Laudato Si Sunday Reflection: To make all things new

Today's reflection is brought to you by
2 Corinthians 5:17-21.

As your family members,
when we are
one in mind and heart
with you,
O God,
creation is renewed.

You only want us to reconcile ourselves to each other
and to you
through our oneness of mind and heart,
to take up a full-time ministry of being of
one mind and heart
in you.

You do not count our sins against us,
but only call us to unity and reconciliation
with all your creation.

You call us to be your emissaries,
to live
in reconciliation and unity
and to invite others to join us.

You became one of us
so that we might become one
with you and all that you have made.

Give us minds and hearts
to see the many places and ways
where our oneness with you
can become the oneness
to bless your world
with the newness
it so desperately needs.

+Amen.

* * * * * * *

In thinking about the new creation in Christ that we hear about in today's second reading, I look around at creation at present and wonder how we can make it new with God's help. Unity of heart and mind, seeing the world with the compassion with which God sees it is certainly a big part of that. It's heating up down here, and it's much harder to ignore the climate crisis when you don't have air conditioning, as is the case for most of our family members in the developing world.

Climate change is also HERE -- in our backyard. Remember how hard it was to breathe in Edmonton back in August thanks to all the summer forest fires? Our sister, Mother Earth, is crying out, trying to wake us up, but are we blowing off her disasters (including storms like the one in Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe) as coincidences -- at our peril?

At the beginning of a section about Weak Responses -- paragraphs 53-59 of Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home (access it by clicking here) -- Pope Francis puts it plainly: "Never have we so hurt and mistreated our common home as we have in the last two hundred years." Our advancing technology won't be able to save us if we are lacking the caring culture needed to address the earth's issues, and the leadership to bring about change. Laudato Si is the Pope's small step to push humanity in the right direction, a call to wake up.

But will it be enough? We need a solid plan that the world's entire population will buy into, with international law to back it up. Otherwise, the strongest voices (of the economy and politicians looking to save their seats) win. Climate summits have been happening every year since 1995, but not one of them has brought about serious change. I am ashamed that my Canadian government has been one of the worst when it comes to reneging on its promises toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions. I'm ashamed -- and angry -- and grieving.

Pope Francis points out that "the alliance between the economy and technology ends up sidelining anything unrelated to its immediate interests.... any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented" (paragraph 54).

It never ceases to frustrate me when people with economic interests in resources deride those who care about the environment, pointing out that without such-and-such a resource, life won't be so cozy or convenient. The thing is that many of us are only too aware of the inconveniences that come with protecting our planet, and are willing to put up with more hardship and hassles if it means future generations will have a planet worth inhabiting.

But if our environment continues to decline, none of our present sacrifices will matter. The fact that our family gave up one of our two cars has meant that sometimes we miss some events and activities, but life is not about convenience in most parts of the world! Most of our brothers and sisters on this planet don't have one vehicle, let alone two or more... Should we? I often wonder how we could live with no car at all. I'm sure it would be doable. But we'd all need to jump on that bandwagon to really make a difference at this stage in the game... and there's my terrible excuse.

Paragraph 55 looks at the fact that while some countries have made significant progress toward ecological sensitivity, overall "harmful habits of consumption" haven't changed. And Pope Francis and his team actually mention "the increasing use and power of air-conditioning" as an example. I'm sure you and I could list so many more. As the Pope notes at the end of the paragraph, "An outsider looking at our world would be amazed at such behaviour, which at times appears self-destructive." We are killing ourselves and creation by taking the good things God has given us for granted, wasting them and the earth in the process.

Paragraph 56 says that too many of us "deny doing anything wrong because distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is." Paragraph 57 is even less cheerful, raising the spectre of wars, nuclear and biological, once resources become scarce (I'll let you read that part for yourself) and concluding, "What would induce anyone, at this stage, to hold on to power only to be remembered for their inability to take action when it was urgent and necessary to do so?"

But as various people in the Bible say over and over again, "be not afraid." Paragraph 58 reminds us that human beings have been able to reverse some of the negative planetary impacts we have had in the past, accomplishing small things that prove that "men and women are still capable of intervening positively. For all our limitations, gestures of generosity, solidarity, and care cannot help but well up within us, since we were made for love."

The last paragraph of this section (59) warns us against "the rise of a false or superficial ecology which bolsters complacency and a cheerful recklessness." It's not enough to buy all the 'green-washed' cleaning products off the store shelves or participate in Earth Hour once a year -- and forget about changing the rest of our lives.

The planet will probably continue as it is for some time, leaving us with the illusion that things are fine and our little actions are making a difference, but if we continue with our same old thinking "carrying on with our present lifestyles and models of production and consumption... delaying the important decisions and pretending that nothing [bad] will happen," nothing NEW happens. And it's the big changes that we need to make that will save us.

I had a conversation with my future son-in-law this week about the kind of future his kids (my grandkids) will see, and he reminded me that societies have undergone radical changes when necessary in the past. The Weak Responses section that I reread this week is calling us toward stronger action NOW -- for the sake of all of creation. Could we live with one less vehicle in our lives? Could we turn off the air conditioning and lower the thermostat in the winter? Shop less? Share more? Spend more personal effort instead of taking consumer culture's quick, cheap, and easy ways out?

What am I taking for granted that I can appreciate more -- or do without?

What sacrifices am I willing to make to save our planet?

And most importantly, how can we see our world with God's compassion and help to make all things new again?

