Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

So much news to comment on, but I don’t want to do news right now. I want to do contemplation, I want to take a long walk on this chilly foggy day along Lake Michigan, to love the melting snow-cover, to cherish all that I love, all that is threatened, in this magnificent natural world that tries so hard to hold us up, to care for us, despite our abusive, violent relationship with it.

It can’t take much more, can it? We all know that.

The bleak part of my meditation is on how hopeless it seems as tens of millions of us spew carbon into the air with our holiday travels, our presents-buying, our consumer ways, in a society in which we are told over and over again that our economy depends upon us consuming until we are comatose, literally numb. The news reports each day on how well we are doing in this planetary death spiral.

But let’s not go there. It is a backdrop, but it is not the only thing happening.

I have begun having conversations with folks in the Milwaukee area about getting our project going here, and once again, as in so many places I have visited in recent years, I keep finding hope in abundance in the many good people who are trying so earnestly to make the ‘great turning’ away from this consumerist post-industrial society towards something more in keeping with the beauty of the human being within the fabric of life on this planet.

This is sacred ground, and I am always humbled and honored to be invited to walk on it, to share it in the lives of others.

The turning will happen. It will be difficult, painful. Much needless suffering will occur because we are so far behind the curve on this. But the turning will happen, because it is already begun. I am already a privileged witness of its occurence here, there, and everywhere.

And so we come to Christmas and then the celebration of a new year — one that will determine the near-term course of the politics of this nation. But that’s for more posts after 2008 begins. Right now, as we say in our greeting on the home page, it is time to walk with, to breathe in and out, to sit and meditate, on that most famous of Christmas phrases, “Peace on Earth to all of good will.”

It is said without thinking for the most part.

Peace on Earth is going to mean making peace with Earth. It is going to mean ending our abusive assault on the nature that gave birth to us and which destruction would mean the death of us.

Peace on Earth means creating a world in which it is possible for all human beings to live with dignity, with their basic needs met, within a ‘culture of life,’ which, translated away from the ‘right to life’ crowd, means a culture in which all living creatures have their place to be and to flourish as part of the living ecosystems upon which our human life also depends.

It is winter. We feel the cold air; we are humbled by the snow and ice storms. We see landscapes transformed before our eyes. Early this morning, the winter solstice occurred, and many people and cultures marked the moment. Now comes the promise of the return of light.

Wherever we are, in whatever clime, here are days in front of us, precious few in our frenzied lives, when we just might take a little time to relax into the awareness of the natural world around us. The original Christmas story is so marked by the impact of nature and of our place in the cosmos, even to a star guiding visitors from the east to the humble stable. Animals visit, spirits appear to shepherds. So much wonder, if we just open our eyes.

I want to conclude this reflection with an excerpt from an essay by the Passionist priest and earth-theologian (geologian) Thomas Berry. The essay is entitled ‘Legal Conditions for Earth Survival,’ and appears in his book, Evening Thoughts: Reflecting on Earth as Sacred Community:

Not only our physical being but also our souls, our minds, imagination, and emotions depend on our immediate experience of the natural world. There is in the industrial process no poetry, no elevation or fulfillment of mind or emotions comparable to that experienced in response to the magnificence of the sea, the mountains, the sky, the stars at night, the flowers blooming in the meadows, the flight and song of the birds. As the natural world diminishes in its splendor, so human life diminishes in its fulfillment of both the physical and the spiritual aspects of our being. This is the case not only with humans but also with every mode of being. The well-being of each member of the Earth community is dependent on the well-being of the Earth itself.

I wish you this well-being in the new year and beyond. I wish us all the strength and courage to do what we need to do to ensure this well-being for all the generations to come after us.

A blessed Christmas and New Year.

[tags] earth community, peace on earth, post-industrial society, the great turning, Thomas Berry, evening thoughts, culture of life[/tags]

Photo credit: bigfoto.com