A Creation Crisis & Brushing Our Teeth

 

Do you remember how years ago we were urged to brush out teeth or shave without letting the water run throughout the task? This was going to help "save the environment", along with other earnest individual activities. I still follow this suggestion and both recycle and cycle even though we now realize that addressing the climate crisis, including species and habitat loss, require the urgent effort of nations working in concert with one another. 

I've engaged in these practices for a long time because I want to be a responsible global citizen and I'm a Christian who believes that "the Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." For more than three decades I used my pulpit, not to bully but to exhort and educate and encourage when it comes to Creation. I observed Earth Sunday and Creation Time in the liturgical church year and I can only hope somebody was listening.

The cartoon above uses four panels to tell the story of what we've come to appreciate about the complexity of the existential crisis which is upon us. It would be easy to deny or to descend into hopelessness. Let's no go there, for the sake of Creation. 

Creation -- Not for Sale!

 

Many of us are aware of the Roman Catholic encyclical, Laudato Si, released by Pope Francis in 2015. It continues to be an exceptional response to the climate crisis and offers a direct yet hopeful reflection on Creation, Creator, and human responsibility. The theology is so solid and thought-provoking. 

I've just become aware of a Lutheran document published in 2017 related to the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation titled Creation - Not for Sale. In one of the essays theologian Martin Kopp asks the rhetorical question: "Does nature have a price?" Later he responds by saying that nature is presenting the bill for our human exploitation and answers to the question he has posed: "There is a reform to be undertaken in our hearts, minds and deeds. For if nature has a price, creation is priceless -- it is not for sale. 

These are wise words but I am also intriguted by the cover of the document, an image it took me a couple of looks to interpret. This is a stylized bar code in the shape of a tree with the word "creation" also in bar code form. This is clever and both literally and figuratively graphic. 

This brings to mind the enduring "priceless" Mastercard advertising campaign going back to 1997. The first ad which ran during the World Series had a dad taking his son to his first baseball game, paying for the tickets, a hot dog and a drink with his MasterCard with the slogan "There are some things money can't buy; for everything else, there's Mastercard".

Of course, people can become deeply in debt because of credit cards and even have them revoked. Is humanity on the verge of existential bankruptcy because we haven't learned that Creation is not for sale? I pray not, for the sake of generations to come. 

Pope Francis & his Visit to Asia Pacific Nations

 

This is the Season of Creation so I'll comment on the lengthy visit of Pope Francis to Asia-Pacific nations because the pontiff has included a focus on climate change or what is more aptly termed the climate emergency. 

Francis has made care for Creation and honouring the Creator a priority of his papacy, even to choosing his papal name in honour of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of the environment. His 2015 encyclical , Laudato si' (Praise Be to You), draws on the Canticle of St. Francis for inspiration and is subtitled "on care for our common home". It is a nuanced, wide-ranging document. 

Island nations are particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels and first in Indonesia, then in Papua New Guinea, this reality has been noted. A New York Times article by Emma Bubola offers: 

In the Pacific island nation of Papua New Guinea, hundreds of people may soon have to abandon their homes, pushed inland by the rising sea. Hundreds more were buried in a devastating landslide this year. Around the country, intensive logging is shrinking the island’s lush rainforests, and mine tailings have polluted its rivers.

On Friday, Pope Francis, who has long begged the world to preserve nature, started his visit to a place that is a stark example of how human action can harm the environment. Locals hoped his presence would make a difference.

“Your holiness, climate change is real,” Bob Dadae, the governor general of Papua New Guinea, told Francis at a meeting on Saturday. “The rise in the sea level is affecting the livelihoods of our people,” he added, asking for the pope’s support for “global action and advocacy.”

The Times article goes on to make a Canadian connection in the person of Cardinal Michael Czerny, in charge of a Vatican department responsible for promoting human development:

[Czerny] said that the pope’s trip to the Asia Pacific region underlined the urgency of caring for the environment. “It’s shouting out that we have to take our human and environmental responsibilities seriously,” he said.

Again, I commend Pope Francis for his quietly relentless focus on this existential threat and the ways in which he makes connections with scripture, the Creator, and the Incarnation.