Let’s Get Down to Earth Again

My first and primary source of revelation came one night in early childhood. Gazing into the sky with my father that evening, I’ve never forgotten how the vast universe of sparkling stars and swirling planets spread out before us. Somewhere deep within, I experienced the Holy and felt a part of the awesome creation. A few years later, during Girl Scout days, I would yearn to be immersed in nature with sky, lake, forest, woodland plants and animals, a feeling so deep I had no words to express its gravitational pull.

When I eventually became a minister, I felt honored when parishioners trusted me enough to come to me and quietly reveal their own stories of the sacred, often speaking of them for the first time: the break of dawn, the golden hour of afternoon light, a mountain vista, or the experience of rocking a newborn or holding a hand at life’s end. I was deeply saddened to learn they didn’t dare speak of them earlier for fear of not being taken seriously or for not being believed. 

Even as the Earth is in peril, there is an absurd unwillingness to move beyond the status quo. Action must rise from the margins, as movements always do.

This would be my experience for decades: an abiding sense of the holy discovered in the elements of the natural world, yet finding a lack of enthusiasm within religious institutions for earth-bound awe or, more broadly, creation care.

The Fragrance of Bread 

As I came of age, sacred moments intertwined with the everyday. My mother bought the notion of convenience sold to post war homemakers: canned soup, TV dinners, and store bought-bread. Except on snow days. Oh, how we LOVED snow days in New England, for only then would she bake homemade bread. The aroma filled the house as we eagerly gathered around the table to taste the heavenly goodness. Love smelled like the fragrance of bread.

I was smitten and learned to make bread myself, with a new spirit of simplicity revealed to me. The life-shaping More-with-Less Cookbook was my teacher.[1] Between its pages are directions for making just about every kind of food from whole, healthy ingredients. Prayers from around the globe are tucked into the margins of the recipes. Bread-baking became the spiritual practice that kept me grounded over the years through the peaks and valleys of life. Even now I am still up to my elbows in flour, water, salt and yeast, mixing, and kneading this prayer into every loaf: 

“Be gentle when you touch bread. 
Let it not lie uncared for, unwanted.
So often bread is taken for granted.
There is so much beauty in bread.
Beauty of sun and soil,
Beauty of patient toil.
Wind and rain have caressed it,
Christ often blessed it.
Be gentle when you touch bread.”

                                                       —author unknown[2]

Fifty years have passed since I packed up all of my experiences of the Holy, my deepest yearnings, bid farewell to the world of teaching second-graders, and started a pilgrimage into the unknown of Yale Divinity School. The intellectual challenges of learning about God were important preparation for my new calling into parish ministry. Yet everyday experiences of the sacred were the most profound—soulful prayer and holy ground moments unfolded in and beyond the chapel, the classroom, library, and the green. Life in the campus apartments was rich with opportunities for practicing simple living. As cash-strapped graduate students we found creative solutions for repurposing furniture and other possessions, cooking homemade meals, and gathering to share them. This would be a unique time for many of us. 

A More Passionate Spirituality

I brought my convictions about spiritual practice and environmental action into my years of local church ministry and conference leadership. We highlighted the theme of creation care in unique settings, but the church as a whole lacked a sense of urgency or passion for the work. The greatest allies came not from the congregation but from the wider community. The confines of traditional beliefs and practices no longer seem to fit for many of us. It left me searching for a wider, passionate spirituality.

Last year, a Celtic pilgrimage along St. Cuthbert’s Way in Britain provided ample practice for walking lightly on the earth and experiencing oneness with creation. The 62-mile journey in the footsteps of the 7^th century saint took me from the borderlands of Scotland across hills and Roman roads, past ancient wells, along farms, grazing sheep, and stunning wild flowers. We would come to embrace the elements: rain, sun, wind, and mud, lots and lots of mud as we closed in on the English coast and the Holy Island of Lindisfarne. This would be more challenging and more beautiful than we imagined.

Earlier this year, a second pilgrimage to the wild and windy island of Iona off the western coast of Scotland acquainted me with St. Columba, a highly influential force in the early church and Celtic Christian wisdom.

Original Blessing

These Celtic saints and their ancient wisdom teach of original blessing, that everyone is born with a sense of the sacred, and every creature and all of creation is sacred. It holds a wide, inclusive welcome, a passion for peace, equity, beauty, simplicity, imagination, and vision for everyone to love and care for all God’s creation. 

My experiences of the Holy have helped me make sense of the gravitational pull of Earth on my life—sun, sky, water, wind and soil—and the deep joy I feel by attempting to live in harmony with God’s sacred creation. Author John Philip Newell recalls a talk he was giving on the Celtic tradition and its invitation “to look for this light in one another and in everything that has being.” A Mohawk elder attended that night. Newell writes, “The Mohawk elder stood with tears in his eyes as he spoke, ‘As I have been listening to these themes, I have been wondering where I would be tonight, I have been wondering where my people would be tonight, I have been wondering where the Western world would be tonight, if the mission that had come to us from Europe centuries ago had come expecting to find light in us.’”[3]

The Sacred Within?

I find myself wondering what Earth would be like if long ago Christians had been content to live simply, care for others, and honor the Earth. By failing to nurture and honor the universal sense of the sacred within all of God’s people, creatures, and creation, the church has missed chances for transformational leadership in the climate crisis. My sense is that all of our institutions reflect the dominant culture of power, profit, and privilege. Even as the Earth is in peril, there is an absurd unwillingness to move beyond the status quo. Action must rise from the margins, as movements always do, to resist the prevailing cultural consumerism and discern a vision for a more resilient network of communities, a more just economy, and the health of the Earth. 

Could a re-emerging, down-to-earth spirituality awaken new passion and urgency for the regeneration of earth, working to make the world better than we found it? 

The Rev. Janet Smith-Rushton ’78 M.Div. is a retired Elder in the New England Conference of the United Methodist and lives in Falmouth, Mass. She leads the Waquoit Zero Waste Bulk Buying Group and volunteers at the Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. A member of the Yale Club of Cape Cod Alumni Board, she also serves on the YDS Alumni Board.