Joy into action

During my walking on the Jakobsweg, I read Pope Francis' Evangelii Gaudium. I found it inspirational. The joy of the gospel, it begins, fills the hearts and lives of all who encounter Jesus.

It's a long document - more like a book actually: but don't let that put you off reading it. Because it's informally written and well-translated - and full of good stuff. One passage I particularly liked was this: An authentic faith – which is never comfortable or completely personal – always involves a deep desire to change the world, to transmit values, to leave this earth somehow better that we found it. We love this magnificent planet on which God has put us, and we love the human family which dwells here, with all its tragedies and struggles, its hopes and aspirations, its strengths and weaknesses. The earth is our common home and all of us are brothers and sisters.

I was reminded of this when Mary Colwell came to Cheltenham last night, to speak at one of our regular, if infrequent, Christian Ecology Link meetings. Her title was "Surprised by Joy, Impatient for Change". We heard more about the first part than the second, but no matter. For one evening at least it was possible to be an environmentalist and not a killjoy.

What is joy? Mary began by asking, besides being one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit. Not the same as happiness! Do animals experience joy? Hard to say, but perhaps it's through nature alone that we can be truly surprised by joy. Sylvia Earle talks of discovering it when "dancing" deep in the oceans with an octopus: Mary herself, sitting on a Cornish beach, en-joyed a seal popping up amid the breaking waves. For her, it brought to mind the thought voiced by former slave, George Washington Carver: God speaks to us every hour about nature if we'll only tune in.

But John Muir was the figure who dominated the talk: even among the environment-minded, he is little spoken of. Born in Scotland in 1838, one of seven children of staunchly Presbyterian parents, he moved with the family to the United States, where they set up a frontier farm. Seeing the destruction brought to the wilderness by the advance Westwards, he became its advocate, his campaigns bearing fruit within the National Parks system.

Everywhere John Muir looked, he saw God, and joy in nature motivated him to wonder - and to act, in order to protect forests, rivers and birds. He died in 1914, the same year as Martha, the very last of the passenger pigeons whose fate he so much lamented.

For Muir as for us, joy isn't a passive emotion: it arouses a sense of injustice, and makes you want to do something: most people are on the world, Muir wrote: not in it... touching, but separate... I must get out into the mountains to learn the news. A prophetic voice.

In his "Surprised by Joy", C.S. Lewis says, Joy is never in our power, and pleasure often is; so if, in the face of adversity, we suffer a defeat, then we can never lose faith in humanity - just pick ourselves up for the next battle.

Walk the talk - faith into action

This was the title of a stimulating presentation by Mary Colwell today, at a morning gathering of the Clifton Diocese Justice and Peace Commission in Bristol. The aim was to highlight projects from all corners of the Diocese, but sadly only a handful of those "corners" were represented. Mary's keynote address deserved a larger audience: I'm going to try to get her to repeat it in Cheltenham early in the New Year.

Others too spoke with conviction, including Catherine (photographed here) on the IF Campaign. And I was impressed by Dr. Séverine Deneulin of Bath University, whose presence brought down the average age.

On the first break out, I found myself talking earnestly to my contemporary Peter Downey, whom I'd last seen 57 years ago at All Hallows.

Last night on Any Questions, Jonathon Porritt delighted me with an encomium for Pope Francis. I sent him congratulations. "Even as I was thinking about that," he replied, "I was wondering whether you would be listening! Makes up for all those cynical comments over so many years - and I have been seriously impressed by the way he's completely reinterpreting what leadership looks like for the church."

A sparky evening with Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link

In May last, Fr. Tom Cullinan addressed Cheltenham Christian Ecology Link on “Christ and Ecology”. “We need,” he said, “to allow that which God brought about in Christ’s ministry (and the mystery of his cross and resurrection) to reproduce itself in our age. In other words, we need to become extremely aware of the conditions we are living in; of the social order we are part of, and of what’s happening on our planet.”

Fr. Norman Tanner S.J.’s talk to CCEL last night, “Ecology in Christian tradition from the early church to today” had a different emphasis. The Professor of Church History at Rome’s Gregorian University brought us “a few scattered historical reflections”. Central to his theme was the humanity of Christ, who showed us that an ecological life meant the best, the most sensible way to live.

