‘Every living thing, every woman and every man, is anointed with the spirit of creation.’ Photo: by Ahmet Sali on Unsplash
Identity crises: Paul Hodgkin rewrites more sacred texts
‘Today, the prophetic voice of our times belongs to the scientists.’
Climate breakdown calls us to new ways of living. The Light calls us to simultaneously stand in awe of the sunset and to understand how the great Earth cycles of water, energy and carbon intertwine in that same sunset. To face an unstable climate we need to know both the Truth and the truth: the Truth that lies in the ineffable beyondness of things, and the smaller truths that guide action in a perilous world.
Look, the Light of our climate-ridden times seems to say, perhaps the world is this way: ‘And God said, “Beloved Eve, eat this apple from the tree of knowledge so you may better wonder at all things on Earth and know the fullness of each and of yourself. And share the apple with Adam so that he too, may understand and follow you in this, and together you can serve the whole of creation.’”
This kind of re-visioning is one way to let the Light seep into our souls. What joy to use our knowledge to serve creation. What peace to renounce that fascist command to ‘have dominion over everything that crawls upon the earth’. What a relief to give up the patriarchy.
One of George Fox’s favourite biblical texts was: ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit’ (Joel 2: 28–29). This was the anchor by which Fox called the early Quakers to prophecy, and to equality. When I read it today, I still sense the earth-shaking liberation that early Friends must have felt at the direct revelation of the Light.
Today, the prophetic voice of our times belongs to the scientists: repent, they say; change, love the Earth, not yourselves. In the Light of the Earth crises, Fox’s prophetic text might become: ‘Creation pours out its spirit on all beings. Your sons and daughters, your coral reefs and your icecaps, will prophesy. Your old women and men, your ancient valleys and your rocks of ages, will dream dreams. Your young women and men will see the future. Every living thing, every woman and every man, is anointed with the spirit of creation.’ For of course, it is the coral reefs and ice caps that are prophetic now. It is our young people who can see the future most clearly. And to live these times well, to anchor our social witness, we need to allow the Light to transfigure our deepest beliefs.
It feels sacrilegious to be re-writing these old truths in this way. Who am I to be doing anything close to the hem of these texts? But that is surely the point: we need to find ways to be close to the sacred not as it was, but as it is now – the now in which the Earth is being defiled.
The word ‘sacrilegious’ is made up of two words, ‘sacred’ and ‘legere’, which means ‘to pick up and move’. If these re-imaginings are indeed sacrilegious then I hope it is in this second sense: an attempt to pick up our sacred truths and move them to the desecrated Earth. Rooted in the soil of an unstable climate, perhaps they can re-hallow the Earth and help us see the Light.
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