The Season of Creation is an Opportunity for Renewal 

-Anthony G. Siegrist

We are in the middle of the Season of Creation. In the broad sweep of church history, the Season of Creation is a new thing. It was initiated by the World Council of Churches in 2008 following the proclamation of day of prayer for creation in 1989 by the Orthodox Ecumenical Patriarch Dimitrios I. The purpose of this liturgical season is to set aside a time “to renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion and commitment together.” 

This year I want to invite us to experience creation—the natural world—as a place to encounter God. This is not often the first thing that comes to mind when we think about our natural environment. When many of us think about the environment we think of the negative impact of human power. We think about harm and vulnerability.  

And yet, the natural world is also a realm of great power and resilience. And not only physical power and biological resilience, though these certainly are attributes of nature. I’m actually thinking of the immense and longstanding spiritual power resident within the natural world. Moses met God in the desert and on a mountain. Jesus regularly retreated into the wild lands. The spirituality of the biblical poets would turn to literary mush without the experience of sea and sky, fox and raven.  

I believe there is something within our souls that recognizes the presence of other beings within the natural world. God’s presence, the lives of plants and animals and other forms of influence and aliveness. The Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has observed that we live in a “disenchanted” world, where we ignore or outright deny the existence of these other forms of being and presence.   

If we have disenchanted our world, then the Season of Creation holds great possibility. If observing this liturgical period prompts us to re-encounter the wildness and mystical power of God’s creation, then it holds promise for our spiritual renewal. May it be so! 

May this Season not be one where we fixate on our own power—the things we can buy, the change we can cause, the political views with which we can tinker. May this Season of Creation be one where we come under the influence of God’s presence in the natural world, where our humanity is reformed and where our imaginations are retuned to perceive aspects of liveliness we can’t measure.