[Return to Part I]

[... continued ...]

For some, religion is a way to integrate and honor our experience of and dependence on the natural world. For others, a way to deny its reality or to transcend its impermanence. We have many examples of native people and others pleading and bargaining with the gods of nature. "Some seem to find religion an opiate" as Freud said, "while many reject it entirely following the rationalism of what we are still pleased to call the enlightenment". But none of us can now escape nature as it affects both our vulnerability and our responsibility within it. The ecological crisis of our time gives new urgency and new meaning to spiritual and religious life as that in turn affects our agency in nature.

Interestingly, it is really only in the latter part of this century that western societies have focused on nature as part of their scientific and economic concern with ecology. Though many prophetic voices cried alone in the wilderness before them. This has in turn had a profound affect on science itself, as we move from a mechanistic understanding of a world that is in theory predictable, to a more open understanding of its infinitely mysterious complexity. All of us have been very humbled to discovery the devastation under way "on our watch" as it were, while we proudly praised our creator and naively overrated our confidence to be stewards of creation. When I hear the word steward I am always reminded of a comment by Russell Train, formerly of the World Wildlife Fund who said that "the world that created order was doing very well, thank you, until the stewards came along."

But last consider for a moment this word "ecology". It's root is the Greek word "oikos" which means household. Ecology is the study of processes and relationships within Earth's household. I never heard this word in the years of my formal education, though all my children learned their science in its terms. Until recently I did not think of it as a religious word either. But, of course, it is. In its highest form it may well be very close to what Jesus meant when He spoke of the Kingdom of God. For the most part, and again in Western society, religious and academic institutions have long since parted ways, but we do share this household, Earth. One discovering the processes that govern its essential integrity and the other seeking somehow to relate to the source of the household, the better to honor its fullness.

Economy of course has this same root which goes to the rules and norms of management of our earthly household. Now these rules and norms are not necessarily about money, though they seem to have become so in our time. I think the virtual autonomy of market institutions and technologies must be a great concern to all of us.

Our ecological suffering is not the fault, however, of any one group. Nor, is it the burden of any one people or nation, though some now experience more immediate or hazardous expressions of it now than others. The danger in our household threatens all of us. And is itself a sign of the deep interconnection of all creation. Over-developed countries suffer from spiritual impoverishment, as less-developed places do material impoverishment. But as Robert Kaplan makes clear in his recent book "The Ends of the Earth" we will all suffer the effects of environmental pollution, climatic change, new viruses and roving refugee populations, whether the poor of West Africa or the upwardly mobile in our culture. And, we have been very slow to learn that the technologies which numb our souls and deprive us of basic competencies to care for ourselves may cause such suffering as well as alleviate it.

Oikos also gives us the root of the word ecumenical; of the whole earth. And I believe that all the worlds religions and spiritual traditions have something to teach us in this shared context of ecological suffering and not just through theological belief systems, but through wisdom in their ways of life as well.

Native and Aboriginal populations have long valued silence and the awareness of nature that rises from it, unhurried pace and the peace that follows and flows from natural rhythms. We have called them primitive, heathen and pagan peoples. All terms which etymologically refer to their closeness to the nature, but used by us with a pejorative intent. We may well now ask to sit at their feet as indeed of others thought by us to be backward because they differ from us, the Amish and the Mennonite peoples for example.

Listen to this account of the spirituality of the most senior of our brothers and sisters, the Aborigines of Australia. It is Miriam Rose Ungerbauman speaking to Frank Berman. "Our most unique gift," she relates, "the greatest gift we can share is called dadere. It is inner deep listening and quiet still awareness. Dadere recognizes the deep spring that is inside of us. We call on it and it calls to us. This is the gift that the world is thirsting for. Dadere renews us and makes us whole. There is no need to reflect too much and do a lot of thinking. It is just being aware. My people are not threatened by silence. They are completely at home in it. They have lived for thousands of years with nature's quietness. We do not try to hurry things up. We let them follow their natural course like the seasons. We watch the moon and each of its phases, we wait for the rain to fill our rivers and water the thirsty earth. When twilight comes we prepare for the night. At dawn we rise with the sun. We watch the bush foods and wait for them to ripen before we gather them. We wait for our young people as they grow, stage by stage, through their initiation ceremonies. When a relation dies, we wait a long time with the sorrow. We own our grief and allow it to heal slowly. We wait for the right time for our ceremonies and meetings. The right people must be present. Everything must be done in a proper way. Careful preparations must be made. We do not mind waiting because we want things to be done with care. We do not like to hurry. There is nothing more important than what we are attending to. There is nothing more urgent that we must hurry away for. We wait on God too. God's time is the right time." Such profound wisdom.

Western expressions of Judaism and Christianity may also well benefit from other faith traditions of the East, for example. The Buddhists respective of long cycles of history and nature as these attest to the intimate interconnectedness of all things in history and nature. For our linear ways of thinking tended to blind us to the reality of this, even when its part of our own theologies. One of my favorite expressions of it in our theology, the Anglican theology, comes from the theologian Richard Hooker, who wrote, "God hath created nothing simply for itself, but each thing in all things and of everything, each part in other has such interest that in the whole world nothing is found where unto anything created can say 'I have no need of thee'."

