How we live

I’m looking at an article in the New York Times. “How countries can get richer without wrecking the planet”.  Note the two parts here.  We at least know now that we are wrecking the planet just by looking out the window at the smoke from fires many kilometers or miles away. But the article takes it for granted that somehow we can have it all anyway and being richer will make us happier. Neither need be questioned.

The article goes on to state that it’s a conflict between accumulating wealth and. preserving nature. It adds our need to lift people out of poverty - as though accumulating wealth is going to do that – and that the rich will always share with the poor. Researchers at the World Bank think they have found a way.  Well good for them. Let’s see how it is to be done.

• Farming more intensively and in appropriate places

• Preserving more areas of forests that stash planet warming carbon

• Supporting biodiversity

“Suppose you used all the resources that you have more efficiently” – says the lead economist. “How much could you produce?” Countries could sequester lots of carbon dioxide without denting economic growth. Or they could increase annual income from forestry and agriculture for food needs without damaging the environment. Preserving land and water helps the economy and nature at the same time.

Producing more food on smaller plots sounds good. Was Monsanto consulted on that one and will they be happy to give up their land? Small farmers, few as they are, will like that. It continues to sound good until others warn there might be unintended consequences. Perhaps they have studied those caused by the industrial revolution. The mention how one country increased agricultural productivity but contaminated the adjacent waterways. In another case, increasing land efficiency meant that there were more land grabs of protected ones.  Reducing garbage or eating less beef were not among the efficiencies. We still want it all – and we have a master-slave relationship with nature.  That’s not something noticed in the report - or by most of us most of the time.

Social - Really?

Social – Really?

Remember when you were a little kid when you were daydreaming, and a voice broke through and ordered, “Pay Attention.”  Remember when we were asked to “Stand at Attention”. In those days we would have interpreted such commands as an order to focus.  Now attention is a feature of the economy. 

• When I was musing on the role of social media during the pandemic and why a study in process has more or less ignored it thus far, the first thing to do was to have a look at my own Facebook use.  Since too much scrolling down is wasting time, I limited myself to the first ten entries which were as follows: ·      

• Photos from a son on holiday from his university teaching post in Hong Kong in Vietnam. Well worth seeing.

• Suggested: People I may know.  I don’t.

• Suggested: post from Julia’s Violin Academy. Not an instrument I play.

•  Suggested: An advertisement for a condo coming several miles north of where I live. I am not in the market for a move or purchase.

• Pictures from a woman I know of herself and her sisters from several years back.

• A cartoon posted by someone I know – somewhat funny

• More pictures from the Vietnam visit

• A somewhat sentimental piece from a family member about people he has known.

• Suggested: A grocery store ad

• Suggested: post of famous pianists’ hands

Perhaps 20% of this was worth my attention and time. Half were ads, none of which were appropriate.

Remember when we thought social media was wonderful and would unite us all in peace and “person-hood”.  First we grabbed accounts as individuals and shared our dog, cat and children in photos. After our organizations had websites, we had to add links to social media in the hope that our world would expand far and wide.  We wonder if we should boost our posts to get better readership – instead of thinking of how were are sending even more money to Meta.  But is all our attention to our own bubbles blinding us to how social media has turned us as individuals and organizations into commodities? Do we just think we are promoting our personal or organizational brands while Meta laughs all the way to the bank?

The purpose of social media was never to bring us together in world peace – but to make money. Most it is owned by just one company – Meta – while a few others compete with it. The advantage over conventional advertising is the ability to direct targeted ads to specific audiences. The purpose is not to sell advertisements to us – but to sell us to advertisers.

When we don’t like all those ads they send us, we can pay to omit them or buy premium versions– thereby replacing the revenue lost from advertisers. Then they suggest boosting our organizational posts to wider audiences. Often this will include a headline only – since it is already known that 80% of headlines are the only thing read to get the brand  imprinted in our brains. All the while, these companies are engaging in what is termed “surveillance capitalism” – telling the advertisers how many people are looking at their messages. Twitter apparently makes 13% of its income this way by selling the infomation back. Meanwhile the company tries to get the mix of ads and real messages just right in a Goldilocks arrangement; It looks as though from my own above history that I am a real sucker for ads, since mine start right away after the first message.

