The Season of Creation has drawn to a close but our need to care for the Earth is ongoing. As the T-shirt says, there is no Planet B. I've just finished Neil DeGrasse Tyson's Astrophysics for People in a Hurry and what a joy it was. I thought that I would formally close off these creation-themed posts with some reflections on what he calls the cosmic perspective.
The day he learned that, "more bacteria live and work on 1cm of [his] colon than the number of people who have ever existed in the world" was the day he revised his thinking on who or what was in charge. He realised that people were not so much masters of space and time as "participants in a great cosmic chain of being". The bottom line being that we do not so much live in the universe as that the universe lives in us (we are made of the elements forged in the cores of stars whose explosions make them available as building blocks for everything around us). Getting this 'cosmic perspective' is about having wisdom about our place in the universe. Tyson highlights particular attributes of this wisdom:
1. It belongs to everyone
2. It is humble.
3. It enables us to grasp both the large and the small.
4. It opens our minds to extraordinary ideas but it stops us becoming gullible because it's based on evidence.
5. It gives us a realistic view of the universe, which forces us to reassess the value of all humans to one another.
6. It shows Earth to be small yet precious.
7. It finds beauty in the universe, and in the laws of physics that shape it.
8. It allows us to see beyond our circumstances and to transcend our primal needs.
9. It makes a mockery of nationalism.
10. It embraces our kinship with the rest of life on earth as well as our atomic kinship with the rest of the universe.
Tyson would probably hate what I'm about to say because it's clear from an aside in the book that he has little time for God. But when I read his attributes of the cosmic perspective I couldn't help but think: call it whatever you're comfortable with, but this is what I would call the 'God perspective'. Each of these ten items are equally aspects of the view when looking through a God-window.
God is for everyone; seeing things from God's perspective keeps us humble; it can encompass both the whole of creation and the hairs on our heads, the sparrows and the lilies of the field; the Christian faith is extraordinary - and based on facts even atheists accept (though there will always be things that cannot be proven, only accepted in faith and/or experienced); God's perspective as viewed through the Christian lens jolly well ought to make us value all human beings deeply (when it doesn't, something has gone seriously awry); it does show Earth to be small yet precious; it does lead us to wonder at the beauty of the universe; getting a glimpse of our lives from God's perspective can help us to both embrace and transcend our circumstances, and enlarges our vision of what a meaningful life looks like; God is not nationalist, and true worship of God excludes the possibility of idolising one's country; and finally the God perspective shows us our deep relationships with all the rest of the created order, and indeed with God.
By coincidence (is there such a thing in God's economy?) today's reading for Morning Prayer was from the book of Ecclesiasticus 1.1-10:
All wisdom is from the Lord, and with him it remains for ever. The sand of the sea, the drops of rain, and the days of eternity—who can count them? The height of heaven, the breadth of the earth, the abyss, and wisdom—who can search them out? Wisdom was created before all other things, and prudent understanding from eternity. The root of wisdom—to whom has it been revealed? Her subtleties—who knows them? There is but one who is wise, greatly to be feared, seated upon his throne—the Lord. It is he who created her; he saw her and took her measure; he poured her out upon all his works, upon all the living according to his gift; he lavished her upon those who love him.
The Hebrew Bible's take on wisdom is that it is how obedience to God's ways is expressed. The wise obey, obedience leads to wisdom. It leads, we might say, to an insight into God's perspective. The reason for the season of creation is surely, in the end, to develop a God's eye view of creation? We engage in practices of caring for the planet not only because it is the right thing to do for practical reasons, but because these disciplines develop our wisdom about our place within creation. We are not just in creation - creation is also in us.
The official Season of Creation is over for this year. My prayer is that we will continue to be thankful for all that we have, to act responsibly towards all that we can, and to continue to practise the disciplines that deepen our God perspective of God's glorious creation.
Tyson, Neil deGrasse, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry (Norton: London & New York, 2017)
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