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Devotion Thirty-Six, “Space”

Forever, humans have been captivated by space, by what is beyond the Earth.  Ancient civilizations were watching the stars and the planets and the sun.  Observing.  Noticing.  paying attention.  Trying to make sense of it all.  

There are ancient structures, buildings, pyramids, even the serpent mounds of Ohio, that are oriented so that the sun hits in a certain way at a certain time of year.  This activity of the sun had been observed and the construction capitalized on that.  It is so amazing how humanity is captivated by the sun and the skies.  

Now we have telescopes launched into space sending pictures and images back to Earth which enchant and astound us.  There is SO much going on out there!  And so much of it is beautiful!

Where does space fit into our world view?  And where do we fit into space?  The US now has a Space Force, the sixth branch of the military established in 2019.  What is the mission of that branch of government?

“The U.S. Space Force protects our country and the freedom to operate in space, keeping it secure, stable and accessible for military space power and new waves of innovation.. .  Space now defines our daily lives and the modern way of war.” [https://www.spaceforce.com/about]

Once space was about understanding time and the passing of the year and sacred devotion to the gods/God.  It was the subject of curiosity and  scientific exploration.  Now, it is a venue for war and for the extension of capitalism.  Apparently there are plans to put company logos in space so that they shine to earth.  

One of the astronauts in Samantha Harvey’s novel Orbital reflects:  “When he thinks of the six of them here, or the astronauts now going to the moon, he hears that haunting call – that’s what we’re doing when we come into space, asserting our species by extending its territory.  Space is the one remaining wilderness we have.  The solar system into which we venture is just the new frontier now our earthly frontiers have been discovered and plundered.” [p. 162] 

Sadly space has become a vista for colonization, for ownership and claim to access, power, and resources.  And of course, this all makes someone, someones, very rich!  

Prayer:  This Lenten season, may we see the folly of our ways.  May we reclaim our need for the transcendent, for the Beyond, for something greater than we are.  So that we may glory in the gift of this precious life on Earth.  Amen.

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Devotion prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

The devotions this Lenten season will be based on the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey.  Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024.  It is a beautifully written story about the experience of a group of people orbiting the Earth in a spaceship.  They see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24 hour period.  The book is a reflection on the experience of living together and appreciating planet Earth in a new way.

Devotion Thirty-Five, “Mother”

Those in the mental health profession say that the most important person in our lives is our mother.  Whatever our mother was like, even if we never knew her, our mother is the most important person in our lives.  Even by being absent, she has an influence upon us.  And a mother that is present and loving and nurturing can make all the difference especially when there are other forces at work around us demeaning us or degrading us.  The influence of a mother is extremely significant.  Even if we hated our mother.  She is still an influence on us.  We have to decide whether it will be for good or ill.

I know that my mother did not grow up with many opportunities.  She told us that she was determined that my brother and I would have all the things she never had – like outings to museums, attending concerts, taking music lessons, going on vacation, etc.  And we did!

In the novel, Orbital, by Samantha Harvey, the biological mother of one of the astronauts, Chie from Japan, dies while they are on their space mission.  It is very difficult for her.  Now she has no mother on Earth to go back to.  But this reinforces the realization that the Earth is our mother.   Harvey tells us:  “They look down and they understand why it’s called Mother Earth.  They all feel it from time to time.  They all make an association between the earth and a mother. . . 

“But now, more so.  Since Chie came to the galley on Friday evening where they were making dinner, her face colourless with shock, and said, My mother has died. . . . 

“Since that news, they find themselves looking down at earth as they circle their way round it  . . and there’s that word:  mother mother mother mother.  Chie’s only mother now is that rolling, glowing ball that throws itself involuntarily around the sun once a year.  Chie has been made an orphan, her father dead a decade.  That ball is the only thing she can point to now that has given her life.  There’s no life without it.  Without that planet there’s no life.  Obvious.” [pp. 11-12]

I am wondering what our lives would be like, and what Earth would be like, if we took seriously the idea that Earth is our mother.  What if our relationship with Earth were the most important relationship in our lives?  Somehow, I have the feeling that this would bring us closer to the God/Divine Love/ Creator, and to each other.  