Studies have already suggested that social media is as addictive as many drugs.  Younger inexperienced users are far more vulnerable that older ones to bullying and many of us have never had to endure hate messages. But we might ask why we turn to social media?  Are we anxious? Lonely? Or just Bored? Do we need affirmation from others? A need to show off? People I know appear to demonstrate all these characteristics now and then. That’s their choice. But before I log in and scroll down, do I ask myself why I am there instead of somewhere better?

O Canada

Encampment of protestors close to Canadian House of Parliament on the 18th day of their blockade

We Canadian are suddenly the centre of attention everywhere after a world wide reputation of being boring. Our fifteen minutes of fame nevertheless are an embarrassment when we become notorious for all the wrong reasons. Every gathering of more than one at a dinner table starts a conversation - and one is then left to reflect on the issues and implications for democracy.

It all began when some truckers didn’t like vaccine mandates mandated not only in Canada but also in the United States that wouldn’t allow them to travel back and forth without proof of vaccination. But what started as something fostered by a clear minority - 90% of truckers were fully vaccinated and their associations did not support the action - escalated into blockades of others that shut down borders, affected food and industrial chains, and terrorized the downtown residents of the Ottawa and federal parliament in Canada’s capital city. Hundreds of protesters settled in a downtown encampment with blaring horns and maskless invasions of the major shopping centre and nearby market. They parked their big wheelers, blocking bus routes and ambulance lanes on city streets and shutting down all surrounding businesses. Others did the same thing on major international routes - in one case stopping a quarter of Canada/US daily commercial traffic. They want all pandemic restrictions lifted - and some also are openly want to overthrow the elected government. Freedom signs are everywhere. There aren’t any Responsibility signs.

As it happened, last evening I attended a seminar on Non Violent Communication. Its founder, Marshall Rosenberg, seemingly had good reason to explore the subject based on his own upbringing and it has some good features as a model for one-on-one communication. It suggests a path with four components: observing the facts of a situation where one is impacted, examining how one feels about it, how it impacts one’s needs and values, and how one might explore the experience with the person who was involved in it. We were asked to think of a situation where something had happened that we didn’t like - and work through the other steps. We then practised with a partner, listened to each other’s account, and reflected out loud what we had heard.

All of this appears on a chart to help us. Feelings are listed under broad headings; joy and contentment, fear and anxiety, anger and frustration, sadness and grief. Each heading has numerous subsets.

The other side of the chart has headings of needs and values; subsistence, protection, security and trust, participation, creation, affection, identity, meaning and purpose, leisure, freedom, understanding, transcendence. There are subsets here as well.

But what was most interesting was an additional box labelled Faux Feelings. These were interpretations masquerading as feelings: Abandoned, abused, attacked, betrayed, ignored, intimidated, invisible, let down, manipulated, neglected, put upon, rejected, rushed, unappreciated. The descriptor for these reads, “thoughts about what someone else is doing to me.”

The Faux Feelings are rampant on both Ottawa’s encampment and its citizens. I’ll avoid the mudslinging of some of the politicians that everything is someone else’s fault. “Individuals and governments are regulated by laws and not by arbitrary actions, No person or group is above the law.” says Our guide for Aspiring Citizens. It applies in fact to all of us now since when we came as settlers it didn’t occur to us that we could take land occupied for centuries by the people of our First Nations, but that is another matter. Generally most of us believe in peace, order and good government. We are having a good deal of difficulty in communicating with those who don’t share how we interpret it.

We’re now dealing with the first ever imposition of the Emergencies Act - after watching local police forces outnumbered and inactive. Ottawa’s police chief has resigned and is replaced by an integrated force. Following the money from outside the country can now be investigated and accounts can be frozen. But these measures, coming after days of turmoil, has made us a laughing stock and a poster child for protests worldwide. It’s a totally new experience - and about the only thing that was totally predictable is that a certain US news service like Fox and its main supporter, the has-been president would be all over it. Even two New York Times opinion columnist feature it now, as well as an entire feature section. Famous we are, but not in a good way.

