Futuring formation in a climate of turbulence

Intro

This is a paper I wrote for a recent gathering of people involved in thinking about spiritual accompaniment in our region.

Reading Jane Shaw's volume, I was struck what a different world it addresses. Not only is my class background not really represented (it's all seems quite middle/upper class). I was largely left feeling that this is spiritual practice that seems quite detached from much of the lived reality of the nation that I read recently about in The People [The Rise and Fall ofthe Working Class 1910-2010]. The exception is to some extent is Percy Dearmer. These are people also who lived and worked in a world also where CO2 was below 350ppm (it’s now 420+) and the climate was still the relatively stable holocene we came to know and mostly love (yes, even in Britain!)

My fear is that to continue to think along the same trajectory as these mid-20th century pioneers would be to isolate Christian spirituality from the most important and momentous features of what is now underway. Gaia Vince puts that into perspective as she asks:

"Where are you at with your five stages of grief for the Holocene? That’s the geological epoch we were living in for the past 11,700 years – the period of time when humans invented agriculture, built cities, invented writing, became “modern”, essentially. All of history took place in this epoch, marked by its congenial, relatively predictable climate, in which ice sheets retreated from Europe and North America, and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were high enough to enable the flourishing of grains, like rice and wheat." Now we’ve left those Holocene conditions for the uncharted Anthropocene, an age brought about by human activities and characterised by global climate chaos and ecological degradation...  find myself experiencing all stages simultaneously. Anger that my children won’t get to snorkel the wondrous coral reefs of my Australian childhood; pain and guilt over the millions of Indian villagers displaced by floodwaters, losing their homes, livelihoods, even their lives. Depression over the scale of loss: of wildlife, of glaciers, of verdant landscapes, of safe, reliable weather. It is the last two stages we need to reach – acceptance and reconstruction – if we are to build a livable Anthropocene."  https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jul/18/heatwave-floods-save-planet-children

 So it does seem important to me to parallel the recent COP28 Global Stocktake with a  taking stock of what lies ahead and what it will mean for churches and Christians to respond well in order to understand, coram Deo, the kinds of communities and people we need to be; with our glocal neighbours and recognising we are [part of] the ecosystems that we rely on for sustenance.

“We must try to understand the meaning of the age in which we are called to bear witness. We must accept the fact that this is an age in which the cloth is being unwoven. It is therefore no good trying to patch. We must, rather, set up the loom on which coming generations may weave new cloth according to the pattern God provides.” (Mother Mary Clare SLG)

Where the climate crisis is causing distress and eco-anxiety, we have the opportunity to ground ourselves in a theology of a God intimately involved in creation – the God who created us, dwells in us (‘us’ including the natural world), and will meet us at our end. -JR Hollins: https://joannahollins.wordpress.com/2023/07/18/the-vicar-or-the-ground-source-heater/

What lies ahead?

It now seems we cannot avoid a minimum of 1.5°C for several decades. This will shift ecological zones, expand deserts, melt large amounts of polar ice, raise sea levels by metres not just the few centimeters we’ve seen so far. It will result in fiercer rain and storms. In turn this will imperil food security. These things will increase tensions in human society, promote migration, there will be wars and rumours of war. The darker angels of our nature will find greater opportunity to ride forth.

We are already seeing the emergence of the conditions of and for a neo-feudalism and a rentier basis for economies being laid down by TNCs and their billionaire owners.

We are already seeing the rise of the political reflexes of that economic shift.

While not inevitable, this path is likely. What we do now in the next 5-10 years is of deadly importance -I use that adverb with forethought!

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TAKE A BREATH -notice our own reactions, hold them before God …

 

This is a vital part of the work of God right now.

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The time for declaring emergency and working for sustainability was 40 years ago. Now our sector [conservation] must focus on being collapse-aware, to aim for ruggedisation and to build a regenerative culture. …. This means anticipating, facing and responding to the linked crises of ecological and climate breakdown, pandemics, rising inequalities, displacement, famines & conflict. … Earth crisis, for short. … Where society is competitive, where there is a lack of shared responsibility, and where heritage isn’t cherished as a commons, collapse is more likely to lead to conflict and displacement. … From <https://bridgetmckenzie.uk/sustainability-is-in-the-past>

Meeting what lies ahead

I suggest that Christians and churches will need to consider upping our game and preparing for action in these missional responses.

Churches *should* have a vital role in the short to medium terms:

·       helping to build community resilience;

·       offering help  for people to learn new skills;

·        providing pastoral care to the anguished, shocked and regretful;

·       truth seeking and telling in the face of disinformation and denial;

·       offering spiritual accompaniment as people re-orient lives around sustainable practices;

·       making known and exemplifying the riches of spiritual practice to support simple lifestyles and neighbourliness. (And be learning and re-learning all of that ourselves)^[i].

These feel somehow monastic. It is also vital and necessary. There are movements afoot already to promote and foment these things. Christians should surely be among them.