Norman started with an illustration from the early 4th Century, given us by St Jerome: St Paul of Thebes lived in Egypt as a hermit, a raven supplying him with dates and bread. But hermits did not completely disassociate themselves from the world: St Anthony visited Paul once a year. When Paul died, his grave was dug out by lions with their paws: Anthony placed the body in the grave, the lions covering it up. Both saints lived to 100, their good lives “an image of ecological balance”.

“Good” lives, that is, not just ascetic ones. Jesus is symbolised as a fish: the Eucharistic bread and wine flow into the rest of our lives, where we enjoy a meal at leisure: it completes a natural symbiosis. Ecology implies a mixture of beauty and suffering – the suffering necessary for growth.

A feature of the early Church is life in community – in villages, families, monasteries, nearly all with their animal and vegetable kingdom attached. Where humans and animals live together, as they did, each animal (not just dogs and cats) is known by name. Most people live in the countryside, and farming is – as St Benedict wrote – an integral part of a balanced life. This synthesis does not need emphasising: it is just there.

Within these manageable units, mutual correction between the human population is possible, and the norm. This changed with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation, which placed more value upon each person’s relationship with God, than upon God’s place within an ecologically balanced community. Individualism grew stronger – and we became too polite. “All of us for ourselves” and “the sky’s the limit” get in the way of a balanced life for the community. The question today is: how do we hope to achieve ecological balance?

Now, aware of resource constraints, the problems of overpopulation and habitat destruction, there is a new imperative to live simply. We nevertheless need to remind ourselves that the reasons for doing so, characterised in the early Church’s history, remain valid.

Norman’s talk provoked a flurry of contributions from the large audience. One audience member questioned whether concerns about overpopulation were not exaggerated, which brought a sharp response from Mary Colwell, environmental adviser to our Catholic Bishops Conference: “Even if we are able to feed seven, going on nine, billion people,” she said, “at what cost? 60% of even the animals and plants in the UK are already under serious threat of extinction because of the way we have to use the land.”

She went on, “The problem is that the Christian Church has nothing to say about the natural world: it doesn’t know what it thinks about nature generally and our relationship with it.”

Mary Paterson passed on a recommendation for Richard Bauckham’s “Beyond Stewardship: The Bible and the Community of Creation”. On the controversial question of population, Clive Burton pointed us in the direction of Albert Bartlett's classic YouTube lecture, "The most important video you'll ever see".

Feedback since received includes a note from Canon Andrew Bowden: he found helpful Norman’s stress on the importance of ‘community’ and 'collegiate theological discussion' for a healthy ecological life. At the same time, he asked “Where would we be in our understanding of ecology without the scientific individualism unchained by the Reformation and Renaissance?”

Gordon McConville, Professor of Old Testament Theology at the University of Gloucestershire, also liked the connections to “community”: Norman “said some very interesting things, even if some members of the audience thought he was working with an idea of ecology that they were not expecting.”

From Mary Colwell came the comment that she "really valued Norman's ideas that community, simplicity and connection with nature are great insights the Church has to offer the world today, wise ways of living whether there is an ecological crisis or not."

Norman himself said he enjoyed being with us – and that he had learned a lot! Thanks to him for sparking this particular evening of 'collegiate theological discussion'.

“Sacred Earth?” - Ecological Challenges to people of faith

This was the title of Mary Colwell's talk to Cheltenham Inter Faith last evening. As you'd expect from an award-winning film-maker, Mary gave us some beautiful video clips: the dolphin, the peregrine, a rare type of shark - all took starring roles.

But this wasn't a mere nature ramble. Mary's mission is to get across that people of faith uniquely share a sense of joy and hope; that we know we are meant to be here on Earth (that Christmas tree ornament hanging in space); that we can enhance the Earth, and take the long view in doing so, since we are part of a journey. In the words attributed to the late Archbishop Romero, "We are prophets of a future not our own."

What's causing our well-documented problems are greed and apathy: we are doing the bad things to ourselves. Self-sacrifice is part of being a person of faith.