Environmental Stewardship Commission (MEESC)

The Creation Story
²⁰ And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky.”
²¹ So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swarm, and every winged bird of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
²² God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.”
²³ And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
²⁴ And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind: cattle and creeping things and wild animals of the earth of every kind.” And it was so.
²⁵ God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind, and the cattle of every kind, and everything that creeps upon the ground of every kind. And God saw that it was good.
²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make humankind ..."
And it all went downhill from there.

We interrupt your regularly scheduled season of Pentecost for a four-week celebration of Creation.

• This morning we celebrate the animal kingdom.
• In the weeks to come we’ll be celebrating the gifts of plants, water, and finally light. If you notice, we’re kind of going backwards. That’s because this Sunday is the one nearest to St. Francis Day, and Francis was know for his love of the animals and birds.

• Elephants, Giraffes, Leopards and Lions, Birds and sea creatures too colorful to believe.
• At the Duluth Zoo, I watched with fascination as the polar bear swam round and round its pond.

• Never, before the 20th Century, did humans have enough population or technical capability to modify large portions of the globe. For most of our existence we needed protection from the larger animals. But now the situation is reversed. One of the great challenges of our age is to pass on to our grandchildren a world where these amazing creatures still live.
• Back when the book of Genesis was written, the idea that people could have control the future course of the world, could have dominion over it, was largely a pipe dream. Now suddenly we find ourselves with the power to reshape the natural environment in massive and long lasting ways. Will we use it responsibly, refraining from changing things whose workings we’ve barely begun to understand?

• One year in the boundary waters we paddled around a corner just in time to see a moose and her calf swim across a narrow neck of the lake and climb out onto the shore. It was one of the highlights of the whole trip.
• Then there are the Eagles that soar above our lakes and rivers and make me stand riveted, watching them ride the thermals.
• The animals bless us merely by their presence, their beauty, and their sheer interesting-ness.
• Dolphins surfing the bow waves or the bright cardinal in our yard can bring us more joy than 100 bars of gold.

They bless us as pets with a love that is independent of our beauty or our worldly success.

• Pepper and Cary are always delighted to see me come home. In fact we’re glad that Pepper’s tail is cropped. Otherwise nothing would be left standing after one of her welcomes.
• Because of the undemanding joy they bring, pets improve our health in measurable ways.
• They can turn a care facility from dreary to pleasant all by themselves.

• They provided a concentrated source of food that left us time for painting, music, play, thinking, and planning.
• We still depend upon the Chickens, Pigs, Ducks and cows of the traditional farmstead for a lot of our food, although we no longer raise them in such idyllic settings.
• Until quite recently horses and oxen provided the muscle that made intensive agriculture possible.  These Great Plains could never have been broken into farmland without teams of willing horses pulling the plows.  Nor could the western ranges have been ranched without the highly trained horses carrying their cowboys.
• To this day a versatile machine that can do a lot of heavy work is called a workhorse.

• My sister does animal assisted therapy in Rochester. She tells about one young man from a very troubled family who would barely talk to her at all about his feelings. Then she brought in her little brown spaniel, and round and gentle as any dog you could meet. She started asking him how he thought Cyan felt about this stranger, and how he interpreted her attempts to check him out. Before long he was talking much more freely about what it was like to live in his family.

Search and Rescue

• St. Bernards: Cask of liquor is a myth, but they really did search for lost travelers in the high mountains
• Dogs were all over the pile at the world trade center, searching for any survivors.
• Seizure dogs: So tuned into their humans that they can often detect an approaching seizure as much as 30 minutes before it strikes. The dogs are then trained to alert their human, so he or she can get to a safe place and prepare.

Helping Children Learn

• The other night we happened catch a TV segment on a school in Israel were they decided to experiment with having pets for all the children in the classroom.
• There were the most amazing pictures of children working at their tasks with rabbits in their laps and pet rats crawling around the table.
• Contrary to what you might expect, the children’s attention spans and academic performance both improved dramatically.

• Let us begin to understand ourselves as partners with all God’s creatures in God’s ongoing creation.
• It’s true we occupy a special niche and have unusual capabilities.
• But let us use those capabilities in the service of an ever richer and more diverse creation.
• The animals of this earth give us many blessings.
• Let us be a blessing to them in return.

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