Statements of Faith ~ Week 3

 

O God, the source of our being and the goal of all our longing, we believe and trust in you. The whole earth is alive with your glory and all that has life is sustained by you. We commit ourselves to cherish your world and to seek your face.  Creed used by Women in Theology group from Eastwood, Australia

 

Creeds, like hymns and scripture, are one of the tools we have to encourage and engage in theology.  Theology is what we say about God.  Theology is impacted and influenced by your encounters, experiences, words you’ve heard, and reactions you’ve had to others.  For example, you may have heard growing up that God is a white male with a long flowing robe and beard.  In response, you may continue to hold that image tight as the only image that is right.  Or, when you hear God referred to as “Father,” it might be like nails on a chalkboard to your soul.  Or, you may be somewhere in between.  All theology is a very human attempt to define the undefinable, to speak the ineffable, to hold what is beyond our capacity.  All theology is autobiographical.  Rather than hang our heads or stomp our feet as if we have it all figured out, I believe that what we say about God is a snapshot of where we are at that moment, with open curiosity that God is not finished with any of us yet.  When the Creed above speaks about God, the writer directs our attention and intentions toward the earth/creation.  Our Creator, still creating, is woven into all that is around us ~ both seen and unseen.  Unlike people who see God as a clockmaker who made creation and then stepped back to let it unfold without interaction, this creed is saying that God is intimately involved in tending all life.  God is not in some galaxy light-years away, but as close as our next breath.  God is there in the food we eat to sustain us, in relationships that cause laughter, and in moments when we feel fully alive.  This part of the creed reminds me of a poem by Mary Oliver, which also reads like a creed and theological statement.  Slowly savor these words with me:

 

Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper? 
This grasshopper, I mean— 
the one who has flung herself out of the grass, 
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, 
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down— 
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. 
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. 
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. 
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is. 
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, 
which is what I have been doing all day. 
Tell me, what else should I have done? 
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon? 
Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?

 

May this awaken your imagination to sense God’s sustaining presence in you, through you, around you, and beyond you today.  Amen.