The Monk Manifesto: Kinship With Creation
Matthew 6:26-30
March 10, 2013
It was back in 1976 that the world’s second-most-famous Scientologist, John
Travolta, starred in a made-for-TV movie called The Boy in the Plastic Bubble. The
movie was about a young man whose immune system doesn’t work, so any contact with
germs could kill him. To stay alive, he has to stay in his bedroom, where the air is
specially filtered to be germ-free. When he goes to school, he has to wear an orange
spacesuit that keeps the dangers of the world at bay. The drama in the movie comes when
he falls in love with the girl next door and has to decide whether to step out of this aseptic
cocoon, at great risk of death, so he can be with the woman he loves.
You may remember that Seinfeld had some fun with this theme, when George
visits the house of a “bubble boy” – a rude teenage brat – and goes ballistic over a game
of Trivial Pursuit, accidentally tearing through the protective plastic and sending Bubble
Boy to the hospital. A very funny episode.
There was for a while a fascination with this idea, the sad and lonely plight of
people whose vulnerable bodies need to be shielded from the world. Some found in these
stories a metaphor for fragmentation, the way people were increasingly feeling
disconnected from each other.
That TV movie was 37 years ago, in the pre-Internet age. I was thinking about it
this week because I think the problem has changed. The web has made possible a lot of
human connections: you can discuss your stamp album with a fellow collector in Japan;
you can find out on Facebook what your sixth-grade teacher had for breakfast this
morning. We’re in danger, though, of a different kind of problem, and that is
disconnection from nature, perhaps the purest expression of God’s creative Spirit. Any
time you are looking at a screen – a computer screen, a television screen, your whiz-bang
smart phone – you are walled off from the natural world by glass and plastic, as surely as
poor John Travolta was imprisoned in his room.
Technology is seductive. But it can jangle you emotionally. It presents a virtual
reality that, it’s good to remember, is not reality. It’s a simulation.
I was interested to read that, as the conclave of cardinals gathers in Rome to
choose the next pope of the Catholic Church, no cell phones are allowed. The reason is
that the cardinals need to be listening for the Holy Spirit, not Googling the candidates’
names. The technology is a distraction.
As we continue with our Lenten series of messages on the principles of monastic
life, we come to this next tenet of the Monk Manifesto: “I commit to cultivating
awareness of my kinship with creation and a healthy asceticism by discerning my use of
energy and things, letting go of what does not help nature to flourish.”
That’s a profession of the examined life, one in which we don’t heedlessly waste
God’s gifts of energy and time, in which we don’t throw money away on stuff at the
expense of experience, in which we try to live consciously and simply.
But it also recognizes that our own creativity – our ability to bring into the world
new ideas, new insights, new art and music and poetry and inspiration – is a shoot
growing from the vine of God’s creative Spirit. We are able to create only because we are
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in touch with that God Spirit – you know, the one that created the world. And if we allow
ourselves to get cut off from the natural world, we lose that connection to God’s creative
power. We dry up. Life becomes arid and repetitious and boring.
So the monks remind us that we need to break the window, tear through the
plastic, and get the skin of our hands and our bare feet onto the natural world. I’ve come
to learn this better in the past few years, about the restorative and energizing power of
being where things grow. I’ve been trying to take my day off to get into the woods
somewhere – Stiglmeier Park in Cheektowaga, maybe, to look at the deer, or along the
Clarence bike trail, or Delaware Park if I’m short on time. And I’ve found that when I do
that, take some time in nature, I feel a lot better. I feel somehow whole again. It pushes
my reset button.
Jesus knew this. In his life and teachings, he was in many ways a nature poet. He
told stories and pointed to things in the natural landscape – flowers, seeds, stalks of
wheat, flowing water, mountains, clouds, salt, sheep. We can imagine him with the sun
on his shoulders, speaking the words that form today’s scripture, from the Sermon on the
Mount – “Look at the birds of the air … consider the lilies of the field, how they grow
…” The portrait Matthew paints is of a prophet deeply connected with nature as a
wellspring for creative thought and action. Jesus knew the power of recognizing his
kinship with all living things and with the created order.
So today’s word is simply that we should do the same. Do like Jesus. I know the
ground is mostly still frozen and our own landscape is painted dirty gray, but don’t
despair! It has been a temperate weekend, the calendar says spring is less than two weeks
away, and real spring, with crocuses and robins and buds on the trees, is not far behind.
One way to remind yourself to do this, to pay attention to the natural world and
recognize our kinship with it, is to do the Jimmy Stewart/It’s a Wonderful Life thing. Try
to look at the world as if you had died, and then imagine: How would I see this if I could
come back for one more day on earth? How would I perceive the crispness of cold air, or
the surprising warmth of the sun on a 30-degree day, or the way your cat arches her back,
or the finely tuned orchestra of birdsong, or the hard sharp stars on a clear night? If you
can do that – daydream yourself back into noticing the incredible gift, the incredible
artistry of creation – you’ll be a good ways toward claiming that kinship with creation. It
will ground you and center you. And you will know yourself to be part of that created
order. The sun and the wind will be your spiritual directors. And you will know yourself
to be created and beloved by God.
If you’re looking for a writer who can crystallize this idea for you, you can’t do
better than the poet Mary Oliver, probably the pre-eminent nature poet of our time. I want
to close with a poem from her 1986 collection called Dream Work. This poem is called
“Wild Geese.” It goes like this:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
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Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
Amen.
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