Creatorem Caeli et Terrae (Creator of Heaven and Earth)

The recycling lorry grinds past.

Children head to work and school.

Then stillness returns.

After prayer, I step outside.

The dawn leans in,

dew on grass,

a robin’s sermon,

breath rising like incense.

Creator of heaven and earth,

the words arrive not as theory

but as touch, taste, trembling:

light through leaf,

the smell of damp soil,

the world alive with God.

Once I thought creation a thing,

a stage, a backdrop for redemption’s play.

Now I see communion,

each creature a syllable

in the endless language of praise.

The heavens declare.

The trees clap their hands.

Even the stones rehearse hallelujahs.

This is no random sphere,

but a temple vast as the stars,

Eden at its heart,

each river a hymn,

each mountain an altar,

each breath a prayer.

And yet we, the clever ones,

split atoms, dissect meaning,

name everything,

and forget to kneel.

The left brain measures, masters.

The right remembers wonder,

the God who walked in the cool of the day,

who speaks not through equations

but through things seen and unseen.

“Where were you,” says the Voice to Job,

“when the morning stars sang together?

Have you seen the storehouses of snow?

Told the eagle to soar?”

The answer is silence,

and silence is worship.

For we are dust and stardust,

a little lower than angels,

a little higher than earthworms,

and kin to both.

Still, grace breathes through our nostrils.

Still, the Spirit hovers,

calling forth light again.

Heaven is not beyond Mars,

but woven through this world,

a hidden pulse,

divine presence threaded through all things.

Yet the rivers groan,

the forests sigh in smoke,

the soil remembers every wound.

The earth waits,

not for dominion,

but repentance,

for sons and daughters

to join creation’s aching hymn.

This temple longs for renewal,

its veil torn not in ruin but revelation,

when heaven and earth meet again,

and glory fills the dwelling.

From time to time the veil still thins,

and the ordinary shimmers

with the weight of the holy.

I look up.

A red kite wheels through bronze mystery.

The wind hums psalms through the trees.

My lungs fill with borrowed breath.

I whisper again,

half prayer, half wonder,

at the miracle of life.

I believe in God,

the Father Almighty,

Creator of heaven and earth,

the One in whom all things hold together,

whose wisdom births galaxies,

whose tenderness cradles the sparrow,

whose beauty will one day

make all things new.

And somewhere in the distance,

the robin sings again.

-Rev’d Jon Swales