Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

Part of our problem (and it is basic) in trying to figure our way out of the disastrous mess we have made of our nurturing earth is that we still tend towards solutions under the old biblical framework of dominating and subduing the earth, or, as in the previous example of the Army Corps of Engineers, trying to control the earth and its energies rather than live with or within them.

I read the following passage today, written by Ohiyesa, member of the Dakota (Sioux) Nation.  I found it in this marvelous little book that I picked up at a National Park Service headquarters in South Dakota last year, The Wisdom of the Native Americans, edited by Kent Nerburn:

"There are no temples or shrines among us save those of nature.  Being children of nature, we are intensely poetical.  We would deem it sacrilege to build a house for The One who may be met face to face in the mysterious, shadowy aisles of the primeval forest, or on the sunlit bosom of virgin prairies, upon dizzy spires and pinnacles of naked rock, and in the vast jeweled vault of the night sky!  A God who is enrobed in filmy veils of cloud, there on the rim of the visible world where our Great-Grandfather Sun kindles his evening camp-fire; who rides upon the rigorous wind of the north, or breathes forth spirit upon fragrant southern airs, whose war canoe is launched upon majestic rivers and inland seas — such a God needs no lesser cathedral."

We in the west, children of the so-called Enlightenment, thought that the work of our own hands, what we built, was a greater work than the creation of The One.  We have lived over and above nature, as if it was created only to be at our service.  Often the western god seems little more than a reflection of our grandiosity, our own guilt, our own alienation from nature and our true selves.

Think of the Corps trying to beat the Mississippi River into submission.  The root of this faith in human control of nature is a far different spirituality than that of Ohiyesa.  And one can imagine how different the result would have been had our relationship with this North American earth been rooted in the spirituality of those people who first lived and loved here - those peoples we conquered so that we could continue the religiosity of domination and subjugation of nature.

Think of this next time you are shopping at some enormous strip mall or shopping mall out in the suburbs and exurbs.  For these are the real cathedrals of our day, our places of worship, places where we devote so much of our lives and energy, what we think of as the end goal of our human existence.  Think of what once was there.  I guess, sadly, many people would say that shopping is a great improvement over nature — with the results we see all around us.

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