Forty years ago I sat with other
Catholic elementary students holding our Lenten bowl of rice and glass
of water for lunch while listening to a teacher share stories (from
Development and Peace educational materials) of children in other lands
who went without enough food; with rice and water if they were lucky.
A ‘Jesus parable’ - like The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
– was also read. Then we ate in silence … a sense-experience
and contemplative moment for our minds, hearts and bodies to take in
the global realities and the spiritual lesson.
Twenty years ago I was a pastoral
worker for a Catholic Church, feeding and visiting the poor in inner
city Edmonton, many of whom were displaced from their lands and their
people (refugees, poor immigrants, outcasts, marginalized, ‘lost’).
A few years later I was teaching inner city children in Boston, aware
each day of the wounded spirit they carried with the insidious trauma
of racism and violence that frequented their young lives, along with
their ancestral memory of slavery and displacement from their native
homelands. In many ways, ‘the rice bowl and glass of water’
was symbol for the deprivation and losses experienced by inner city
people.
And for more than the last decade
now, my educational service and retreat work has attended to a broken
earth – another sacred, broken body. In so many ways her life
forms and life-sustaining elements are misperceived, objectified, abused,
violated, raped, ‘enslaved’ to work for others’ disproportionate
material gain, abandoned, left to die. I’m reminded of the parallel
to the man beaten, robbed and left to die in the story of The Good Samaritan.
Thomas Berry is noted for saying
that if we don’t recover the sense of Earth as sacred, then we
are truly lost. We are most certainly being called to a deep change
of heart, a cultural metanoia (1) - a total,
all-encompassing reorientation of the collective self to the deepest
truth of our existence.
The significance of the times
we live in cannot be overstated. Crisis and opportunity meet us at an
ever-accelerating pace. And one’s spiritual response most often
flounders for footing with our awareness of the magnitude of human impact
on the land, the water and air, and the daily fraying of the web of
life. Perhaps stillness is what is most needed … stillness and
presence with the creation, frequenting a solitary place to pray in
nature … and resolving to relate with the natural world in a very
different way – out of an expanding ecological compassion.
Matthew Fox describes compassion
as the world’s richest energy source, yet largely unexplored and
untapped. Describing the cosmic dimensions of compassion, Fox says that
for the sake of the planet’s survival we need it more than ever.
(2) We need to interpret the parable of The Good Samaritan ecologically,
thinking about the interdependence of all living things. Most of us
just assume that we will always have other life forms, plants and animals
available for our use. We need to read the parable in the light of current
realities like climate change, and living within the early stages of
the sixth major period of extinction, and the impact of the tar sands
industry on indigenous people and planet (3), and the harsh living conditions
of peasants, small farmers, landless farmers and indigenous people all
over the world …
As Christians, looking for spiritual grounding in the face of so much
quickening collapse, how might we reclaim the legacy of the four primary
Christian virtues as ‘spiritual tools’ for an ecologically
sensitive Christian orientation? Here’s a beginning at new definitions
within an ecological framework:
Ecological Prudence:
growing in a biocentric philosophy of ecological harmony or equilibrium;
the ability to judge between ecologically virtuous and vicious actions,
not only in a general sense, but with regard to appropriate actions
at a given time and place; 'joining together to bring forth a sustainable
global society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights,
economic justice, and a culture of peace' (4)
Interspecies Justice
(Earth Jurisprudence): 'advocating for healthy ecosystems and exploring
the role of humans as integral members of a comprehensive Earth community;
creating legal norms and dispute resolutions that foster mutual human-Earth
relationships, and encouraging a fundamental rethinking of the basis
of law' (5); 'strengthening local communities, enabling them
to care for their environments' (6)
Greening our Fortitude:
mental and emotional strength while facing ecological threats, loss
and collapse (i.e. resolving to move through our fear, anger, apathy,
despair, grief to a new place of strength and action on behalf of life);
humility and courage to face conflicting worldviews as related to relationship
with the Earth; alertness, courage, presence and service in the face
of danger; honestly facing one’s own temptations and addictions
to over consume so as to disarm their power
Eco-Temperance –
moderation in our use of energy and water; limiting and reducing waste;
limiting food choices that use large amounts of water and energy to
produce and transport; abstaining from ecologically destructive and
unethical behaviour; 'preventing harm as the best method of environmental
protection and, when knowledge is limited, applying a precautionary
approach' (7)
We might imagine that we hold
a bowl of rice and a glass of water in the company of others –
representatives of the human and more-than-human community of life.
And with these symbols, imagine that we begin to hear the cry of the
Earth from within – the cry of the elements that sustain life,
of the multi-species community of life that is suffering and vanishing,
and of our own human ‘collective pain-body.’ In such a contemplative
moment, what might rice and water teach us as the Christian way to respond?
How, now, are we called to be the ‘good and compassionate neighbour’?
Footnotes:
1. From the Greek, metanoia, changing one's
mind, repentance. In the psychological theory of Carl Jung, metanoia
denotes a process of reforming the psyche as a form of self healing.
The writer suggests that ‘cultural metanoia’ (cultural therapy)
is an anecdote to the cultural pathology that Thomas Berry speaks of
in Evening Thoughts p.17.
2. Fox, Matthew, A Spirituality Named Compassion. Compassion
is creativity put to the service of justice.
3. Indigenous Environmental Network, ‘Tar Sands: Indigenous Peoples
and the GIGA Project,’ www.ienearth.org
4 . The Earth Charter – Values and Principles for a Sustainable
Future, www.earthcharter.org,
Preamble
5. In February 2008 Barry Law Review, Orlando, FL, and Center
for Earth Jurisprudence (of St. Thomas University) jointly hosted
the first academic symposium on the theme, ‘Framing an Earth Jurisprudence
for a Planet in Peril.’ Presentations considered re-contextualizing
human governance systems within our absolute inter-relatedness to all
creation. Challenge was made to the dominant worldview that other beings
are objects, ‘natural resources,’ which reinforces disassociation
from the natural world. Arguments were made in favour of the rights
of nature since all beings and life-sustaining elements are part of
a greater system of order, and away from the limited worldview that
only humans have rights. The symposium presentations can be viewed online
http://www.earthjuris.org/events/02-08symposium/videostream.htm
6. The Earth Charter, Principle IV(13)f
7. The Earth Charter, Principle II(6)
Copyright © 2008 by Pax
Gaia Initiatives
