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!
………………………………………………………………………………
TAKE A BREATH -notice our own reactions, hold them before
God …
This is a vital part of the work of God right now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
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
·
21st 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¬if_id=1691680506613098¬if_t=group_activity&ref=notif
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