Interdependence
Last post I spoke of the importance of the earth’s economy as the foundation of sustainable human economy. Ecology teaches us about whole systems, how they function, how each part is interdependent with each other part in a dynamic and, in living systems, a creative evolutionary manner.
In this season of Easter and Passover, of death, resurrection and liberation, of the two seminal holidays in the Judeo-Christian tradition, I want to speak of a new tradition. Thomas Berry, the renown Geologian, speaks of the revelatory power of the Universe. Creation, in its beauty, awe, and mystery, is in itself revelation.
Pre-literate cultures have known this. But with modern science we are blessed to understand the Universe Story in a deeper fashion. Destruction, death, transformation, we are all part of this evolutionary cycle. Our challenge is to participate in this journey as deeply as our moral courage and spiritual imagination allows.
To honor this season of budding trees, hummingbirds on the wing back to our gardens, and the opening of trillium outside my bedroom window, may we all be inspired to participate in the transformation and liberation of human culture into a life-sustaining adventure.
From Thomas Berry:
INTERDEPENCE
We cannot have well humans on a sick planet.
We cannot have a viable human economy by devastating earth’s economy.
We cannot survive if the conditions of life itself are not protected.
Not only our physical being, but our souls, our minds, imagination and emotions depend on our immediate experience of the natural world.
There is in the industrial process no poetry, no elevation or fulfillment of mind or emotion comparable to that experience of the magnificence of the sea, the mountains, the sky, the stars at night, the flowers blooming in the meadows, the flight and song of birds.
As the natural world diminishes in its splendor, so human life diminishes in its fulfillment of both the physical and the spiritual aspects of our being.
Not only is the the case with humans, but with every mode of being.
The well-being of each member of the earth community is dependent on the well-being of the earth itself.