Hymn #49

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“This earth was once a garden place, 
With all her glories common.” 

This morning I helped a friend bury her dog 
A dog that she once didn’t want 
Taken in under duress 
But in time grew affection for. 

Our tears mingled with the gray sky drops 
Falling gently on the mounds of shadow dark earth 
Freshly spaded and heaved to each side 
Of the chosen birth place for Jacksie 
To grow in entropy and resurrect new life 
In Lorene’s garden of common glories. 

“Dust to dust” she said. 

Coincidentally (is not life so often curiously coincidental?)
Just before this grace of being called upon 
To help my friend open the womb of Mother Earth 
And reverently return Jacksie back to Her care 
I had read these words of Saint Paul: 

“We have this treasure in clay jars 
To demonstrate that this exceptional power 
Belongs to God and is not from us.” 

Ah yes! We—these uncreated intelligences—

We cast about in our clay jars 
Flailing about to find the face of Jesus 
In the works of our hands rather than in our hearts. 
In our exceptional power rather than in the garden given—
The place that God for us prepared— 
This Adam-ondi-Ahman. 

“Her land was good and greatly blest . . .” 

“Was” is the operative word. 

And I wonder: 
What has God repaired in this land once good and greatly blessed?
What has Mother Earth rescued? 
So many species—remarkably evolved and pronounced “good”—
Have come and gone long before we came. 

But She stood still and let them extinguish.  
Lost pieces of creations puzzle.  

“Her fame was known from east to west, 
Her peace was great, and pure the rest.” 

And then on the sixth day 
In the very last moments in this long survival of the fittest
Mother Earth gave birth to man and woman 
At Adam-ondi-Ahman. 

Clay vessels bearing divine wine 
Spirits breathed and become earthy 
Thirsty for knowledge 
Hungry to become Gods

Remaking earth in our image 
An image of man mingled with scripture 
Of glorious beauty and invention and Jesus love 
Mingled with our exceptional power to degrade and pollute and extort
Marring and scarring this glorious garden place 
This Adam-ondi-Ahman. 

“We read that Enoch walked with God, 
Above the pow’r of mammon, 
While Zion spread herself abroad” 

Yes. Zion is spread abroad. Thinly. 
Enoch and kin left the garden long ago. 

“O God, where art thou? And where is the pavilion that covereth 
thy hiding place? 

“How long shall thy hand be stayed, and thine eye, 
Yea thy pure eye, behold from the eternal heavens the wrongs done”
By thy people and of thy servants, 
And thine ear be penetrated with the cries 
Of Adam-ondi-Ahman? 

We—whom you made Lords over all the earth— 
We are naming our dominions extinct at an unprecedented rate. 

“And men did live a holy race, 
And worship Jesus face to face” 

We—the treasure in holy jars of clay—do not mourn or reverently bury,
These our dead. 
There are no sky gray tears for these lives we did not want.

Where is our affection born of time spent with them?

Sweet Jesus, more holiness give us, in this race against end times. 

We are proud of our greatness and glory. 
We think we can buy anything in this world with money. 

And yet—and yet Father-Mother still stand still 
Watching us purchase the dissolution of Adam-ondi-Ahman 
As we journey far from our first covenant path. 

“Hosanna to such days to come, 
The Savior’s second coming, 
When all the earth in glorious bloom 
Affords the Saints a holy home, 
Like Adam-ondi-Ahman.” 

Will this God save us in our sins? 
Or will She still be still—and wait— 

Wait for us to pick up our shovels 
And excavate our hearts 
And bury our weapons of war 
And pour new wine in our jars of clay 

And rescue Adam-ondi-Ahman.