Heron, otter, magpie, acorn....

Painting by Amber Merrick-Potter, owned by the Blog author

I love words, I have always enjoyed reading and writing. Recently I’ve come across a group of words that are under threat:

heron, magpie, otter, acorn, clover, ivy, sycamore, dandelion, buttercup, poppy, radish, willow, bramble, weasel, vicar, psalm, carol, bishop, chapel, pulpit, sin, pew and devil.

Nature words and church words. Why are they under threat? In the latest edition of the Oxford Junior Dictionary these words have been taken out in favour of words such as:

blog, broadband, MP3 player, voicemail, attachment, database, export, chatroom, bullet point, cut and paste, allergic, celebrity, childhood, tolerant, vandalism and negotiate.

The words we use echo our interests, our concerns, how we spend our time and what is important to us. In short, they show us who we are. We are living through a period of extraordinary technological revolution; the pace of change has been phenomenal. We have jumped head long as a society into this revolution, grasping every opportunity it has thrown our way. From the computer, to the internet, to the smart phone, to interconnectivity, social media, blogging and vlogging, technology and its ability to connect us has taken over our lives. We are always online and in communication, showing and telling others all about who we are and what we do. We have gained a whole new world, like when the printing presses first got going, and books suddenly became more available. It is exciting and wonderful and extraordinary. Except that such interconnectivity reveals a deeper alienation from other environments, other ways of being. In our enthusiasm for the new we have not properly accounted for what we have jettisoned, in order to embrace ‘the new’.

Words like blog and chatroom need to be in the dictionary, or we won’t be preparing children for the world as it is. But, at the same time the dictionary has given us a gift – it has shown us something that we can too readily avoid who we really are, or, what we have become. It is a mirror to our very selves. This ‘wake-up call’ or ‘moment of epiphany’ then presents us with a choice. Is this who we want to be? Is this who we want our children to be? Then, if not, what are we going to change?

Jesus chose time outside and alone, as the times when he would pray. When we think about the encounters that Jesus had with people throughout his ministry, these are encounters that regularly occur outside.  Jesus teaches people outside in big and small crowds: he gets baptised in the flowing water of the Jordan (not in a building); he spends 40 days outside in the desert; he spends the night in prayer before his death in the Garden of Gethsemane, and is crucified outside, on a tree. When he returns, who does Mary think that he is, but the gardener? The list can go on, take a closer look at one of the Gospels and pay attention to where Jesus is located.

I wonder when Christianity became an indoor religion. There is no need for it to be. We talk a lot about wanting to get people over the threshold of the church as though the only place to worship God or to become a Christian is inside a sacred building. Perhaps, as our appreciation of the natural world has reduced and our cities and our cars have got bigger and louder, we have retreated inside out of necessity. In so doing we have become detached from our natural world, from its relationship to us as a place of renewal, refreshment and most importantly encounter with God.

Jesus prayed outside. Jesus taught outside. Jesus was among the people, in the crowds, on the river, the lake, at the well, on the donkey. Where might we find Jesus today, and how would he teach us to pray?

I have a sense he may say to us: ‘go outside’; ‘consider the lilies’, ‘look at the birds of the air’.

The spiritual challenge of our current ecological crisis is an urgent one that we need to address. It’s true that climate change, loss of habitats, species loss and the like are massive issues that we should counteract by changing our habits and behaviour. But, habit change for us as Christians, should come from what we believe about God.

God is the Creator and as such like Him we have creative spirits; we are also innovators and inventors, and all this is good and blessed. But, and, we have been alienated from the Garden of Eden. Humans get tempted and we give in - we take the fruit from the tree that is forbidden: if something can happen, we let it; if there is a new path, we follow it; a new technology, we eagerly eat it up. It is only after taking the fruit from the tree that we experience the consequences. It is only after we’ve delighted in the joys of the smart phone that we realise we’ve become addicted to checking our emails, looking at Facebook, reading the news. We then have a choice to make.

Heron, magpie, otter, ivy, carol, psalm, blog, allergic, celebrity, childhood – what is the imaginative word-world that you want to inhabit? What is the imaginative word-world that you want your children and grandchildren to inhabit? How do you need to ‘turn-around’, change your behaviour, your habits and your routines to bring your spiritual imagination to life?