On Sunday afternoon, April 20th, my church celebrated Earth Day in Audubon Park with the two other Greater New Orleans congregations of our denomination, and with some 100+ volunteer adults and young people from Massachusetts and New Hampshire and Vermont, also of our faith tradition. We set up chairs and blankets in the shade behind the labyrinth, with a folding table covered in batik cloth as our altar, our chalice flame protected by a glass hurricane shade, and a flaming chalice metal sculpture crafted by a member of my congregation hanging from a low branch over us.
It was a glorious day, blue sky with a few drifting clouds, a light breeze riffling the pages on our makeshift pulpit, the grass and clover soft and green. There was a flock of birds chirping and swooping a few yards behind where we had set up, and a little further away, behind a fence, was the Audubon Zoo, where the new Asian-Pacific Festival was going on. The park was filled with happy people of all ages and races, and faint sounds of music drifted toward us from cars going by on East Drive, from inside the Zoo and the festival, from over by the Great-Grandmother Oak where some young people strummed guitars and sang softly.
We decided not to try to set up a sound system and the four ministers (one from each congregation and one community minister) just pitched our voices higher to reach our spread-out Earth Day congregation over the mild din of everything else going on. The responsibility of the Meditation portion of the service fell to me, and I gamely reminded everyone that we were not going to "enter into the silence" as in a usual worship service, but would instead enter into a time of paying attention to sight and sound -- the different shades of green from the leaves, the vines, and the grass, the blue of the sky, the creamy cottony wisps of clouds, the blue, pink, white and purple of the wildflowers, the whoosh of the wind, the songs and calls of the birds, the voices of the people around us -- even, I said, the faint sound of the animals at the Zoo -- all part of creation, all part of our world, all part of our celebration of Earth Day. Enter into a time of paying attention.
And we did. And around us was symphony of natural and human sounds that we were a part of and paying attention to. And then, right on cue, a lion at the Zoo ROARED.
Well, you couldn't have planned it any better, and when we resumed the service, I said, "That's something that never happens in church -- I've never had a lion roar during meditation before!" And everyone laughed.
When the service was done, we shared the food and drink we had brought with us -- ham and chicken (both home-made and that New Orleans church potluck staple Popeye's) and hummus, tabouleh, spinach salad, ambrosia fruit salad, 3-bean salad, cheese and crackers, black bean dip, fresh fruit, French bread and Passover matzoh, an apple pie, Girl Scout cookies, cake, and yummy baklava. Lots of cold juice and water and iced tea and soft drinks. Despite the large numbers of people, many of whom had NOT brought anything, there seemed to be enough food for everyone. Folks gathered in clumps in the shade, or on the benches around the Labyrinth and enjoyed the food and conversation and the day.
There were many hands to make light work of the clean-up afterwards, and we all agreed it had been one of the best Earth Day services and picnics ever. But the highlight of the day for me was that lion roaring into our meditation time.
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