Monkey Business

Last year at this time we were struggling with the slow demise of our cat, Bustopher, who was sixteen years old. That's a great run for an outdoor cat and he managed to live through three moves and four different residences. He was my constant companion in the house and would follow me from room to room. Where my lap was, he was. Although Ruth has been ready for another dog or cat for months, it has taken the better part of a year for me to consider another pet.

Many of us have special relationship with our pets and companion animals. I visit elderly folk who spend days in apartments with no other contact than Fluffy, and it heartwarming to see the relationship. We have a member who takes her dog to visit in hospitals and patients love it. Another member is a kindness teacher, going to schools to speak with kids about compassion and kindness. And yes, her dog goes with her. Of course there are guide dogs and working dogs such as the Border Collie our friends use with their sheep.

 

All this said, I know that Bustopher was a companion in our household, but he wasn't human. Which brings me to the now infamous, stylin' Darwin, the Ikea monkey. This monkey was discovered wandering the Ikea parking lot in Toronto and quickly became an international sensation. Trouble was, said monkey was illegal, and was seized from the distraught owner. We have learned that she treated the monkey as though it were a child (see above) and she petitioned the courts to have Darwin returned. Today a judge decided no, at least not before Christmas, in order to better consider his long-term fate. The word is Darwin is doing well in a primate sanctuary, so apparently the human is more traumatized than the monkey.

What should our relationship be with our non-human companions? It makes me a little queasy when folk lose their perspective and treat pets like kids. And events like Woofstock horrify me, at least in the extremes to which some will go in spending on animals. Where is their moral perspective in a world of need?

I do think we need to respect animals other than the human kind, and that it is appropriate to form emotional bonds with them. As many of you know, we have a blessing of the animals in October at the time of the Feast of St. Francis. I was surprised when I offered an invitation to some of my ministerial colleagues to have a joint service, only to have several say that they wouldn't on theological grounds. Huh? My bible tells me that God is the creator of all critters and there are verses which tell the people of Israel to treat working animals with respect.

I suppose it is a matter of balance. What do you think about the Darwin case? What about our "theology" of relationships with non-humans creatures?

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson

Yikes, this is a busy time to work in a few blogs alongside that Christmas thing. I am finishing up William Souder's remarkable biography of the woman who was arguably the founder of the environmental movement and I thought I would share how good it is.

On a Farther Shore: The Life and Legacy of Rachel Carson is about 500 pages long, including the footnotes but I have found it an insightful and inspiring read. Carson is best known for Silent Spring, published fifty years ago. But she was already an established and popular author when it was released, having sold millions of copies of her other books about the sea and the way its complex ecosystems work.

Souder helps us see that Carson was aware of climate change sixty years ago, and understood that tampering with the web of life affected all the organisms within it. This is commonly accepted today but wasn't appreciated by many of her contemporaries.

Carson knew that Silent Spring would be a different book from her others, a polemic against chemical toxins such as DDT which would incur the wrath of the companies that produced them, as well as some members of the scientific community. She was labelled a communist, an hysterical woman, a spinster, a poor scientist. The offended companies, such as Dow, threatened to sue her and her publisher, but they never did, because she was accurate with her research.

 I hadn't realized that the scientist who invented DDT was awarded the Nobel Prize for Science because initially it was believed that it was not toxic to humans, mammals or birds and was a sort of Wonder Pesticide. In the end it was shown that DDT and others in this family of toxins poison everything. The photo of children playing on a beach being fogged wtih DDT makes me shudder.

Carson was secretive about the cancer which made writing Silent Spring a challenge, and she died not long after its publication. She did live to enjoythe book's success.I admire her resolve and ability to rise above conventional wisdom to offer something new and world-changing. As I have said before, that's what prophetic figures do, including the great leaders of religions.

Do you know much about Rachel Carson? Were you aware of how

A Theology of Trash?

I wonder what will happen for garbage pick-up the week of Christmas, since Tuesday would be our usual trash day? The municipal website will tell us, the way it informs us about yard waste schedules, and Christmas tree disposa,l and e-waste pick-up. We keep churning it out and they keep cruising by to spirit it away. There are only two of us in our house, we try not to bring home packaging, and we compost in our backyard. Still, the gift that keeps on giving. Good news though. Before long we will be sending it all up in smoke in Clarington, thanks to a shiny new incinerator. Well, not so good.