What spiritual perspectives support these 'missions'?

Grounding in natural world: we know that there are strands of Christian spirituality that value and rejoice in creation; we need to lean into them but in a way that doesn’t denigrate the urban per se. We should also widen our thinking about incarnation to more thoroughly incorporate (!) understanding that the flesh is matter, imbricated in ecosystems. (We might note and theologise about the way being in nature supports good mental health.)

Preferential option for the poor. Hopefully I don’t need to say more about this?!

Joy in enough, simplification (new Franciscanism?) and rejoining our lives and life-systems to the circular economies of nature. Yes, let’s consider the lilies and the birds how they are supported and support life around them.

Learning the insights of protest movements especially: undoing hierarchy; valuing each; self and other care; listening; (cf Quaker decision making);

It is important that we help the development of a Missio Dei perspective -implied spiritual disciplines of (corporate) attention, discernment and reflection; together and individually. We can use the Five marks of mission to help draw our attention to where to look for God at work.

We have been seeing the way that money buys social perception filters and narrative hegemony. Ctr "You shall know the truth and it will set you free" -rediscovering intellectual humility and valuing truth-seeking -disciplines of study, valuing not bearing false witness, courage in challenging untruths, half-truths and evasions, telling truth to power.

 One of the tests of actual faith, as opposed to bad religion, is whether it stops you ignoring things. Faith is most fully itself and most fully life-giving when it opens your eyes and uncovers for you a world larger than you thought - and of course, therefore, a world that's a bit more alarming than you ever thought. The test of true faith is how much it lets you see, and how much it stops you denying, resisting, ignoring aspects of what is real.     -Rowan Williams quoted in A Splash of Words" by Mark Oakley

 Humility in mission: it is God’s mission, God’s agenda we seek. Too often in the past the churches have tried to own and badge efforts for justice and reform. Too often we have been rivalrous with others. But it is God’s work, we can be content with doing right and good things even if it doesn't have ‘Brought to you by the CofE’ in the corner. Too often we have been arrogant and failed to listen and so we’ve missed the Spirit blowing gently and unexpectedly in the lives and circumstances of others -the sheep not of this fold.

 Courage:

 "In a time of overlapping global crises, it’s clear that radical courage will be required of us as individuals and as a society - in our communities and institutions at local and national levels, and not least among those in public life - if we are to make decisive progress on our interconnected economic, environmental and social challenges, and create truly just and flourishing futures ... That will require at least two things: the willingness to step out of our comfort zones and into the storms and waves, to protect the poor, the vulnerable and nature itself, and a clear sense of where to find the resources beyond ourselves to discover that courage." -Justin Welby

 Re-learning hope: not as optimism or wishful thinking or escapist eschatology. We can no longer work for a better world, only a less-worse one (accompanying people in bereavement from modernist progressive optimism). Hope as a humble sustaining of work with God in the world and among God’s people, simply knowing /trusting that “our work in the Lord is not in vain”

Finding spiritual perspectives that help us to deal with complicity. BLM and the current climate/enviro crises remind us how we are deeply formed and held in life-patterns and attitudes that do not serve wider human flourishing. Understanding corporate sin and our participation in it in ways that help us to live wisely ourselves and to minister to others, is vitally important. I personally believe that this is where conversations about sin and atonement ought to be circling. Not to mention liturgy and theological formation.

What does "holy and righteous life" look like in these conditions?

As well as regular attentive reflection on the world around us -human and more-than-human; as well as discernment of God’s mission and our own vocations within it; as well as meeting together for mutual encouragement and upbuilding … we will need to consider some marks of a holy and righteous life that we have not paid so much attention to over the last century (or maybe I’m wrong?)

·       Resilience through facing despair, complicity and world-view bereavement with gentleness, truthfulness and Godly neighbour love.

·       Peacemaking

·       Community building /Mutual aid to try to nurture resilience against the threats of divisive rhetoric and selfish responding to crisis. It will also enable the kind of working together that will actually save lives and enable human and ecological flourishing

·       Casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly

·       Bearing witness to truth

·       Dealing wisely with complicity

·       NVDA, Civil disobedience

·       21^st century alms-giving that recognises structural dimensions of alleviating want.

As I mention these things, I’m so often aware that there are precursors. Christians in past times of civilisational change and collapse have done many of these things in various ways. Often it has been monastic and mendicant orders who have been at the forefront….

Over to you....

^[i]From < https://www.facebook.com/groups/2349278635285005/?multi_permalinks=3536698376543019&notif_id=1691680506613098&notif_t=group_activity&ref=notif

Heiress embraces limits to wealth

 A very interesting development was reported from Austria. An heiress is giving away a big chunk of an inheritence. Her basis for doing so is that she has not earned it.

I have inherited a fortune, and therefore power, without having done anything for it. And the state doesn't even want taxes on it.