Tom Edsall tells us why the former president loves the the truckers. They’re his kind of people. Rand Paul invited them to come to Texas to work - though he doesn’t seem to know that they can’t come in until they are vaccinated. Edsall goes on to talk about the positive and negative effects of social capital. Bowling alone can also be Bowling for Fascism and there is an interesting map showing the US with positive and negative impacts of each. Tribes can reinforce both good and evil. Paul Krugman wrote two days ago When Freedom means the right to Destroy. He calls it a slow motion January 6. I think he is correct in describing both our fears and the speed of our response. It’s not only that we have integrated economies but we have integrated responses to pandemics and other hard stuff. And it emerges in faux feelings on both sides of the border.

Krugman compares the cost of the border crossings to Black Lives Matter protest costs. “The B.L.M. demonstrations were a reaction to police killings of innocent people; what’s going on in Canada is, on its face, about rejecting public health measures intended to save lives. Of course, even that is mainly an excuse: What it’s really about is an attempt to exploit pandemic weariness to boost the usual culture-war agenda.”

We’re still Canadian. We haven’t tear gassed our demonstrators and their trucks yet even though a news panel political commentator noted yesterday “I’ve been tear gassed for much less.” It might be the time we are thinking more about how we take our democracy for granted than ever before. And we’re watching.

Thomas and Sallie

The following is an essay that I have written for members of the Deep Time Network and can also be accessed on that site. It is something of a departure from the usual posts here - but an important element in dealing with our climate crisis.

Thomas and Sallie

As a movie fan, I might have been tempted to title this essay When Thomas Met Sallie but I will not go there. Instead, I want to pay tribute to two teachers and prophets, Thomas Berry and Sallie McFague. Through their writings, they have influenced me greatly in the later years of my life, with their prophetic sense of where we find ourselves now – as well as their pointing to the way we must go. While their messages are often directed to North American audiences, they reach far beyond those shores.

 What is their influence for me?  In a nutshell. It involves the rethinking of my faith tradition and how, in spite of all its virtues, it has had a negative impact on how we view the earth.  I am a cradle Anglican, a graduate of a college in the University of Toronto that required me to take religious studies in each of my four undergraduate years, a widow of an Anglican priest and an active member and volunteer of my parish church and for its regional and national bodies. It has resembled swimming in an ocean with little knowledge of other oceans. It’s not that I have never questioned my faith or was less than satisfied with the answers. It’s also that I have often failed to ask the right questions.

 In the first try at this essay, I handled each author sequentially and delved into their writings in chronological order.  Two helpful readers pointed out that this was really two essays and if I wished to make a comparison, the methodology was not helpful. I’ll now proceed to review how they converge and how they differ.

 I did meet Sallie McFague briefly at Rivendell, a beautiful retreat center on Bowen Island near Vancouver.  My sister-in-law, a staff volunteer there, had recommended one of her books and I told Sallie I was reading it.  “Which one?”, she asked, somewhat sharply.  Life Abundant, I replied. She relaxed, saying, “I’m so glad.  I’ve been writing the same book for twenty years and this is the best version so far”.  I await the final one in November 2021 that will be published posthumously two years after her death in 2019. Like Thomas Berry, she had a long and productive life.

 Sallie McFague had a somewhat conventional academic career, but it was one filled with growth and reassessment. Born in 1933 in Quincy Massachusetts, her first degree was in English from Smith College in 1955, just as I was starting a similar degree at Trinity College, Toronto. She then pursued a Bachelor of Divinity at Yale, followed by a master’s degree and a doctorate there. She taught briefly at both Smith and Yale and moved to Vanderbilt Divinity School in 1970, where she taught for 30 years. In 2000 she became Distinguished Theologian in Residence at Vancouver School of Theology in British Columbia.

