This week, we entered the second part of Ezekiel’s vision of the living waters, a vision that contains the question: “Have you seen this?” We are invited not just to understand the vision, but to see it, feel it, and be changed by it. In the vision, water flows from the temple into dry and lifeless places, even transforming the Dead Sea into a place teeming with life. Along its banks, trees flourish, bearing fruit in every season. This is a picture of divine reversal, where death gives way to life, scarcity to abundance, and exile to homecoming.
Alongside this vision of ecological rejuvenation, I placed Hildegard of Bingen’s understanding of *viriditas*, the greening, life-giving energy of God that animates all creation. In both Ezekiel’s vision and Hildegard’s visions, we see a world where everything is interconnected: land, water, creatures, and people belong to one another and are sustained by God’s life. This vision challenges us to refuse a split between matter and spirit and embrace a faith that is embodied, ecological, and relational.
What do we do with this vision? We have agency.
The man’s question, “Have you seen this?”, is our doorway.
In a world shaped by speed, abstraction, and crisis fatigue, we can slow down enough to perceive life unfurling around us. We can let beauty and vitality reach our bodies. We can allow ourselves to be changed by what is STILL alive.
And what about the shock of divine reversal in this passage?
Do we still have imagination for restoration beyond what seems possible? What power captivates our attention and shapes our imagination: the armies, the corporations, the political systems and ideologies and patterns of consumption that steal and destroy, or the greening power of God?
We can live like we belong to one another. We can learn the names of our neighbors, including the trees and the birds and the weeds. We can shift our focus from consuming to connecting, from owning things to being kin to things, from overgiving/overtaking to living reciprocally and mutually with life.
We can immerse ourselves in the river. We will talk about this more next week. Next Sunday, we will have a shorter service and then head to the ocean to baptize a few of our youth.
Blessings, Anne