Scripture

Genesis 1:9-13

And God said, “Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. Then God said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it.” And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

Day 3 of Creation: God Grounds Us to Allow our Divinity to Grow

by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts

Read the message below. Video premieres today at 8 pm EDT, click here to watch on YouTube with live text chat

Today we are being called by the depth of Divine Love to uplift each other with justice and compassion. Often, this starts with ourselves - being patient and accepting of our progress while focusing on living virtuously, with humility, and living up to all the higher ideas that should come into our daily lives. The beginning of day three of the creation story symbolizes this in a way: starting to ground the roots of Divine enlightenment and nourishment into our earthly thinking and embodiment.

The mystical Christian thinker that inspired our community had a deep conviction that oppressive and colonizing forces were at the heart of what constitutes hell on earth, pointing to the treatment of indigenous and enslaved peoples in the West as all-too-poignant examples of the pain and suffering that we can inflict when seduced by greed, lust, and selfish, non-compassionate thinking. Something that we're confronted with today, both in ourselves and in our world.

As we've found in our earlier explorations of the Jewish and Christian Bibles' creation story, the days of creation (like many of the parables within these scriptures) describe and invite us toward our own process of relinquishing these habits and working to change them in the world. As well as finding the truly diverse and receptive state of receiving and embodying Divine Love and Justice in our own way. The beauty of the creation story is that it not only invites us to take our spiritual journey towards spiritual sabbath or divine peace seriously, but it also points out that we can't just get there in a day (or even seven)! It takes a process that often repeats itself and overlaps in ways - similar to how Genesis has two accounts of creation.

In our reflection, it starts by describing on day one that to begin this process we become open to a higher, more inclusive and divine understanding of the universe than just the abyss of external-self obsession (or in other words, we start to receive the light!). Then, on our second day of regenesis, we begin to find that we've begun to receive higher truths in our consciousness (the raising of the higher waters from the lower), this brings more dynamism to our lives and helps us develop what it calls the "sky:" a centered state of mind that remains open and flexible to what is.

And now, early in day three of creation, we're called to allow our developing spiritual dynamism and reception of higher truths to truly ground themselves in our outward lives!

Genesis 1:9-10: And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. God called the dry ground "earth," and the gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good.

So, continuing our exploration from day two of higher and lower waters (waters tend to represent truths in scripture), we find that Divinity starts to reorder and transform even our lower water (or lower truths), giving way to groundedness and "earth." In a sense, once our higher truths have begun to be formed and we allow our mind to become more like the sky (day two), God brings our lower ideas more into spiritual alignment and unity! This also means that a richness like that of the earth and sea begins to form in our minds and spirits, which will eventually lead to all the flourishing life (and eventually peace) in later days.

In our lives we're tasked with beginning to live up to our higher truths in our outer (lower) lives if we're to truly continue our own seven-day creation story. And as you know that's more easily said than done, which is why so many ancient and indigenous groups put such emphasis on creation parables and how these invite us toward deep spiritual growth and change. Unlike the literal readings of scripture that we're sometimes drawn to, these cultures always put emphasis on the spiritual undertones of their stories and parables and how their meanings all fit together to uplift us and our communities - similar to how Christ and other voices of God throughout our cultures used parables!

Living up to higher truths often involves patience and our continuing process of letting go of the things that don't fit the underlying love and light from God that inspires this journey to begin with. As we allow the light to dispel our reactive judgment and fear towards ourselves and others (yes, even for "good" reasons!), we also find that we can start approaching the unfortunate states of mind we've held since we were young - discerning their roots, forgiving them, and most importantly: letting go of our aversion and attachment to those hurtful habits, which allows them to start healing.

In their stead comes the centeredness of peaceful thought and awareness, as well as a transformation of our external living - which can be said to be truly "grounded" by Divinity and that is as powerful as a unified "sea." We start to allow ourselves to embody God's Way, which is often called the Tao, Yoga, or Dharma, and which is the embodiment of virtue, social justice, compassion, and peace. Indeed, it's our awareness that every single living entity is connected to us on a path of similar Divine empowerment that allows us to start to truly tap into the compassion and acceptance that causes us to stand for the social and economic justice that defines virtue and what we know of the heavenly kin-dom.

And as we read further into the third day of creation, we find that allowing Divinity to ground spiritual truths into our external living gives forth to sprouting, seeding, and fruiting plants! From the tender grass to the fruit-bearing tree, Divinity starts to sprout through us into our lives as helpful and nourishing actions, thoughts, and intentions. When we allow ourselves to grow spiritually, illumined by the light of the Divine Creator, we find that we eventually start to express a new level of God's goodness and life on the earth. A type of life that spreads and shares itself with others, feeding them literally, figuratively, and spiritually.

This nourishment and disruptive growth and change is very much needed in these times, when children are detained, kidnapped, malnourished, and abused by the hundreds of thousands in backrooms to even ICE detention camps in the U.S.! When untold minorities are oppressed, imprisoned, and many are killed nonchalantly, and when "the most powerful man in the world" openly encourages hate, racism, ignorance, epidemic and immense cruelty.

May we allow the sprouting of Divine Love and Justice to take root in our enriched spiritual lives. May we allow our lives to step another day forward into our development towards peace, life, and sabbath. And may we let go of the oppression that suffocates our own spirit, as well as that of our planet, and find that all life is as rich as the earth, as powerful and worthwhile as the sea, and deserves to sprout.

Peace and care to you,

Rev. Cory