Thoughts on the Environment - Common Ground

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Thoughts on the Environment

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Common Ground October 2014

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The Environment Common Ground

We are the sons and daughters of the earth. We are the sons and daughters of creation. Although we are finite beings, our minds can encompass the universe.

We chip away at its secrets. We try to figure out how it works. We struggle with our presence in it. We struggle with the why of it all. Although science can tell us the what of things, it is forever baffled by the why.

All human traditions include an effort to understand what our place is on the earth. What our place is in the cosmos. Is nature something to be conquered?

Is nature something to be worshipped? Are we part of an ecology of time, place and being that requires mutual respect? We seek guidance in religion, myth, and works of art.

In Genesis, God creates the world and sees that “it was good.” Later, God makes a covenant with Noah, his offspring and all of the creatures of the ark. In describing the rainbow as the sign of that covenant, God specifically states that it is between Him and the earth. This interpretation provides a reasonable Jewish case and a reasonable Christian case for the divine nature of the world and our role as stewards of its many resources.

For most Buddhists, there is no separation between creation and the divine. All beings, all things manifest Buddha consciousness. There is no deistic first cause like God or Allah. The divine spirit is immanent in creation, not separate from it.

Creation is treated respectfully. All sentient beings, including animals have consciousness. Creation is not a resource to be exploited.

Within the various Jewish traditions, some mystical Hasidim believe everything is divine. Whether something is animate or inanimate, it has a soul with the less animate stones having a simpler soul than a plant or an animal. The stones whisper quietly. We do not hear them. The sacred nature of creation is universal.

For many Muslims and for many readers of the Qur’an, the desecration of nature is a sin. Creatures and the landscape itself are sacred. Everyone is responsible to serve as stewards of creation. The Qur’an says, “Surely the creation of the heavens and the earth is greater than the creation of man; but most people know not.”

Myths, like religion, influence how we look at and interact with creation and nature. They are metaphors that embody spiritual journeys and concerns in our daily lives with lovers, families, friends and colleagues and with the earth and the cosmos. Our shared biology, our shared heritage and the earth we share, serve as the birthplaces for mythic content, for our common humanity.

Myths shed light on experiences that are beyond rational human understanding, the inexplicable feelings of awe, well being, love and fear. Mythic content extends our finite limitations. We sense an understanding that surpasses anything that words or rationality can express. Like God, myths are ultimately ineffable, inexplicable, and beyond human categories. We react to them with our entire being, emotional, physical, spiritual and intellectual.

Myths resonate in the space the Zen monk refers to when he asks, “Who are you between two thoughts?” Moments in the natural world, sunsets, sunrises, hurricane winds, take us to feelings of awe like music that goes directly to our spirit, pierces rationality’s armor, opens us up to something that cannot be articulated, something that simply is.

Perhaps this space is between our conscious and unconscious selves, where mind and body distinctions disappear, where language is no longer necessary, a place where we are at one with our surroundings, the place where passion takes lovers. Although we cannot describe its geography, we know it is there. We have felt it in our bones.

If one assumes that there is something spiritual, something divine about the earth, there is hope for the establishment of a broad human community of common interest in the well being of creation. Secular belief systems may not support the underlying divinity of the universe, but they can still gather around the ecological wonder of its forms and functions; they can gather around the common sense needed to prevent environmental catastrophe.

The identification of a human community grounded in mutual responsibility for the earth’s well being is a choice that assures our survival into the future. Perhaps a community of the earth can be established that cuts across religious and secular beliefs. Christians, humanists, atheists, agnostics, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and others can all share in our most common human heritage, the earth itself.

Clayton Medeiros claymedeiros@aol.com http://issuu.com/claymedeiros/docs Facebook No Regrets Journal