Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

There are so many ways that we are reminded that we are not apart from Nature, that we are immersed in it, elements of it. We think we control it, and then it controls us.

The piles of trash in the alley behind my Mother’s house — rolled up wet carpeting, ruined furniture, etc. One neighbor said that the storm water exploded out of her basement drain “like a volcano,” with enough force to move furniture around. And these houses were a couple blocks from the Menomonee River and up a slight hill. My Mother’s house was leaking during the deluge but escaped any real damage.

Said Bill Borghoff of the National Weather Service in Sullivan, “This is pretty much unprecedented, to get day after day with 3 to 6 inches of rain in the Wisconsin River Valley.”

Unprecedented, like so much of our weather lately.

Fond du Lac — “A large protion of our city is underwater,” said a local police officer.

Iowa — wow! Cedar Rapids, Des Moines. Many small towns, ruined farm fields.

Cedar Rapids City Council member Brian Fagan:

“I just can’t believe it,” Fagan said. “You caught me at a time when I just don’t have the words. I’m sure someone will pin it (down), and I’ll maybe grasp on to that. But right now, I just don’t have the words.” [For some stunning video of the Iowa floods, check out this Chicago Tribune page.]

The ripple effects of this will continue for days, maybe weeks. The economy of the Mississippi is now being hit as well. [As I write this, Des Moines officials are announcing voluntary evacuations from downtown. Wow!]

The totals of economic damage from this past week or so of extreme weather will undoubtedly reach a billion or more dollars.

And I don’t have words this morning either. Overnight, I awoke to yet another deluge — rain falling in torrents and crashing thunder and lightning — just what we didn’t need, though I love storms. But this is nuts.

I don’t have words, except to reiterate something truly essential about all this — we must learn humility before Nature, before the forces of energy on this planet. Like any honest, loving relationships, we must surrender feelings of “power over,” we must surrender “control trips,” and selfishness and ego.

The energetic forces of climate on this planet are likely to reach more extremes because of global warming — more heat, more energy. More heat, more moisture in the atmosphere which feeds these storms as they develop.

Like those houses built on sand (sound biblical, perchance?) at Lake Delton, the ones that broke away and floated down the Wisconsin River, we humans are living in all sorts of vulnerable places where we should not be. And like Lake Delton, we do it with this hubristic feeling that humans can engineer into existence whatever life they please on this planet.

And then Nature lets us know who’s in charge.

When we restore our relationships with Nature, healthy loving relationships, we will stop living so inappropriately with our loved ones — our families, friends, neighbors, the trees, critters, wetlands, waters of our bioregion. We will live in a way that takes into consideration the totality of our neighbors, our Earth community, the one in which we are embedded.

For now, remember one of the essential elements of a spirituality of ecological hope — compassion, boundless compassion, for all those suffering today — for the Boy Scouts in Iowa and their families, for those who have lost homes and possessions, for the communities where so much economic damage is done.

Let us learn from all this. Let us learn from all this.

[tags] floods in the midwest, extreme weather, National Weather Service, Lake Delton, balance of nature[/tags]

Photo credit: Cedar Rapids flooding and more info on conditions in Iowa, Des Moines Register