by Richard Gehring
In the beginning when God
created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and
darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept
over the face of the waters. Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and
there was light. And God saw that the light was good; and God
separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and
the darkness he called Night.
It's winter now at the South Pole—which means that it is also night
time there. The sun set in March, thus beginning the
six-month-long polar night. Most of the three hundred scientists
and support personnel who staff the Amundson-Scott South Pole Station
during the brief Antarctic summer packed up and left already in
February. But sixty hardy souls are still living and
working in the total darkness that has now descended over the pole.
The near total lack of light, and the bone-chilling temperatures that
come with it, make it impossible for planes to fly to and from the
South Pole at this time of year. No one and no supplies can be
transported for several months. Yet the “polies,” as they are
known, continue to go about their daily lives in this dark, frigid
world. Some of them even make the two-mile round trip through
the ice and snow every day on foot in order to keep the South Pole
Telescope up and running.
With no light, it's impossible to see where you're going. With
no light, nothing is able to grow. With no light,
temperatures during the Antarctic winter often dip into the
triple-digit-below-zero realm, with wind chills even lower.
It's no surprise, then, that most “polies” look forward to the sunrise
with great anticipation. As the dim orb slowly creeps back over
the horizon in September, they are ably to begin moving around beyond
the small compound where they have been sequestered for months.
They wait expectantly for the first flight in October when their
isolation will come to an end as new supplies and personnel arrive,
and many of those who wintered over can return home. They deeply
appreciate the goodness of light and the possibility for life that it
brings. Those who have endured the months-long night really
understand just how meaningful those words are: “Let there be
light.”
And there was evening and there was morning,
the first day.
And God said, ‘Let there be a dome in the
midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.’
So God made the dome and separated the waters that were under the dome
from the waters that were above the dome. And it was so. God called
the dome Sky.
“Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink.” So goes the
famed line from Samuel Taylor Coleridge's epic ballad, “The Rime of
the Ancient Mariner.” Penned more then two hundred years ago,
the truth of this statement is becoming sadly more real around the
world today. Estimates are that more than twenty percent of all
the people in the world do not have access to safe drinking water.
That's over a billion people who cannot consistently get the fresh
water they need for healthy survival.
In some places, there simply isn't enough rainfall to meet the demand
for water year-round—a condition that is only made worse by global
warming. In some places, there's plenty of water, but it's all
in the ocean. And the process of desalination is far too
expensive and energy-consuming to be practical almost anywhere other
than a few oil-rich desert countries. But in an increasing
number of places, the water is present and fresh, but too polluted for
human consumption.
Three years ago, the citizens of Alamosa, Colorado discovered what it
means to live with such contaminated water. On March 19, the
state Department of Health and Environment issued a “bottled water
only” restriction due to a salmonella outbreak traced to the public
water supply. A week later, the city water department began
treating the water supply with such high levels of chlorine that
residents were warned not to use their water for anything other than
flushing the toilet. Schools, restaurants and other public
buildings closed down as the 10,000 people of Alamosa relied on water
trucked in from neighboring communities.
Restrictions of various kinds continued to be in place for three
weeks. By the time the water supply was declared safe,
nearly 350 suspected cases of salmonella had been reported—over 90
confirmed. 13 people were hospitalized. One died.
And what caused such contamination of an entire city's water supply in
the most technologically advanced nation in the world? We still
don't know.
And there was evening and there was morning,
the second day.
And God said, ‘Let the waters under the sky
be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And
it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were
gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then
God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed,
and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed
in it.’ And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants
yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit
with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good.
There aren't many people still alive who actually remember the Dust
Bowl days of the “Dirty Thirties.” During this time of extended
drought, huge dust storms would regularly blacken the sky and remove
precious topsoil from the fields. At times dust clouds
would blow all the way from the Texas Panhandle to Washington, DC and
New York, with much of the soil ending up in the Atlantic Ocean.
During the 1930's, millions of acres of farmland became useless, and
hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes.
Degradation of dry lands claimed peoples' cultural heritage and
livelihoods. Thankfully, we've learned a great deal about
farming techniques since then so that such large-scale soil erosion is
unlikely to happen again in this country.
Still, even with more knowledge and better technology, we are losing
topsoil at an alarming rate. As recently as the winter of
1995-96, for example, cropland in Kansas lost an average of two
inches of soil for every two and a half acres. Across the U.S., soil
is eroding away at a rate ten times faster than it can be replaced
naturally. Worldwide, thirty percent of the arable land has been
rendered unproductive by soil erosion in the past four
decades.(Cornell U. Chronicle Online, March 20,2006) Farmers
respond by using more fertilizer, much of which ends up running off
into streams and rivers. They pump more groundwater for
irrigation, depleting our aquifers and spreading minerals on the field
that make the soil even less productive.
Increasingly, the “dry land” on this planet is becoming incapable of
putting forth vegetation. Plants are unable to yield seed.
Trees fail to bear fruit. The creation that was declared “good”
is becoming less inhabitable.
And there was
evening and there was morning, the third day.
And God said, ‘Let there be lights in
the dome of the sky to separate the day from the night; and let them
be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be
lights in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth.’ And it
was so. God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the
day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. God set them
in the dome of the sky to give light upon the earth, to rule over the
day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness.
And God saw that it was good.
It is nearly impossible for us to comprehend the true vastness of
space. We can't really wrap our minds around the concept of
“light years” or trillions of miles. But imagine for a minute
that our sun was the size of a mini-basketball—6½ inches in diameter.
If that were the case, the earth would be the size of a grain of sand
about 58 feet away from the ball. The edge of our solar system
would be about 2300 feet out.
