Earth Spirituality

The ecological theologian Thomas Berry (1914–2009) reflects on our much-needed connection with nature:

What do you see when you look up at the sky at night at the blazing stars against the midnight heavens? What do you see when the dawn breaks over the eastern horizon? What are your thoughts … in the autumn when the leaves turn brown and are blown away … [or] when you look out over the ocean in the evening? What do you see?

Many earlier peoples saw in these natural phenomena a world beyond ephemeral appearance, an abiding world, a world imaged forth in the wonders of the sun and clouds by day and the stars and planets by night, a world that enfolded the human in some profound manner. This other world was guardian, teacher, healer—the source from which humans were born, nourished, protected, guided, and the destiny to which we returned….

We have lost our connection to this other deeper reality of things. Consequently, we now find ourselves on a devastated continent where nothing is holy, nothing is sacred. We no longer have a world of inherent value, no world of wonder, no untouched, unspoiled, unused world. We think we have understood everything. But we have not. We have used everything. By “developing” the planet, we have been reducing Earth to a new type of barrenness. Scientists are telling us that we are in the midst of the sixth extinction period in Earth’s history. No such extinction of living forms has occurred since the extinction of the dinosaurs some sixty-five million years ago. [1]

Berry calls for a spirituality that honors the natural world:

The ecological age fosters the deep awareness of the sacred presence within each reality of the universe. There is an awe and reverence due to the stars in the heavens, the sun, and all heavenly bodies; to the seas and the continents; to all living forms of trees and flowers; to the myriad expressions of life in the sea; to the animals of the forests and the birds of the air. To wantonly destroy a living species is to silence forever a divine voice. [2]

To preserve this sacred world of our origins from destruction, our great need is for renewal of the entire Western religious-spiritual tradition…. We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with it, … to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us, from a spirituality concerned with justice simply to humans to a justice that includes the larger Earth community….

We cannot save ourselves without saving the world in which we live.… We will live or die as this world lives or dies. We can say this both physically and spiritually. We will be spiritually nourished by this world or we will be starved for spiritual nourishment. No other revelatory experience can do for the human what the experience of the natural world does. [3]  

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Nothing changes a person more quickly or more dramatically than fear. We saw in Naaman’s story how the king of Israel misinterpreted the letter from the king of Syria because he was afraid. Rather than faithfully fulfilling Israel’s calling to reveal God to the nations, the king refused to help Naaman find healing, tore his own robes, and lamented what he feared was an imminent invasion from Syria. Here’s a more recent example of how fear causes a rapid and dramatic change. In a 2011 survey, evangelical Christians were the religious group in the U.S. most likely to say that the personal character of elected officials mattered. By 2016, evangelicals were the religious group most likely to say character didn’t matter. What caused the sudden reversal of values? Journalist Tim Alberta asked one prominent pastor and he answered with two words: “Under siege.”He explained that evangelical Christians now feel afraid, persecuted, and threatened. Under those conditions, their previous commitment to certain public principles and ethical standards has loosened or been abandoned altogether. Like Israel’s king in Naaman’s story, fear has caused them to forsake their calling to pursue safety instead. Thomas Aquinas, the medieval theologian, said fear causes a contraction of the soul. He compared its effect on a person to a city under siege. In the pre-modern world, when an army attacked a city, the inhabitants in the countryside would gather their resources and barricade themselves behind the city’s walls. From this contracted, inward-focused position they would hunker down and hope their food and water outlasted the attacking army’s resources and will to fight. Similarly, when we are afraid we also contract; we pull our resources—physical, emotional, economic, and moral—inward in a posture of protection and self-preservation. We can think only about ourselves, our needs, our survival, and nothing else. As Aquinas said, “Fear is such a powerful emotion for humans that when we allow it to take us over, it drives compassion right out of our hearts.”From this defensive, contracted posture the callings we’ve received from Jesus Christ get quickly abandoned, and the higher reasoning necessary for compassion and ethics becomes impossible. Give to the one who asks, forgive those who’ve sinned against you, turn the other cheek, love your enemy—these commands are nonsensical to the soul contracted by fear. As Henri Nouwen said, “Fear engenders fear, it never gives birth to love.”In this election year, regardless of your political affiliation, there will be many voices seeking to make you afraid, to contract your soul, with the effect of preventing you from following the generous, self-giving way of Jesus. Some of these voices may even claim to be Christian. But fear is never the way of Christ; it is the way of antichrist. Because God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power and love (2 Timothy 1:7). DAILY SCRIPTURE ROMANS 8:31-39  2 KINGS 5:1-27 WEEKLY PRAYER Ambrose of Milan (340 – 397) Preserve your work, Lord. Guard the gift you have given even to those who pull back. For I knew I was not worthy to be called your servant, but by your grace I am what I am. And grant that I may know how with genuine affection to mourn with those who sin. Grant that as often as I learn of the sin of anyone who has fallen, I may suffer with them, and not scold them in my pride, but mourn and weep with them, so that in weeping over another I may also mourn for myself. Amen.

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