Flora and fauna Sunday

By David Kitchingman in All Sorts

enigmatic reflections on evolution and our place in the world

Flora and Fauna Sunday (Within the Season of Creation)

Hi Jo
Yes, in case you didn't know, that's what today is, or at least could be. You never know these days. Next Sunday might be Flotsam and Jetsam Sunday, and the week after probably Second Cousins Sunday. But I shouldn't be so tough on modern times. After all, it's a fair while since today was first called Sun-day and tomorrow Moon-day instead of plain today and tomorrow.
So why Flora and Fauna? Surely every Sunday has both, just so long as the flower roster team (peace be upon them) continue to decorate the church, and a few aphids manage to hitch a ride. But the bug - no, the bright idea (in principle, I support it) started in 2008 when the Lectionary decided to add a new option, a "Season of Creation...in response to a growing concern in Christian communities over the way human beings have treated God's earth".

The season, first devised by the Lutheran Church in Australia, picks up on the Orthodox tradition which celebrates September 1 as the first Day of Creation. It runs for six Sundays on a three-year cycle, incorporating St Francis of Assisi Day on October 4 (or3). An ecumenical group now offers online resources from www.seasonofcreation.com. A couple of quotes: "The creatures of earth are our kin"; "We have treated planet earth as a garbage dump". There's little if anything to be seen of words like "evolution". Overall, the liturgy is very biblical and Christological - the cosmic Christ is at the core.
I have to say that, after a promising initial impression, and despite the practical ecological encouragements, I find it personally disturbing. There's much of value to rediscover in the Bible and Christian tradition of our intimate connections with the natural world, but I don't believe we can be content with a rebore of the traditional approach to Creation.
"The Great Story" (a title suggested by Sir Lloyd Geering) can no longer be adequately told by a Christianity that claims it for itself. Wonderfully poetic Biblical imagery deserves to retain a place, but the full canvass must now include a comparable measure of the mind-boggling evidence that science continues to produce.
I want to suggest three areas in which standard Christian interpretations are inadequate on their own to fully convey the magnitude and mystery of the Great Story.
History
How old is old? Is Lloyd Geering old? Yes and No. At 95 no less, he's just published his latest book, From the Big Bang to God: Our Awe-inspiring Journey of Evolution. Its contents make him seem not so much a spring chicken as a spring that hasn't even begun to be sprung.
How old are the Bible and Christianity? Very old, according to some modern editions of Biblical aids featuring maps with titles such as "The Nations of the Ancient World", as a backdrop to understanding Biblical times. Yet even a Psalmist knew a thing or two. "A thousand years in your sight are like yesterday, like" (if I may bring Psalm 90 up-to-date with the latest generation). So compared with history as a whole, the Bible is barely three days old. As for the Christian Story, it's also just a minnow in comparison with the Great Story.
So how old is the universe? 6,017 years or 13.75 billion years? Exactly the former according to Archbishop Ussher, whose Biblical calculations were published in 1650, narrowing down the year of the Creation to merely 4004 BC. Approximately the latter according to a broad scientific consensus today.
Thanks to a steady exposure in recent decades to the rationale of the scientific enterprise, there wouldn't be too many non-fundamentalist Christians anxious about maintaining Ussher's literalist dependency on Biblical genealogies, etc. There is probably a general acceptance among mainstream churches that that kind of approach arises from an unfortunate misunderstanding of the nature of the Scriptures.
Nevertheless, many who have come to terms with such distinctions have yet to grasp the scope of the new dimension that science has "ushered" in. This is not simply a matter of grafting onto Biblical interpretation some factual extensions based on our modern knowledge of the physical world. Rather, it must lead to a reappraisal of our whole understanding of ourselves and the limitations imposed by our origins and cultural developments.
Destiny
It's not just a matter of recognising that we occupy a tiny speck on the timescale and landscape of evolutionary history. It's also a question of whether we count for anything in terms of purpose and design. "Predestination" and "evolution" don't make for comfortable bedfellows. "Chance", "mutation" and "luck" (good and bad) don't feature in theological wordbooks. Yet our quirky survival thus far really seems to defy the odds of a divine selection process.
We're the only surviving Homo species. Our nearest surviving cousins, the chimpanzees, number less that 200.000 in the wild (if I heard correctly on the "Planet without apes" radio interview last weekend). Our ancestors had to squeak through five mass extinctions in the past, and we can't be sure of surviving the sixth such period now under way.
And now it's being proposed that our very earliest ancestor at the organic molecular level may have only made it by being ferried via a meteorite blasted off the surface of Mars without any navigation system. So it may not only be men who are from Mars, but women as well, via Venus of course. Was God on vacation at the time or delighting in a version of Russian roulette in which the barrels numbered 6100?
A certain aspiring politician has been accused this last week of "having been born without the requisite brain-chemistry for modesty". But it may be that that condition is widespread within the population at large, and not least among those who subscribe to a strong sense of personal providence. We people of faith are slow to shrug off the conviction of having been purposefully guided every step of the way.
Theology
And now I'm about to get into even deeper water, so deep that it might match or exceed the depth of a hot fissure in a primordial ocean trench where an organic molecule might have first spluttered into life about 3 billion years ago. I'm reneging and will surface, though if I do so too fast I might risk getting the bends.
You see, there's a big question behind the Big Bang, and I'm not sure that I can provide the big answer, and certainly not right at the end of these "Connections". If you can't wait, then you could try reading one person's answer. Geering's From the Big Bang to God is quite short (186 pages), boldly comprehensive, and very readable, but take care with the implications of the title.
I'm not sure how I got into this stew via Flora and Fauna Sunday, but that's the way of evolution - it takes some odd twists and turns. If I get a chance to start again I hope it might be on Bacterium Sunday.
David Kitchingman