My writings - and those of others.
Interpretations
I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book, Sacred Nature, Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World. One of her strengths is a thorough understanding of Christianity and her additional willingness to explore the teachings of other faiths and to share them. This book reinforces something that I have come to realize in my own explorations. Faith communities need to play an important role in the conversations around aspects of climate emergency and climate justice that cannot be provided by either science or environmental advocacy groups, important as both are. Ours relates to values, ethics, meanings and the rituals where we enact our understandings.
Armstrong has much in common with the views of Thomas Berry, though it is surprising not to find him listed in her bibliography -though his students, Tucker and Swimme are very much there though.
Other faiths have always the divine in nature and continue to do so. Christianity did in its earlier days, but diverged in the fourteenth century. Western people encounter the God of history, especially as it is understood in the Old Testament, rather than a God of nature. When we are encouraged to look at nature, we are encouraged to see beauty and look for comfort now - while forgetting the ugliness and discomfort that we have wreaked upon it through the notion of domination over it. What we may miss in the process is nature’s power to disrupt and destroy, which other faiths and cultures recognize more fully. Job, for Armstrong, is the Biblical figure who gets it right - but not without going through a major transformation. Armstrong sees it as a lens worth exploring.
Power & Energy
We in the west are the beneficiaries of the development of energy originally produced by the burning of coal. I am old enough to remember the arrival of the coal man who provided fuel stored in the basement of my house - a scary person, because he was necessarily covered in soot. Later the oil truck arrived to deliver fuel. Still later, my father had a heat pump installed in a newer house - in the late 1970s. His motivation probably had little to do with saving the planet, but saving money.
Canada is blessed with much electricity produced by hydro electric power and my province has more resources than others. But it is human power that also plays a role. There is news this morning that young people in Montana have been successful in suing their state government asking for the right to “a clean and healthful environment” through a provision relating to energy projects. It’s the first successful case following a number of others started by young people. The impact on climate has to be a consideration in approving projects, and more rulings will now have a better chance of success. The suit was brought on behalf of the Children’s Trust and it involved 16 young people aged 5=22.
The oldest of these will be 49 in 2050. I have a friend who is now in his 102nd year and he has said that he thinks 144 would be a good age for a lifetime. He is a retired professor and when he retired at 75 as a University professor, he thought working five hours a day on academic research would be a good aim. He still does - without either a TV or a computer - but attends both opera and Blue Jays games as a fan. His environmental impact is much lower than mine - and since he has never driven a car, it undoubtedly is.
The likelihood of his making age 144 is small. But the politicians who want to slow down the use of climate change might think about how old they will be in 2050. The premier of Alberta will be 79 that year. I’m in a better position than she is to imagine what life will be like for her then. She won’t have her current job. She may have health issues relating to climate change or be affected directly by floods or fires. But basically she will have left the problem of pausing the support of renewable energy for a bit - as she has just done- to the current five and 22 year olds. I wonder how she will feel then.
What we generally lack is imagination and a realistic picture of human nature - the latter with its combination of strength and limitations. Politicians start with the best of intentions - to make the world the better place. After a term of office the intention becomes to stay in office. They like power after having a taste of it. Companies are good at telling us that climate change depends on us as individuals so they can keep doing what they do, which is to make a profit. They like power too.
That doesn’t mean that individual actions don’t count. I continue to recycle in the hope that at least some of my trash gets re-used. I send letters to my premier urging him to reconsider his original promise to retain the Greenbelt. Individuals matter - but governments and movements matter even more. Young people are teaching us that the law matters. What if all these elements converged? That’s a story that imagination could start to tell.
Local & Global
This morning’s parish newsletter arrives as usual with a reminder of a coming Community Dinner. This is a project going back more than twenty years. Once a month we feed 80-100 urban poor - some occasionally homeless, but most with some kind of permanent shelter. What they don’t have on a welfare income is the ability to buy enough wholesome food. We try to provide that. It is the least we can do for these regular guests that we have come to know over the years - and sometimes they tell us their stories.
Stories count in the world of climate change and too often they are horror stories. The fires in Hawaii have hit home and in a recent Zoom meeting, people talked about the places they had been - now completely devastated. Being there in the past made it matter. They understood the loss.
What is difficult is the stories we don’t hear. I’ve been reading the book, Not Too Late, which is full of stories of parts of the world with which I have no direct connection. Many are heartbreaking as the people affected suffer the climate degradation caused by mining, deforestation and other forms of exploitation that lay waste their world, while we ignore them. What if it were mandatory for any community like mine to adopt a far off island where the people face the disappearance of their land through erosion and flooding and hear their stories regularly in their own words? It might knock some sense into us as we recognize what we are doing to our island home and its effects on our siblings.
Holiday Pursuits
When I looked at two books on a coffee table, I was amused at the common titles with the same words. After years of never reading fiction, I am doing so at a furious pace now. It took me a while to discover the Canadian writer Louise Penny - and even more time to get a copy of the first one on the public library app, since it begins a series - and everyone wants to read the novels in sequence. While it took her five years to write this first one, I devoured it in about six hours. Luckily she has speeded up to produce far more. There are crime writers who like to create deeply flawed characters, but I am happy with Gamache - and the chief detectives of writers Donna Leon and Susan Hill. None of them are perfect but they and their accompanying families and cohorts live for me through dozens of books and become friends.
Drawing is also something I have pursued for years - sometimes in classes and for this month, just on my own. The library book has projects in pencil, pastel, watercolour, acrylics and oils - and I have plenty of supplies of all but the last - not a good choice for an indoor environment in any case. It’s not about creating masterpieces, but learning to see.
Insights from novels and paints - a good way to spend a staycation.
Productivity
In reading 4000 Hours again - a common practice, because I rush through books and then often re-read to absorb more of the details rather than the main argument - the author spends a good deal of time debunking our notions of productivity and our lack of control over our work and our inability to focus - and thus our fritter away our lives.
I was reminded of an interaction with a grandson about 12 years ago now. I was called into action as a sitter for two small boys on an afternoon when I had a tight deadline. I thought I had come up with a clever idea to keep them busy for the next hour so I could finish my assignment. I presented them with two large sheets of plain paper and a collection of markers and crayons. My instruction was to keep busy- and use the entire sheet of paper - while I got on with my work. “This will keep them occupied for a good long time”, I thought. I was wrong. The younger one returned within five minutes with the assignment completed - even with some decoration. There are many kinds of productivity.
