Text: Genesis 1:1-2:4a

 The Peace of Wild Things, by Wendell Berry [watch an animation here, listen to Wendell Berry read here]

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. 

Today we begin a sermon series on caring for Creation. So it seems appropriate to begin with Wendell Berry, who as both a farmer and a poet, has been a steward of the earth and attentive to God’s creation for most of his life. 

I wish that, like Berry, I could rest in the grace of the world and feel free. But the truth is I (also like him) despair for it. I am anxious and fearful for the future of the earth, that the beauty of the water and the great heron that Berry speaks of are disappearing. North America has lost over 3 billion birds over the past half century. (Cornell, “US Bird Populations Continue Alarming Decline”) 

I am anxious and fearful that the stars that Berry waits for are not only day-blind but invisible at night as well because of the increased light pollution, disrupting the beauty and rest of the dark and the natural rhythms of creatures – including humans – who need both the uninterrupted dark sky and the softness of the stars and moon. Over 70 percent of earth’s land animals are nocturnal but as day-creatures we often forget both that and the ways that so much light affects our own brains and bodies. Plus we miss so much beauty! (Megan Eaves-Egenes, “The Case for the Disappearing Night”)

I am anxious and fearful that when I google to find details about the birds or the night sky the first results I receive are not the Cornell Ornithology Lab or Meagan Eave-Egenes, author of the book Nightfaring: In Search of the Disappearing Darkness, who I’ve cited above. Instead I’ve gotten AI summaries and the pursuit of AI and the infrastructure needed to generate it is taking over our land and our water and our resources in what seems like exponential ways.

The birds and the light and the land are not parts of Creation that have just randomly disappeared. They have been consumed and dominated – are even now being consumed and dominated – by another creature among them: human beings. Unfortunately many human beings believe that these first verses of the bible give us license to do just that.

The first chapter of Genesis is a text that was written for worship. I’m sure you noticed the repetition. In the same way that we often do in a call to worship or a prayer of response or when we sing some hymns, there’s a refrain. It is a song of praise in which the stanzas are days. 

It was morning, it was evening. It was morning, it was evening. Each a stanza in a song of praise for both God the Creator and for the Masterpiece that God called into being. Over and over we hear “it was good.” “God saw that it was good.”

As God creates, God also blesses. We make a mistake in thinking that it is only humanity that God commissions and blesses. Everything that God sees is blessed with goodness, for starters. There is nothing on this earth that is not fully and beautifully good. And as God starts to create habitable places that can bring forth life, God also blesses with growth and fertility.

 Then God blessed them” says verse 22, “‘Be fertile and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let the birds multiply on the earth.'” And then, when humanity is created on the sixth day, the same day as the other earth animals, we together with the animals receive that same blessing. We make a mistake in thinking that blessing is only ours.

By the time humanity is created in God’s image, we have a whole six stanzas of the song of Creation to learn what it means to reflect God. God invites, God creates, God calls good, God delights. God gives food. God makes life. God finds balance in light and dark, water and land. God is a skilled craftsperson. An artist.

So when God gives the blessing and commandment to humanity, “fill the earth and [blank: subdue? have dominion? rule? control?] All of these are ways that the interpreters have rendered that verse. Bible scholar Ellen Davis suggests “skilled mastery.” 

There is no doubt that humans do have a special place in God’s Creation. We are aware of our own creatureliness. We are the only ones described as indeed being in God’s image. 

In an interview with Krista Tippett on the program On Being, she says:

 The Hebrew word is a strong word, and I render it “exercise skilled mastery amongst the creatures” because I think the notion of skilled mastery suggests something like a craft, an art, of being human without taking away the fact that humans do, from the perspective of almost all the biblical writers — not every single one but almost all — humans occupy a very special place of power and privilege and responsibility in the world. But the condition for our exercise of skilled mastery is set by the prior blessing of the creatures of sea and sky that they are to be fruitful and multiply. So whatever it means for us to exercise skilled mastery, it cannot undo that prior blessing.

She goes on to talk about the emphasis in the text on the fruitfulness and fecundity of the earth, on how it provides for all creatures and every part of God’s creation is given food. And that then, at the very end of the chapter, God reminds the human care-takers, “Look, I give you every seed-bearing plant that’s upon all the earth and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit that shall be yours for food. And to all the animals and to the birds and to the things that creep on the earth.”

To Davis, this is the strongest clue that humans must be called to skilled mastery. Because we are the ones who know that everyone – including ourselves – need to eat. We can see the systems of how food is produced and consumed. We can create or we can interrupt those systems. 

I also think it’s super interesting that God doesn’t tell humans to eat the animals – or even for the animals to eat each other. It’s the growing things that are called food. To me, that evokes a couple of things. One, that there is no need to dominate or do harm to another creature to get food – even among animals and wild things. God has created a world without violence.

And second it sounds like God’s vision is for vegetarianism. As someone who is an aspiring vegetarian, I can see the ways that especially the factory meat farming takes a toll on land and waterways and consumes resources much more heavily than plant-based eating.

It is a beautiful gift and blessing that humans have been given. But like Uncle Ben told Peter Parker (aka Spiderman), with great power comes great responsibility. Genesis 1 is written like a song with a rhythm, if not a beat. It returns to themes and has cycles in a way that calls to mind the cycles and rhythm of the seasons, of the land itself. 

It’s a rhythm that many of us have largely distanced ourselves from. Even of the most basic rhythm of dark and light/night and day. Knowing that we can flip a switch any time. That unless we live far in the countryside, our streets and sidewalks are bright and cast a glow that argues with the stars.

I wonder if honing our mastery skills within creation might bring us closer to understanding how to live within the rhythms of creation and I wonder if that’s what Wendell Berry was getting at when he lies down with the wood drake.

The very creatureliness of the animals means that though they may not be able to express an understanding of them, they know the dark and the light, the movement of summer into fall. They know when the fruit is ripe and when the seeds are ready to harvest. If I want a blueberry I will import one from South America, without a second thought.

It will be hard to relieve myself of anxiety related to climate and the land. But I do believe that there is hope when we work together with care and consciousness as we are called to. So many Christians – including groups like the Anabaptist Climate Collaborative – are making connections between God’s call to humans in Creation and our responsibility to engage our skilled mastery.

And so many artists and activists are offering concrete and hope-filled ways to engage, to reduce our consumption, to lighten our footprint, to create greater balance. I don’t need to make a list for you; you can google it (and if you type -AI after it, you won’t get the auto summary). 

But I will say that the same Cornell article that I quoted above about disappearing bird populations also reports that when individuals and communities and business interests work together and have a will toward conservation and restoration it works. And the article notes, rightly, that the same ecosystems that support birds also support us. 

And so, I will lie down where the heron feeds and I will again share the words of Wendell Berry in blessing as we close.

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

—