This is the air I breathe
Welcome,
Sulfur Dioxide
This
is the air I breathe
Hello,
Carbon Monoxide
Your
Holy presence
The
air, the air
Living
in me is everywhere.
This
is my daily bread
Breathe
Deep
This
is my daily Bread
While
I sleep
Your
very word
Breathe
deep
Is
spoken to me.
And
I am desperate for you,
And
I am lost without you.
This
is the air I breathe
Bless
you, alcohol blood stream
This
is the air I breathe
Save
me nicotine lung steam
Your
Holy Presence
Incense,
Incense
Living
in me, is in the air
This
is my daily bread
Breathe
Deep
This
is my daily Bread
While
I sleep
Your
very word
Breathe
deep
Is
spoken to me.
And
I’m cataclysmic ectoplasm
And
I’m fallout atomic orgasm
Desperate
for you
And
I’m vapor and fume
I’m
lost at the stone of my tomb without you
And
I breathing like a sullen perfume
Desperate
for you
Eating
at the stone of my tomb
I’m
lost without you,
Looking
rather attractive
I’m
lost without you,
Now
that I’m radio active
I’m
desperate for you,
Just
watch me spark
Cry
out to live
I
glow in the dark
I
am desperate for you
Breathe
deep
I’m
lost
While
I sleep
I’m
Lost
Breathe
deep
I’m
lost without you
This poem is a mash up of this is the air I breathe by
Michael W. Smith and Air from Hair by James Rado, Gerome Ragni. It is actually the first thing I thought of
when I knew I had sky Sunday. The
imagery that these two images bring about can be, and I hope it was, disturbing.
When I used to drive into Los Angeles from Palm
Springs it would strike me as I came over the one hill and looking into the
basin of Los Angeles there was a yellow/brownish haze just hanging over the
city. The air is everywhere and this is
the air we breathe.
The original Gospel assigned for today speaks of the
sky turning dark for 3 hours as Christ hung on the cross. I choose instead the reading where Christ
actually says red sky at night sailors delight red sky in morning sailors take
warning…well more or less.
The other readings one is from Jeremiah and it says;
Jeremiah
4:23-28Common English Bible (CEB)
23 I looked at the earth,
And it was
without shape or form;
At the
heavens
And
there was no light.
24 I looked at the mountains
And they
were quaking;
All the
hills were rocking back and forth.
25 I looked and there was no one left;
Every bird
in the sky had taken flight.
26 I looked and the fertile land was a desert;
All its
towns were in ruins
Before
the Lord,
Before
his fury.
27 The Lord proclaims:
The whole
earth will become a desolation,
But I
will not destroy it completely.
28 Therefore, the earth will grieve
And the
heavens grow dark
And still a 3rd reading form the psalms says;
Psalm
19
For
the music leader. A psalm of David.
19 Heaven is declaring God’s glory;
The sky is
proclaiming his handiwork.
2 One day gushes the news to the next,
And one
night informs another what needs to be known.
3 Of course, there’s no speech, no words—
Their
voices can’t be heard—
4 but their
sound[a] extends throughout the world;
Their
words reach the ends of the earth.
God has made a tent in heaven for the sun.
5 The sun is like a groom
Coming out
of his honeymoon suite;
Like a
warrior, it thrills at running its course.
6 It rises in one end of the sky;
Its circuit
is complete at the other.
Nothing
escapes its heat.
There is a theme here which is the voice of creation,
or more specifically the way which
The sky not only announces and celebrates God’s
presence, but also sympathizes with
Creation when it suffers.
Have you ever watched the skies when a storm was
brewing, black clouds rolling?
In like wall after wall of waves? Have you ever had a
sense of God’s presence in?
The storm or God’s voice in the thunder as many
ancient peoples did? (Note
Psalm 29!) Have you ever sensed that eerie feeling
that comes during an eclipse?
When all the animals are spooked?
Why is the sky so important to us? Our moods seem to
change with the weather—
When the sun shines we are likely to be happier than
when darkness covers the sky.
Why? What does the sky mean to us? Is our faith
influenced by the sky or related to
The sky in some way?[1]
It is interesting to note that in general when the Old
Testament refers to heavens the original Hebrew could be translated as sky or
skies, and really that often works better, for me anyway for then the air around
us, above us and beyond us. All of this
space is where God dwells. God is
living, according to the Old Testament, here between us.
We take God
in…This is the air I breathe. We exhale
God…This is the air I breathe. We harm
and foul God with pollutants form cigarette smoke to exhaust from Coal mines
and power plants. We made the Earth a
member of our congregation and yet we walk in God daily.
