Nature, Sustainability and Us

Over on my Wisdom of Tolerance blog I am currently exploring the way in which all the great world faiths view nature and our place within it. So often when discussing religious tolerance we are called to celebrate our differences. But here is one area where we can celebrate our common beliefs! Isn't that a better quality with which to cement relationship?

So back to nature and the environment and sustainability. Too often in the past we have been arrogant enough to believe that humanity is in some way in charge of the world’s ecosystems. We have either seen ourselves as the dominant stewards of God’s creation or believed that our superior intelligence and consciousness entitles us to manipulate the world’s resources solely for our own needs. That has certainly been a failing of Christian teaching in the past (happily no longer).
Anyway I believe that both views are wrong. I believe we need to become more sensitive to our humble place within this vast and complex web of life that God has created. I believe that our future depends on that understanding. I am not alone.
Lovelock has described our desire to use this Earth for our benefit alone, particularly in our wholesale burning of fossil fuels, as ‘breathtaking insolence’. (1) Cottrell calls it the ‘arrogance of the superiority of intellect’.(2)When we truly regain our sense of belonging to earth, he says, ‘this elemental awareness automatically brings with it a gentleness and humility towards all other expressions of life.’
We have indeed sinned in all our excessive use and abuse of nature, showing our greed and selfishness. In the past this often may have been due to ignorance, but we can no longer claim that as any sort of excuse for our behavior.
We need to come with humility and awe to apologize to our own higher spiritual power, whether that is God, Dao, Yahweh, Allah, or perhaps simply our own inner conscience. We need to beg forgiveness and resolve in our healed hearts and souls here and now to do all we can to amend what we have caused and prevent further ravaging of the natural and wonderful creation of which we are but a relatively small but so destructive part. ‘We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts,’ we lament in the beautiful prose and poetry of The Order for Evening Prayer in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for the Church of England. Do we go out and live our faith?
It seems that too many of us follow the mechanics of our religion to the near exclusion of prayerful living and discipleship. I believe there is a need for much more spirituality in our Western religions, for more ministry directed to the healing of our own souls for the sake of the spiritual health of the world around us, and for underpinning our mission to the world, not just for our own personal redemption.
While controversy and debate continues over the facts surrounding climate change and our role in handling this, the ecologists have little doubt that we are part of a complex web of life and we are damaging this fragile global ecosystem. We have become aware that any of our actions must weave into that whole living system. Traditional indigenous cultures understand that and we need to work with them. They have wisdom that we have lost in our urbanization. As Lovelock reminds us, we need ‘to renew that love and empathy for nature that we lost when we began our love affair with city life.’(3)

1 and 3. James Lovelock, The Revenge of Gaia, London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006, pp. 146 and 8 respectively.
2. Barry Cottrell, The Way Beyond the Shaman: Birthing a New Earth Consciousness Hampshire UK: O Books 2008, p107.

How do we value the Natural Environment?

I have been following a blog for a while called Sustainability in Crisis. One particular post caught my eye this week: Should we put a Financial Value on the Natural Environment.
This discussion came about because the UK Government have tried to do just that.And opinions are very divided on how and whether it can be done.
But this is not confined to the UK - the principles are just as relevant in the USA, and Robert Kennedy and others have had something to say about the issue on the other side of The Pond.
This is what I said by way of comment on that blog but it is either awaiting moderation or has disappeared into the ether. So for what it is worth I am saying the same thing here:

"I think we could turn this question on its head. Perhaps we should look at the economic system itself, which is flawed in many ways. One important flaw is that humans are not valued within the system.

We measure a ‘healthy’ economy in terms of the material wealth or prosperity that is created by and for its working citizens, expressed in terms such as the gross domestic product (GDP), gross domestic income (GDI) or gross national product (GNP). Whichever measure is used, they all put a zero valuation on the environment, on healthy citizens, social cohesion and cultural values!(1) As Robert Kennedy said:

…the (Gross National Product) does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages… It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it tells us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. (2)

A very large number of people in our society are presently undervalued or not valued at all in monetary terms. These include the old and young, the infirm and disabled, the housewives and the many community and charity volunteers without whom many organizations would simply not survive. All of these people outside the conventional workforce often work very much harder and longer hours than many in full time employment. But they gain no financial independence or recognition within the economic framework from their toil. I know of a wife who for two decades has selflessly cared full time for an increasingly and profoundly disabled husband. Or I think of the mother who takes a career break to raise her own children. These women both lead enormously valuable lives, but feel undervalued.

But it is the economic system that is wrong.

