Golden

Rhona Cathcart January 10, 2021 0 0

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Genesis 1: 3 (NRSVA)

3 Then God said, ‘Let there be light’; and there was light.

Popular music, for the last few decades at least, has tended to focus on love and relationships. But occasionally a pop song will dig deeper, mining below the surface of our emotions to explore what it means to be human; what, fundamentally, we are made of.

According to Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s ‘Woodstock’, “We are stardust, we are golden. We are billion year old carbon. And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.”

It’s at once a cosmic and an earthly picture, with echoes of Genesis.

The moment when God said ‘let there be light’ was a cosmic event. It was also the moment from which life on earth flowed. Life came from light. But we are not especially heavenly. We are earthly, organic, mineral. In us the cosmic light is bound, mutated into something more grounded.

As it happens, it turns out that Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were right. As James pointed out last week we are literally golden, at least in part. There is something like 0.2 milligrams of gold in the average human body. We might have to dig to find it but it is there.

PRAYER:

Star-duster,
Mineral maker
Origin of light and life

We know we are but specks:
tiny organic compounds, granted the gift of consciousness.

Yet within us there is gold

Help us to uncover the warmth, the lustre which you planted deep inside us,
that we might gleam with gratitude, wonder and praise.

May we know this week that,
however deeply it is buried,
however dull we might feel,
we are golden.

Amen.