Religious Life and eco-spirituality

RELIGIOUS LIFE AND ECOLOGY
During the past twenty years there has been a lot of talk and writing about ecology, about going green and about energy use. Arguments are proposed about reasons for recycling cans and buying gas-saving cars and even for eating more vegetables! As vowed religious, we should not be thinking, talking and reflecting on these issues as if these types of action and practice were the extent of our responsibility to read the signs of the times. There’s got to be more to it.
In all aspects of the ecological movement there are competing and contradictory arguments related to the issue of rights, the question of whether or not humans are destroying planet earth, and the economics of recycling and reusing everything.
For vowed religious who propose to be some sort of professional trail blazers and truth seekers, we should be reflecting beyond saving cans and energy as important as these actions are. We should be reflecting on the very nature and purpose of humans in consideration of new knowledge and understanding of the origin of the universe and our new cosmological insight.
When founders of religious orders in the 16th and 17th century read the signs of the times they were faced with a subsistence culture which was slow to change and which was poorly organized socially and which was only beginning to understand the scientific principle which allowed humans to know their origin and their place on earth. The founders responded by establishing educational and medical systems to address the great human need of the times.
Since those early centuries religious have participated in the very dynamic process of “development” which brought great progress to many parts of the world at a great price to other parts of our world. Human societies followed the Genesis command to dominate the world and eventually brought civilization to a situation in which competition for scarce resources has created inequity, famine, pollution and alienation from nature.
Too frequently these issues have been addressed in scientific, material and economic terms and less in spiritual terms. What has all of this got to do with God, with meaning and purpose in our lives? Who are we: consumers and users who don’t mind raping the earth no matter the consequences?
“Eco” has become a very popular prefix to a vast number of words and situation. Advertising and business have even adopted it. I want to suggest that vowed religious should emphasize “eco-spirituality” as our specific perspective on everything that business and advertising and even the Sierra Club propose as needing to be “eco”.
The sign of the times to which we religious should respond relates to a vast array of values that go unexamined even when we are in the midst of recycling cans and turning down thermostats. This array starts with patriarchy and moves through a string of values which as professional educators we are lulled into accepting as normal and part of progress, part of the “good life” which we have dedicated our lives to promote.
To say that we live in the midst of a paradigm shift seems not to begin to describe the changes in spirituality that we should be addressing, the task peculiar to our vocation, one that we are privileged to witness in our times.