I’ve just watched a robin flap and splash energetically in the bird bath which a friend and former colleague gave to Geoff and me as we moved to Saint James’. The robin’s enthusiastic bathing reflected its need to keep its feathers in good condition in order to survive, and maybe even its relief at finding a drop of water in the Vicarage’s dry and dusty August garden.
When the bird bath was given to us in January we were in the middle of what felt like an eternal winter. And now we are in what feels like a summer without end. The weather has moved, alarmingly, from one extreme to another in the short time that we’ve been at Saint James’.
Watching the Vicarage garden come alive during the late spring was one of the early delights of our move to Saint James’. And counting the different species of birds in the garden, which is on the former site of Holly Farm and includes a varied stand of mature trees, has been another.
The seasons of the natural world have formed a backdrop to the seasons of the church’s year that we’ve celebrated as we’ve got to know individuals and families in church and in the wider Clayton community. At Saint James’ our youngest members are around one year old and our oldest members around a hundred years old. Our members span a wonderfully wide age range and the generations have so much to share with each other.
Building this new website has illustrated some of the rich gifts, skills and insights that the generations have to share with each other. A small working group of church members came together to build the website. It is fair to say that we members of the working group represented generation x and baby boomers!
Like the robin we had energy and enthusiasm, plus lots of bright and creative ideas. But we faced some technical challenges in actually constructing the website. So, my twenty-one years old nephew, a member of the millennial generation, served as trainer and consultant to us, and between us we built the website. And we members of the older generations have learned a lot of valuable skills that will help us to maintain the website.
At Saint James’ we’ve been thinking a lot about the different generations and the relationships between those generations. One of the things that has struck us is how very different their life experience is, whether in childhood or teenage years or in the kinds of challenges that members of those generations face as adults around housing, employment and raising families, and so on.
The well-honed tech skills that the millennials have is just one reminder of the scientific and technological advances that have changed society and relationships, from family relationships to political and economic relationships at local, national and global levels, including relationships between human beings and the myriad non-human species with which we share the planet.
One of the questions raised by the extremes that we’ve experienced in the seasons and the climate across this year is, What responsibility do the generations have to each other and to the generations as yet unborn which we hope will follow; our children’s children and their children’s children?
Or, to put the question another way, What will the planet be like for our one year old members when they approach a hundred years old, as we hope they will? Will the planet be able to support and sustain them and their children and grandchildren, and their children’s children and grandchildren? We do we hope for our children and grandchildren and for their children and grandchildren? And how can we create the best circumstances for those hopes to stand a chance of being fulfilled?
Stewardship of creation, for the sake of the well-being of both people and planet, is an important part of our discipleship as followers of Christ. And for us at Saint James’ as Anglican followers of Christ, it is expressed in the fifth of The Five Marks of Mission which is ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth.’
The Five Marks of Mission are:
To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom
To teach, baptise and nurture new believers
To respond to human need by loving service
To seek to transform the unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and to pursue peace and reconciliation
To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth
The Five Marks are sometimes abbreviated to Tell, Teach, Tend, Transform and Treasure. Each of the five marks can only be fully understood and interpreted in our lives as disciples in relation to the other four marks. We cannot fully tell unless we are also teaching, tending, transforming and treasuring.
For example, we cannot fully ‘proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom’ unless we are putting the Good News into practice through responding to human need by loving service, transforming unjust structures and safeguarding the integrity of creation of creation, on which we, and our children’s children, and their children’s children, depend for survival.
In their book The Inner Level (2018), which explores the very real impact of social and economic inequality on human physical and mental health and on the environment, or creation, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett write:
‘If the world is to move towards an environmentally sustainable way of life, it means acting on the basis of the common good as never before, indeed acting for the good of humanity as a whole. But the status insecurity and individualism promoted by inequality distance us from both the means and the will to take action on problems that threaten us all. The nature of the environmental calamity now unfolding, and the means by which we might avert its severest effects, demand that we act for the common good’ (p.228).
For us as followers of Christ the imperative to steward creation for the sake of the well-being of both people and planet is founded on the prior theological conception of God as creator of all life, human and non-human. Theologian Sallie MacFague develops the concept of God as creator to embrace a conception of the earth, on which human beings and all life forms depend, as the Body of God (A New Climate for Theology, 2008).
This image of the earth as the Body of God is an image which reminds me of the place of us human beings in creation, as part of creation and wholly dependent on creation for our survival. The creation, the Body of God, of which we are a part and on which we depend, is beautiful and fragile, broken and resilient, and not to be taken for granted but received as a gift of life, related to as a gift of grace and shared that all might have life and have life in abundance (John 10:10).
And as I finish writing, a juvenile jay has flown out of the trees and shrubs outside of my study window, attempted (rather humorously) to take food from the fat balls hung on our bird feeder and plopped down to gather the crumbs and seeds that were dropped around the base of the feeder by the small birds.
Julia Babb, August 2018