Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope

Today from Margaret Swedish:

As we mark once again the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, while partying away one hopes we can take a moment to reflect on our national condition.  Independence is a lovely word, but hardly relevant in a world where we are more than ever before in human history so profoundly interdependent.

Independent from what?  If from oppression and tyranny, yes, absolutely.  If independent so that we can be as rich as we want, consume as we want, live as if others don’t exist or concern us, then we are in major denial and are becoming ourselves oppressors.

We need one another.  We need one another if we are to save ourselves.  We are dependent on each other for ensuring that the fabric of the earth’s ecosystems does not break down to the point where it can no longer sustain our lives.  We are dependent on this earth’s fabric of life of which we are one interwoven part.  We breathe with the earth, recycle life’s energies with the earth, are born out of and die back into the earth so that life may go on, evolve towards whatever profound fulfillment lies at the summit of this journey.

We together breathe the same air, eat from the same ground.  How we care for that air, that ground, will determine our quality of life.  Right now we are consuming vastly more than this earth can sustain, leading us on a downward spiral towards disaster.  We cannot separate ourselves from this process.  It is what it is.  Earth has only so much capacity.  We will either learn to be downwardly mobile, rethink the ‘growth’ engine of the global economy along with its maldevelopment model, or we will all together face the collapse to come.

We will either address this equitably — the affluent relinquishing enough of their consumption patterns to make possible the eradication of degrading poverty – or we will face, in the midst of the other many crises, a world in rebellion, in rage, a violent war-prone world.

Our choices become increasingly stark.  The longer we put off the major decisions regarding the reorganization of human life to something sustainable and renewing for future generations, the more severe will be the adjustments.

So, while watching fireworks over these next days, and waving flags, and barbecuing beef, and battering the beaches and parks with crowds and noise and ATVs, take a moment to regard your home, your planet.  What we do to it, we do to ourselves.  The respect we bring to it reflects our own degree of self-respect — if life is not sacred for us, we will not treat this earth with the sacredness it manifests every day, struggling to carry us even through our recent centuries of profound abuse.  If it is only a playground to be trashed, that says something about the level of respect we feel for ourselves and one another, and to what extent we believe there is meaning in human existence beyond the deadening consumption of goods, upward mobility and competitive economic activity to which we have consigned the meaning of our lives in this country.

So, here is to another approach:  here is to a world in which we will one day declare our “Interdependence Day,” an age when we celebrate together the human journey that is our common bond, when we honor our place in gaia/earth, when we come to reverence all the earth did to bring us into being.

And here’s to the day when we begin to return the favor by bringing our human existence back into balance with all that made us possible. 

Think of this as you are with your children this weekend.  Think of them.  Think of their future.  Think of what kind of world you hope for them.

Then let’s declare a new independence — from the tyranny and oppression of a way of life that is destroying their future.  Yes, independence from the bondage of this economy of growth, wealth generation, and consumption of non-renewable goods to the joy and freedom of abundance — the natural abundance of this good earth, our home, our only, only home.