Digging into the Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon
Wherein I go all eco-savvy English teacher preacher lady on you. You're welcome.
I’ve always prided myself on being a bit of an eco-savvy human being.
Growing up in Oregon, it’s like the stuff of the earth ran through our blood. Granted, maybe it also came with being a child of the 80s: I played outside until it got dark (until Mom yelled from the front porch to come inside already) and I spent half my summers in the backyard treehouse Dad engineered with nary a nail hitting those precious tree branches. Just as I can’t not recycle and compost and garden now, I also can’t not spend weekends in the woods camping, staring at the emerald trees and the azure sky and the tangerine embers of the crackling fire.
Well, imagine my delight when a local church not only invited me to preach, but also invited me to preach during the Season of Creation! The Season of Creation, if you don’t know, is an ecumenical movement that invites participants to “renew our relationship with our Creator and all creation through celebration, conversion, and commitment together,” from September 1 - October 4th every year.
I had a feeling I’d be pulling up my eco-savvy britches like never before, because as I soon whispered over and over again to those good people, holy is all around us, if only we’re so willing to see.
But back to the Season of Creation. In the Episcopal tradition, the season traditionally ends with a Blessing of the Animals the first Sunday of October. (This little bit of barnyard chaos really is one of my favorite times of year). However, sometimes the party just keeps going, extending through the end of October as was the case when I took the pulpit a couple of days ago.
Although I’d normally then preach on something from the lectionary (which usually consists of a reading from the Old Testament, a Psalm, an Epistle, and one of the Gospels too), this time the psalm was swapped out for “The Canticle of Brother Sun and Sister Moon” by St. Francis of Assisi.
As it goes, my sermon felt like a cross between the former English teacher known as myself and the passionate preacher lady who comes alive with the stuff of the Earth.
If this is your jam, enjoy!
First, some background:
St. Francis was an Italian mystic, poet, and Catholic friar who founded the religious order of the Franciscans. Known as the patron saint of the environment, animals, and action, he’s the one we revere on St. Francis Day, when all of the dogs and cats, snakes and parakeets show up for a little creaturely blessing. It’s no wonder that he’d then be in the business of inviting all of God’s family to praise their Creator through The Canticle of the Creatures, as this song is also sometimes called – because to him, all creatures form one family of creation.
Now, for the canticle, which is broken into four stanzas:
Most High, all-powerful, all-good Lord, all praise is Yours, all glory, all honor and all blessings. To you alone, Most High, do they belong, and no mortal lips are worthy to pronounce Your Name.
The first stanza (which includes the first six lines, as it reads to the Franciscans) is essentially an elongated salutation to the One who gets “all praise” and “all glory” and “all honor,” the Creator of all Creators, God.
Praised be You my Lord with all Your creatures, especially Sir Brother Sun, who is the day through whom You give us light. And he is beautiful and radiant with great splendor, of You Most High, he bears the likeness.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Sister Moon and the stars, in the heavens you have made them bright, precious and fair.
Praised be You, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air, and fair and stormy, all weather’s moods, by which You cherish all that You have made.
Praised be You my Lord through Sister Water, so useful, humble, precious and pure.
Praised be You my Lord through Brother Fire, through whom You light the night and he is beautiful and playful and robust and strong.
Praised be You my Lord through our Sister, Mother Earth who sustains and governs us, producing varied fruits with colored flowers and herbs.
In the second stanza (which is 19 lines to the Episcopalians, but only 17 to the Franciscans), we’re introduced to all the brothers and sisters: Brother Sun, Sister Moon (and the stars), Brothers Wind and Air, Sister Water (she’s the one the Franciscans leave out, questionable); Brother Fire, and our Sister, Mother Earth. These are God’s creatures – so along with them, let these things in and of themselves, sing, “praised be you, my Lord.”
Here, writes Father Richard Rohr, St. Francis was honoring the Holy Spirit, in whom we live and move and have our being, but it didn’t happen while he knelt on a bench and closed his eyes and earnestly sought the things of God. Instead, it happened while he was looking out at the world around him – this is part of what it meant to be a friar (and not a monk). It happened while he was out in creation, just staring at the things of the earth. To Rohr, this particular part of the poem speaks of the incarnation – because “if God entered the world through Jesus, then … the real, physical elements of the world are the hiding places of God.”1
More often than note, holy is all around us, if only we’re so willing to see.
Praise be You my Lord through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial. Blessed are those who endure in peace, by You Most High, they will be crowned.
The next five lines, which speak of praising God “through those who grant pardon for love of You and bear sickness and trial,” were actually written after the fact to help resolve a dispute that arose between the mayor of Assisi and the bishop. “He asked a friar to sing these lines in the presence of the two men so they might be reconciled” – and indeed reconciliation happened.2 It makes me wonder: how might we also seek reconciliation, renewing, repairing, and restoring our relationship to God, one another, and all of creation?
Praised be You, my Lord through Sister Death, from whom no one living can escape. Blessed are they She finds doing Your Will. No second death can do them harm. Praise and bless my Lord and give Him thanks, and serve Him with great humility.
Finally, in the last stanza, we meet the last of the siblings, Sister Death, “from whom no one living can escape.” Even to her, all of creation is to “praise and bless and thank,” serving God with great humility. These last six lines (of which one about sin is omitted from the original), were added in just before his own death. Did St. Francis know he would soon embrace the reality of death? Is that why “Sister Death” takes on friendly or even “sisterly” aspects? “Who of us,” one writer asks, “is afraid of our sister? Indeed, under usual circumstances, we are not afraid of our sister.” According to legend, Francis went on to “joyfully to meet [death]” and “invited it to make its lodging with him. ‘Welcome,’ he said, ‘my sister death!’”
Now, for wrapping it all up:
So, as we come to the end of the poem, I want to take us back to the beginning, to those places of backyard and front yard gardens, of the San Francisco Bay and of the myriad of creation-places that beckon us come and see and be reminded of the One who is in all, seen and unseen. Think of that place, your place, now.
Of these places, we think of the song we just picked apart, but we also dwell on this thought, first spoken by St. Bonaventure: “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.”3
In this place, whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, God is everywhere. In this circle, the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the Bob Ross’s that live in our backyards and the tomatoes that grow there too, Earth and Water and Air and Fire, the humans in here and the humans out there too, we are all one. Everything is sacred. No longer do we, can we divide this into exclusions of sacred and profane, for ours is an inclusive universe.
And in this circle, just as all creatures are our brothers and sisters, all cry out to God.
After all, holy is all around us, if only we’re so willing to see.
PS: If you’re in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, join me in conversation with friend, author, and fellow middle-aged cheerleader
on Wednesday, October 29th, 7 pm at Great Good Place for Books. We’ll mostly be talking about her new book, The Missionary Kids, but I have a feeling we’ll probably talk about Church Camp a little bit too.4Join us!
The majority of Rohr’s ideas came from this video.
This too can be found in the aforementioned Rohr video.
Let me jog your memory: The Missionary Kids was featured here and I wrote a bit about being cheerleaders for Jesus at Burning Goose here.