#temply

THE GREAT CATHEDRAL OF THE EARTH

It is Wednesday of Holy Week. I am in New Harmony, Indiana standing in the Roofless Church, which to me is one of the most prophetic sites of prayer in the western world. It has four defining walls but truly it has no roof and it's only partial enclosure is the canopy at the far end of the church.

Fifty years ago, well in advance of the earth consciousness of today, Jane Blaffer Owen of New Harmony, a most beautiful and wise woman in collaboration with the teachings of Paul Tillich, George Mcleod and others saw that our sacred sites must not to be cut off from the holy temple of the earth; that our sacred sites must not represent enclosed separation from the other peoples and the  other creatures of the earth.

Yes, it may well be that most of us much of the time require sanctuaries that will provide us with some shelter from the elements in which to gather with others but even in these sanctuaries we must find language, rituals, symbolism that keeps reminding us that the primary context of our sanctuary of our life is the earth, evolving and unfolding from God.

During Holy Week we are journeying towards resurrection and this journey takes us also true stories of falseness, betrayal, endings.

The earth  knows much of that story of suffering and in part it is because of humanity’s betrayal of the earth.

If Christianity is to make a profound offering to the world at this point in time we must keep remembering in our life, in our vision, in our commitments,  the great cathedral and the living cathedral of earth, sea, and sky. | John Philip Newell