Earth Day at St. Paul’s
Sermon by Mike Margerum preached on June 14, 2026 at St. Paul’s, Year A, Proper 6.
Awe, Awe, Awe. How to share my enthusiasm for Natures beauty? Hard to do this inside. We need to
get out and look. Photograph and draw what we see. Earth day is generally celebrated on April 22, each year, but because of the Newness of Mother Hannah we didn’t have a chance to celebrate God as beautiful until today.
The editor in this last issue of Nature thanks a retiring Illustrator by the name of Stan Fellows. Stan has been illustrating for Nature for 25 years. His assignment for this issue was to go out and draw a herd of
Buffalo at the Zapato Ranch in southern Colorado. A ranch that has a large bison herd. Because Stan couldn’t get close to the herd, he welcomed the unexpected and drew a small frog that had leaped up on his hand. “It’s what makes Stan’s art so compelling” the editor says. Stan says, “Draw what’s right in front of you,” “Relax, be silent, clear your mind and look carefully. Now sketch your surroundings.” He welcomed the unexpected as the Awe, the beauty of that moment.
Here is a poem from Mary Oliver: It’s called “The Swan”
Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the
black river?
Did you see it in the morning, rising into the
silvery air –
An armful of white blossoms,
A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it
leaned
into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank,
a bank of lilies,
Biting the air with its black beak?
Did you hear it, fluting and whistling
A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the
trees – like a waterfall
Knifing down the black ledges?
And did you see it, finally, just under the
clouds –
A white cross Streaming across the sky, its
feet
Like black leaves, its wings Like the
stretching light of the river?
And did you feel it, in your heart, how it
pertained to everything?
And have you too finally figured out what
beauty is for?
And have you changed your life?
– Mary Oliver
Have you finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? The ecology group here at St Paul’s just finished a book study on a book called: The Art of being a Creature by The Rev. Ragan
Sutterfield. In a chapter called Awe he says, “Awe is among the most adequate acknowledgements we can have before God’s gifts.” In another book of his called “Watch and Wonder, Birding as a Spiritual Practice”, he says: “When we open ourselves to beauty, we find that it draws us toward the object of our attention… it decenters us.” It gets us out of ourselves. What a wonderful idea, that by looking for beauty in the world we can find God, yes in the majestic swan and the lowly frog. God created them so he is part of them. When God created this world, he called it good. And God is good.
Have you ever had an experience with beauty? I was up at Lake Tahoe, up on the top of Shakespear, a peak overlooking Camp Galilee. The vista there is breath-taking with the lake laid out before you. I heard a loud taping behind me. The sound was coming from two Pileated Woodpeckers drumming on a fallen log. Pileated Woodpeckers are a large woodpecker the size of a crow with a shocking red crest on its head. The face is black and white. Once you have seen one you won’t forget it. I know I haven’t.
Have you had an experience with beauty? Gods Awe? Beauty comes in many forms. Yesterday several of us went into Lovelock correctional center for a one-day retreat. It is sometimes hard to see the beauty inside the institution. The buildings are very grey, with lots of wire, sharp razor wire, little grass, and a few flowers. But inside as we share talks and reflections with the men inside another type of beauty comes out. Beauty shines from men’s faces when they learn that they are cared for by others. Gods Awe. Beauty comes for us in many forms, but sometimes we want to put it in a box, keep it for ourselves, or tone it down because it is too powerful for us to understand. Do we dwell in the darkness that surrounds us? The pain we have as we age, the loss of our functions? Can’t we, can’t I change my life and focus on seeing the beauty in the world?
In the gospel today Jesus is sending out the Disciples into the world to share the beauty of the Kingdom of God. And the epistle says we do this because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit that has been given to us. The Awe of God.
I want to teach you a complicated Grace that is appropriate whenever you need it. Pay attention this is complicated. This also comes from Fr. Ragan. It goes like this:
Hold your hands toward the food we are to eat and say AWE, hold your hands toward the members of the table who are to partake of the meal and say AWE, hold your hands up towards God the beautiful and say AWE, Now let’s practice this complicated prayer.
Toward the food God has given us say
AWE, towards others who travel with us say
AWE, towards the Beauty in this world say AWE.