The second in series of blog posts for Lent from Sr. Madeleine Gregg, fcJ
Past generations of Christians were taught that human beings are the “crown of creation”. We were the ones who were made in the image and likeness of God—the Bible said so, right in the book of Genesis. We didn’t consider ourselves as part of creation; the mind-set that humans have “dominion” over the Earth served to separate us from creation. And because of that we have treated the world around us as nothing more than a source of raw materials from which we can fashion anything our hearts desire.
Pope Francis explained in Laudato Si’ that the interpretation of Genesis as giving us complete freedom over the rest of creation is a distortion. Yes, we are a special kind of creation, endowed with creativity and intelligence, capable of co-creating with God. Yes, we have spiritual abilities to perceive realities beyond what comes to us through our five senses. Yes, we have an eternal destiny. But all healthy ecosystems have limits and this truth has been ignored by much of humanity in recent decades. Rather, people have chosen to live and create and use resources as if we can transcend all limits, as if our creativity and intelligence entitle us to be and do and become whatever is pleasing to us. Yet, our freedom is not license. Our eternal destiny is, as Teillard de Chardin explained, to tend and care for all of creation, helping to lead it to its fulness where God is all in all.
In fact, what once were seen as human capacities began to show up in scientific research in one animal species after another. Think Jane Goodall and her discoveries about the abilities of chimpanzees and gorillas for intelligent exchange of information and even feeling. Think of the decades of research on dolphin intelligence, starting back in the 1960s showing that dolphins possess high-level cognitive skills, including self-awareness, social complexity, and the ability to understand language and even artificial languages.
Quite recent research has now shown that even plants have sophisticated systems of communication and are in communion with other beings—mycorrhizal fungi and other individual plants of their same species. You have only to read books like “Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest” by Susanne Simard in British Columbia or “Our Green Heart: The Soul and Science of Forests” by Diana Beresford-Kroeger, who lives outside of Ottawa to enter this fascinating new chapter of research, awe, and wonder.
The Eco spirituality that has developed from theological reflection on these lines of research is at the heart of the ecological conversion needed at this time. An Eco spiritual perspective on sin and forgiveness can lead us to be more aware of our interconnectedness with each other, with all others and with all of creation. It draws our awareness, as Jesus and the early Church did, to the suffering of others, both human and other-than-human. It leads us out of our own self-gazing modes of striving for perfection to gaze on the horrible experiences of others and on our relationships with them. And, when we do this with compassion and honesty, it shows us how we have caused or contributed to the distress or destruction that encompasses life on earth. It shows us where we are not co-operating with the Creator God to bring creation — all creation with all its peoples – to the fullness of life and light. I think that the ecological conversion described in Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudato Si’ or ‘On the Care of Our Common Home” is the Lent that the Church now needs to keep.
And it starts with deepening our awareness of what it means that we are part of creation.