 I never had the privilege of meeting Thomas Berry, but I have sat in lecture halls and online courses with people who knew him well.  When the Parliament of World Religions came to Toronto, I agreed to work as a volunteer for an exhibit booth. This gave me access to the entire program and allowed me to sneak into a session led by Mary Evelyn Tucker. I already knew of her through a reading of Living Cosmology, Christian Responses to Journey of the Universe. It had been recommended by a friend in my local parish and it had already changed my perspective. Later I ran into Mary Evelyn again with her husband, John Grim, on a long series of elevators in the Convention Centre and after chatting, promised to write to her for advice.  When I did so months later, she replied almost immediately, copying my note to several people in Toronto. This created a whole new world of university lectures, attendance at an online course presented through the Deep Time Network, meetings with a Toronto Passionist community and engaging with new friends, some of whom were Berry’s students. Thomas Berry’s teaching and influence has sent ripples far and wide.

 Encountering Sallie McFague first was a good introduction to Thomas Berry, because the latter has a wider perspective, and his papers almost take it for granted that his readers have a good grounding in traditional Catholic Theology. But what has struck me subsequently is how well they both understood the coming climate crisis while most of us were ignorant.  They also recognized the shortcomings of traditional Christian theology to cope with it and issued a warning.

 Thomas Berry wrote poetry throughout his life, and I was delighted to encounter this poem:

Morningside Cathedral

 We have heard in this Cathedral
Bach’s Passion
The Lamentations of Jeremiah
Ancient experiences of darkness over the earth
Light born anew
But now, darkness deeper than even God
Can reach with a quick healing power
What sound,
What song,
What cry appropriate
What cry can bring a healing
When a million year rainfall
Can hardly wash away the life destroying stain?
What sound?
Listen — earth sound
Listen — the wind through the hemlock
Listen — the owl’s soft hooting
in the winter night
Listen — the wolf — wolf song
Cry of distant meanings
woven into a seamless sound
Never before has the cry of the wolf expressed such meaning
On the winter mountainside
Morningside
This cry our revelation
As the sun sinks lower in the sky
Over our wounded world
The meaning of the moment
And the healing of the wound
Are there in a single cry
A throat open wide
For the wild sacred sound
Of some Great Spirit

A Gothic sound — come down from the beginning of time
If only humans could hear
Now see the wolf as guardian spirit
As saviour guide?
Our Jeremiah, telling us,
not about the destruction of
Jerusalem or its temple
Our Augustine, telling us,
not about the destruction of Rome and civilization
Our Bach,
telling us not about the Passion of Christ in ancient times,
But about the Passion of Earth in our times?
Wolf — our earth, our Christ, ourselves.
The arch of the Cathedral itself takes on the shape
Of the uplifted throat of the wolf
Lamenting out present destiny
Beseeching humankind
To bring back the sun
To let the flowers bloom in the meadows,
The rivers run through the hills
And let the Earth
And all its living creatures
Live their
Wild,
Fierce,
Serene
And Abundant life.

 I entered the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine in Manhattan every school day for three years in the early sixties, when I taught at a small private school in Morningside Heights. One of the cathedral’s many chapels served as the one for our school before the new school building had its own. Once I left a parcel in the chapel and found a back door open to go in and retrieve it – and feeling my way around the ambulatory on a dark later afternoon, realized the Cathedral’s immensity as the only person in that enormous space. Its subdean, who also served as as our school chaplain, was Edward West, who became Canon Tallis in the novels of my fellow teacher Madelaine L’Engle. The poem also is filled with the images of the Missa Gaia, composed by Paul Winter and others and premiered in the Cathedral in 1982. I sang in the premiere of that same work in Toronto about 25 year later bringing to this full circle.

 Sally McFague would have liked this poem.  In one her own books she writes about the power of metaphor and sees parables as falling into the category, saying:

 “The shock, surprise or revelatory aspect – the insight into fatherly love – is carried in the parable of the Prodigal Son by the radicalness of the imagery and action. This parable, like many others, is economical, tense, riven with radical comparisons and disjunctions. The comparisons are extreme; what is contrasted however, is not this world versus another world, but the radicalness of love, faith and hope within this world.”

 Both writers see the importance of stories and their symbolic value. Both have a poetic sensibility born of deep experiences in childhood.  Thomas Berry speaks of a mystical experience as a small boy looking at a view from his North Carolina home and a sense of its importance.

 “Beyond this site . . . was a meadow covered by white lilies rising above the thick grass. Whatever preserves and enhances the meadow in the natural cycles of its transformation is good; whatever opposes or negates it is not good”.