Prayer: May we learn to revere the Earth for all the ways it sustains our lives providing us with food, shelter, companionship, and beauty.  A gift beyond compare without which we are nothing.  May we be grateful for all the mothering love that sustains our lives.  Amen.

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Devotion prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

The devotions this Lenten season will be based on the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey.  Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024.  It is a beautifully written story about the experience of a group of people orbiting the Earth in a spaceship.  They see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24 hour period.  The book is a reflection on the experience of living together and appreciating planet Earth in a new way.

Lent Devotion 34 “Nurture”

I like to go to the performances of the Florida Orchestra. I also like to go to the opera. I love the art museum. What motivates people to invest their lives in such creativity and performance?

We are very fortunate in our community to have hundreds and hundreds of devoted doctors. People who have invested in extensive schooling and training so that they can help to heal others. It’s amazing!

There are teachers in our schools who spend night and day thinking of new ways to engage students and make learning interesting, valued. Each and every day they show up at school and help young people to understand the world around them. It’s beautiful!
And as a pastor, I think of the thousands of clergy who each and every week preach to their congregations and offer spiritual care and incite people to want to follow Jesus devoting themselves to the have nots and to creating a just society where everyone has access to what is needed to thrive and live in peace.

But space? Being an astronaut? I’m not so sure why anyone would want to do that, though it certainly is incredible!

In Samantha Harvey’s novel, Orbital, the crew on the international space ship includes one person from Italy. One from Japan. One from Great Britain. Two from Russia. And one from the US. The ship has been orbiting for years with the crew changing on a regular basis, coming from different nations, and the mission continuing. But the spaceship is getting old and new initiatives are afoot, so this orbiting of international travelers is coming to an end. One of the Russian cosmonauts, Roman, reflects on the this culmination: “He seems to know that something is ending, that all good things must go this way, towards fracture and fallout. So many astronauts and cosmonauts have passed through here, this orbiting laboratory, this science experiment in the carefully controlled nurturing of peace. It’s going to end. And it will end through the restless spirit of endeavour that made it possible in the first place. Striking out further and deeper. The moon, the moon. Mars, the moon. Further yet. A human being was not made to stand still.” [p. 202]

I am very interested in this concept of a “science experiment in the carefully controlled nurturing of peace.” It seems we could use many more experiments of this nature. In space. And certainly on Earth. Experiments seeking to nurture peace. Some of us will go to the No Kings demonstration today. Maybe that is what we are really doing. Being part of an experiment in the nurturing of peace. I hope so!

Prayer: There are so many ways for us to engage with life and with society. We are beings infused with creativity and dreams. In who we are and what we do, may we be part of nurturing peace for ourselves, for our neighbors, for our enemies, for the world, and for the cosmos. Amen

Devotion prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

The devotions this Lenten season will be based on the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey. Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024. It is a beautifully written story about the experience of a group of people orbiting the Earth in a spaceship. They see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24 hour period. The book is a reflection on the experience of living together and appreciating planet Earth in a new way.

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Lent Devotion 33: “Las Meninas”

First of all, you may want to Google “Las Meninas” and see a picture of the painting by that name by Diego Velazquez.  And maybe you have seen the painting in Museo del Prado in Madrid.  It is very enigmatic.  There are several little girls in the painting.  It’s title is translated “The Ladies in Waiting.”  And there is the painter with his easel painting a picture.  Of the king and queen whose images appear in a mirror.  And there is someone in the background in a doorway.  And some other adults including a dwarf looking on and a dog asleep.  So what is it a painting of?  What is it about?  An artist painting a painting?  The little girls?  The monarchs in the mirror?  Illusion?  Delusion?

This painting was the subject of an art class for Shaun, an American astronaut on the spaceship in Samantha Harvey’s novel, Orbital, when he was 15.  Another student seated near him engaged him about the painting which he cared nothing about.  He wanted to be a fighter pilot.

This other student became his wife.  And sent him a postcard of the painting writing on the back all the issues addressed by the teacher about the painting.  And Shaun brought the postcard with him on the spaceship to remind him of his wife.  

