Image: Shelley Lawrence rscj

Discussion Starters for Lent, Week 4

*The section "We Speak" addresses concrete concerns faced in Australia. We invite you to ask the questions that are relevant to your own context.

Creation: Web of Life

The Bible speaks
As long as earth lasts,
Sowing and reaping,
Cold and heat,
Summer and winter,
Day and night
Shall cease no more
Gen.8: 22

When I gather the clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the Covenant between myself and you and every living creature of every kind. And so the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all things of flesh. When the bow is in the clouds I shall see it and call to mind the lasting Covenant between God and every living creature of every kind that is found on the earth.
Gen. 9: 14-16

The Poet Speaks
The greatest beauty
is organic wholeness,
the wholeness of life and things,
the divine beauty of the universe.
Love, that, not man (sic) apart from that …
R. Jeffers,The Earth Speaks (ed. S. Van Matre, Michigan,1983)

We Speak
Australian mammals have been disappearing before our eyes. The existence of small mammals across our land has become a thing of the past. No longer are there colonies of brush-tailed bettong, brush-tailed possom, bilby, stick-nest rat, mainland tammar wallaby or quolls, to name a few. At Venus Bay, on Eyre Peninsular South Australia, for example, years of white settlement had caused the disappearance of native animals, birds and plant species. However, in this example, a property of 1423 ha. came up for sale in the 1970s and was purchased by the government for a park. Land has been added, and now the park is over 6,000 hectares in size. Controlled regeneration in this park with its predator-proof fence, has allowed the successful reintroduction of many species unique to Australia.

From Renewing Creation (South Australian Heads of Churches, 2003).

We Pray
L. We invite our great South Land to worship with us.
G. We invite her hills to rise up in praise,
Uluru and Kosciusko, the Blue Mountains and Thredbo.
L. We invite all species in this land to join with us
in praising our Creator.
G. Platypus and penguin, cockatoo and koala, bees, trees
and every link in the whole web of life around us.
L. We invite the mysteries of creation to celebrate the Spirit
that gives them life.
G. Black holes and butterflies, embryos and ocean deeps,
soaring hawks and human hearts, guided by a Wisdom
deep within.
L. We invite all creatures in the web of life
to join in the Spirit’s song of reconciliation. Amen.