A  SENSE  OF AWE 

AT  THE  EARTH 

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily for this 5^th Sunday after Easter [C] is, “A Sense of Awe at the Earth.”

Last Friday - April 22^nd - was Earth Day. It's something that has been  going on since 1970.

At our last staff meeting we were asked to say something for the good of the earth this Sunday - so here goes.

THREE READINGS

I read today's 3 readings with the hopes that something in the readings would be a good lead in for this theme of “Earth Day.”

Sure enough today’s second reading from the Book of Revelation is perfect. It begins, “Then I, John, saw a new heaven and a new earth.”  It ends, "Behold, I make all things new."

Perfect.

The reading talks about the heavens, the sea, the earth, the city, dwellings and the human race. [Cf. Revelation 21: 1-5a]

Perfect.

Let’s work - let’s complain - let’s do our part to make everyone and everything better.

Next the reading uses the metaphor of a wedding.

We had two weddings at St. Mary’s yesterday. Seeing a bride on her wedding day: what better image of newness and new life. 

Now at a wedding nobody notices the bridegroom - except for two moments. The bride is it. He’s chopped liver. 

I've noticed that the first moment is when the bridegroom is all alone at the top of the sanctuary steps. Then the music starts: "Here comes the bride..." or what have you. All stand and turn to see the bride coming down the aisle. At that moment all the bridesmaids in the seats turn to see the bridegroom's face as his face sees his bride come down the aisle in all her beauty. 

Tears and tissues. It's an awesome moment.

The other bridegroom moment is at the reception when he is called out on the dance floor to dance with his mom.

Perfect.

Life is the moments.

AWE AND AWFUL MOMENTS

The title of my homily is, “A Sense of Awe at the Earth.”

Not all moments are the same - obviously.

Some are same old,  same old,  same old. These are the moments we are on automatic pilot and we don’t notice anything awesome.  These are mac and cheese moments.

But then there are moments that are awesome - moments that overwhelm us.

These are Lobster Thermidor or Baked Maryland Lump  Crab Cake moments - or great burritos moments - depending on your taste buds.

I saw the following in someone’s house recently. It was handwriting on the wall: “Life Is Not Measured By the Number of Breaths We Take, But By the Moments That Take Our Breath Away.”

Of course.

It’s good to sit down at the end of each day and look at the moments of that day.

You saw a little kid put a dollar in the hat of a street violinist. She creeped up carefully - looking back at her parents twice - her parents who signaled her to go on. She looked up at the musician - and put some green in his hat - looked up at his face again - and then ran back to her parents with great delight and a great smile on her face.

You stopped to smell the roses or the lilacs on a neighbor’s lawn.

You bought yourself an ice cream cone. Hey it’s good to treat oneself besides the kids to ice cream and your got yourself two scoops - rum raisin and pistachio with chocolate chips. Nobody was looking. Uuum good. Uum. Great lickings. And you even toasted yourself with the cone.

You saw an old couple holding hands as they were headed for an afternoon matinee movie.

You stopped to watch a flock of birds flying north.

It’s good to pause to look at what you saw that day on the planet - and hopefully you had some awesome moments.

I hold that if a person does this every evening - as a night prayer - you’ll  see a lot more the next day - because you have to do homework every night. I discovered this from vacations - keeping a journal - and making a report of my journey that night - on what I saw that day.

But there are also some moments that are awful - and we spot them each day as well.  

Ugh.

We saw a fight. We saw someone yelling at a kid. We saw someone dump their garbage or wrappings or coffee cup on the street.

I notice in putting this homily together the close connection between awe and awful  and awesome.

Life can be the good, the bad and the ugly.

Life can be the awe - the awful - and the awesome.

ACTION

I also began thinking about action - the action step - in life.

By declaring a day as Earth Day - the hope is to get action.

It works. 

Mother’s Day helps florists and card shops - and moms get a lot more “Thank you’s” that day compared to other days.

So too Father’s Day.

So too Qingming Day. I never heard of this till I was looking up stuff for Earth Day.

Every April 4  to April 6, in China, it’s Qingming Day - a time everyone heads for the cemetery where their parents or grandparents are buried and they sweep and clean up the graves. Neat.

They also bring flowers and burn paper money and incense at their graves.

Neat - for the flowers. I wonder about the smoke - and the stuff left on the cemetery grounds.

So too because of Earth Day - schools and churches and organizations and cities do stuff to sweep up the mess. They plant trees. They challenge us to not dump on Mother Earth. Let’s clean up the air and clean up the water.

I noticed in a story in the New York Times the other day about a parish in Brooklyn. They marched to the Gowanus Canal and prayed over the water and poured holy water onto it. It’s still a mess. It was close to the last stop on the subway before we got to Coney Island as a kid. We’d go over a small bridge and we kids would hold our noses as we did and yell out, “Perfume Bay.”  I guess it’s still a mess.  Some day - someday. The first step is awareness and then action.

This year’s theme for Earth Day is not to waste food - not to dump food - and awareness of the amount of food that is just dumped into landfills - has gone down.

CONCLUSION

The title of my homily is, “A Sense of Awe at the Earth.”

I talked about the reality that there are moments when we see things happening on our earth that take our breath away.

I remember my first trip into Mexico - going over the border in a car in Nogales Arizona into Nogales Mexico - and as we went down the highway I began to realize in 5 minutes the value of emissions control here in the United States. Cough. Cough. Cough.

We have seen smoking going down in our lifetime. Cough. Cough. Cough.

For the sake of transparency my dad died of emphysema - not because of smoking however  - but from what they called “White lung”.  He worked with flour at Nabisco in New York and New Jersey.

Awareness hopefully leads to action

So where can make the earth more beautiful today  - this week - in this life.

Last Sunday I suggested picking up at least one piece of trash - paper - what have you - each day.

And be awesome for each other - each day - and when another is awesome - give them an awesome “Atta girl” or “Atta boy” or “Atta earth.”

And “Ooops!”  it’s Spring - and awesome beauty surrounds us - so make sure you see all around and give God at least one good, "Atta God" each day. Now that's a great Atta Prayer.