Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

On the day after Christmas in 2004, millions of us sat glued to our TV screens as we watched the horror left by the great tsunami unfold in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and elsewhere. It was one of those great tragedies the magnitude of which the mind and heart could not really absorb. More than a quarter of a million people were killed.

Two plates beneath the ocean did what they have done since the creation of the planet — they slid over and under each other, something necessary for life to exist, and the resulting waves washed all those people away.

In the first chapter of my new book, Living Beyond the ‘End of the World:’ A Spirituality of Hope, I reflect on the multiple disasters that we humans have endured on our crowded planet in recent decades — from earthquakes, hurricanes and cyclones, floods — and reflect on what this tells us about our deep and abiding connections with the ecosystems of the planet.

Now Myanmar and the Burmese Delta.
Estimated death toll from Cyclone Nargis could approach 100,000. Satellite photos show whole villages and all the vegetation around them completely washed away. For another stunning before and after view, click to this page at the NY Times website.

It is not just the immediacy of the disaster that is so full of horror; it is also what it will mean for the future of the country, for these millions of people, survivors, whose lives have been catapulted into a misery that will mark this generation and no doubt the next, given the challenges of rebuilding their lives and communities, their wrecked lands and infrastructure.

It does not help that the nation is ruled by such a repressive, isolationist military government.

I link to this Washington Post article in part because of the heartrending slide show that you can view by going to the ‘This Story’ box.

Also, this video on the MSNBC website from this morning’s Today Show:

Again, it’s just hard to wrap one’s mind around this kind of devastation and the suffering that has only just begun for these people.

What does this have to do with ecological hope? Well, we humans have seen our population grow in the span of my lifetime from 2.5 billion to 6.7 billion. This growth has concentrated in some very vulnerable parts of our planet, like low-lying coastal deltas and seashores — places like the Burmese Delta and New Orleans, places prone to natural disasters. Adding to the worry, disasters that come from the weather are likely to worsen with global warming, as is well-documented now.

What to do? Look at New Orleans. How long did the compassion of a nation last? It was hardly there to begin with in terms of government services, and those services were stingy and ungenerous at best in the long months after — now years.

This does not bode well for our human community.

When we speak of spirituality, we speak of deep inner values, the kind of values that motivate our behaviors and life choices through our days. In most religious traditions, compassion is at the heart of the matter. It remains one of those inescapable exigencies of our various faiths. No getting around it. It is not an extra added on after we have lived righteous personal lives and dealt with our personal salvation. No, rather, it defines what it means to live a righteous life.

And our font of compassion will need to be inexhaustible in the days, years, decades ahead.

As so often in these tragic stories, the extent of the disaster is a fine mix of extreme natural events, population densities, deforestation and other ecosystem degradation (those natural systems that used to weaken storms like this one), and poverty. It is always the poor who end up living in the most vulnerable places, it seems, and it is always the poor who are least able to afford those things that provide a measure of resilience — strong houses, healthy ecosystems, good infrastructure, efficient and competent public services, insurance, etc.

And so these disasters bring us multiple layers of moral, ethical and spiritual challenges.

They also remind us that we are part of a vibrant, alive, volatile planet. Accepting this, and cultivating a bit more humility in the way we live within Nature, would go a long ways towards helping us live more appropriately, justly, and compassionately.

[tags] Cyclone Nargis, Burmese Delta, Myanmar disaster, human compassion in the face of natural disasters, poverty and natural disasters[/tags]