Description
4 Creation
In creation there is fragility and vulnerability; that is the nature of creation.
That was one of the wise sayings collected at our first L’Arche meeting. My original anguished question had been, ‘How can I go on believing in a good Creator God when something so drastic has gone wrong with the creation of a new human being?’ Meanwhile, acceptance of Arthur’s condition as an accident was a reminder that we’re all vulnerable, all accident-prone, that creation is fragile, that loss and death are inherently part of the life we know on earth. This was reinforced by the experience of identifying with persons who are impaired for life, an identification acknowledged by assistants in L’Arche and felt by myself in worship at Monyhull Hospital. So the questions shifted: What does it mean to be human? How are we to make sense of creation’s fragility? What does our vulnerability mean for understanding God’s creative purposes? This is one of the areas where now I would claim that Arthur has given me privileged access to the deepest truths of Christianity…