In Jeremiahs vision he sees an enemy about to destroy
all that God has created. As a matter of
fact the season of creation author describes it this way;
“. The
Disaster he sees coming is so destructive
he depicts the event as if it were a reversal of
The original acts of creation. To
understand this vision we need to return to the events
Of Genesis One. Consider the following:
Compare v. 23 with Gen. 1.1: Return to
pre-creation – all is ‘waste and void’
Compare v. 23 with Day One: No light in
the sky
Compare v. 25 with Day Five: No birds in
the sky
Compare v. 26 with Day Three: No
vegetation comes from the land/Earth
Jeremiah’s vision turns the whole of the
original creation process upside down. This
Portrait, moreover, is more than a
metaphor.”[2]
If
we look around us we can see this destruction happening around us every day. Fires are wiping out acres of
vegetation. Drought is devastating our
state. In other parts floods and
mudslides are wiping out villages where glaciers are disappearing, and ocean
tides are rising. Jeremiah ends his vision by predicting the earth will mourn
the sky will turn black.
I
have seen the sky turn black and the sun disappear due to the big fires in
Oakland. I have seen the sky turn from a
haze to a dark orange to fill with soot due to nearby fires. Jeremiah has laments where he speaks further
of the earth mourning and the land crying aloud to God. I believe in many cases this is happening
today. The land is crying out and some
are listening.
The
author of the Seasons of creation sky Sunday bible study tells us; “We have
created a hole in the ozone layer. By excessive use of various sprays and
chemicals we have released chlorofluorocarbon molecules into the atmosphere. In
the stratosphere chlorine atoms escape from these molecules and attack the
ozone molecules. The resulting ‘hole’ first appeared over the South Pole, but
the ozone layer is thinning over other continents. Because of this thinning, UV
rays from the sun have now increased and so have skin cancer rates. (though ,
due to changes we have made,, in a study released this summer if we stay the
path the ozone may heal by 2070)
There
are many ways in which we have polluted our skies. The combustion of fossil
Fuels
in factories and cars produces a host of noxious materials that fill our skies.
One
Of
the common effects is smog. Air pollution is no longer a crisis we can avoid.”[3]
I
must say we are getting better but our dependency on fossil fuels is still way
too high. We are still in the very early
stages of switching from more hybrid and fuel cell cars but I believe we are
getting there. We, as you know, have
most of our electricity generated from the sun.
People
have shrugged at solar energy claiming it is a flash in the pan or not
viable. But I still wonder what would
happen if we required every new structure to have solar panels, or at least
every government building. “In full sun, you can safely assume about 100 watts
of solar energy per square foot. If you assume 12 hours of sun per day, this
equates to 438,000 watt-hours per square foot per year. Based on 27,878,400
square feet per square mile, sunlight bestows a whopping 12.2 trillion
watt-hours per square mile per year.”[4] We have yet to begin to access all the energy
around us.
Of course the biggest problem with this is someone
will lose money. Someone else will make
money. The energy companies, the way
many stand, are losing money as solar becomes more popular. The gas companies are losing money as
responsible organizations and people are divesting form them. They try to block advances that will better
our environment at every turn. It really
is a shame. Yet, in spite of all that, the LAPD announced today they have just
bought 137 electric cars!
Finally the author I have been sharing with you form
seasons of creation goes on to remind us
Many of
us have been conditioned to think that only humans communicate the mysteries of
God. We do not expect other parts of creation to have a voice like that of
humans. Butterflies do not talk. Trees do not sing the way we do. Skies do not
communicate.
Psalm
19 indicates just the opposite. Many Psalms, like Ps. 148, celebrate the way
trees sing, fields rejoice and the rest of creation praises God. This Psalmist
invites all creation—including sea monsters and storms—to praise the Creator!
Sometimes
we think this kind of talk is but poetic language, giving human voice to
non-human reality. Psalm 19 suggests that the voice of creation is more than a poetic
way of praising God. All creation is here communicating about—and with—the
Creator.
In
this Psalm the sky proclaims good news in its own way, not a human way. The sky
is the mediator of God’s word. The sky announces two things—the vibrant
presence of God and the creative work of God.[5]
Unfortunately
over the city of angels the sky often mourns and warns of the troubled
air. The sky becomes distressful for
those with conditions and young people on certain days as the particle count is
just unsafe. We must listen to God in
heaven, God around us, God in us, between us and remember. This is the air I breathe. This is the air we
breathe. Amen.
[1] Norman Habel,
Good News from the Sky, accessed September 8, 2015,
http://seasonofcreation.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/bible-studies-sky-sunday1.pdf.
[4] Ecoworld
magazine, Http://www.ecoworld.com/energy-fuels/how-much-solar-energy-hits-earth.html,
June 14, 2006, accessed September 8, 2015,
http://www.ecoworld.com/energy-fuels/how-much-solar-energy-hits-earth.html.
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