 Sallie McFague speaks of a discovery at a very young age that one day she would no longer exist. She relates this in the introduction of spiritual autobiography in her book Life Abundant. At Vanderbilt University she taught a course in the biographies of others and had never documented her own until a student challenged her. She says that it came in several stages:

 The first, which came in two stages, occurred when I was around seven years old. One day while walking home from school the thought came to me that someday I would not be here: I would not exist. Christmas would come and I would not be around to celebrate it.; even more shocking my birthday would occur, and I would not be present. It was not an experience of death- and the fear of it; rather, it was an experience of non- being: I simply would not exist.  Eventually it began to turn into a sense of wonder that I was alive- and so were myriad other creatures.

 The two were sensitive children who would become visionaries.

Both writers speak of the task of the coming twenty first century as ‘The Great Work’, a reckoning with what North American settlement and colonialism have done to despoil its lands. Both recognized the need to incorporating the cosmology now available through modern science within the Christian framework. To do so they both draw on the teaching of Teilhard de Chardin.

 Sallie McFague in her book, The Body of God, builds on her earlier quest of broadening our understanding of God to explore a new understanding of nature. Along with Thomas Berry, she sees the necessity of looking at the creation stories emerging from science. She says:

 “. . . To say God is creator is not to focus on what God did once upon a time, either at the beginning or during the evolutionary process, but on how we can perceive ourselves and everything else in the universe dependent on God now in terms of our cosmic story. . .  Moreover, and of utmost importance, whatever may have been the mechanisms of evolutionary history in the past, evolution in the present and future on our planet will be inextricably involved with human powers and decisions”.

 Thomas Berry also delved deeply into the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who influenced him powerfully. The French Jesuit Priest, paleontologist, theologian and philosopher was responsible for the discovery of Peking Man and one of the earliest to view the evolutionary process from a spiritual perspective. In his essay, Teilhard in the Ecological Age, Thomas Berry observes:

 “Indeed, he is the first person to outline in some full detail, and with some meaningful insight, the four phases of evolutionary process: galactic evolution, Earth evolution, life evolution, human evolution. He sees all this in its encompassing unity, and with such descriptive detail of the outer process and the inner forces that sustained the unfolding sequence. Probably no one at the humanistic, spiritual or moral level ever attended so powerfully to this evolutionary process as did Teilhard.”

 Admiration of Teilhard was not a problem for McFague at Vanderbilt, or at an interdenominational school of theology in Vancouver. Drawing on Teilhard’s teaching could have been for Thomas Berry, had he not referred to himself as a “geologian” even after a loosening of adherence to dogma after Vatican II. Both Berry and Teilhard affirmed the beauty and value of the universe as the pre-eminent cosmology. They also shared a view that a materialistic view of evolution did not do it justice and saw a sacred dimension of its journey from its beginning.  

 A reassessment of theology demands a new look at creeds.  The strength of creeds is that they deal with relationships. Problems arise when the connotations of images used in other eras may bring cultural associations that don’t sit well in our own. Both writers draw on their growing understanding of ecology in their reframing.

  When considering God as patriarch, Sallie McFague notes that ‘Father’ can suggest both dominator and provider.  The masculine predominance can also be problematic for women, as when one theologian quipped, “When God is male, the male is God”. It is important not to treat the Bible as the literal “Word of God” but delve into the stories and ponder what they say about relationships. Most of the stories emerge from a patriarchal tradition. Other images for God are possible as she notes:

 “I have come to see patriarchal as well as imperialistic, triumphalistic metaphors for God in an increasingly grim light; this language is not only idolatrous and irrelevant - besides being oppressive to many who do not identify with it – but it may also work against the continuation of life on our planet.”

 In her third book, Models of God, she offers new Trinitarian images:  Mother, Lover and Friend. She wants these to be relational, both personally but also applicable in the wider context – “God so loved the World”. In expanding this new Trinity, she likens the first person to Mother as creator. All the associations of gestation, giving birth and lactation have real-world reference and suggest a different relationship with the world than a monarchical one. Mother also includes an element of tenderness towards the most vulnerable.

