THOUGHT FOR THE DAY - 28th June 2007

The Rt Rev James Jones, Bishop of Liverpool

As Nick Robinson pointed out this morning – for just a few minutes the country was without a Prime Minister. Strictly speaking it was the Queen who was without her Prime Minister, because constitutionally and, as an aid to political humility, the Government is hers, not Tony Blair’s or Gordon Brown’s! Nevertheless, while Her Majesty’s Government waited to be placed into new hands the earth didn’t quake, neither did the foundations of Whitehall shake! Although, this week the RAINS certainly came down, rivers burst their banks, houses were flooded, people died and families are in mourning, grieving the loss of their homes. And there’s more to come.

One of the reactions has been to blame the Government for lack of investment in flood defence systems. Those whose homes are ruined are understandably angry and looking for someone to blame. Lodged at the back of our imagination is the idea that nature and all her forces are there to be tamed, even dominated.

Natural disasters are no longer an Act of God, but a failure of Government.

Such a view flows easily from the picture given in Genesis where God gives Adam dominion over his creation. We are the Lords of the Earth!

But keep reading and another picture begins to form on the screen.

For, in the next chapter God’s telling Adam to serve and preserve the Garden of Eden.

WE are to be the servants of the Earth.

Take either picture on its own and we’re in trouble!

If all you see is “Dominion”, you can end up with humanity exploiting, even raping the earth.

If, on the other hand, all you see is humanity serving the earth you can fall into the trap of worshipping nature, rather than the God of nature.

Superimpose the one image on the other and we get a sharper idea of what God intended our relationship with nature to be – servant Lords of creation – working with nature, respecting its force, directing its energy with a sense of awe and reverence.

In yesterday’s programme there was a piece about the Merseysound with Roger McGough. But one of the most famous and surprising Liverpool poets was Gerard Manley Hopkins, a priest in Everton. He wrote: “The world is charged with the grandeur of God”. The poem speaks about how “nature is never spent” and how “the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast…..”

It evokes exactly the right relationship with nature and if poetry’s allowed to mix with politics would inspire any new administration to govern with soul.