Ecology as a Way of Seeing

Jones Family Farms owner Terry Jones walking through his Connecticut fields with his grandson, Jackson. Photo c/o Jones Family Farm

I grew up in a small rural town in New England. A couple of factories were the major employers of the local population, and the town was surrounded by family farms. In fact, my mother’s parents owned a small farm, which proved a most delightful place to visit – after I got over my fear of bulls and large pigs! It was incredible to stand next to a cow as a child and be able to touch such a large creature. It was delightful to see young chicks moving from egg to incubator and then out in the barnyard. Such a mystery! Nor was I spared seeing chickens separated from their heads on the tree stump used for such a purpose. It was a revelation to understand that this was to be our evening meal. My grandfather and uncles would milk the cows and my grandmother would turn that milk into butter and cottage cheese. A large garden provided fresh vegetables in season and the hay would be mown and baled to feed the livestock. Pigs ate the peelings and any vegetable matter not fit for the table.

 

Life was oh so simple then…

This introduction to the ways of living with what the earth provided was supplemented by walks in the surrounding forest, “exploring” the streams and brooks, discovering wild berries and unusual flowers, watching for the birds and trying to avoid the insects. The world seemed somehow quieter there and seemed to follow ways different from the hustle and bustle – even then! – of traffic and the gathering of people.

 

This pull of nature has always been with me, and it has grown as I have been able to spend time in mountains, along the sea, and in the desert. All such venues have left me feeling like a pilgrim on this earth, sometimes even an intruder. Mostly, however, I have heard the call to know myself as a welcome guest: welcomed by the earth and the One who created it.

 

The times—they are a-changin’

 

Such a background probably primed me to notice how we in Western society have moved from a deeper awareness of our environment to a place where environmental concerns are taken into account in almost every facet of our lives. The question is often asked: Is this way of doing things environmentally friendly? Or, to use the shorter term – “eco-friendly.” I have come to understand that “eco” in such a term derives from the Greek word for “home.” It suggests that the world in which we dwell matters very much in all we experience. An “eco-spirituality” seeks to take into account the role the world plays in our lives of faith, in the way we find ourselves in relationship with the God of all creation. Recent decades have seen this concern move from a caring for this planet on which we dwell to an awareness of the cosmos and the way forces far beyond us shape the world in which we live.

 

Challenging Words Are Needed

 

On June 10, 2002, Pope Saint John Paul II and Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople sign a “Declaration on the Environment”

In 1990, the Vatican issued two declarations that focused on the environment and concerns about the environment. “The Ecological Crisis: A Common Responsibility” frames the questions about ecology in terms of morality. “Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All Creation” has environmental concerns as its main focus.

 

In 2002’s “Declaration on the Environment,” Pope John Paul II and Patriarch Bartholomew issued a call to first world inhabitants to “turn away from unjust and destructive consumer culture.” In their 1991 document “Renewing the Earth,” the U.S. bishops connected ecological justice and social justice. The bishops have continued to address ecological concerns in this way.

 

Such a new awareness in faith always seeks to tie itself to Scripture, whether in discovering new meaning in what Jesus did and taught, or at least ascertaining that it does not go against what we already know from Scripture. When doing this, we must acknowledge that the world we inhabit is not the same as that of Jesus. The world at that time did not seem to consist of much more than the Mediterranean Basin, at least to the common person.

 

We’re all in this together

 

Today, however, we have become used to hearing warnings from scientists about the wholesale depletion of the earth’s resources. We “remember” the Dust Bowl, Chernobyl and Bhopal, events where human activity brought widespread destruction. These days the evidence is being sifted to determine what extent human practices may be playing in climate change. With the advent of nuclear weapons we came to realize we could change the world in ways that could not be reversed. The Vietnam War saw the introduction of napalm and “agent orange,” and Desert Storm found us concerned about the use of biological agents in warfare. Meanwhile, epidemics from AIDS to the ebola virus to the most recent flu outbreak (H1N1) challenge medical scientists with their strength and adaptability.

