A precious, fragile gift

The Rev Dr Richard Frazer reflects on the importance of caring for creation.

I HAVE a wee shed that I built a few years ago, constructed mainly from discarded church pews. I had an experience recently there that made me reflect on how careless we can be of so much that is precious in our world. In the shed is a stove so that I can keep warm in cold weather as I retreat there to write.

This day I opened the door of the stove and found a tiny dead bird. It had fallen down the flue and could not escape. My heart grieved in that moment. It made me think of several poems in which an encounter like this reminds us of the harm we can do.

I think of Burns’ poem turning over a mouse’s nest with his plough. The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner about the slaughter of an albatross. There is a poem by John Burnside in which he reflects on hitting a deer with his car and stops, only to see the eyes of this traumatised deer far off in the woods looking back towards him in its wounded terror, “boring into my flesh to stroke the bone”.

Our Christian faith is profoundly earthy. At its heart is the Incarnation, the Divine nature taking on flesh. Jesus is full of stories about the natural world and he uses mud and spittle to cure a man’s blindness.

In the Hebrew Bible, we read of humanity’s ‘dominion’ over nature. Nature is there for our use and, perhaps, plunder. Some have felt that the whole realm of nature is of no consequence and all that matters are individual human souls. However, in the Genesis story there is another vision of human beings with responsibility to ‘tend and serve’ the creation.

Many years ago, I became good friends with a minister called Joe Leckie. He was a thorn in the flesh of the church, reminding us of ‘God’s Green Gifts’ when many in the church had not woken up to the crisis of Climate Change. He was often a lone voice advocating that our faith was telling us to be careful of this precious earth and its fragile beauty.

He once wrote about the environmental movement as people doing God’s work, even though they were not necessarily people of faith. He was perplexed that few people of faith in those days had joined in.

He told me once of the story of Cyrus the Persian, who makes an appearance in Isaiah. Cyrus was not a Jew, but he ordered the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem when he realised that the Jewish people had their minds on other things than their vocation. As Joe said, ‘when God’s people do not do God’s work, God finds other partners to fulfil God’s work’. He felt strongly that care for creation was sacred work.

The slaying of the albatross becomes a transforming moment in the life of the ancient mariner. He comes to see that the whole of creation is a precious, fragile gift as it discloses God’s creative majesty.

“ The consequences of the slaying of the albatross becomes a transforming moment in the life of the ancient mariner.

He prayeth best, who loveth best All things both great and small; For the dear God who loveth us, He made and loveth all.

The latest report on the Climate Emergency from the UN tells us that a liveable future for all is reachable if we take urgent action now. Policy and scientific knowhow will not transform our relationship with nature alone, however. We also need poetry, art and spiritual renewal to awaken us to humanity’s greatest challenge and vocation, the tending and serving of this beautiful garden of God’s creating. ¤

The Rev Dr Richard Frazer is minister at Edinburgh: Greyfriars.