we don’t hear this story very often because it isn’t included in the regular 3 year lectionary cycle, and I have to admit I’m kind of grateful for that because of its dark themes of jealousy, violence and judgment.
And second, I noticed how many phrases and images in this passage have found their way into our contemporary culture: my brother’s keeper, the land of Nod, the mark of Cain, East of Eden. We often use these phrases now without connecting them to their origins in the Hebrew scriptures. The Land of Nod is just a sleepy place in our nursery rhymes. East of Eden is the Salinas Valley of California in the movie of the same name and the John Steinbeck novel on which it is based.
This story is full of human mistakes and human tragedy. But the human characters Adam and Eve, whose actions set this story in motion, and their sons Cain and Abel, aren’t the only characters in this drama. As their relationships with each other are irrevocably changed by their actions, so too are their relationships with God and with the land. You could even say that the Land is a character in this story, a character that supports and nurtures the human characters, and is both cared for and harmed by what they do.
In the beginning, Land is a garden, a place of abundance gifted to humans by the Creator. The Land supports the First People, and the Creator gives them the responsibility to walk in harmony and care for the land so that it can continue to feed and shelter them. The first people are born of the earth and, in turn, expected to honour and care for it. It is a self-sustaining, balanced ecosystem in which very little work is required to produce food. The Land is our mother, our source and sustainer, and our job is to respect and care for her.
Unfortunately, it isn’t very long until humans try to rewrite the contract with the Land and the Creator. We begin to envy and to imitate the power that should belong only to the Creator. We listen to the wrong advisors, we fiddle with the delicate balance, and the Garden is ruined. Adam and Eve are ejected from Eden, and the effortless harmony between Creator, Creature and Land is shattered. The Land becomes an enemy to be subdued through back breaking labour, forced to produce what we need instead of providing it gladly.
And our relationship to God also changes. We begin to see God as a taker rather than a giver, we feel that we can no longer trust the One who gave us the garden but then exiled us. We refuse to see how we ourselves have destroyed the sacred relationship with the Creator and the Land.
As Adam and Eve’s sons grow, we witness the development of two very different approaches to living off the Land. Cain tills the ground and raises the crops, and Abel herds a flock of sheep. When God prefers Abel’s offering of a fat lamb over Cain’s crops and produce, Cain kills Abel. Once again, human jealousy and violence and lust for power result in exile. Cain the farmer becomes Cain the nomad, through his actions removing himself from his family, the land of his birth, and his God. The character of the Land changes from mother to witness. The land witnesses Abel’s murder, opens to receive his blood, and refuses to produce more crops.
Doesn’t this ancient story sound only too familiar? Aren’t we still East of Eden, still trying to force the Land to give us what we want, still turning our back on the Creator and on the harmony that the Creator desires for us? The Garden that we were given has become a wasteland, as rivers disappear, forests burn, the ground dries up and blows away.
The photo above was taken last summer in a dried-up wetland in southern Iraq, in the area that is traditionally considered to be the location of the Garden of Eden. These marshes used to support fish and a great diversity of plants and animals, which are now threatened because of drought and government mismanagement of scarce water resources. The inhabitants who subsisted by catching fish in the streams and raising buffalo on the abundant grass can no longer support themselves. Their story is the story of Cain, and the story of people throughout the world who are being displaced by droughts, by wildfires, by floods.
Let’s be clear: unlike Cain, most of these populations are not responsible for the disasters that force them into exile from their homes. They are the victims of a system gone horribly wrong, a world in which the Land is exploited and destroyed in the name of progress and profit. As Joni Mitchell sings, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”
We are East of Eden, in a strange and unforgiving land, a long way from home. Like Cain, we have gone away from the Lord and settled in the land of Nod. When will we stop sleep-walking towards destruction, when will we wake up?
There are some clues in our Genesis story that give us hope, that tell us that all is not yet lost. We probably can’t get back to the garden, as our Woodstock generation so fervently wished to do. But this story tells us that our Creator God loves us and wants us to survive and thrive where we are now. When Cain cries that he will not be able to live on the Land, that he will always be a wanderer, that he might be killed, God says no. God will not allow Cain to be killed. The mark of Cain is a mark of protection, not of punishment. Cain is the author of his own punishment. His violence against his brother has divorced him from his family and the Land. By his own choice he turns his back on his Creator. But his Creator does not turn his back on him. God’s mark protects Cain from death at another’s hands.
How do we live with Cain outside the garden, East of Eden? Waking up is a first step. Acknowledging that our own actions have led us to this place. Understanding that God is not judging us but, like a good parent, is letting us make our own mistakes and hopefully learn from them. And like a parent, loving us no matter what.
Let’s return to those loving parents, God our Creator, Earth our Mother. Let’s listen as the Land witnesses to the mistakes we have made, and learn again from our ancestors and the First Peoples how to live in harmony.
When I start to despair over our seeming inability to do this, I often turn to the words of Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Citizen of the Potawatami Nation and a trained botanist. I’d like to end with a couple of quotes from her book “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.”
Robin says, “Knowing that you love the earth changes you, activates you to defend and protect and celebrate. But when you feel that the earth loves you in return, that feeling transforms the relationship from a one-way street into a sacred bond.” What a concept: our love for earth is reciprocated – the Earth loves us in return! And that connection is sacred.
And she concludes her book with this, “I envision people recognizing, perhaps for the first time, the dazzling gifts of the world, seeing them with new eyes, just as they teeter or the cusp of undoing. Maybe just in time. Or maybe too late. Spread on the grass, green over brown, they will honor at last the giveaway from Mother Earth. More than anything, I want to hear a great song of thanks rise on the wind. I think that song might save us…Let us hold a giveaway for Mother Earth…Gifts of mind, hands, heart, voice and vision all offered up on behalf of the earth. Whatever our gift, we are called to give it and to dance for the renewal of the world. In return for the privilege of breath.”
Let’s take a deep breath, raise our voices in gratitude to the Creator, and live lovingly on the land where we are planted. East of Eden, where we still can flourish.
Amen.
A Time for Silent Reflection: Take a moment of silence to recall your memories of the land of your childhood. Try to use all of your senses to recall a favourite place. Pay attention to your feelings of comfort or loss.