So to return to the question – and the concern expressed that the natural world should be seen as having some value in and of itself, not just in its benefit for human welfare and well-being. This could happen, but we would need this to be within a financial system that is cyclical and sustainable and environmentally sound, and that is far from the reality of our present economy.

The fact is that we cannot sustain our present financial systems
There is massive wastage in our consumer society, both from personal consumption and in our industrial processes. Alarming statistics can be found of physical waste:

Americans waste or cause to be wasted nearly 1 million pounds of materials per person per year…[and] this does not account for wastes generated overseas on [their] behalf…the amount of waste generated to make a laptop computer is close to 4000 times its weight (3).

There is a beautifully sustainable cycle within nature. Dead bodies provide food for living creatures, plants photosynthesize and produce oxygen from carbon dioxide and animals use that oxygen in their respiration of which the by-product is carbon dioxide. At school we learnt all about this and called it the Carbon Cycle, little suspecting that 50 years later this would have such a fundamental significance for the future of the world!
If we can see the Earth as a single living entity involving complex interrelationships and a finely tuned balance of all life, as envisioned for example by James Lovelock, should it not be logical for a sustainable economy to mimic that natural world, indeed be a part of that world, where everything is recycled, everything has a further use elsewhere. We would then be able to build a system that is totally cyclical and sustainable and environmentally sound, and such a system would be able to place values on those important intangibles.

Evolution biologist and futurist Elisabet Sahtouris (4) once posed the question: doesn’t it seem crazy and so obviously illogical that our household finances and the study of how we make a living (or economy) should be so totally divorced from the study of how other species make a living (or ecology)?
This seems so simple and obvious but we cannot see it and we stumble onwards within an economic system that is deeply flawed!
So let’s first look at how we can change our economy – to embrace all these other essential qualities."

1. Hazel Henderson, 2001, cited in The Path to Living Economies – a collaborative Working Document of the Social Ventures Network at http://livingeconomiesforum.org/living-economies-path

2. Robert F. Kennedy, from transcription of audio version of Address made 18 March 1968 at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, sourced at http://www.jfklibrary.org/Historical+Resources/Archives/Reference+Desk/Speeches/RFK/RFKSpeech68Mar18UKansas.htm

3. Paul Hawken and Amory and T. Hunter Lovins,1999, p. 52 cited in The Path to Living Economies – a collaborative Working Document of the Social Ventures Network at http://livingeconomiesforum.org/living-economies-path

4. Attributed to Janine Benyus at a Bioneers conference – from a Note from the Author Elisabet Sahtouris, 2000 at http://www.ratical.org/LifeWeb/Erthdnce/erthdnce.html

© Eleanor Stoneham 2011

Flaws in our Economy - We cannot sustain our present financial systems

There is massive wastage in our consumer society, both from personal consumption and in our industrial processes. Alarming statistics can be found of physical waste:

Americans apparently waste or cause to be wasted nearly 1 million pounds of materials per person per year…[and] this does not account for wastes generated overseas on [their] behalf…the amount of waste generated to make a laptop computer is close to 4000 times its weight.*

There is a beautifully sustainable cycle within nature. Dead bodies provide food for living creatures, plants photosynthesize and produce oxygen from carbon dioxide and animals use that oxygen in their respiration of which the by-product is carbon dioxide. At school we learnt all about this and called it the Carbon Cycle, little suspecting that 50 years later this would have such a fundamental significance for the future of the world!
If we can see the Earth as a single living entity involving complex interrelationships and a finely tuned balance of all life, as envisioned for example by James Lovelock, should it not be logical for a sustainable economy to mimic that natural world, indeed be a part of that world, where everything is recycled, everything has a further use elsewhere. We would then be able to build a system that is totally cyclical and sustainable and environmentally sound.But we are very far from doing that at the moment.
Evolution biologist and futurist Elisabet Sahtouris once posed the question: doesn’t it seem crazy and so obviously illogical that our household finances and the study of how we make a living (or economy) should be so totally divorced from the study of how other species make a living (or ecology)?

This seems so simple and obvious but it also seems that we cannot see it!

*Paul Hawken and Amory and T. Hunter Lovins,1999, p. 52 cited in The Path to Living Economies – a collaborative Working Document of the Social Ventures Network

How to build a culture of empathy with nature

Connection with nature is one of our most effective healing activities. And if we heal ourselves, we start to heal the world.
So how to build a culture of empathy with nature?

Here is a lovely extract from Aldous Huxley's Island:

‘For example, how early do you start your science teaching?’

‘We start it at the same time we start multiplication and division. First lessons in ecology.’

