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Apostasy (Earth Day Is Everyday)
| Open Poetry #40 |
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Apostasy (Earth Day Is Everyday) |
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Mistletoe Angel 
since 2000-12-17
Posts 32816Portland, Oregon |
(This poem I wrote was inspired by how many of us cynically restrict wide consciousness of being environmentally conscious to one specific birthday per year, and that to claim only one day is "Earth Day" is truly apostasy; a desertion from our faith and principles to constantly care for all God has provided us with, and therefore I chose to post this poem the day after Earth Day to further the point that we must always make an effort to be ecologically-conscious. This poem also serves as a response and gentle rebuttal to our friend Balladeer's poem "Earth Day Rambles" (some of the poem is actually based heavily on an actual part of the transcript from our Alley dialogue, LOL!) which is a great poem I recommend to every one of you here but has some particular points I disagree with (we're good friends but fundamentally disagree on some topics) which I gently reflect on here.  Earth Day is truly everyday in my heart, and may we strive to make it so!  )* Apostasy (Earth Day Is Everyday) By: Noah Eaton 4/23/07 “In the beginning, God created the heavens, and the Earth.”, the debate reels on, how He did so, how long it took Him, whether or not He used a paintbrush, and if He did, did He paint with Van Dyke brown, and did he use Phthalo or Prussian blue, but the Bible makes clear, that God is the Creator, that “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for He founded it upon the seas, and established it upon the waters.”….. …that God owns the Earth, by virtue of creating it… …His involvement in this world’s Creation, goes beyond the spiking horse itself, for “he is before all things, and by him all things consist.” “upholding all things by the word of his power”, “things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by Him, and for Him.” He went through all the trouble for a purpose, so that “the heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.”, letting “everything that has breath praise the Lord.”, “for since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse”….. …..that’s where we come in, that we are special being made in God’s image, yet we are still intimately linked to His creation, thus He has given us a mandate to be stewards, stewards of this Earth, offered the responsibility to care for His creation, as He had placed Adam in the Garden of Eden, “to dress it and to keep it.”, you may also say, the legacy of Noah’s flood, may be the original Endangered Species Act….. …..when God is involved, anything is truly possible, look at Elisha’s spring in Jericho, where water used to be undrinkable, useless in irrigating crops, and added a sifting of salt into the water, explaining "This is what the Lord says: 'I have healed this water. Never again will it cause death, or make the land unproductive'". and to this day, 4,500 liters of fresh water bubble up, from under the ground in Jericho, every single minute, proving resilient as a sparkling oasis, of the desert, proving that God is the same, yesterday, today, and forever, and that perhaps, there are other Elishas among us….. …..what happened to that covenant, you can say it began with sin, where sin began with Adam, and because of this sin, “the creation was subjected to frustration”, by the one who has sinned, “in hope that the creation itself, will be liberated from its bondage to decay.”….. …..where “there is no faithfulness, no love, no acknowledgement of God in the land, there is only cursing, lying, and murder, stealing and adultery.”, reminding us we can’t be misled to believe, He will not judge this dear world for its sin, which only further encourages exploitation, of His creation….. …..makes you think about, when God spoke to the children of Israel, asking that they can grow and harvest crops, for six years, but “in the seventh year shall be a Sabbath, of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath unto the LORD; thou shalt neither sow thy field, nor prune thy vineyard.” warning them not offering that land rest, would result in the land not yielding crops, that “all the time that it lies desolate, the land will have the rest it did not have, during the sabbaths you lived in it”….. …..perhaps that’s why we’re experiencing, desertification, global warming, extinct and endangered species….. …..because of our sins, “a curse consumes the earth; its people must bear their guilt.”….. …..Mother Nature IS worried, man CAN hurt her, though we hold faith, that God and Mother Nature work, in benevolent, mysterious ways, that her womb consists, of all the sacred remedies, and healing secrets of our living Earth, this world isn’t like “Ferngully: The Last Rainforest”, where sprites, and a bat voiced by Robin Williams, will somehow stop all the world’s deforestation, convince all lumberjacks and timber companies, that the clear-cutting of old growth forests, ruins the native habitat of thousands of species, leaving the area deficient of natural minerals….. …..I’m an optimist, but not in the sense, of that 1988 Talking Heads single, “(Nothing But) Flowers”, where in some post-apocalyptic world, all parking lots will become oases, all Pizza Huts will become covered by daisies, and discount stores will become cornfields, but rather in the sense, that when the question is asked, “Will the individual choose to acknowledge his Creator, and be reconciled to Him?”, we will again practice the ministry of reconciliation, as many of us righteously believe, in the second greatest commandment, that we must love our neighbors as ourselves, and when we hear time and time again in the news, about benzene levels causing increased asthma rates, just because some factories ignored emissions caps, or about hundreds of thousands dying of cancer in India, just because of poor oversight and denial at Bhopal, we express genuine emotions of alarm and grief….. …..yes, this earth has been through the wringer alright, ice ages, tsunamis, Chernobyl, Exxon-Valdez, George W. Bush, our Congress since 1976, etc. over the course, of approximately 4,600,000,000 years….. …..but the real test here, is understanding our present time, purifying our hearts before our Creator, that though it is said we have the right, to “fill the earth and subdue it”, it doesn’t mean literally, selling two sparrows for a halfpenny, that He in fact set rules for bird protection, telling the Israelites, should they come across a bird’s nest, with the mother sitting upon her young or eggs, they were to let the mother go, where Jesus said He’s aware of every small bird, that falls to the ground, of every young raven crying for food….. …..we should care, for to believe Earth Day only comes but once a year, is apostasy; to tend the Earth should be a perennial state of mind, engineered by active faith, rather than passive belief… "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other" Mother Teresa |
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ckpowell New Member
since 2007-04-23
Posts 5 |
Here is a nice poem in response to yours, (I didn't write this) Prayer in The Pentagon by: Robert Dederick Nine planets, Sir, endlessly circle, Sir, one yellow star among Sir's galaxies: Pluto Neptune Venus Jupiter Saturn Uranus Mercury Mars and this- this watered and this aired this favored one where all that crawl and swim and fly and run that drove and swarm and herd and flock are in with tooth and leg and lung and claw and fin created clothed and colored are by Sir Eight colors (counting white) Sir's rainbow makes when whiteness on Sir's broken waters breaks arched over tidal blue and branching gray and grazing green and foaling brown down and away with gorsing yellow glow and honeyed hay and petalled blush and mottled winging whir; the limpid eyes each of Sir's colors wakes dark-irised are and cleared and curved by Sir Seven tossing seas Sir's pent-up lands divide where silver shoals in aching green-ness glide turn suddenly and dart and flatly lie break surface plunge and from each other hide and stare as though by staring they aver what sweet surprise had widened each wide eye that once looked early on creating Sir Six senses there were then in us who were salt-tasting all along the salt-scented shore who felt crust cool and looked on shrinking sea and heard gull-cry on draining estuary and found back of these five a something more a sense of self and back of self--Sir Five fingers though (counting a thumb) were what we mostly were aware of as we fought Sir's elements and cleared Sir's forests and sought creation-wise new metalled ways to go by spinning wheel and wing off runway. So? Four quarters of our world began to grow too few and of Sir's yellow star we thought equations scribbled bubbled in retort distilled its hot explosive secrets. So? Three questions pose themselves now as we wait: did Sir not know how to end what Sir began? Or could we choose? Or did Sir always plan? Two hands of ours to bring us soon or late bent to destroy what the hands of Sir had wrought One day when we and all our world are brought to Nought? |
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