Online Summer Camp - EARTH - Day 2

                                        Camp Edgewood, Eden Mills, ON - the Chapel in Winter

READ – Job 12: 7-10

 

As a teenage I spent my summers working at Lutheran Camp Edgewood in Eden Mills, ON.  The camp setting was 52 acres of forest, pond, and bluff. The program had opportunity for campers to build and sleep in home-in-the-woods. Teaching and learning about creation and nature was part of the program too.

My summers at camp grounded me and grew me into who I am today.

I had good teachers!

Turtle, Ginger, Cedar.  Elderberry, Rabbit, Maple. Yarrow, Robin, Pine.

 

Ask the animals, and they will teach you. – Job 12: 7

Ask the plants of the earth, they will teach you. – Job 12: 8

 

·        *      What have you learned from the animals, from the plants?

·         *     Does Earth (and that earth holds) draw your attention inward or outward?

·         *     Does Earth draw you to the Creator?

 

There is something about a chapel in the woods: singing and the birds joining in, listening to God-stories with a wind gently playing on the skin, praying and sunshine dappling down through tree leaves to warm the face, feeling whole as the smell of the forest floor fills one’s being. Side-by-side with members of creation and campers in this sacred earth space was grounding!  The experience grew respect, honour, kindness.

Firmly planted on the ground, respect, honour, and kindness bubbled up from my toes and my whole person felt joy and connection. Creation and human beings gathered in the space were equals, in relationship, breathing together.

In God’s hand is the life of every living thing and the breath of every human being. –Job 12: 10

 

·         *     Have you worshipped or prayed outside surrounded by Earth?

·         *     How did it make you feel? Was the experience different from being inside?

·         *     What did you learn?

·        *      Does Job 12: 10 (written above) cause you to consider how you live and act in the world?

 

Spending summers outside, rain or shine, changes how one approaches each day. Time living intimately with Earth has one consider bigger questions.  Chapter 38 of Job shares such contemplation.  The chapter is a series of creation themed rhetorical questions:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?

Have you entered the storehouse of the snow?

What is the way to the place where the light is distributed,

or where the east wind is scattered upon the earth?

 

One of my favourite Lutheran theologians is Joseph Sittler (1904-1987). His work is rooted, drawing on a relationship with God and Earth, weaving together an ecology of faith and evocations of grace.  He wrote: I have never been able to entertain a God-idea which was not integrally related to the fact of chipmunks, squirrels, hippopotamuses, galaxies, and light years.

 

·       *       How do you interpret the relationship between God and Earth?

·         *     Do you have a relationship with God? With Earth?

·         *     Does one relationship help the other?

 

Creator,

We give you thanks for Earth.  Ground us in Earth. May we learn from the animals and plants. In relationship with you and creation, grow in and from us, respect, honour, and kindness.  Amen.