‘Ecology? Isn't that a bit complicated?’

‘That's precisely the reason why we begin with it. Never give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in isolation. Make it plain from the very first that all living is relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and the country around it. Rub it in.’
‘And let me add,’ said the Principal, ‘that we always teach the science of relationship in conjunction with the ethics of relationship. Balance, give and take, no excesses - it's the rule of nature and, translated out of fact into morality, it ought to be the rule among people.’

And as James Lovelock reminds us, we need ‘to renew that love and empathy for nature that we lost when we began our love affair with city life.’

Here are some ideas to build on. Comments welcomed.

The Big Picture

1. Build a truly holistic education – one that helps us understand that we are a part of something much bigger than ourselves – the whole universe. Teach basic ecology from a very early age – to learn to value biodiversity in all species. Don’t teach our different subjects in isolation – The Hindus draw no clear division between the economic or political and the religious or cultural facets of life. The body and mind are in the service of the heart. In the same way Hinduism teaches that politics and economics are rooted in and guided by religion and culture, and ultimately by spiritual experience.

2. Alastair McIntosh holds a vision for a spiritually rich and holistic education. In his book Soil and Soul he imagines a life-long curriculum of organic food and biodiversity, energy alternatives and respect for all, healing skills incorporating not only the most advanced scientific advances but also the spiritual healing principles, of poetry and story. There would be the study of conflict resolution and how to eliminate the causes of war. And the kids would have fun and play in tree houses. McIntosh’s wish list is long but the spiritual message is clear. Such an education is about ‘building of community as right relationship between soil, soul and society, powered by the passion of the heart, steered by the reason of the head, and then applied by the skilled technique of the hand.’ (Soil and Soul)


3. Promote and support Green political parties and encourage a more holistic political agenda – our politics needs to build a wider vision, where humanity is seen not as simply inhabiting an environment there for our own use, but as being interconnected with the rest of the natural world, and in a spiritual as well as material sense. (see Jean Hardy: A Wiser Politics)

4. Question modern farming practices – and encourage minimum eating of fish and meat – promote vegetarianism.

5. Promote films that inspire us with the wonders of nature.

6. Support organisations working for the protection of nature – Friends of the Earth, Woodland Trust, etc.

The Small Picture

1. Feed the birds – learn all their names, listen to their songs. Join bird organisations (in UK The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds)

2. Grow plants – anything - however small the patio or yard or garden. Make this a family activity - take on an allotment or join a community garden. Grow vegetables for the dinner plate – they taste so much better, and are healthier. Always buy organic.

3. Be outside in the open whenever possible – encourage outdoor play and recreation in safe spaces.

4. Walk in the countryside – in all its forms – woodland and forest, mountain and river, allow plenty of time to be still, to look and to listen and to just “be” a part of the wonderful natural world around us. Feel the sacred and the spirit in all living creatures. Hold or watch and contemplate the “life” in inanimate objects such as stones, water.

5. For those many of us in towns, take a daytrip by train or bus to the countryside beyond, and use the local parks.

6. Visit the seashore and cliff tops, – rock pools and sand dunes – watch birds at the edge of the shore – walk barefoot in the sand.

7. In fact walk barefoot wherever possible – because as Alastair McIntosh has said, we ‘tread on the earth so much more gently barefoot.’

8. Read and study the English Romantic poets, who understand their own place within nature.

Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home

Dogs cannot know when their owners are coming home. Or can they? If you havn’t come across Rupert Sheldrake, and his book Dogs That Know When Their Owners are Coming Home: and Other Unexplained Powers of Animals, I would suggest you look it up now. Sheldrake is one of that rare band of scientists who are not answerable to any fund provider; he is beholden to no one, he can speak his own mind untrammelled by any monetary influence. (James Lovelock is another).

He can therefore think and speak “outside the box” without fear of comeback, and he does! I have heard him speak before – at a regional meeting of the Scientific and Medical Network, where he told us of his theories of morphic fields and morphic resonance, amusingly illustrated with plenty of experimental evidence from pigeons – and dogs! I was therefore looking forward to hearing him talk at the Resurgence conference last Saturday (see my 5^th November post) and I was not disappointed. Pilgrimages are part of a basic human need, he told us. He was himself inspired in his youth by Indian pilgrimages when he lived on that continent in the 1960’s and 70’s, and he urged us to be open to the sense of sacred in the world around us. There is a paradigm shift happening around us, he told us, and the mechanistic view of nature is breaking down, although many scientists are not yet recognising this, indeed refusing to entertain the idea since it is so “unconventional.” Sheldrake is viewed as a maverick by many in scientific circles, but I have yet to see a more convincing maverick scientist.

