Greening Our Worship

This is a piece I wrote for the June edition of the SA Uniting Church paper New Times, when the theme was on what churches are doing to combat Climate Change:

You’ve changed the light globes, added the option to receive the weekly newsletter on line rather than on recycled paper, cleaned the gutters, installed a rain water tank and switched to Fair Trade tea and coffee. You’ve written to the transport authority with a request for more frequent Sunday morning bus runs, installed bike racks and petitioned the Government to stop subsidizing our dependence on fossil fuels. Now you wonder, what is next?

Where I worship there never was any light globes to change nor gutters to clear. Here the only power is solar, and I don’t mean that which goes on the roof and fires up the data projector. The solar power we rely on for light and warmth is that which follows night and has, for a very long time, been a sure and certain thing. For two and a half years the Eco-faith community has been gathering under the trees in Botanic Park, rain, hail or shine. For obvious reasons, greening our worship has taken a different focus than reducing our carbon footprint through changing our property. We have used six common liturgical practices through which to focus our efforts at living more environmentally sustaining lives: awe, lament, embodiment, listening to our sacred story, communion and Sabbath.

Seated on lush green grass, under a turquoise blue dome and a canopy of leaves, accompanied by a choir of birds, awe towards the magnificence of creation and the amazing imagination of the Creator seems to rise as easily as breath. Meeting where we do each week we have become attuned to the Seasons and to the elements. We take notice. Awakened to wonder, awe spreads like wildflowers into our everyday lives. Worshipping the God of Life in the very tangible presence of creation increases our reverence for the whole of life. We feel in our bones that “where there is an absence of awe there is destruction.”(-Lao Tzu) is a true and accurate explanation for much of the harm that is done. Considering “the lilies of the fields and the birds of the air” becomes a lived, felt experience not an abstract axiom when in the very midst of the those lilies and those birds

Opening our hearts to wonder also opens them to grief and concern about the environment. We choose to notice the cost of not living in right relationship with God, self, neighbours (human and non-human) and the earth. We seek to be more informed (did you know that we would need 8 planet earths if the whole world were to live like the average Adelaidian?) We lament the way we live and acknowledge how hard it is for us to change.

We pay attention to using and moving our bodies in worship, especially when we pray, so as to be in touch with our own creatureliness.

In attending to our sacred text, we listen especially for the ways in which the subversive wisdom of Jesus might influence our own practices of living. Input from the worship leader is brief; a tantalising enticement to conversation, to which all are invited to have their say.

Our idea of communion is far broader than the Eucharistic meal. We delight in taking the radically inclusive nature of Christian communion to extend to more than just those who are present and more than just to the human race. The magpies who gather on the edge of our circle remind us that we are a part of life, not the centre of it. We like to acknowledge those who have gone before – creatures who once lived where we meet; the traditional custodians, the Kaurna; those who had the foresight to plant the trees whose majesty they would never see; people who have influenced us for better. In our four directions prayer we also like to pray for those who are far way and for the future, that life which is yet to come.

All Christian worship is a derivative of the Hebrew notion of the Sabbath. Within our worship we have instituted some particular Sabbath practices, like 10 minutes of time to walk, wander, or sit in quiet and stillness on our own. We also encourage each other to engage in other Sabbath practices at times when we are not meeting, like Buy Nothing Day or Earth Hour. Traditionally the Sabbath was a 24 hour period when the faithful were forbidden to engage in any activity which might be seen as an attempt to improve upon creation. Even God kept it (still keeps it?) For us it is a time to leave aside our cleverness – usually just for an hour or two. One person says that the fact that there is no PowerPoint to distract her is one of the very reasons she worships with us. It’s time out from our getting and spending, having and holding culture. A time to notice what God is doing and be thankful, to re-connect, to reflect and make decisions about how we want to live. A famous frog once said,”its not easy being green”. The way I see it, it’s soon going to be much harder to be anything other than green.

Today I am reflecting on whether the practices we use in worship on a Sunday morning carry through to the whole of life: are they practices for life as well as for worship?