 

Such were not the concerns of people in Jesus’ time, and so obviously not a part of his preaching. We do, however, get a sense of Jesus as one connected to nature. He used metaphors from agriculture and animal husbandry to make his points and explain who he was. He is, for example, the good shepherd or the true vine. In one of the most poignant passages in the gospels, he tells his disciples not to worry; take a lesson from the birds of the air, the flowers of the field. Notice how God tends them. In fact, no sparrow falls from the sky without God’s notice. A theology of interdependence can certainly be based upon such teachings. Some have even commented that recent discoveries about the nature and properties of light enrich our understanding of Jesus as “light of the world” and his calling his disciples the same.

 

Prophetic Voices

 

Jesuit Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, examining a skull

Fr. Thomas Berry, a member of the Congregation of the Cross and Passion (the Passionists), dedicated his life to integrating knowledge of the universe with our faith in God. He died earlier this year, leaving a legacy some say picked up the mantle worn by Fr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist whose mystical vision saw God purposefully at work in an evolving world. Fr. Berry insisted on the interrelatedness of all reality and cautioned against seeing a universe that consisted of objects. “We are a communion of subjects,” he would repeat, and, if we are to move into the future, that will only be possible “through mutually enhancing relationships among all creatures.” Berry asked how we could expect sick individuals to get well in an unhealthy planet. We ignore the health of the planet at our own peril. Yet, I would never categorize Father Berry as an alarmist. I believe he was trying to call us to conversion – to see things in a way that made sense of all we are discovering and to see God’s hand at work in it all.

I believe my vocation in La Salette has helped me to see all this in a particular light, and I believe this exposure to the New Story (as this cosmology has been called) has cast new light on the way I see La Salette. Just as we return to the Gospels, mining Jesus’ words and actions for wisdom, we can do the same for the event and message of La Salette. Of course, the physical setting of the apparition site high up in the Alpine foothills encourages us to think in terms of the grandeur of God’s creative activity. Moreover, Our Blessed Mother pointed to the relationship of human beings to the Earth when she drew the connection between conversion and the harvest: “If my people do not submit, the grapes will spoil and the potatoes will rot…,” but “if my people are converted, the rocks will turn into mounds of wheat and the potatoes will be self-sown in the fields.” Such images derive from the Hebrew prophets, who announced a God who could turn desert land into fertile fields, and vice versa.

 

God is at the Center

 

I believe we have too closely drawn the connection between conversion and sin. Our Lady never mentioned sin at La Salette. In fact, Jesus never spent a lot of time talking about sin. Our Lady did mention those who neglect the Sabbath and those who take her Son’s name in vain, images which call to mind the Ten Commandments. But what if the “Ten Commandments” were something more than a list of laws or rules, the transgression of which we name “sin”? What if the Commandments were revelatory of right relationship between God and human beings? What if conversion is more than repenting of sin (although it is that) and is more a matter of being restored to right relationship, to true perspective, to wholeness? It is a matter of coming to see God again at the center of our lives; not simply our individual lives, but at the center of all life. Conversion acknowledges and honors God as central, and humbly acknowledges ourselves as God’s servants, as recipients of grace. When God is at the center, all creatures find their proper perspective. Because our store of knowledge continues to grow – personally and communally – it seeks to find its place with what we knew before. Conversion then necessarily becomes a lifelong enterprise and the option that allows experience and knowledge to be integrated and made whole.

 

Mary’s Promise of Blessings

 

This is why Our Lady at La Salette pointed to the fact that people no longer went to Mass, no longer participated in liturgical observance, such as Lent. It wasn’t so much a matter of following laws (Jesus and St. Paul had already pointed out the futility of that approach to salvation), but of being in a place and among a people where the Good News of our relationship with God could be heard and acknowledged and celebrated; a place where people could be supported in their faith that there was more to life in this world than what industry and economics offers. Otherwise death becomes the only way to escape the chains this world is too eager to impose. “No!” Our Lady is saying, “Conversion is always an option; God is ever love!” This is a message of life, of possibility, of something “more.” It is a message our world needs to hear more than ever before. We are blessed to hear it ourselves, and blessed to be able to share it with all God’s people.

 

Recommended Reading:

• Awe-filled Wonder: The Interface of Science and Spirituality by Barbara Fiand (Paulist Press, 2008)
• Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe by Judy Cannato (Sorin Books, 2006).
  
• Our Lady of La Salette, pictured speaking with the
  children above a field with workers harvesting their crop.