Laudato Si: Sunday Reflection #19... How would Jesus live?

There was no environmental crisis to speak of in Jesus' day. World population was steady at maybe 300 million, and most people lived very simply, growing their own food, bartering and trading for other things they required, building or crafting the necessities of life and mostly using just what they needed. Consumer culture existed for the rich, but even they didn't control everything back then, though Jesus' conversations with some wealthy people of his time made it into the Gospels. He spoke of the dangers of wealth and excess, and his words still resonate today, but often go unheard because the message of commercialism is so much louder and brighter. Maybe we need bumper stickers like the one below...

It's an interesting exercise to consider Jesus' life in comparison with our own, but it seems to me that too often the church gets hung up on his divinity and all the head stuff that goes with it rather than his human experience of the heart and guts of life. This week's piece of Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home, focuses on Chapter 2, section 7, The Gaze of Jesus (you can access the entire document by clicking here). Paragraphs 96-100 have me thinking about what it would be like to see our present world through Jesus' eyes.

I like this section of the encyclical, because it reminds me that if Jesus and I were to go for a walk, he'd be as happy as I am to walk down to the river and just watch the ducks for a while (not that there are very many ducks now that winter has finally hit Edmonton). He might like spreading soil amendment from my compost pile, and eating garden vegetable soup at our dinner table. But what would he think of all our computer gadgets? The noise of traffic? How my husband has been working ten hours a day of late?

Paragraph 96 says that Jesus was always reminding his disciples of the intimate relationship between God and God's creatures. In the scriptures he often reminds us about how God clothes the lilies in splendor, notices every sparrow -- and counts every hair on our heads.

Jesus also "often stopped to contemplate the beauty sown by his Father, and invited his disciples to perceive a divine message in things," says paragraph 97, to the point of using creation in his teachings and parables and thus indicating that he was a nature-lover who was deeply aware of and in love with the great Lover who had created everything around him.

In paragraph 98, Pope Francis and his letter-writing team note that "Jesus lived in full harmony with creation, and others were amazed" -- the others, of course, being those who witnessed him walking on water, calming the storms, and enjoying the fruits of the earth. Jesus wasn't someone who "despised the body, matter and all the things of the world" -- he noticed and appreciated life in a holistic way. And yet, there are long periods in Christianity where so-called spiritual ideals were elevated so far above ordinary moments of daily life -- like birth, death, sleep, sex, food, drink and work -- that "unhealthy dualisms... disfigured the Gospel."

I blame this on the fact that celibate clergy who believed they had to live in the Spirit instead of their bodies were put in charge of religion for so long. Had they been allowed to continue serving God and their families, wives and children would have prevented the men from retreating so far into their ivory towers. Married priests were actually only outlawed in the twelfth century when the princes of the church grew tired of supporting families, preferring to keep their wealth to build monumental cathedrals to the glory of God. But what do cathedrals add to the beauty of God's creation, really? And it's family life that keeps most of humanity grounded in reality!

The end of paragraph 98 notes that Jesus was a carpenter who spent a lot of his life as a labourer, endowing work with a holiness of its own. He didn't let big theological ideas unbalance his love for life as a whole even though he was God. He was able to see the big picture.

I like the idea of Jesus
being part of the Green movement
No idea where this photo-shopped pic
originated...

The fact that Jesus came to live in the middle of creation gives everything a sacredness: "One person of the Trinity entered into the created cosmos, throwing his lot with it, even to the cross... Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without thereby impinging on its autonomy" (paragraph 99). The fact that God entered creation as a human being is a sign of how loved and valued we and the rest of creation are. God didn't create the universe and leave us on our own, but joins in the life we live and knows firsthand what creation is all about. Jesus saw -- and continues to see -- the world through eyes like ours.

The section concludes with paragraph 100, which says "the risen One is mysteriously holding [the creatures of this world] to himself and directing them toward fullness as their end." But what does an earth living out of this kind of fullness look like? How does Jesus see it? The old question, "What Would Jesus Do?" applies not only to our relationships with each other, but also to how we treat our earth and live our lives.

So here's an exercise for the week ahead. Let's imagine that Jesus, the carpenter of Nazareth and son of God, moves in next door. What kind of house does he build for himself? How big is his moving van? What are his yard and garden like? Who are his friends? How does he entertain them? What does he buy at the grocery store? How does he travel around? What does he wear? How does he spend the bulk of his time? How does he care for our earth?

And then we can imagine our lives changing to match his...

*******

A prayer for our earth

All-powerful God, you are present in the whole universe

and in the smallest of your creatures.

You embrace with your tenderness all that exists.

Pour out upon us the power of your love,

that we may protect life and beauty.

Fill us with peace, that we may live

as brothers and sisters, harming no one.

O God of the poor,

help us to rescue the abandoned and forgotten of this earth,

so precious in your eyes.

Bring healing to our lives,

that we may protect the world and not prey on it,

that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction.

Touch the hearts

of those who look only for gain

at the expense of the poor and the earth.

Teach us to discover the worth of each thing,

to be filled with awe and contemplation,

to recognize that we are profoundly united

with every creature

as we journey towards your infinite light.

We thank you for being with us each day.

Encourage us, we pray, in our struggle

for justice, love and peace.

+AMEN.

(A prayer for our earth and all quotations from Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home © Libreria Editrice Vaticana)

Up next: #20... WANTED: Wisdom