"Sing to the Lord a new song, his praise from the end of the
earth: Let the sea and what fills it resound, the coastlands, and
those who dwell in them. Let the steppe and its cities cry out...
the villages...and shout from the top of mountains. Let them
give glory to the Lord..."
[ Isaiah 42: 30-32, THE OLD TESTAMENT ]
Comment: The word "Glory" has various meanings, like
renown, giving honor, beauty and magnificence of a place,
that which provides pleasure. Words are stock full of
representations and actions. As for "Song," it usually means
a poem set to music. But it also can refer to those musical
phrases we detect from birds, whales, and insects.
So considering these different meanings of these two words,
perhaps I was right thinking about God's relationship with not
only our good Earth but of all of Creation when it came to
reading these particular lines from the book of Isaiah. In a
sense the "New Song" could indeed be connected with our
recent discoveries about the universe and our consequent
appreciation of such. For those who believe in God, a fairly
new approach can be found in the following new words: the
New Cosmology, Deep Ecology, and Panentheism.
Basically the New Cosmology represents our contemporary
knowledge-base about our 13.7 billion year-old universe.
It's an unfolding universe, beginning with the cosmic event of
the Big Bang. It's about the discovery of an infinity of galaxies,
of great galactic clusters, star nurseries. And just in our galaxy
alone there are surely a myriad of planets circling millions of
suns, floating in space under which is the implicate world of
Quantum Physics.
Deep Ecology is about a newly emerging worldview. "It sees
the world not as a collection of isolated objects, but as a
network of phenomena that are fundamentally interconnected
and interdependent. Deep ecology recognizes the intrinsic
value of all living beings and views humans as just one
particular strand in the web of life."
[Fritjof Capara, THE WEB OF LIFE: A NEW SCIENTIFIC
UNDERSTANDING OF LIVING SYSTEMS, Anchor, P.7.]
As for Panentheism, it is a belief that, yes, God is greater than
the universe, but also includes and interpentrates the universe.
If so, this means that God is constantly present to ALL of us,
who live in and share in Creation. It adds meaning to the idea
that whatever we do, or how we treat the "other", we also treat
God. God is Everywhere, in Every One, threaded Through and
Through.
So than, what might this "New Song" mean to us as we stand in
the midst of our relatively new knowledge-base about God and
the Universe in which we all live and have our being?
It's still natural for us to lift our voices in song, to think and feel
the beauty of poetics. Perhaps with more and more conscious
comprehension of who we are, of the Who in which we exist
and are a part, we can bring ever more joy into the New Song.
It's perhaps about the aspect of "pleasure" in the meaning of
Glory.