 God as Lover – a new naming of the second person of the Trinity - is not meant to be sentimental, especially in an ecological context. “We have a tempter no other generation has had,” Sallie says, writing in a nuclear age, “We face the temptation to end life, to be the un-creators of life in inverted imitation of our creator”.  Sin is not the failure to turn from the world and toward God, but a refusal of relationship toward all living beings in favour of the love of one’s self – to refuse to love all that God loves. In this model, God suffers along with humans and is present in our pain here and now. McFague says,

 “What is needed on this view of salvation is not the forgiveness of sins so that the elect may achieve their reward, but a metanoia – a conversion or change of sensibility, a new orientation at the deepest level of our being- from one concerned with our own salvation apart from the world, but to one directed toward the well-being, the health of the whole body of the world”.

 The third person, Friend, for Sallie is represented by the table fellowship of Jesus, where the Body of Christ is not an exclusive or elitist group but one that shares a meal. The Spirit is conceived as a friend to the world and acts in a way that fosters its well-being. Both God and humans are friends of the world. In the nuclear age it is an antidote to fear of the stranger. Boundaries of nations or species give way to the realization of sharing the planet. The outsiders are not our enemy but our sisters and brothers in an expanded world, where the best of human experience of companionship gives us this relational model of caring for all.

 Thomas Berry drew upon world religions and cosmology to inform his deep understanding and practice of Christian religion and arrived at a different Trinitarian view The Trinity is, of course a complicated doctrine that tries to deal with paradoxes of transcendence and immanence, time and space, divine and human, mystery and revelation. “Never ask people what they believe,” observed one of my former parish priests. “Because you won’t like it”. We don’t have a language to deal with the Trinity.  At its best it helps us with an understanding of divine and human relationships.  But it also can avoid the rest of creation and our relationship to it.

 Berry’s early life was thoroughly Catholic in its orientation. His growing interest in ecology led him to wonder why the church was not paying attention to what was clearly a moral and spiritual concern. “Christians are off in the distance as, indeed, are most of the professions and institutions of our society. . . Stewardship does not recognize that nature has a prior stewardship over us”, he said.  The universe story must become prominent and inform religious sensitivities. He thought it was too late for a new religion and urged that all religions, especially his own, incorporate the new understandings: “The most needed of these insights is the realization that humans form a single community with all the other living things that exist on earth”. Moreover “We have established a discontinuity between the nonhuman and human components of the universe and have given all the rights to the human”.

 The universe provides the basis of the Trinity in its basic tendencies – “differentiation, interiority and universal bonding” as Berry’s way to think about Father, Son and Holy Spirit which by contrast is a family model.

 The universe story is one of immense creativity resulting in immense time and space with huge transformations – galaxies, formations of stars, creation of the elements, the supernova explosion, the creation of our own star, and the creation of the Earth as one of the planets, the creation of a living cell and the possibility of reproduction and photosynthesis, plants, animals and finally the human – every creation unique and individual in its differentiation. Our response to such differentiation is celebration

 The incarnation can also be viewed in a new way.  The writers of the New Testament never saw the Christ figure as an individual limited in time and space. In Colossians, Paul says “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”  The Gospel of John begins “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Such a universal sense, Berry says, is also present in other world religions that share this sense of interiority.

 Universal bonding broadens our roles in faith communities to extend our reach not only to other humans but to all other species and forms of life of our common planetary home. We need to see our relationships through our experience of the natural world and our responsibility for it. This comes not chiefly through a focus on soul and inner life, but through a deep understanding of the universe story. The desire for a universe story resulted in the collaboration of Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme resulting in The Universe Story and later, the Journey of the Universe film, and even more recently the Noosphere Project videos hosted by Brian Swimme and produced by Human Energy.

 Both Sallie McFague and Thomas Berry embrace the Gaia Theory as a way to envision the earth. McFague’s model of the universe is as God’s body. What is important is the notion of embodiment as an organic model, as opposed to the rational mechanical model of the planet described by science. We experience our own body. We first learn through our senses.  We also use “body” to signify a community with whom we associate and take seriously. For those in the West, these bodies are Jewish and Christian, but we now know there are other cultural communities and faiths that created them. It allows all of us to use this common metaphor.

