The Mosaic

Our Elders -

On Monday night I attended an event with Barbara Brown Taylor at Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church. If you’ve heard me preach, then you know how much I love Barbara Brown Taylor. While I took copious notes on Monday (I think I must have written down everything she said!), one thing stood out to me the most. Something she said has been shifting my perspective all week.

She read Genesis 1 aloud and then shared how we so often think God saved the very best for last, creating humans as the final cherry on top of the created world. This, of course, feeds our idea that humans are in control and that nature is subservient. On the sixth day of creation, God created the humans, but God also created the cattle and all the wild animals. She said, “I choose to see all the things that preceded me in the order of creation as my elders, of which I am a kid sister to them all.”

Everything Barbara Brown Taylor says sounds like poetry, but this really stuck with me. I’ve been looking at nature, at animals, at my own dog differently than I did before. If I choose to see them as elders then they demand my respect and my attention, because elders have so much to teach us.

Monday and Tuesday of this week I hosted fall convocation at SMU. Terry Wildman, a Native American who has recently helped translate the New Testament into the First Nations Version, shared with me that there are rituals in which the rocks are referred to as the grandfathers of the earth, emphasizing Barbara Brown Taylor’s point.

I invite you this week to shift your perspective toward the created world and consider all things that preceded you in the order of creation as your elders. What do they have to teach and offer you, I wonder?

Love you all,
Pastor Victoria