Touch the Wounds of Creation

When we have the courage to admit it, we know that we live in a wounded world.

When we have the courage to do it, we reach and touch the wounds of Creation:

      the jutting ribs of the polar bear, 

      the ripped, stripped skin of the mountains

      our hands immersed in the stream bled dry

      the bleached coral 

      the flooded crops 

      the flooded neighborhoods                    

      the melting glaciers.    

Extinction.

Take it in; take it on—Creation’s stigmata

Touch the wounds of Creation:

      body broken, blood shed: no inner grace, that.

  Without redemption? 

Touch the wounds of Creation:

      and Creation’s pain touches back, 

      reaching into our hearts with fingers of ice, anointing with dust and tears.

What do we do with our grief? 

      Do we submerge ourselves in the tears and the dust, 

      and find ourselves—unthinkingly—simply remaining there?

When we have the courage to feel it,

      grief carves out the soul, calling us to confession. And then to change.

When we have the courage to dare it, we begin to imagine,

      and we rise from the dust and tears, to claim the improbable vision,          

      to begin to do what can’t be done: change hearts and minds,

      and with others, to chip away at the systems that destroy,

      to strip their greed bare and starve their power.

And to make something new from the dust and ashes.

When we have the courage to live it,

      we engage in the work of redefining

            Progress, the Good Life, the Bottom Line.

What matters? Who we are.

Touch the wounds of Creation.

There is much that can be healed.

There is courage to be found.

There is redemption to be had.