I am delighted to share another beautiful submission to the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Amy Oden’s reflection The Ministry of Creation.
I noticed it first when I needed respite from the demands of caregiving for my husband as he declined with dementia. When I became depleted or tempted to push myself beyond my own well-being, it was the trail along a nearby lake that saved me. I could walk the trail and weep or stare or daydream, the lapping waves and soft breezes offering balm to soothe and comfort me. I didn’t have to get tasks done or make anything better. I didn’t have to figure anything out or try to hold it altogether. I could just be, without effort. I found my deep breaths again, my pulse settling into its rhythm. What a discovery: I could let creation minister to me!
Through those hard years of Perry’s dementia, I learned to trust this, to allow creation to minister to me again and again. When Perry moved into memory care facility during the pandemic, I couldn’t visit him, couldn’t sit with him, hold his hand or touch him. My own body rebelled at this physical separation. I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, distress overwhelming my thoughts. I remembered then the way creation had ministered to me and I sought the Oklahoma prairie. As I stood on the edge of this wide-open expanse of short-grass, fierce wind in my face, I felt my body release at a cellular level. When words and the gestures of friends could not seem to touch the depth of my pain, the only solace was the sky, the only comfort the vast ocean of prairie, grass bowed by the caress of wind. I surrendered to creation’s ministry, allowing myself to receive creation’s balm.
The ministry of creation was my lifeline through those particularly painful months. When I couldn’t pray or speak or think clearly, I could walk the trail along the nearby lake. It was like oxygen. I didn’t have to figure anything out or make anything happen. I just had to show up and let creation take it from there. It did require me to get out of bed, mechanically go through motions of dressing, drive 3 miles to the parking lot, get out of my car and move my legs. This was creation’s ministry, too, pulling me back into my body, back into my life.
I couldn’t tell you what happened really. I don’t remember thoughts, breakthroughs or epiphanies. I only know I was held in the sky and water, dirt and trees. They held me, let me walk, let me be. They didn’t push with probing questions, offer suggestions or try to make it all OK. Creation companioned me, gently being itself and thereby receiving me as I was. Something in that accompaniment restored me slowly, over time, cell by cell, my shattered sense of my life began to re-form.
Recently I’ve moved to a new city, Seattle, a major life transition that brings both losses and new possibilities. Again, I can feel my body drawn to the nearby Green Lake to walk, to let my awareness settle on the gentle movement of the water, let my skin feel the soft breeze through the trees, to let creation minister to me. I’m learning it is medicine, a healing, a sense of regeneration at a cellular level. I don’t know the actual chemistry, but I can sense that I am receiving a salve. I trust it.
Other times, I walk along Shilshole Bay where the wider view of water receives me. As I behold this brilliant view, I sense creation embracing me, holding me. And when I want to soar, to become “a feather on the breath of God,” as Hildegard of Bingen says, I stand on the ridge at Discovery Park, 200 feet above the Puget Sound. I join the spacious vista of creation’s glory, the Olympic Mountains across the water and the San Juan Islands spreading out as far as I can see. This expanse pulls me into creation’s embrace, lifting me up so that I feel lightened, carried, in the arms of sea and sky.
Allowing creation to minister to me was not a spiritual program I set out to learn. It was not a spiritual self-improvement path I was determined to master. Instead, it was an unexpected showing, a revelation as creation showed me how to surrender, how to enter its arms and rest. It was a slow, gradually increasing awareness that I was being pulled into creation’s embrace, a solace beyond words, a place to rest. The ministry of creation returned me to myself, not to my previous self but to the new self I was becoming. This is holy ground, holy work, holy rest.
Raised on the prairies of Oklahoma, Amy Oden finds her spiritual home under the wide-open sky. Her passion is to introduce spiritual practices that nourish lives to follow Jesus into the world. She has been a seminary professor for most of her life, focusing now on spiritual formation and spiritual direction.
