Charles Worth
Nov 2021
Look into a new-born baby’s eyes.
What do you see?
Augustine knew – it’s sin.
Adam fell, we follow, flesh is weak,
matter inferior, the natural world
not to be trusted but controlled.
Pelagius disagreed. The Celtic monk
who loved the wilderness of Wales
gazed at the new-born and declared
‘I look into the very face of God.
His spirit is in all that is created
from tiny insects crawling in the grass
to great wild beasts
that roam throughout the forest.
God’s spirit dwells within them.
Trees and grass and flowers,
God’s spirit gives them beauty.’
The argument was fierce in Rome
and Palestine. The powerful
prevailed, a heretic denounced.
Man took dominion over mother nature,
fed his people, prospered, grew.
The wild was tamed, subdued, then ravaged.
Our earth lies conquered, breathless,
counted out.
So was Augustine right? Has sin
destroyed the gift of life,
invisible boundaries crashed
by needy egos?
Listen! Watch!
The wild is fighting back.
A fierce new energy is being born –
fire and flood and hurricane,
the city in the wilderness,
the holiness of trees,
the protest of the birds,
First Nations first again,
our blood in the green earth’s heart
and now the heretic
is prophet.
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Forty-Three Newsletter • Number 515 • March 2022
Oxford Friends Meeting
43 St Giles, Oxford OX1 3LW
Copyright 2022, Oxford Quakers