At one point on the voyage, another colleague on the spaceship, Pietro from Italy, asks about the postcard.  After reading the postcard, this scene ensues:  “Pietro stares for a while at the painting, and a while longer, then says, It’s the dog.

“Pardon?

“To answer your wife’s question, the subject of the painting is the dog. . . “

“Now he doesn’t see a painter or princess or dwarf or monarch, he sees a portrait of a dog.  An animal surrounded by the strangeness of humans, all their odd cuffs and ruffles and silks and posturing, the mirrors and angles and viewpoints;  all the ways they’ve tried not to be animals and how comical this is, when he looks at it now.  And how the dog is the only thing in the painting that isn’t slightly laughable or trapped within a matrix of vanities.  The only thing in the painting that could be called vaguely free.”  [pp. 150-160]

To me, this is an aim of our Lenten journey and our life’s journey.  To be free.  Free of the posturing and props and pretenses that obscure our true identity and our freedom.

Prayer:  In these holy days of Lent, may we try to affirm our deep down humanity that is so often hidden behind many veils and pretenses.  And may we also try to see the full humanity of others.  Then we can be free.  Amen.

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Devotion prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

The devotions this Lenten season will be based on the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey.  Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024.  It is a beautifully written story about the experience of a group of people orbiting the Earth in a spaceship.  They see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24 hour period.  The book is a reflection on the experience of living together and appreciating planet Earth in a new way.

Lent Devotion 32: Wisdom

It is remarkable the knowledge that the human species has been able to acquire.  Considering the time that has elapsed between the inception of Creation, the evolution of homo sapiens sapiens, and the present moment, humanity has progressed at breakneck speed.  And the speed of the acquisition of knowledge is ever increasing.  With the spreading use of Artificial Intelligence, new vistas of knowledge open up.  Advances in science and technology may make it possible for human life to improve for everyone.  

Or maybe not.  With all this knowledge, we still seem beset by problems.  Like delivering healthcare to all.  Being attuned to the heart attack symptoms of women.  Seeing that everyone has a safe, secure place to live.  Making sure all people, including children, especially children, have enough food to eat.  There are many things that seem to be lagging despite our attainment of knowledge.

Addressing some of these situations is not so much a matter of knowledge as a matter of will.  And wisdom.  When we choose to take care of everyone, we avert many other problems.  We don’t seem to have learned that yet.  It is wisdom that eludes our species as a whole.

Shaun, an American astronaut on the spaceship in Samantha Harvey’s novel, Orbital, has a prayerful moment.  Harvey relates:  “With his eyes closed he can hear that gibbon call, hollow and echoing. . . . Imagines placing his hand on the warm neck of a horse and can feel the smooth, oily lie of its coat, though he’s barely touched a horse in his life.  The dart of a jay between the trees in his backyard.  The dash of a spider into cover.  The shadow of a pike beneath the water.  A shrew carrying her young in her mouth.  A hare leaping higher than seems warranted.  A scarab beetle navigating by the stars.  

“Pick a single creature on this earth and its story will be the earth’s story, he suddenly thinks.  It can tell you everything, that one creature.  The whole history of the world, the whole likely future of the world.”  [pp. 162-163]

I am not sure we can say that about the human creature.  The human creature seems to be the creature most capable of deception, ignorance, bias, and greed.  I’m not sure there is even one human creature alive today that can tell Earth’s story.  Let alone the story of Earth’s future.   

Prayer: We hold Earth’s story deep in our bones, in our sinews and synapses.  May we listen to that story and appreciate it’s wisdom so that we may create a new future not just for humanity but for Earth and the cosmos.  Amen.

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Devotion prepared by Rev. Kim P. Wells, pastor of Lakewood United Church of Christ in St. Petersburg, FL.

The devotions this Lenten season will be based on the novel Orbital by Samantha Harvey.  Orbital won the Booker Prize in 2024.  It is a beautifully written story about the experience of a group of people orbiting the Earth in a spaceship.  They see 16 sunrises and sunsets in a 24 hour period.  The book is a reflection on the experience of living together and appreciating planet Earth in a new way.