Song of Songs 4:1-7, 12-15
Love all God’s creation, both the whole and every grain of sand. Love every leaf, every ray of light. Love the animals, love the plants, love each separate thing. If thou love each thing thou wilt perceive the mystery of God in all; and when once thou perceive this, thou wilt thenceforward grow every day to a fuller understanding of it: until thou come at last to love the whole world with a love that will then be all-embracing and universal.
Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
These words are spoken by a character in the story who is known as a particularly holy man, an elder to whom people go for wisdom. ‘Love all God’s creation’ is his advice. The whole of it, yes, but also every small detail. When we can learn to do that, we will have grown closer to what Jesus invites us to become: people who love God with all our hearts, love our neighbours as ourselves, and even love our enemies. But it seems to me that the wisdom of Jesus, of the Bible, of the elder in this quote is this: the direction of love goes from the particular to the universal, from the person in front of you to humanity in general, from the tiny bug to the whole of the universe. September is known as the Season of Creation, a time in the Church calendar when Christians of all kinds of traditions ponder and pray about creation, focussing particularly on climate change and the challenges of acting justly and living well on this planet we call home. And I’d like us to begin the season of creation with this thought: you can’t love the universal until you love the particular. And the way into the universal is through the doorway of the particular.
I experienced this when I first visited Kew Gardens. In one of their glasshouses, I came across this wonderful little plant (pictured above). ). It caught my attention straight away. From a distance it looks a bit showy, exotic even. But the closer you get, you realise that this plant hosts lots of little flowers, each one waiting to emerge, each one you could quite easily miss and walk past. The detail of these delicate and intricate flowers sparked my imagination. In a garden that stretches over kilometres, a place full of huge trees and exotic flowers, there is this collection of tiny flowers, and all of it is loved by God, all of it exists because he loves it. And if I can learn to love it, too, then I will be joining my heart to the heart of God. Me seeing and loving this plant is a way I can connect to God. And with that we discover the spiritual tool that will help us face the reality of climate change and do our part to make a difference.
Love is the best motivator in the universe because it has an energy that is limitless. Remember our reading last week: ‘Love is strong as death…it burns like a blazing fire…many waters cannot quench love.’ Love is powerful. Which is why we are back with the Song of Songs for a while. One of the things you’ll notice when reading this love song is the number of references to the natural world. When the lovers speak to and about each other, they keep going back to nature to help them express their feelings. We heard it this morning: your eyes are doves, your hair is a flock of goats, your lips are crimson thread, your cheeks are halves of pomegranate, and so on. Of course, if you take this literally you’ll end up with a rather strange image of this woman. We are expected to hear just how close these two lovers are to the world around them. They aren’t simply in their environment; they are part of the environment. Their love story would be impossible without the trees and the myrrh, the gazelles and the mountains, the streams and the doves. It all is vital to their story. Could it be that we need to hear over and again that we too cannot live our lives separate from the natural world? I can’t imagine my life without the beauty of this world, without the enjoyment of taste, without the feeling of colder mornings or when the sun shines on your skin. This Song invites us to remember that our whole lives are lived in connection with this world, and all our life stories involve everything around us. God loves God’s creation and wants us to love it too.
In the second part of our reading, verses 12-15, we hear the man speaking of his beloved as a garden locked and a fountain sealed. You’ll remember another famous biblical garden, the garden in Eden. ). From this garden flowed waters, a paradise filled with diverse plants and animals, food that was pleasant to eat, fragrances that captured the attention. And once humanity was placed into this garden, they were given the opportunity to partner with God in helping it to its potential. The language used, though, has been troubling for many. In the first story of creation, Genesis 1, we hear these words: let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air… The word ‘dominion’ means lordship, a kind of authority that assumes a hierarchy and a separation. In the second story of creation, Genesis 2, the language is different: working in partnership with creation. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. But then we have another incident in chapter 3 of Genesis. You’ll know the story I’m sure, it involves fruit from a tree, a snake, and Adam & Eve. We’re then told that human beings would now have to work hard to make the land produce food, that childbirth would be painful, and so on. This speaks of a difficult relationship between humanity and creation. But here in the Song we are offered an alternative way, and it is encapsulated in the word love. Instead of domination and instead of painful work, we are invited to love the world as God loves the world. We are invited to do what love invites us to do: serve, be generous, invest ourselves, be open to challenge, on behalf of creation. No longer do we seek to dominate, to abuse, to think of nature as separate from ourselves; now we seek to live in loving harmony. Of course, the same applies to our human relationships, doesn’t it? Follow the story of the two lovers and you’ll see an example of a healthy relationship: mutual affection, accepting the shadow sides of each other, respecting of boundaries, willingness to serve, words of affirmation, asking how to serve and give. What if we could live that way with our natural world? What if we could love it as God loves it?
Our world is facing a serious challenge. I don’t have to tell you this; the way humans live on this planet is not sustainable. We have not loved God’s creation well. We have extracted its resources, destroyed delicate habitats, made entire species extinct, all for the sake of our selfish desires. But we have an opportunity to change. And for me the only way this will be possible is if we start to learn the way of love as described in the Song of Songs. Can we love each separate thing? Can we view each part of God’s creation as sacred because God holds it and cares for it and loves it? If we can, we will find that we can no longer spoil it. We will no longer destroy habitats because we love them too much to see them ruined. We will make changes to our habits, giving up things that harm the planet. We will seek to protect and nurture the parts of the world we have authority over. That is the way a lover acts towards the one they love; that’s how we see the two lovers act in the Song of Songs.
So a challenge, an opportunity, for you this week: every day find something small, some little part of creation, and do your best to love it. Pay attention to it, try to view it through God’s eyes. Take that thing with you in prayer to God and ask for help to love it better. And through that separate thing, you might come to love the whole of creation more. I have prepared a little prayer guide to help you, which you can download here.
If we can learn to love each separate thing, we can learn to love the whole too. And if we love the whole, we will serve and protect and nurture and not destroy. And best of all: we will be joining our hearts with the heart of God. So may you discover a fresh love for creation this week. May you realise again that this is the same love with which God loves you. And may all of this give you courage and confidence to challenge the evils of our day which are damaging God’s good creation. Amen.
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