Contemplation, conversion, and ecological action

Participating online in St. James’s marvellous celebration of the Church of England’s first ever Feast of Creation in Christ, I was reminded of Pope John Paul II’s affirmation in 2001 of the “ecological conversion” that he perceived to be underway since the 1980s, rendering “humanity more sensitive to the catastrophe to which it has been heading”. Yet when Pope Francis picked up and amplified this call for ecological conversion in his remarkable encyclical Laudato Si’, On Care for our Common Home in 2015, it was clear that catastrophe had not yet been averted. Despite advances in some areas of local nature conservation, pollution reduction and sustainable technologies, the planetary crisis had continued to deepen, with escalating rates of biodiversity loss, global heating, and toxic contamination of Earth’s precious air and soil, waterways and seas. Today, a decade later, “Earth’s cry”, as Pope Francis put it, entangled as it is with the “cry of the poor”, is sounding louder than ever. This cry is calling us towards a profound transformation in the globally dominant ways of feeling and thinking, acting and living in relation to the more-than-human world of which we are a part, upon which we remain dependent, and towards which we have a duty of care.

Ecological conversion begins with an awakening of some kind. For some, the scientific evidence of ecological imperilment, persuasively presented, can be sufficient. For others, something more experiential is required: suffering or witnessing the terrible effects of toxic contaminants on human health; noticing that once abundant plants or animals had virtually disappeared from your home environs; finding a favourite waterway too polluted to enter and denuded of life; falling victim to a climate-change related calamity, or seeing others do so…

Yet even with access to the science and exposure to the consequences of industrial society’s unabating assault upon the living planet, Earth’s cry and the cry of the poor go largely unheard. There are many things that can impede ecological awakening. Disinformation is one. Distraction is another. But so too is something referred to in the Hebrew scriptures as “hardness of heart” (k’shi lev): a stubborn resistance to change one’s ways and show compassion towards others.

In order to counter such hard-heartedness, we need to go back to what some believe to be the very wellsprings of religion. For the German theologian, biblical scholar, and founder of the field of comparative religion, Friedrich Schleiermacher, for example, the essence of religion lies not in those systems of belief, moral codes and ritual practices that have accrued to particular faith traditions over time, but rather in a profound sense of communion with the infinite. This sense of communion is not an abstract idea, but something that is felt in the flesh. And it can be facilitated by deep contemplation of the finite things of the vastly more-than-human world in which we ourselves participate as embodied beings. Schleiermacher held that religious experience of this kind inspired a sense of humility and wonder, along with respect for, and compassion towards, other finite beings, human and otherwise. For “religion”, in his understanding, “considers everything holy.”

Anybody entering the north door of St James’s has the chance to read something similar from the pen of Schleiermacher’s English contemporary, William Blake, who was baptised in the church font in 1757:

To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wildflower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand

And eternity in an hour.

These words come from Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence,” written around 1803. The poem continues, however, in a very different key: that of prophetic social critique. For if, or at least, as Blake insists in “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”, “everything that lives is Holy”, then all acts of cruelty towards other creatures are intolerable, and the social structures that engender, perpetuate, or simply tolerate them, are ultimately doomed:

A Robin Red breast in a Cage

Puts all Heaven in a Rage

A Dove house fill’d with Doves & Pigeons

Shudders Hell thr’ all its regions

A dog starv’d at his Master’s Gate

Predicts the ruin of the State  

And so the poem goes on, itemizing a litany of evils, interlinking animal cruelty with social injustice. Writing at the dawn of the fossil-fuelled industrial revolution that has delivered the world into today’s planetary crisis, Blake clearly was already hearing – and prophetically mediating – the entangled cries of the Earth and the poor.

The ecumenical Season of Creation affords an annual opportunity for us all to do the same. But the Earth Justice team at St James’s also extends a regular invitation to cultivate our readiness for the ecological conversion of our hearts, minds, and lives in their monthly outdoor eco-contemplative liturgies. Come along and join us, even if, like me, you can only do so online!

https://earthjustice.sjp.org.uk/eco-contemplative-liturgies

1 JOHN PAUL II, GENERAL AUDIENCE, 17 January 2001 https://www.vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/audiences/2001/documents/hf_jp-ii_aud_20010117.html

2 Friedrich Schleiermacher, On Religion. Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers, intro., trans. and notes, Richard Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, p.94. I have a short article coming out with the journal Humanimalia, which discusses Schleiermacher and Blake in relation to the online conversation between Rev. Lucy Winkett and Jane Goodall, in which Jane discusses evidence for a sense of wonder and awe in chimpanzees, suggesting that our capacity for religious experience is not uniquely human.

Photo credit: Sara Penrhyn Jones