www.seasonofcreation.com

One of the things that is very humbling for me is the incredible people who encourage and support SU’s EPYC work in “equipping a generation of eco-prophets in the transformational nonviolent Way of Christ”. One of those people is my hero, mentor and friend Joanna Macy. Recently Joanna wrote that one of my lines from my EPYC updates she wanted to “write up a stick on the wall”. The line?

“Increasingly I wake with praise on my lips as I rise to face the pain of our world.”

The latest project of Biblical scholar Norman Habel (who I think is one of Australia’s best kept secrets), helps communities do just that. Called “A Season of Creation” the brilliant project is explained on the website:

“There is growing concern in Christian communities about the ecological crisis and the way human beings are treating God’s Earth. Planet Earth is in peril. All creation is suffering. An effective way to focus these concerns is through worship… In the season of Creation we celebrate Christ together with creation, we face the ecological crisis with Christ, and we serve Christ in the healing of creation.”

As Joanna says over and over again, “It all starts with gratitude”. Norman Habel is the Editor of the “Earth Bible”, “Readings from Perspective of the Earth” and “The Land is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies”.

Like his maybe more well known American contemporary Walter Brueggemann, Norman Habel’s brilliant Old Testament scholarship provides a rich “manure” for a deep and practical biblical spirituality of ecojustice that radiates from the very heart of the gospel. That in Jesus, the “kingdom of God”, God’s “Great Turning”, or the “nonviolent transformation of all things” has been initiated and we are invited to take part. Or as the great Eastern Orthodox philosopher Nicolas Berdyaev put it,

“The kingdom of God, is the transfiguration of the world, universal resurrection, a new heaven and a new earth.”

For photos of what this means practically for the Peace Tree Community click here