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PREFACE
Two
events sparked off our need to write Earthsong.
The cellar of our
local OXFAM shop was recently converted into a Third World and Green
Resource
Centre. Our friend Alan who is a teacher and who helps there on
Saturday
mornings said to us on one of our visits: 'Why don't you make a green
resource
pack? - we could do with one'. And so it was that we quietly started to
look for
material. But our search took a wider perspective when we learned of
the latest
initiative of the World Council of Churches which has called for a
conciliar
process on 'Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation' asking
Christians
throughout the world to study these issues and respond out of their
experience.
We wrote to Geneva for study materials and concentrated our own effort
on ‘the
Integrity of Creation’.
As
the material
accumulated, we were
faced with the problem of how to present
it. We took the excellent anthology In a Dark Time
by Nicholas
Humphrey and Robert J Lifton as our guide, not in any hope of being
able to
emulate it but rather as a model of the way that such a collection of
material
can be organised by the hands of masters.
The Oxford dictionary defines the word integrity as wholeness,
soundness,
uprightness, honesty. Our friends in Germany study
‘die Bewahrung der
Schöpfung’ while the French talk of la
sauveguarde de la creation.
In the French word sauveguarde are hidden two verbs
of action: keep safe
and guard, we keep safe and guard something on behalf of someone else.
We are
entrusted by the past with a responsibility for the future of creation.
And God
politics are the new Planet politics.
A new territorial imperative comes into being and in the aeons of time,
creation is busy taking another leap. A new adventure is already under
way.
It is an adventure in which every human being on this planet is called
to
participate at the political, economic, social and personal level. The
exploration outwards will not succeed, however, without a
corresponding journey forwards; for this is
uncharted country.
It means finding out about out roots; who
we are, where we came from how, and
why: of being sure that we set out
with sound equipment. It means a recovery, a
reconstruction, a making whole of the past
in the biological, cultural and spiritual sphere.
It means to wonder and meditate on out
common past.
Each of us is only part of the
story of creation and us now need
and want to inhabit a new home: the whole
earth. Therefore the whole must sing in
us it we are to live in the
whole.
This requires a better understanding of how
we arrived where we are now in the
community of living creatures in all its
diversity, and how we are part of it.
It is a long journey back in time.
We are also rediscovering the strength of
our cultural abundance. Here, a journey to look
at our roots is necessary. We must
recover the insights of supplanted and long
forgotten cultures and take them back to
our heart as part of our wealth,
blessing and guide.
It means going back to our spiritual
roots. For we are all spiritual beings
with a capacity - and need to relate, love,
transform - to apprehend lasting forms of true
beauty, harmony and wholeness. Beings who meditate
on the mystery of life. By whatsoever
name we name our God - or give none
- God always is the Lifegiver - the provider,
speaking wisdom through the writers of our sacred
beaks, speaking wisdom through poets, mystics
and sages, speaking wisdom through the
unfolding of all creation itself.
The choice is ours. To be foolish, or
to be wise. To long for death, or
to Cry and give birth. To let Earth
die or to love all life with a
new might and strength.
And let the Earth sing!
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