Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Yesterday’s reflection focused on Holy Week. This evening, at sundown, Passover begins. These sacred days we celebrate each spring bring us back to our roots, the roots of us, of the human species, and the stories that give meaning to the human journey. They remind us of how all that we have — the gifts of the Garden of Earth, stories of liberation from oppression, the longing for freedom and thirst for justice, the witness of prophets and martyrs and their calls to conversion, our sense of equity and right relationships represented, as just one example, in the ideal of the Jubilee Year — all of this is gift of the Earth, gift of the sacred, the divine, whatever name we give to this presence in which we live and move and have our being.

I recommend a visit to a wonderful website, tel shemesh, celebrating and creating earth-based traditions in Judaism. There you will find prayers and reflections to celebrate, or to bring to your Seder tables, a spirituality emerging from this precious planet as it encounters these traditions.

Two samples from their Seder meditations:

Kadesh/Blessing the First Cup:

Cup that is the womb, cup that is the cave,
Cup that is the sea, cup that is the grave,
Cup that is the earth, cup that is the light,
Cup that is the seed, fill us on this night.
We lift this cup to the Source of Life.

Karpas/Eating Greens:

Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy.
From the salt water of our eyes comes the green of growth.
From the salt of the ocean comes all life on earth.
We promise to preserve this green life
as it has preserved us.
We promise not to treat the earth as a slave
but as a friend.
We too were slaves
And we know the dangers of unceasing work.
Let us allow the earth her rest
And let us value all that is green
As a treasure we must preserve
Not as a servant we can use and throw away.

How we reinvent the stories of our faith traditions will have a great deal to do with how we articulate a spirituality of ecological hope that can help form, give substance to, our work of transforming the human presence on the Earth.

It is a time of a vast leap in the evolutionary process of which we are part and expression. How that goes, how that process unfolds, will have everything to do with how we respond to it now — with fear and dread, or with courage and exhilaration at all we are learning about who we are within this unfolding Earth and consciousness.

And while we honor and celebrate these religious feasts, let’s remember to honor the renewal of Life itself, this madness of Spring, in its own right. Go immerse yourself in it, and then remember what we have put in jeopardy with our ‘way of life.’ Suddenly, it becomes glaringly clear what needs to fall away, what false meaning we have super-imposed over human life that now threatens to crush, or snuff out all life.

Celebrate everything. Love this Earth. Share your bread of suffering, community and hope this week with friends and family. Renew and re-charge for the struggle ahead — to transform the human journey for the sake of all that lives and breathes on this planet.

[tags] earth spirituality, passover, seder, spirituality of ecological hope, spring[/tags]