A couple of years ago I wrote a poem on the wonder of creation, All the Time in the World, and another on Creationtide, Saving the Earth. In that second poem I touched on a problem I have with our attitude to Creationtide; the following is not truly a poem, more a succession of thoughts:

The Cross is not a Hat Stand

Many things mean much to us,
they differ in degree
to different people,
to you,
to me:
world peace, poverty, politics,
care of the elderly, the sick,
social and family relations,
feminism, education,
prison welfare, crime prevention,
…
but the cross is not a stand
on which these hats can hang.
Yet we have turned Creationtide into ecologytide,
fueled by guilt or fear of global warming,

It should not be a time of guilt
for our misuse of the world God gave us,
but a time of wonder
of how God so loved the world
from In the beginning at the dawn of time
nearly fourteen billion years ago,
to Christ’s last words on the cross:
It is finished.

All that hung upon the cross was love,
the love of God, in Christ, for the world.
All that we can hang upon the cross
is our love in return,
for God, in Christ,
sent to give us eternal life.

The day will come when after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, that we will harness for God the energy of love. Then for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.         Teilhard de Chardin