Welcome to Tuesday and our feature on nature with Carl Safina.
The Sarum Prayer
God be in my head—and in my understanding
God be in my eyes—and in my looking
God be in my mouth—and in my speaking
God be in my heart—and in my thinking
God be at my end—and at my departing
The Creation Praises
Selections from Genesis 1, Psalm 148, Psalm 96 (Robert Alter Translation)
And God created the great sea monsters…which the waters had swarmed forth of each kind…and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the water in the seas” (Genesis 1: 21–22)
Praise the Lord from the earth.
Sea monsters and all you deeps.
Let them praise the Lord’s name
Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth!
Reflection: Collectively, we humans have a very high opinion of ourselves in relation to the other living creatures. As though we occupy center stage. We forget that in the ancient origin story of Israel, the first blessing from God is given to the sea creatures, along with the first command to multiply and fill the earth (seas). Any blessing we receive cannot override this prior blessing. And this priority is reflected in Psalm 148, in which the first creatures called to worship are the “sea monsters and all you deeps”
In his book, Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel, Carl Safina, writes of the song of humpback whales. Their songs, he says, are structured songs—composed of ten consecutive themes, each made of repeated phrases of about ten different notes requiring about 15 seconds to sing. The entire song lasts 10 minutes. Then the whale repeats it, for hours. In his latest book, Becoming Wild, Safina writes that the male humpbacks in the Pacific all sing the same song, and the humpbacks in the Atlantic sing a different song. Each Ocean hears its own song from the humpbacks. And get this, the song changes in each ocean every year. Reminds one of the Psalm 96, “Sing to the Lord a new song, sing to the Lord, all the earth.” Carl Safina, who has roamed the high seas listening to whales singing, is clearly gobsmacked when he writes in Becoming Wild: “Humpback whales sing the most complicated, unusual, and cultural non-human songs on earth. For millions of years without pause, somewhere on this planet, the ocean has hummed with their singing.”
Maybe all this is a reminder that while the beauty around us includes us, it isn’t about us. And there is much beauty we don’t have ears to hear or eyes to see, but creatures other than ourselves do and they are moved to delight just as we are. And God is.
Take a minute if you have it, to listen to the song of the humpback whale.
Prayer for Wisdom & Justice
O Divine Wisdom, who dwells within the holy of holies, and whose light shines through all things created, fill our hearts, O blessed One, with the hope of a blessed future. Make all things new, return wrong to right, and cause us to walk in the ways of justice without which there can be no peace. Amen.
Prayer for Loved Ones
Over the next minute simply name your loved ones, calling each to mind in love, lifting each in the embrace of remembered love, to the God who is the source of all being.
Pause for Gratitude
Identify three things, big or small, ordinary or extraordinary, that you could be thankful for. Pause for the next half minute to name and consider them.
Serenity Prayer
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.
Benediction
So have a blessed day, go in peace, wash your hands, love your neighbor: you are not alone.