I have no doubt in my own mind that one can sense the spirit of prayer from centuries past in ancient places of worship – our own parish church dating back in part to Saxon times, is certainly one such place. And great cathedrals also give an air of sacred space for those who are willing to feel it. I therefore could readily empathise with Rupert when he told us how he makes pilgrimages with his children to cathedrals, walking outside around the building before entering, to maximise the spiritual experience. Tourism, he reminded us, is crowding out the spiritual pilgrimage, and we need to have a balance in our lives, taking every opportunity to incorporate a sacred pilgrimage into all our journeys. One aspect of his talk I could not agree with. He seemed to imply that the great cathedrals of our land have miniscule congregations. That may be so for some of the weekday evensongs for example, but I have yet to experience a Sunday morning Eucharist in an English cathedral where the congregation does not fill the nave, and I have attended many up and down the country. It is I believe a fact that cathedral congregations are generally growing, a response to this increasing sense of need for the spiritual or something “other,” some meaning in our lives.

Sheldrake left us with a great idea – why, he said, do cathedrals hand out leaflets when you pay your entrance fee. Why not in return for the money give the visitor, the “pilgrim,” a candle to light as a sign that something sacred is with us in our visit. Why not indeed!

(The photo is of the Priory Ruins in Walsingham, earlier this year).

To Change the World - Serendipity again

Yesterday I received my July edition of the Christian magazine Sojourners - Faith in Action for Social Justice. As I opened it the page fell open at an ad for a book that I had not come across to date but which is so close to my own interests, I must read it.
James Davison Hunter is the author; the title, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.
If we hope to heal this wounded earth we need to change our culture. I feel quite sure about this, but my preoccupation is with how we can achieve this? Hunter addresses this complex and vital subject. He looks at the question "how might Christians in the 21st century live in ways that have integrity with their traditions and are more truly transformative?" And he introduces a theology of what he calls "faithful presence"within culture and society.

I am looking forward to reading of his ideas and challenges and will be posting up a review in due course.

But I fear that the wealth of wisdom in books such as this do not reach the population masses - and if the subject matter does hit the popular media it tends to be sensationalized and therefore is dismissed too readily as over the top, scare mongering, unrealistic, whatever. Witness the popular media responses to James Lovelock when he wrote The Revenge of Gaia.

In the same magazine its Chief Executive Officer and Editor-in-Chief Jim Wallis has written an article "Is Christian Ministry Illegal in Arizona? (a quick free registration process is required to access). The answer in short is yes! Arizona's new and harsh enforcement law against undocumented immigrants is forcing Christians to break the law in their ministry of love and neighborliness to all, offered in a spirit of compassion and need rather than with regard to and questioning of an immigrant's status. "Arizona's law is a social and racial sin, and ... should be denounced by people of faith and conscience across the nation, " he writes.

Amen to that.

Oil

I cannot believe what I have just heard on the news. We are watching helplessly whilst the most appalling environmental disaster is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, and who knows what the final extent will be of the damage to our planet and our wild life. And all the news item could concentrate on was the billions of pounds wiped off the share price for British Petroleum, the effect on the value of pension funds, and the effect on the stock market generally!! Where should our priorities be?

Then I heard someone describing his experiences in Antarctica - one of the most beautiful places on earth, and one of the last places on earth to be unspoilt by human activity, but for how long?

And remember that BP wanted to drill for oil in the Arctic!

When are we going to learn and curb our greed and our madness and secure some sort of future for mankind? Because rest assured, as James Lovelock has reminded us more than once, Gaia can survive quite happily without us. We should remember this as we continue to destroy our habitat.

Hope, Optimism, Change and a Fresh Start

Yesterday David Cameron, launching the Tory election campaign in the UK, claimed that his party offers hope, optimism, change and a fresh start. 

Hope and optimism: don't they mean pretty much the same? I think not. We must not confuse hope with optimism. Optimism is passive. We believe that something better will happen. Hope is far more than that. It is a firmly held conviction that it is worth taking action to improve something; and for me it is grounded in spirituality and faith.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu tells us: “I've never been an optimist. I've always been a man of hope - I am a prisoner of hope…hope holds on even when things are seemingly doomed and dark.” “We must,” said Martin Luther King, “accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope.”

In Christianity hope is one of the three great spiritual virtues or God given graces, of faith, hope and love. These form the foundation stones of the spiritual wisdoms that have served us well for 2000 years. For the sake of the world, as well as for UK society, the need to return to them is urgent!
And David Cameron surely understands that.

