Many psalms and songs and hymns about creation exist. I would venture to guess that among the first to come to your mind was penned by Anglican poet Cecil Frances
Alexander (a woman, in case the first name leads you to believe otherwise).
All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all.
Singing these words leads me to imagine all those gorgeous panoramic views of nature that I can never quite capture on camera. But when I take a moment to think about it, the words reflect only one aspect of creation. Consider an alternative.
Those Python Boys are up to it again, making a mockery of Alexander’s hymn. It’s telling,
though, that we don’t sing songs with lyrics that lean a little closer to “All Things Dull and Ugly.” We forget the variety in creation. Creation is sometimes bright and beautiful, sometimes dull and ugly. And we forget how creation works. Creation moves through cycles of growth and decay.
Paul writes as much to the Roman Christians:
For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20‒21)
So, what keeps us from singing songs about creation beyond its brightness and beauty? I
would suggest we don’t like the idea of decay. Paul himself describes it as bondage. And
in our culture, we’re groomed to appreciate freedom as essential to vitality. Science and technology have worked to allow us to live longer, healthier lives. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But in our efforts to avoid decay, we have become responsible for the devastating effects of climate change that threaten both human and nonhuman creation.
Let’s turn to another Anglican poet, Malcolm Guite. Guite was inspired to write the following after an experience on a walk through the forest:
The other morning, my meditations were interrupted by a sudden intrusion. There amongst the gold and mottled leaf mould, like some harsh alien excrescence, was a discarded plastic bag. It was totally out of place and told its own tale of indifference and carelessness; not just the carelessness of the person that dropped it, but the carelessness of the culture that produced it. The trees shed their leaves, and in that fall and letting go, achieve a new grace. The leaves themselves let go of shape and colour, and in that change and decay become something rich and nurturing.... But the plastic in our lives does much worse than just disfigure the occasional patch of woodland. It literally chokes the life out of other living things and then returns, in the food chain, to poison us from within.
Winnipeg singer-songwriter Steve Bell was inspired by Guite to pen new words on creation and our responsibility for it. In our efforts to trespass what he calls the “limits
we’re inclined to loathe”—that bondage to decay Paul speaks of—we end up making
“dreadful things that last.”
What is invulnerable to decay and death can destroy the possibility of new life. But even in a creation that is finite and limited, what is vulnerable to decay and death is graced to produce new life.
Each one of us is responsible to value and protect creation—a creation that is sometimes
bright and beautiful, sometimes dull and ugly. A creation both grows and decays. It is part of the calling of Jesus: to live on earth as in heaven.
