In the big inning
Aaron Judge
dropped
a routine fly ball,
and that made
all the difference.

The World Series
could have
turned
out
differently,
but it didn’t.

Aaron Judge’ miscue in the 2024 World Series created a lot of grief for Yankee fans. Just when everything seemed to be going well, the Yankees lost their mojo. How could there have been such a sudden shift in their fortunes?  

Systems analysts have an answer, albeit rather unsatisfying for Yankee fans: every baseball game has an uncertain outcome. The final score is a product of the dynamic mix of player interactions. Since every player performs differently in each game, the final score is always the outcome of their intermixing contributions at that one moment in time. 

Biologist E. O. Wilson describes natural systems in similar dynamic terms. Systems, he says, can be viewed from two different perspectives. Flying over a tropical jungle is one view. From altitude, everything looks the same—lots of trees.  On the ground, however, everything is unique. Each hectare has its own identity, its own community of life. 

Jungle communities are shaped by local history and local soils. Pressure for change can come from any direction: wildfire; a tree-gashing windstorm, or the sudden demise of a keystone species. Each disturbance creates opportunity for a new configuration of the assembled beings.  

Ecosystems are always a unique product of a particular moment in time. Although it may not be obvious from the air, the interplay of multiple local systems is more enduring than a massive monoculture. Life flourishes in community.

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep …” 

The Genesis creation story can also be read from two perspectives. At altitude, the succession of days looks like a mason building a brick wall—each day/brick contributing to an architecturally predetermined whole. Up close however, it looks more like God is assembling the members of a community. Whether or not that community will flourish will depend upon the ways in which each member accommodates its neighbors.

In his book Green Gospel: Foundations of Ecotheology, John Gatta ponders our ways of knowing God. Ask yourself, is knowing even possible? How can finite creatures ever know an infinite Creator? 

Perhaps the desire to know intellectually is misdirected. If, instead, one explores knowing in the sense of knowing your family or the place where you grew up, then there is a way. Knowing is intimate knowledge that emerges from interaction within relationships.

Gatta suggests that this way of knowing is evidenced in our understanding of the Trinity. Somehow in the mystery of it all, the interaction of three identities melds into the reality of one being. 

This mysterious interaction in the heart of the Creator is expressed in the heart of creation. The creation story implies that creation is a representation of God’s essential self. God speaks, the words of God bear the breath of God and the breath of God is the vital energy that both creates and sustains the world.

Our being here on Earth is irrevocably, for good or ill, lived out in relationships with every other created being. Endangered species lists and cancer alleys are indicators of failed relationships; somebody dropped the ball. 

The call for Creation Care is really just an invitation to self-assessment. The operative question? What’s the status of your relationship with all the other members of creation? So, when you confront a failed relationship, the diminishing rather than the flourishing of creation—stop, pause, and listen. At that moment you may be hearing Jesus saying, “. . . whatever you did for one of the least of these. . . you did for me.”

Social commentators are beginning to observe what they define as a sense of “doom-ism” creeping into climate change conversations. There is a feeling that human caused damage has so broken essential relationships as to preclude recovery. And yes, there is plenty of evidence to encourage that perception. 

This is, however, exactly the moment when people of faith need to speak out.  We are the ones who know that the breath of God has not been withdrawn. We are the people who know that the story of Eden’s broken relationships concludes with life in the Celestial City. 

beings of the world.
to all the other
to be a gift
You were born

differently.
things can turn out
Next inning
The game’s not over.