Sunday, March 30th, 2003

We celebrate the beauty of all Creation and commit ourselves to "Discipleship of our Earth!" Today our liturgy of the word and homily will be combined in one multimedia presentation with music by the SJA choir, Laura MacKenzie, Celtic piper-flutist and harpist, the story of creation from Genesis, the poetry of Mary Oliver and Ed Hayes, and visual images and participation by you! Our thanks to Dan Chouinard, Roger Dick, Nancy Gormley, Tinia Moulder, Joan Riebel, Ellen Thayer, Anna Mae & Fred Vagle and Dana White for their help in this "Celebration of Creation!"

The Sun Have you ever seen anything in your life more wonderful than the way the sun, every evening, relaxed and easy, floats toward the horizon and into the clouds or the hills, or the rumpled sea, and is gone ­ and how it slides again out of the blackness, every morning, on the other side of the world, like a red flower streaming upward on its heavenly oils, say, on a morning in early summer, at its perfect imperial distance ­ and have you ever felt for anything such wild love ­ do you think there is anywhere, in any language, a word billowing enough for the pleasure that fills you, as the sun reaches out, as it warms you as you stand there, empty-handed ­ Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems
The Return When I went back to the sea it wasn’t waiting. Neither had it gone away. All its musics were safe and sound; the circling gulls were still a commonplace, the fluted shells rolled on the shore more beautiful than money - oh, yes, more beautiful than money! the thick-necked seals stood in the salted waves with their soft, untroubled faces gazing shoreward - oh bed of silk, lie back now on your prairies of blackness your fields of sunlight that I may look at you. I am happy to be home.       - Mary Oliver, What Do We Know
Gratitude What did you notice? The dew-snail; The low-flying sparrow; The bat, on the wind, in the dark; Big-chested geese, in the V of sleekest performance; The soft toad, patient in the hot sand; The sweet-hungry ants; The uproar of mice in the empty house; The tin music of the cricket’s body; The blouse of the goldenrod. What did you hear? The thrush greeting the morning; The little bluebirds in their hot box; The salty talk of the wren, Then the deep cup of the hour of silence. What did you admire? The oaks, letting down their dark and hairy fruit; The carrot, rising in its elongated waist; The onion, sheet after sheet, curved inward to the pale, green wand; At the end of summer the brassy dust, the almost liquid beauty of the flowers; Then the ferns, scrawned black by the frost. What astonished you? The swallows making their dip and turn over the water. Continue   What would you like to see again? My dog: her energy and exuberance, her willingness, Her language beyond all nimbleness of tongue, her recklessness, her loyalty, her sweetness, her strong legs, her curled black lip, her snap. What was most tender? Queen Anne’s lace, with its parsnip root; The everlasting in its bonnets of wool; The kinks and turns of the tupelo’s body; The tall, blank banks of sand; The clam, clamped down. What was most wonderful? The sea, and its wide shoulders; The sea and its triangles; The sea lying back on its long athlete’s body. What did you think was happening? The green breast of the hummingbird; The eye of the pond; The wet face of the lily; The bright, puckered knee of the broken oak; The red tulip of the fox’s mouth; The up-swing, the down-pour, the frayed sleeve of the first snow­ So the gods shake us from our sleep.       - Mary Oliver, What Do We Know
The Fish The first fish I ever caught would not lie down quiet in the pail but flailed and sucked at the burning amazement of the air and died in the slow pouring off of rainbows. Later I opened his body and separated the flesh from the bones and ate him. Now the sea is in me: I am the fish, the fish glitters in me; we are risen, tangled together, certain to fall back to the sea. Out of pain, and pain, and more pain we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished by the mystery.       - Mary Oliver, American Primitive

Will you teach your children what we have taught our children?

That the earth is our Mother?

What befalls the earth - befalls all the children of the earth.

This we know, the earth does not belong to humans.

Humans belong to the earth.

All things are connected like the blood that unites us all.

We did not wave the web of life, we are merely a strand in it.

Whatever we do to the web - we do to ourselves.

        -Chief Seattle

The above 5 readings can be printed as a Microsoft Word Document or a Rich Text File. If these options do not work for you, right mouse click and Save Target as ... the Rich Text File(RTF) link and open it up in your favorite word processor program.

Rick Spaulding is a photographer specializing in digital photography for the theater and works for National Camera Exchange. He is also an antique dealer and eBay afficianado who enjoys collecting marbles but his true joys in life are his two boys and his beautiful wife, Tinia.

Fred Vagle, in addition to playing in the band, is in charge of the audio/video portion of stjoan.com.