Barack Obama has a prayer he says for America today. It is for

“ hope that we can live with one another in a way that reconciles the beliefs of each with the good of all.” 


Amen

Why slums are a good thing - apparently

Did you watch Slumdog Millionaire? As you watched it did you think that the answers to our climate change and sustainability problems could be found in the slums of cities such as Mumbai and Hanoi? Did you like me think that slum living cannot possibly be a “good thing” and that the poverty of these densely packed areas needs to be addressed as a global humanity problem? We could be wrong apparently.

I have just read something that flies in the face of everything I have held as vitally important to living well in strong community. My gut feeling, and I know I am not alone, is that rural living is idyllic, healthy for body and soul, allowing us to get in touch with the earth beneath our feet and the natural world around us. Why otherwise do city dwellers rush to the countryside for their weekend breaks away from the bright lights? Sure we go up to the city for culture and entertainment, but I always breath a huge sigh of relief when I return from such a trip to the open rural space where I am fortunate enough to live. It seems to me counter intuitive to live in a city.

Inspired by a densely populated, tight knit houseboat community in San Francisco Bay, architect Peter Calthorp believes that good community, or new urbanism as he calls it, is based on what he has termed “walkability,” when everyone has to meet with everyone else on a regular basis as they all go about their day to day business. That certainly satisfies the sound community envisaged by Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks where everyone knows everyone else by name.

So I can see the sense of this relatively new idea. Very densely packed conurbations, slums, urbanization by any name, are hugely efficient in the use of resources, energy, hospitals, schools, for example, and in sustainability with recycling etc. Many of us have seen TV documentaries following the recycling efforts of children on the rubbish tips of slums, where it seems everything has a further use. Slums produce innovative businesses and occupations, not shackled by all the rules and regulations of modern life. That does sound appealing. But of course there is a downside – in health issues for example.

All this and more is in a fascinating article I found in Prospect magazine, (Feb 2010 How Slums Can Save the Planet), while visiting my son last weekend. It is written by Stewart Brand, one of the world’s most influential and controversial environmentalists – see for example his latest book Whole Earth Discipline.

I am impressed with the arguments that Brand and Calthorp use and I recommend you read the article in full. I now have the book which I shall read and I shall post a review at some time in the near future.

I cannot help but feel that something is missing in these ideas, something valued highly by human ecologist Alastair McIntosh for example, so beautifully expressed in his book Soil and Soul. Yes that’s it; humanity needs soul and spirit. Institutional religion may be on the decline, but spirituality is definitely and significantly on the increase. Indeed the reason that some churches are in decline may even be because they have lost sight of the spiritual side of their worship, they do not provide what the public want and need. I have just read two really good books by zoologist David Hay. He is also a practicing Christian but he is certainly not “preachy.” In Something There: The Biology of the Human Spirit, Hay explores the results of his own carefully designed experiments into spirituality and religion over 30 years, and skillfully makes the case for spirituality as the vital ingredient for human well being and for meaningful lives.

His later book, Why Spirituality is Difficult for Westerners, is in fact an expansion of one of his chapters in Something There. In this short and well -written essay in four chapters, he explains why he thinks that spirituality or what he otherwise describes as relational consciousness, far from being something we pick up from indoctrinations in our upbringing, is actually something we are born with, that has survived through biological natural selection as something that is of value to our survival. This, he says, underpins both religion and ethics, indeed is a precursor of both. But it is threatened, at our peril, by the new individualism, the Me Millenium. I have written fuller reviews of both books on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Both Hay’s books are well supported with scientific and theological references as well as with illustration from poetry and prose – which adds a further and interesting dimension to his writing. I recommend them both.

But how does this idea, that new urbanization holds the key to our global problems, fit in with nature and the countryside? Whilst controversy and debate continues over the facts surrounding climate change and our role in handling this, the ecologists have little doubt that we are part of a complex web of life and we are damaging this fragile global ecosystem. We have become aware that any of our actions must weave into that whole living system. Traditional indigenous cultures understand that and activist and futurist Elizabet Sahtouris feels strongly that there are important lessons to be learnt from them. I so agree. They have wisdom that we have lost in our urbanization. As James Lovelock reminds us, in his book The Revenge of Gaia, (London: Penguin Books Ltd, 2006), we need “to renew that love and empathy for nature that we lost when we began our love affair with city life.” Brand suggests that we need a new profession, that of “active urban ecology.” Who then protects the countryside, and for what purpose? I don’t like the sound of this at all!