Eco-Spirituality

EARTHKEEPING NEWS
A NEWSLETTER OF THE NORTH AMERICAN COALITION FOR CHRISTIANITY AND ECOLOGY

Volume Seven, Number Six
September/October 1998

ECO-SPIRITUALITY —

Necessary for a Response to Eco-injustice? (query: Ed.)

Ecology has scarcely penetrated the shell of modern Christianity. One can go through a whole year of the liturgical cycle and hardly know that the earth exists, much less that it is sacred. Earth continues to be seen as a cluster of objects; not as multiple subjects for spiritual communion.

Perhaps the greatest deficiency in Christian nurture is neglect in cultivating our mystical potential. The deep ecology movement, without using God language, understands the importance of a deeply experiential conversion in our attitudes toward nature as a prerequisite for thinking and acting in ecologically sound ways.

For most Christians, going to church means prescribed liturgical actions. It does not mean learning and practicing the the way of deeper personal union with God, immersed in the universe and in our inner being. Spiritual directors do not significantly incorporate nature into their teachings. Nature is only backdrop.

A key to the foregrounding of nature is finding God in all things, of discovering the extraordinary in the ordinary, of becoming people for others. The "other" here, in its intrinsic sacredness, can be bird or river or mountain or air, all constituting the body of God.

An ecological revisioning of Christian spirituality would look again at medieval and Renaissance religious art and architecture. The cathedrals have carvings of plants and animals. God might be found again in the beauty of Botticelli's maidens. The erotic and the sensual, despite all attempts by clerical censors to the contrary, belong to the sacramental heritage of Christianity.

A new Christian spirituality will have to reconsider our relationship to animals. Our anthropocentric and hierarchical attitudes have relegated animals to inferior species. In a market capitalist culture we reduce them to commodities. If animals are part of God's body, the Divine suffers in them.

An ecological spirituality also involves new directions for spiritual direction. Our technological culture with its mechanistic mentality has separated us from a deep connectedness with earth, and with communities of intimacy. Among the psychological results of this alienation from nature are chronic anxiety, anger, a sense of not belonging – a homelessness on earth.

We need to be in dialogue with nature, letting its creatures dictate their needs to us, re-personalizing nature after a long period of de-sacralizing and de-personalizing it. A new ethic will flow from a renewed sense of the co-creativity of God, nature and humanity. It will be an ethic built on intersubjectivity that respects the intrinsic worth of the natural world and our essential inter-connectedness with it.

The ecological challenge underlies most of the major world traumas: war, poverty, famine, overpopulation, the destruction of species and many others. This calls for a profound reinterpretation of Christian traditions. Christianity in dialogue with other wisdom traditions can contribute significant spiritual resources for ecological awareness and inspiration.