Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

I want to share a reflection with you this Sunday — something I plan to do on weekends from now on, share something a bit more reflective, other voices than my own.

Today’s reflection comes from Tom Hayden, author of the wonderful book, The Lost Gospel of the Earth.

The privileged position of the human race, backed theologically by most religions, has to be dismantled or reformed on all levels before we can arrive at an acceptance of kinship and our common natural fate foreseen by visionaries like John Muir, who wrote of all life forms sharing a common ‘law of death and love”…

…if one examines their doctrines,…none of the major religions seems willing to abandon the hierarchical ladder of a monotheistic God, the duality between the temporal and divine, the making of the human (as opposed to, say, butterflies) in God’s image, or the dominion of the human over other living things.

When a system like the Machiavellian state smothers our souls, we have no choice but to respond spiritually. We need a spiritual base to sustain ourselves as human beings… being spiritual is…a matter of understanding that we are spiritual. It is part of being human to be connected to eternity and its cycles, to a living creation, something larger than ourselves.

Those who accept a spirit in nature actually are gaining access to a powerful resource that lies within our grasp. To think otherwise is to perpetuate the illusion and denial that we are separate from nature, or that our minds can understand and control its force. But how can we still claim to conquer, control, and manage a creation larger and greater than ourselves? The modern state and its adherents may attempt to dominate and transcend nature, but the effort is finally in vain. No state is greater than the state of nature. The nature of the state must reflect the state of nature, not the other way around. No government can usurp the governance of nature’s laws of life and death. No executive can be the chairman of the corporate earth. No planner can comprehend what is larger than the mind.

Machiavellian statecraft is idolatry. In trying to conquer nature to build empires, we have left ourselves weakened. We have forgotten another possibility, of being modern villagers in the country of nature, souls participating in creation itself.

You see, we are no greater — and no lesser — than that. When we have rejoined the Earth community as sister and brother among its creatures, we will find ourselves unable to violate and abuse this planet any longer. And this, I believe, is the great spiritual challenge of our times.

[tags] earth spirituality, Tom Hayden, lost gospel of the earth[/tags]