The Playground of God

A reflection by Pamela Hussey

Holidays are here again and millions of postcards are dropping through letterboxes bearing variants on the having-a-lovely-time, wish-you-were-here theme. Villages nestled in the foothills of the Alps, cottages perched on Devonshire cliffs, tranquil lakes, tropical forests, sunsets and sunrises - our beautiful earth in some of its many guises.

A few years ago a movie entitled Blue Planet was shown in the United States: 'Spliced together from film footage taken by astronauts in orbit around planet Earth, this movie entrances viewers with the loveliness of our planet, a small blue and white marble revolving through the black void of space. From above we see the green and brown shapes of the continents, the blue of the vast oceans, the swirling patterns of the clouds, even the lights of cities like jewels in the night. This planet has the look of a live creature, self-contained, full of information, marvellously skilled at handling the sun… this blue planet is our home, our only home in the vast cosmos.' (Women, earth and creator spirit by Elizabeth A Johnson).

The Natural History Museum in London recently held an exhibition called 'Earth from the air', a stunning collection of photographic portraits by Yann Arthus-Bertrand: wonderful patterns in the red soil of fields near the Rio Uruguay in Argentina; the green expanse of the Barrier Reef; huge landscapes where the human figure is almost invisible; and so on in breathtaking variety (see http://www.earthfromtheair.com/ for details).

In Donal O'Leary's article 'The Embodied God' (The Furrow, September 1999) he is touched by the earth's beauty: 'Sometimes I dwell on the wild imagination of a divine artist… who flamboyantly created the millions of incredibly-shaped forms of species, flora and fauna and human, extravagantly absurd, amazingly and fundamentally amusing, one tiny part of eighteen billion years of superbly-timed evolution, which in itself is but one small fraction of an expanding cosmos. So amazing is this playground of God that human resources of imagination, mind or technology cannot cope with it, and all of this is in the embrace of a patient, all-powerful and compassionate energy we can only call divine mystery.'

King David, still the biblical Top of the Pops, offers us, to harp accompaniment, a variation on the having-a-lovely-time theme:

'Fresh and green are the pastures where he gives me repose.
Near restful waters he leads me to revive my drooping spirit.' (Psalm 22)

'Greater than the roar of mighty waters,
more glorious than the surgings of the sea,
the Lord is glorious on high.' (Psalm 92)

'I lift up my eyes to the mountains:
from where shall come my help?
My help shall come from the Lord
Who made heaven and earth.' (Psalm 120)

'Let the rivers clap their hands
and the hills ring out their joy.' (Psalm 97)

'Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth.
Serve the Lord with gladness.' (Psalm 99)

As we pick another postcard off the mat, we can perhaps join in the song of praise for such an outpouring of beauty.