In his essay The Gaia Hypothesis: Its religious implications, Berry supports the idea of the Earth as organic. The hypothesis, developed by chemist James Lovelock and biologist Lynn Margulis and named after the Greek goddess of Earth, argues that Earth can regulate its systems of temperature and atmosphere, making it the only planet we know of that supports life.

 Berry thinks that a cosmology of Earth is necessary from a religious perspective to replace the notion that Earth is a specific geographic location where we find ourselves – a street, a neighborhood or a country.  The science of the last two centuries has given us an understanding of how miraculous Earth’s place in the universe really is. We respond to its landscapes and oceans; we are keen to travel and explore it. But our socialization via language has removed Earth’s nature as a living entity. Indigenous peoples understood this characterization, referring to the elements as brothers and sisters; they also developed liturgies to mark their changes relating in their own life passages.  Natural elements were subjects and could be addressed by an intimate “thou”.

 Both insist that humans regard all other species on the planet as subjects, not objects.

McFague distinguishes two ways of viewing the world, citing much nature writing as opening to “surprise and delight”, often by close observation of a small subject – like a single wildflower or a goldfish. She contrasts this interpretation with the astronauts’ view of earth from space, framing it as an object, however beautiful it was. The difference, she says, is the contrast between the arrogant eye and the loving eye. Any seeing comes from the perspective of the viewer. The arrogant eye looks for the usefulness to the self – what’s in it for me. McFague also characterizes this as the patriarchal eye, a common one in the culture of the west. She notes, “We never ask of another human being, ‘What are your good for?’ but we often ask that question of other life forms and entities in nature. The assumed answer is, in one form or another, ‘good for me and other human beings”.

Thomas Berry agrees with the need for a reorientation toward intimate experience of our surrounding world – the stars, the skies, the oceans, the trees – all those parts of nature that engage the senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch and awake wonder and awe. He stresses, as Sallie McFague does, the necessity of reengaging with the entire earth community.

 “We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world, from a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the written scriptures to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us, from a spirituality concerned with justice only for humans to a spirituality of justice for the devastated Earth community, from the spirituality of the prophet to the spirituality of the shaman. The sacred community must now be considered the integral community of the entire universe and more immediately, the integral community of the planet Earth.”

 Such attitudes require agency, Sallie McFague says that in looking at the contemporary world, one must start economics and she outlines a traditional economic model. A simple definition of economics is the management of scarce resources. It assumes that individuals are primarily motivated by self-interest. rely on it and all ultimately benefit. The world is viewed as an object – a machine with many parts. The goal of the economy is growth and what is measured is gross domestic product. The role of the human is to be a consumer; the emphasis is on freedom of an individual who is sinful – flawed but free to pursue the role of individual happiness. The problem with the model as a worldview is that not all enjoy the good life. One billion may currently have it, but another six and a half billion don’t – and want it. The planet has limited resources and the wealthiest control and use most of them.

 An ecological worldview is different. The scarcity of resources remains a given.  The model is the household – the oikos – and the good of all members in the long term. Fulfilling human need rather than human greed is the objective. The world is a subject - a body, an organism, full of related diverse life forms. The goal is sustainability with a focus on restorative justice, and the human is a care giver. The emphasis is on creation – on incarnation, resulting in a response of gratitude. The goal is recognition of one’s proper place including recognition of privilege for those who have it – and moving to create a more equitable place for those who do not. The problems relate to the discrepancies in a global world. However aspirational the goals are, they require adherence to house rules: take no more than your share, clean up after yourself, keep the house (the planet) in good order. We have work to do that involves much rethinking and practice.

 What would action look like for Thomas Berry??  In An Ecologically Sensitive Spirituality, he outlines it. He begins with the damage caused by the Doctrine of Discovery and its consequences.  Indigenous peoples welcomed explorers without any knowledge of what would follow.  What would have happened if the visitors had responded with wonder to the beauty of the new lands they encountered, so different than those of the lands they departed from. Instead:

 “Unfortunately. these people from across the sea thought they already knew everything. They brought with them a book, the Bible, as their primary reference as regards reality and value. Though a work of great spiritual significance, this Bible has also been used to justify the domination of peoples and land in various parts of the world. Moreover, the book has contributed to the inability of humans to see the natural world as revelatory. Revelation was in scripture alone, not in nature itself.”