There is a new documentary film called Trashed which I hope comes to a theatre near me, because it sounds interesting. Jeremy Irons narrates and Vangelis (Chariots of Fire!) wrote the score. Do we get to see a group of garbage collectors running down a street in slow motion to the strains of synth music? The film is about our extraordinary ability to create junk and what the solutions might be:

The beauty of our planet from space forms a violent contrast to the scenes of human detritus across the globe. Vast landscapes in China are covered in tons of rubbish. The wide waters of the Ciliwung River in Indonesia are now barely visible under a never-ending tide of plastic. Children swim among leaking bags; mothers wash in the sewage-filled supply. Each year, we now throw away fifty-eight billion disposable cups, billions of plastic bags, 200 billion litres of water bottles, billions of tons of household waste, toxic waste and e-waste. http://www.trashedfilm.com/

Uck. I do think the junk we produce is a spiritual issue. Even though somebody hauls mine away to the landfill (remember in the good ol' days when we called it The Dump) I can look at the end of the driveway and be reminded that I am a conspicuous consumer. The United Church did lead the way by encouraging its members to forego bottled water, long before this was a fashionable cause. We were mocked, but we were right. Maybe we need to develop a Theology of Trash, asking what all that flotsam and jetsam says about the state of our souls.

Would this be a good idea, or am I just trash-talking? Are you any better (worse?) about producing garbage that five years ago? Do you go by that ancient adage Reduce, Re-use, Recycle?

Absolutely Maybe

We heard this week that the Canadian government will absolutely not allow the sale of our natural resource companies to foreign governments with lousy human rights. Except of course for this time, but not again...we think. Canada just approved the multi-billion dollar sale of oil and gas giant Nexen to China’s state-owned CNOOC. This despite the fact that in polls Canadians opposed the deal.

To be fair, some are hailing this as walking a diplomatic "fine line," while others accuse the Prime Minister of stumbling around like a drunk failing a sobriety test. Still others say that tassurances there will be no more approvals sound rather hollow.

In a December 10th piece Andrew Coyne begins:

See, the thing about Solomon is, he never actually cut the baby in half.
Nevertheless, the prime minister’s split decision on foreign takeovers is being praised as Solomonic in some circles.
But then, for some people cutting the baby in half — you can have the head and one of the shoulders, but the rest of it you get only in exceptional circumstances — is always the right decision.
Because, you see, it’s a compromise, and compromise shows maturity, and maturity is the beginning of wisdom, and, well, it’s a compromise.
God forbid he’d decided it on principle.

I'm a sucker for anyone who employs a biblical allusion but this interesting from a faith standpoint. Our United Church General Council opposed the building of a pipeline to the British Columbia coast to siphon Alberta bitumen off to China. But what about selling the whole oily farm?

Any thoughts about the sale of Nexen? Is it all a bit confusing?

Flight Behaviour

I enjoyed reading the novel Flight Behaviour by Barbara Kingsolver. You may know this author's name from the remarkable Poisonwood Bible, but she has written other interesting novels and a memoir or journal of sorts called Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. The novel is ambitious in that it addresses the troubling subject of climate change. Kingsolver chooses to do so through the life of a poor young mom in rural Tennessee. Millions of monarch butterflies descend upon a wooded area of the family property, displaced from their usual winter roosting grounds in Mexico. The mixed-up butterflies end up making Dellarobbia a religious star in her local congregation, as well as a reluctant media celebrity.

I found this a very readable story of how humans are messing with the patterns of the natural world. The monarchs become tiny, luminous harbingers or prophets of catastrophic change. Because of my twenty year interest in the changes to our environment and the importance of paying attention I'm not sure whether Flight Behaviour will appeal to a wider audience. There are some heavier, more didactic bits, but by and large it is well-told story with plenty of insights into human nature written by a skilled and sure-handed author.

Have you heard about Flight Behaviour? Does it intrigue you, or does the very notion of a novel which speaks to climate change turn you off?

The View Toward Earth

O little town of Bethlehem
How still we see thee lie
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep
The silent stars go by
Yet in thy dark streets shineth
The everlasting Light
The hopes and fears of all the years
Are met in thee tonight

We scurry around from Point A to Point B in our daily lives, often barely lifting our heads to appreciate the beauty around us. In our paved-over, high-speed existence we can forget what an extraordinary thing it is to be perched aboard this spinning orb in our particular solar system. A few hundred years ago hardly anyone had a clue about the Earth's shape or rotation, and believing that our planet was in orbit around the star we call the Sun was considered heresy and a sin -- literally. In the Older Testament of our bible it is apparent that authors had no idea that Earth is round.

There are some great new satellite photos from NASA and NOAA in the States which remind us that our existence on this particular planet is one of those everyday miracles which we take for granted. The top one is obviously North America, the middle one the Nile, and the bottom one Australia and Asia.

