Create in me a clean heart

“Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts” (Psalm 95:8)

Morning Prayer traditionally includes recitation of Psalm 95, “Come let us sing to the Lord,” also known as the Venite (from the Latin for “Come”). Usually we stop at Verse 7 (“Oh that today you would hearken to his voice”), but during Lent you can add Verses 8-11, which are a little harsher, calling on the people of Israel not to harden their hearts as they did during the 40 years of exodus in the desert.

Today I drove over to the Marin Headlands, right on the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. I wanted to take a break from theology and look at some geology. The Marin Headlands has some fantastic outcrops of Franciscan Complex chert (see image to left). They date to the Jurassic Period (about 145-199 million years ago). They are formed from billions of tiny skeletons of ancient marine creatures gradually turned to rock that was then beautifully heaved, folded, and exposed by the sea. I went to a place called Kirby Cove, and I had the beach to myself.

I poked around to my heart's content, checking out the geological formations, examining the sand composition, and generally enjoying doing geeky things that few others ever want to do with me. I also spent some time in meditation and prayer. It was an easy place to contemplate the grandeur of God.

I cleared my head by praying the Venite, but since we have been adding Verses 8-11, I automatically began adding those verses as well. Just as I said “harden not your hearts” I looked over at this tough outcrop, jutting up out of the ocean, slowly being shaped, and worn, and changed. I realized that this rock and my heart have a lot in common. I have, in fact, been hardening my heart for quite some time; that hardening my heart is the simplest way to characterize my struggles over the past months. But I also realized that maybe I could take some hope from this rock.

Thanks to the support of my home parish, to kind and direct insights, emails, and caring responses to some dramatic pleas on my part, I've managed to begin to truly open my heart to this path. I realize now that I've spent quite a bit of time hardening my heart to my church, to the words of other people, and to God and I've hardened my heart to the changes that this path has already begun to bring.

I looked out at the rock outcrop and thought about how it, hard as it is, is still being shaped as part of God's creation. Here you have what are essentially billions of tiny animal skeletons, that sank to the bottom of the sea in the Jurassic Period. They were buried, heated, hardened, and heaved back up, and now they sit, slowly rounded, moulded, and shaped by the sea. I thought, I may be a bit rocky myself, but I can do that too. I can let God and God's creation work on me. I can harden not my heart; be folded, rounded, shaped into what I'm supposed to be now. I can find my new place in creation. Not a bad start to Lent.

Expanding Our Sense of Sacred Community

This past week I attended a conference, Epiphany West, which gave me both a necessary credit and some new insights into theology and the environment. The theme of the conference was “Sacred Elements,” and our sessions and speakers focused on ways to develop new theologies and even new spirituality for confronting and dealing with the growing environmental crisis. Throughout the week, the anthropologist in me kept kicking in. The more I thought about our environmental problems the more I thought they are really people problems - our inability to honor the gift of the earth given from our ancestors in the past, our inability to adjust our personal and corporate behavior now, and our inability to adjust what we do to ensure that future generations will enjoy the gift of this world. I was particularly struck by an insight from a panelist in a session called “Muslims Going Green.” He argued that the fundamental crisis was not a behavioral crisis or a policy crisis but rather a spiritual crisis. I felt that was very true and it also resonated with my growing sense that there really isn’t an environmental problem as much as an anthro-problem.

The very last talk, by Dr. Marion Grau (theology professor at CDSP), bumped me in a little different direction. She argued that we religious and faithful folk need to explore “re-sacralizing” or “re-enchanting” the elements - earth, fire, air, water. These elements are fundamentally sacred in many religions, even if we have somewhat drifted from emphasizing their sacred and holy quality in Christianity. Her emphasis on these elements as a focus for our theological reflection and for spirituality made me shift my focus on us humans. Perhaps it isn’t simply a matter of a human-caused problem with a human-centric solution. OR, maybe we simply need to expand our idea of community to include these elements. Perhaps we need to sacralize them by granting them the same sacred import we grant to human life. What if we included our world’s elements - earth, fire, air, water, their chemicals, their glorious combinations, in our community of care in a profoundly fundamental way, with the same import as we give to our human community members? I’m looking forward to seeing where Dr. Grau’s theology goes.

In many ways I was drawn back to my faith and religion because it helped me get beyond my own narrow ego. Say what you will about religion, but I think good ones remind you that you are not the center of the universe. Faith and religion also gave me daily reminders to focus on community, on my obligations to others starting with God. I’m now pondering effective ways and ideas that can help us all to grow our community even more, to include the very elements of our world.