I began including Creation-focussed worship in the congregations I served at least 30 years ago, mostly around Earth Day/Sunday in April. I was delighted when the United Church joined Christian denominations around our planetary home in acknowledging a liturgical Creation Season or Time during September and early October, culminating with the Feast of St. Francis, the patron saint of the environment.
The United Church of Canada introduced Creation Time in the Season of Pentecost in 2010. This is a time to realize and celebrate that we live within a miracle – life on the planet Earth, and that we are biologically and spiritually kin with all creation. The realization that we belong to Earth means that we are not so much her beneficent caretakers, as we are indebted and grateful because all of our life energy is derived from her.
This is a season to regard all creation as a radiant manifestation of Spirit, and to understand that the one we call the Christ is cosmic in scope and in love. All of creation lives and moves and has its being within the heart of the Christ, “in whom all things are held together.” (Colossians 1:15-17) Our vocation is to fall back in love with creation and to treat the planet, her biosystems, and creatures, as we treat our family.
The “tree” logo was designed for this occasion and orange was selected as the corresponding liturgical colour, as orange is an important recapturing of an ancient Christian liturgical way of being that we had forgotten. Symbolically and psychologically, orange is the colour of fire and flame, the red of passion tempered by the yellow of wisdom, the colour of harvest, fruitfulness, joy and symbolic of endurance and strength.
I would encourage all Groundlings, those of us who refuse to be "so heavenly minded that we're no Earthly good," to embrace the Season of Creation/ Creation Time/ Creationtide as a meaningful expression of our faith in the Incarnate Christ.
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