I'm sure Bethlehem is in one of the many photos taken, the village on Planet Earth where our Christian story began, in that miracle of the incarnation. Take a look at some of the videos and hold on tight! http://www.thestar.com/news/world/article/1298408--stunning-nighttime-views-of-earth-unveiled-video

The Meek and the Mighty

The meek may inherit the earth, but they will have trouble getting monetary help from the mighty to keep it clean.  Wealthier nations make noise about assisting the poorer ones with funding for technology to fight climate change, but they are shifty about how this will actually happen. So, while we get better at reducing greenhouse gases, they tend to get worse as they become more industrialized, often producing our consumer goods.

Here is an excerpt from a New York Times report on the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Qatar -- you know, the one nearly everyone in the media is ignoring.

At Climate Talks, a Struggle Over Aid for Poorer Nation John Broder

 DOHA, Qatar — The United Nations climate conference here has settled into its typical doldrums, with most major questions unresolved as a Friday evening deadline for concluding the talks approaches. One of the thorniest issues is money, which has often bedeviled these affairs. 

Since the process for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change began about 20 years ago, countries have been split into two often-warring camps: the small number of wealthy nations that provide money to help deal with the effects of global warming, and the much larger group of poorer states that receive it.

 

There is a reason churches and religious organizations have sent delegates to these events. There are issued of justice and equality which they, along with other NGO's, are willing to air (pun intended) while diplomats fiddle. It's unfortunate that we have so little clout and so little money to even get people there anymore.

 

Thoughts?

St. Francis Pledge

You probably know about St. Francis of Assisi, the deeply spiritual, slightly crazy mystic of the thirteenth century. I'm not trying to be disrepectful here, because most religious mystics march to a different drummer --God.

Francis lived a life of radical simplicity, giving away his wealth to live alongside the poor. He also loved Creation and honoured all living things. The legends of his relationships with birds and animals abound, and he is credited with creating the first Living Nativity. I like this painting by Bailey Jack. Pope John Paul II named Francis as the patron saint of the environment. Not bad for someone who lived 800 years ago.

I just learned that there is a St. Francis Pledge, which is a commitment one can make as a faithful  and practical expression of Creation Care. The five commitments are:

PRAY and reflect on the duty to care for God's Creation and protect the poor and vulnerable.

LEARN about and educate others on the causes and moral dimensions of climate change.

ASSESS how we -- as individuals and in our families, parishes and other affiliations -- contribute to climate change by our own energy use, consumption, waste, etc.

ACT to change our choices and behaviors to reduce the ways we contribute to climate change.

ADVOCATE for Catholic principles and priorities in climate change discussions and decisions, especially as they impact those who are poor and vulnerable.

While this is obviously an initiative of the Roman Catholic church, if we substitute the word Christian for Catholic, or "small c" catholic, meaning universal, these are wonderful principles to which we can adhere as Protestants.

Do they work for you?

The Green Patriarch

Everything that lives and breathes is sacred and beautiful in the eyes of God. The whole world is a sacrament. The entire created cosmos is a burning bush of God’s uncreated energies. And humankind stands as a priest before the altar of creation, as microcosm and mediator. Such is the true nature of things; or, as an Orthodox hymn describes it, “the truth of things,” if only we have the eyes of faith to see it. 

  Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I

In the busyness of recent days I have ignored this Groundling Blog, even though I have been aware of a number of important subjects and events. An article a couple of days ago in the New York Times offers a description of the environmental focus of the patriarch of the world-wide Orthodox communion. You may not have heard of the Orthodox church but 300 million Christians are part of this expression of the faith. This means that Patriarch Bartholomew I has considerable influence. Okay, this 72-year-old cleric doesn't look like any stereotype of an eco-warrior we can conjure up, but he has considered how Christians  might "live with respect in Creation" for many years and continues to provide tremendous leadership in this regard. http://www.patriarchate.org/environment His passion has earned him the moniker The Green Patriarch.
 
Bartholomew organizes conferences featuring speakers such as Jane Goodall who teased him that the beards of some of the elder primates she works with look a lot like his, a comment that he took in good humour. He has encouraged Orthodox congregations to install solar panels on their church buildings.

The Times notes that " in September, Bartholomew published a strongly worded encyclical calling on all Orthodox Christians to repent “for our sinfulness” in not doing enough to protect the planet. Biodiversity, “the work of divine wisdom,” was not granted to humanity to abuse it, he wrote; human dominion over the earth does not mean the right to greedily acquire and destroy its resources. He singled out “the powerful of this world,” saying they need a new mind-set to stop destroying the planet for profit or short-term interest."

I am encouraged to hear about leaders such as Patriarch Bartholomew. How about you?