First entry – setting the tone

This
is from my journal (an older form of blog), January 15, 1992.  I
was in a “journalling” group in my church, and we took turns giving the
devotional each week:



Yesterday was the second meeting of
our journal group, and I gave the devotional.  Unfortunately, no
one was very impressed with it, but I like it, so I’ll copy it in here.



I haven’t gotten very far with
meditation, but when I have managed it, the approach that works best
for me is God’s infinite creativity.  Consider the variety of
creation on earth – amoebas to blue whales, the Grand Canyon to
glaciers to rain forests – and each and every person who exists, has
existed, or ever will exist, each with his or her unique personality,
and each of whom God infinitely loves and treasures individually. 
Then look at the innumerable planets in our galaxy, the innumerable
galaxies in the universe, and ask yourself whether God can refrain from
creativity in all of them?



Humans have imagined Vulcans and
Klingons, and thousands of other races.  But even on Earth, God’s
creativity is greater then our imagination!  Think of the infinite
infinities God can create and love!



I have three short readings.



Psalm 8:4-5: When I look up at the
night sky, and see the work of thy fingers, the moon and stars which
thou has created, What is Man, that thou art mindful of him, and the
Son of Man, that thou visitest him?



Part of Eucharistic Prayer C: At
your command all things came to be; the vast expanse of interstellar
space, galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses, and this fragile
earth, our island home.



And a poem, “Christ in the Universe” (Alice Meynell, 1913)



    With this ambiguous earth

His dealings have been told us.  These abide:

The signal to a maid, the human birth,

The lesson, and the young man crucified.



    But not a star of all

The innumerable hosts of stars has heard

How he administered this terrestrial ball.

Our race have kept their lord’s entrusted word.



    Of his Earth-visiting feet

None knows the secret, cherished, perilous,

The terrible, shame fast, frightened, whispered, sweet,

Heart-shattering secret of his way with us.



    No planet knows of this.

Our wayside planet, carrying land and wave,

Love and life multiplied, and pain and bliss,

Bears, as chief treasure, one forsaken grave.



    Nor, in our little day,

May his devices with the heavens be guessed

His pilgrimage to thread the Milky Way,

Or his bestowals there, be manifest.



    But, in the eternities,

Doubtless we shall compare together, hear

A million alien gospels, in what guise

He trod the Pleiades, the Lyre, the Bear.



    O be prepared, my soul!

To read the inconceivable, to scan

The million forms of God those stars unroll

When, in our turn, we show to them a man.