Where again Taoist practice a tense which so attends with care to the dynamic order in the cosmos as the basic model for the social and moral order. Hindu traditions, witness to Earth as our mother, source of inexhaustible riches, I mention the gesture of Tenzing Norkay earlier, and that same attitude of reverence is expressed in one of the traditional dances of South India when the dancer first touches the Earth to beg forgiveness for treading upon her. Now, some of what I am saying will sound sentimental, superstitious, highly selective and unsophisticated. But I might encourage you to look up the word sophisticated in your dictionary one of these days. Its first three meanings in the Oxford English Dictionary are "1) mixed with a foreign substance, adulterated, impure; 2) altered from or deprived of natural simplicity or innocence; and 3) falsified to greater or lesser extent, not honest or straightforward." Perhaps we could use less sophistication, as one kind of step toward our own healing.

The fact is that spiritual traditions of primitive or less developed people have had a more beneficent effect on the natural world than ours, whatever we may think they lack in theological sophistication. Christianity is, of course, a faith tradition I know best. And, we have our part to offer in such new millennial and ecumenical dialog. Grounded in the creation traditions of Israel we affirm the essential unity, integrity of creation because it is the work of one God. And, we affirm the transcended truth in the myths of Genesis, the Genesis creation stories. Not for most of us as accounts of how the world began, but as stories through which we can discern something of the experience of people in the millennia before the common era, which experience is not, at all, unlike our own. The persons, probably many persons responsible for these texts, knew that they were not their own maker. They knew there was a source of life nearby, walking the garden even, but also transcended over all creation, which was ordered and good, very good, providing abundantly for them. They understood themselves to be part of creation, formed of Earth and therefore finite, yet gifted with divine life, breath, so that in some way they bore the image of God. They sense the special value of human being as a response able and account able species. God addressed them and called them to a vocation as "tillers of Earth". But they also sent some limit to their use of creation, the transgression of which brought untold suffering upon themselves and they felt their shame expressed as their nakedness. Even so, God cared for them making garments of skins for them to wear.

Now, in one of these accounts, the social ordering of their own time, which was patriarchy, was read back into creation so that the woman came forth from the body of a man, in spite of all empirical and conceivable evidence to the contrary. And also they had learned well the value of blaming others for their mistakes, but never mind. Some have thought these stories authorized the unbridled exploitation of Earth under the rubric of having dominion. Or, that they gave unlimited mandate for population growth under the call to be fruitful and multiply. But the scriptural record as a whole does not support the image of an exploitative God in whose image we are made, nor is it possible for creation to be fruitful or fertile enough to sustain an unlimited population. Power can, of course, be exercised as dominion or control, but authority is more like responsible influence than control.

Our history as Christians is not altogether edifying, even so, it includes times of great violence and oppression, in solarity and parochialism, as much as fidelity to God and our neighbors in creation. And all too often we have thought of salvation which has the same root as the word for health or healing. We have thought salvation a strictly personal or private matter, particularly since the 16th Century. But it is not. Salvation is social, indeed it is ecological. However, the Christian testament, grounded as it is in an incarnational and sacramental theology, has been lived out in many times and places ve and reverent view of nature. I think especially of the traditions of Orthodox and Celtic Christianity, the life and ministry of Hildagard Bingham and Meister Echart, Francis and Clair, the mystics and the English poets. And all of this, as well as our foundational teaching offer vast potentials for our healing and regeneration.

Sadly, Christianity's post-industrial expressions splintered and fragmented by too many different ecclesial forms can scarcely be heard, let alone honored, in our market world. Yet, our disciplines teach us the grace of repentance and also we can absorb new vision and understanding, such as that which has come to us through process theology, liberation theology and feminist theology. And, through the writings of people like John Muir, Rachel Carson, Wendel Berry and Terry Tempest Williams. As important as this kind of open ecumenical religious dialog may be, however, another kind of coming together is equally essential to our future well-being. For a variety of reasons, religious life has been isolated from influencing, and that word I remind you means "flowing into", the agencies of decision and change in our culture. Religion has been so protected politically that we have become isolated and with the exception of the religious right, we have become shy of letting our own voices be heard in public life.

Scientists may feel their own kind of isolation as well, as their work is increasingly used and marketed by others for purposes quite apart from their own. Even political representatives feel the takeover of independent economic institutions, responsible and accountable to no one. But, we all dwell in one household and it is good for us to meet and talk together, for we are in a terrible disarray. We are suffering another kind of diaspora, another expression of Caesar's motto "divide and conquer". And our Mother Earth, though forgiving, is not and cannot be endlessly so.

I would be the last person to welcome a centralized authority to govern our entire and unruly common life, but I would hope for all of us to become attentive to the costs of the unauthorized, unlimited and unaccountable powers of the market to govern it. I also think we must become less concerned with our individual rights and more concerned with the common good. More disciplined as a people and less willful.

I close therefore with a thought from Wendall Berry, who offers a fine vision of life, lived faithfully in the natural order. He writes, "We cannot live harmlessly or strictly at our own expense. We depend upon other creatures and survive by their deaths. To live we must daily break the bread, break the body and shed the blood of creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, destructfully, wastefully, it is a desecration. And in such desecration, we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness and others to want."

Thank you for your attention. I'd be glad now to take questions, or comments, or objections, or whatever is on offer.