Moving outside the solar system, the next nearest star, Alpha
Centauri, would be almost three thousand miles away. The entire
Milky Way Galaxy in this scale model would span almost seventy million
miles, or roughly three-fourths of the distance from the actual earth
to the sun. Even then, we've only begun to touch the vastness of
the universe. There are thousands of other known galaxies—some
larger than ours and some smaller. The distances between each of
these galaxies, even in our scaled-down version of the universe, is
too great to really comprehend. Even then, that is only the part
of the cosmos that our scientists and their technology have been able
to observe.
Yet with all of these great lights set in the dome of the sky, we have
the audacity to think that what happens to any one of us six billion
or so creatures on this tiny grain of sand matters at all. We
think that the One who flung all the stars into existence actually
cares what happens to us. And the most amazing thing is that
we're right. Even in the midst of all that vast,
incomprehensible expanse of space, God understands us. God cares
about us. God is with us.
And there was
evening and there was morning, the fourth day.
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.’ 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. God blessed them, saying, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the
waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.’
The life that teems in the sea and in the air is truly amazing.
One study of a deep-sea community focused on an area the size of a
tennis court. It revealed 898 species from more than 100
families and a dozen phyla. More than half of these were new to
science.
The blue whale is the largest known animal ever to have lived on sea
or land. Individuals can reach more than 110 feet and weigh
nearly 200 tons—more than the weight of 50 adult elephants. The
blue whale's blood vessels are so broad that a full-grown trout could
swim through them, and the vessels that serve a heart are the size of
a small car.
With nearly 10,000 known species, birds make up the largest single
class of animals. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from
the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the
two-inch bee hummingbird to the nine-foot ostrich. Most
biologists today agree that modern birds are the descendants of the
prehistoric dinosaurs.
Their wings give most birds the ability to fly—a characteristic almost
unique among vertebrate animals. Many birds are thus able to
cover great distances. The bar-tailed godwit, for example,
is capable of non-stop flights of up to 6,300 miles. Sooty
shearwaters nest in New Zealand and Chile, but spend the
northern summer feeding in the North Pacific as far away as Japan and
Alaska. Their annual round trip can reach nearly 40,000 miles.
Yet with all these amazing and diverse characteristics, life in the
sea and in the air is disappearing at an alarming rate. The
creatures that swarm in the sea and the winged birds have been
fruitful and multiplied. They filled the waters of the sea and
multiplied on the earth. May we have the wisdom to let them
continue as their Creator intended.
And there was
evening and there was morning, the fifth day.
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. 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.
Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind
in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have
dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and
over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over
every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.’
So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and
fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the
sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that
moves upon the earth.’ God said, ‘See, I have given you every plant
yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree
with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every
beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything
that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I
have given every green plant for food.’ And it was so. God saw
everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good.
We share this planet with many other creatures. Scientists have
identified more than one million species of animals—nearly ninety
percent of which are insects: some of those “creeping things”
that we read about in Genesis. We humans are part of perhaps the
smallest grouping of animals—the mammals.
The writer of Genesis may not have used the same scientific
classification system that we have. Still, there is a clear
distinction made between birds of the air, fish of the sea, cattle,
wild animals and creeping things. And it is in the midst of all
these other inhabitants of Creation that we show up: humankind.
Humans clearly have a unique place in Creation. Much more detail
is given to creation of those who are made in God's own image.
Humankind is blessed and addressed directly by God.
Yet our earliest ancestors were not birthed in isolation. Unlike
Light and Sky, humanity does not get a day all to ourselves. We
come into being on the same day as the wild animals, the cattle and
all those hundreds of thousands of creeping things that we often
wonder why God bothered to make—like the mosquito and the tick.
We may not understand what the Creator saw in them that was deemed to
be “good.” Yet like it or not, we are a part of all of those
other creatures. And everything that we do—or fail to do—effects
them.
That's what it means to “have dominion” over everything. It's
not, as has been so often supposed, that we can do anything we want
because we're in charge. It's that—for better or worse—our
actions have a profound impact on the fish of the sea and the birds of
the air and the cattle and wild animals and creeping things and every
green plant. Their creation is part of our creation. Their
future is our future. Their existence is necessary for our
existence. God made it all “very good.” And those created
in God's image have the amazing opportunity to enjoy it all, and to
see that it stays that way.
And there was evening and there was morning,
the sixth day.
Thus the heavens and the earth were
finished, and all their multitude. And on the seventh day God finished
the work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all
the work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed
it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in
creation.
So ends the account of the seven days of Creation. God
rests. God does not remain continually active, constantly
seeking to be more “productive.” God does not announce plans for
a bigger, better, more interactive universe. God does not jump
into development of the more user-friendly Creation 2.0. God
rests.
Jesuit priest and psychotherapist Anthony de Mello told a story that
invites us to join in God's sabbath, and enjoy Creation:
The rich industrialist from the North was horrified to find the
Southern fisherman lying lazily beside his boat, smoking a pipe.
"Why aren't you out fishing?" said the industrialist.
"Because I have caught enough fish for the day," said the fisherman.
"Why don't you catch some more?"
"What would I do with it?"
"You could earn more money" was the reply. "With that you could have a
motor fixed to your boat and go into deeper waters and catch more
fish.
"Then you would make enough to buy nylon nets. These would bring you
more fish and more money. Soon you would have enough money to own two
boats . . . maybe even a fleet of boats. Then you would be a rich man
like me."
"What would I do then?"
"Then you could really enjoy life."
"What do you think I am doing right now?"