 The natural world the settlers invaded had much to teach them. What also caused alienation was the domination of the mind in the humanist formation of the west. Added to both were the scientific emphases of Newton and Descartes that saw nature in quantitative rather than qualitative terms. Nature contained objects to be exploited for human advantage. Berry notes:

 “While Earth’s resources are finite, what is not limited is our desire to understand, to appreciate and to celebrate the Earth. We do need endless progress, but not, however in material development. Only an increase in aesthetic appreciation and spiritual experience can be without limit.”

 What is needed, he says, is a reorientation toward intimate experience of our surrounding world – the stars, the skies, the oceans, the trees – all those parts of nature that engage the senses of sight, sound, taste, smell and touch and awake wonder and awe. Thomas stresses, as Sallie McFague does, the necessity of reengaging with the entire earth community.

 “We need to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to a spirituality of intimacy with the natural world, from a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the written scriptures to a spirituality of the divine as revealed in the visible world about us, from a spirituality concerned with justice only for humans to a spirituality of justice for the devastated Earth community, from the spirituality of the prophet to the spirituality of the shaman. The sacred community must now be considered the integral community of the entire universe and more immediately, the integral community of the planet Earth.”

 We need air, food, water and shelter for survival. We share these needs with other species. The journey of the universe has also given humans the gift of consciousness which leads to sensitivity and responsibility, not just for ourselves, but for all living species and our common home. Science has given us a wealth of new learning. We can no longer rest solely in the interior life when we have been given consciousness of the physical order. There is a new role for each of us – the integral ecologist who understands the sacred nature of the universe journey. Such a person plays an essential role in many fields where the ecological implications are understood – law, medicine, education, religion and politics. Thomas concludes the paper saying,

 “Only the universe is a text without a natural context. Every particular being has the universe for context. To challenge this basic principle by trying to establish the human as self-referent and other beings as human referent in their primary value subverts the most basic principle of the universe. Once we accept that we exist as integral members of this larger earth community of existence, we can begin to act in a more appropriate human way. We might even enter once again into that great celebration, the universe itself.”

 As well as a new orientation of economics, both writers call for new liturgies in faith communities and new reorientations of education, politics and law.  That is the Great Work for us now.  Theologian Matthew Fox notes that as Berry defined ecology as “functional cosmology”, indeed we can also draw on Thomas Aquinas, whose name Thomas Berry chose as his own with wisdom.  Aquinas saw joy, love and beauty as the key attributes of the universe. In moving toward action, we must draw upon the “exuberance of existence” where nature wants to reveal itself to us through creation – and join in the joy of creation.

Jobs - pay attention to the numbers

In the middle of an election we will undoubtedly hear from the candidates about job creation - and in some cases, caution that cutting out fossil fuels will cause irreparable harm to the economy and create major job loss. Thus it is good to see the results of a new report from Clean Energy Canada which gives some current facts and projections in its modeling report, The New Reality.

Most of us would be hard pressed to guess how many are currently employed in the clean energy sector. There are already 430,500 people employed there right now. That is more than the number of people in the real estate sector for comparison. By the year 2030, the estimate is that there will be an increase to 639,200 under the proposed federal government new climate plan. The fossil fuel sector will drop by 9%. Thus new clean energy jobs will add 208,700 as opposed to 125,800 lost to fossil fuels.

Here is something else that the report says:

“The energy transition, like climate change itself, does not respect borders, and Canada has the ingredients needed to prosper in a future in which oil is no longer its largest export. As the International Energy Agency recently concluded, if the world is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, no new oil and natural gas exploration and development will be needed going forward.”

We have a major part to play. Politician are far more interested in getting elected than in saving the planet. If you look at the above numbers it is important to see how many are still working in the sector that needs to disappear. It’s not really about jobs - it’s about our future on the planet. We need to pay attention to what the politicians say and vote accordingly.