I think that the points are well made.  She's (a) not done anything to earn it, (b) she's actually inherited power as a necessary correlate of the money. And (c) the state is content to let that situation stand. I think that by implication of what she's gone on to do, she is also affirming that some kind of democratic control over such money (and power) is important. 

Too often the philanthropic model distributes at the whim of the owner. She's actually proposing to give up all title and claim to the money in favour of a more democratic decision-making structure. The former is patriarchal, hierarchical, 'daddy knows best' -and when you look at many of the actual projects either in outline or in detail, you find a somewhat 'hobbyist' approach. It's all about what the donor is interested in and often tied up with strings that push the buttons of the donor and are limited by the donor's lack of real understanding of the conditions of people affected. The only real remedy to that is to give substantive decision making about the use of such funds to the people most affected.

And if governments won't do it, then citizens' assemblies are, I think, a good way forward.

Questions for billionaires, musings for limitarians

 Some contributions to a Mastodon thread on wealth and the wealthy seemed to me to be worth further reflection.

I really would like media interviewers to ask questions like this. The thread has a few other suggestions too.

One of the replies was helpful, I thought.

billionaires don't 'hoard money' they will 'never use'. the notional billion dollars isn't the amount of cash they have in the bank, it's an estimate of the amount of capital — ownership of stock, real estate, and so forth — they control and extract interest from. the idea of capitalists as 'money hoarders' is a child's understanding of what wealth inequality is & hampers any attempt to address its structural cause, which is social mechanisms of power placing a small group in a position to exploit the labour of the majority, not that small group somehow by their own efforts bringing in more money than they spend  -https://octodon.social/@esvrld/111806450875791439

This chimes with what has been mentioned earlier in the posts here on limitarianism, that it traces back to power and structural factors and that their own efforts are no more valuable than anyone else's; they just occupy a more powerful position to be able to extract rents. A subsequent toot elucidates:

if you accept that money abstracts agency, it's much of a muchness.
They have the money because they can compel conduct and (effectively) vampire your agency; you must do as they demand to live. That's where the money arises, even if it's a consequence rather than a cause. -https://canada.masto.host/@graydon/111818441705185094

I think that the idea that 'money abstracts agency' is worth considering further in this respect. It helps us to understand that money is a social construct and is, in a sense, 'owned' by us all; that is, in the sense that we construct it together by honouring it in re-use, to settle debts and acquire things ourselves. By using money as part of our agency in the social world, we empower others also to use it. I guess it's a kind of network effect. But it's a network which is exploitable if you are in the right position in the network and have means to siphon off some of the flows; to capture the surplus above strict costs -including labour. This was, I think, what Marx was noting about capital exploiting labour.

As to the response to these insights.

#greed used to be considered a bad thing.
We need a stronger, more widespread understanding that it is a threat to justice and freedom.
We desperately need to push for a culture where the accumulation of wealth and power is seen as a danger. -https://functional.cafe/@xarvh/111810773059876175

There are definite resonances to Jesus' teaching there. For Jesus, it was a more personal warning about what wealth does to our 'souls' -though I don't this that this excludes a consideration of the social, it's just a recognition of the relatively constrained political space of 1st century peasantry. In a society where we do have a bit more political agency (though it is hard fought and under threat) we should ask about the social and political dangers and work together to head them off as far as possible.

Going back to that first response, above. It helps us to recall, too, that money stands for the use or potential use of resources in a society which recognises that currency. Every currency unit represents the power to command some resource. The resource might be labour, it might be food, it might be finished goods or it might be raw materials. Very often, it's a combination of several of those things in actuality.

It is our communal faith that when we tender currency units, they will be accepted in exchange for goods or services that gives money its fundamental value. Absent that collective belief and monetary wealth evaporates. What is left in that case would be the raw holding of stuff and the raw volunteering or coercion of labour. At base, that is what money is.

Let's note, then, that the wealthy are relying on our communal faith to be able to be wealthy. Without us they are nothing. It is our existence and willingness to live and work within the monetary system that enables them to have their wealth in as far as they hold their wealth in monetary units or derivatives of them. Money is social, it is 'ours', the wealth have merely found themselves in a position to siphon off so-called 'surplus value'. They do this by dint of having various kinds of power to lay claim to the surplus and then to accumulate it. And note also, most often the power to lay claim is also socially constructed. It is 'given' by the rest of us -or at crucial points it is coerced that is to say, our consent is gained by threats of force. Often these threats are enshrined in what we call a legal system as a last resort enforcement of 'rights' to property.

They can only be wealthy because 'we' allow them to be. Their wealth depends on our consent (freely given or otherwise). They are 'licensed' by us to be wealthy.

What I think we need to do is to examine this license for its moral claims and downsides and ethically critique it. This involves questions like: what are just rewards? Why should power entitle one to more resources? What is the purpose of a monetary system? Are there justifications for wealth inequality? What effects does the accumulation of power (in the form of wealth) have on wider society and what is the basis for a society to morally limit those effects?