My Lion Lamb blog for Sunday (ya, I work ahead) is about Oxford Dictionaries' "word of the year," which is "toxic." Toxic is defined as "poisonous, venomous and morally destructive." I wonder in that post whether it is possible for Christians to "detox" the poisonous tendencies of our species, to counteract the grim truth that religion often contributes to the toxicity of our world.
I'm addressing "toxic" here in my Groundling blog in another context. We humans are literally toxifying the planet with astonishing speed and thoroughness.
In many places the air is so polluted that children can't go to school for days on end. In some cities of India and China it is standard to have air filters to make the air breathable. A couple of days ago Beijing experienced its worst air quality in two years.
We are very aware that our waterways and oceans are clogged with plastic, which ends up in the food chain. Tests on humans indicate that we have micro-particles of plastic in us.
Chemicals which have been touted as "miracles" for crop growth and weed suppression kill those who harvest and sometimes sicken consumers.
An e coli outbreak in 36 states was traced to Romain lettuce poisoned by to irrigation canals.
We may think of a "toxic environment" as a metaphor, but it applies literally to the one planetary home for all seven billion of us. The effects of environmental degradation and climate change are evident in virtually every place, including the once pristine Canadian arctic.
As dire as this sounds, we are regularly reminded by the scientific community that we can change for the better. Surely this must be the message of religions and faith groups? Virtually all religious texts describe God as creator and invite us to "tend the garden." It is our imperative to detox God's good Earth.
Do you remember Preston Manning? Yah, that Preston Manning who created the Reformed Party of Canada which became the Alliance Party and eventually merged with the Progressive Conservatives to become today's Conservative Party of Canada. Some of us were leery of the right-wing religious leanings of the Reformed Party but Manning has always been a thoughtful evangelical Christian. He has described himself as "a great fan and imperfect follower of Jesus of Nazareth" and has studied and lectured extensively on managing the interface between faith and politics.
I was interested to see that Manning has encouraged the Conservative caucus to stop vilifying a carbon tax in Canada. A carbon tax and cap and trade are two methods for reducing emissions and making polluters pay, although they are not the same thing. Our federal government has told provinces that the former, the carbon tax will be implemented across the country. Some provinces and the Conservatives are opposed, and claim they'll develop their own programs for addressing carbon pollution. The problem is that none of them has offered an effective program of their own, and Ontario scrapped cap and trade without creating an alternative that makes a lick of sense. In fact, getting rid of cap-and-trade will cost Ontarians billions of dollars. It is ideological stupidity.
Manning said “I know all of you are wrestling with this issue and that there is considerable disagreement among conservatives on how to approach it, but hopefully this approach — focus on attacking the implementation rather than the market-based concept itself — will be helpful.”
Good for Manning. Being fiscally conservative and a conservative Christian do not require a knee-jerk opposition to programs addressing climate change. There are lots of arguments that a carbon tax can be good for business as well as good for the environment. And no matter what our religious leanings, caring for Creation is a key aspect of the biblical mandate. You can look it up!
The Peaceable Kingdom -- John Swanson
Finding ourselves in a world of beauty and mystery, of living
things, diverse and interdependent,
of complex
patterns of growth and evolution,
of subatomic
particles and cosmic swirls,
we sing of God the Creator,
the Maker and Source of all that is.
Each part of creation
reveals unique aspects of God the Creator,
who is both in creation and beyond it.
All
parts of creation, animate and inanimate, are related.
All creation is good.
We
sing of the Creator,
who made humans to live and move
and have their being in God.
A Song of Faith United Church of Canada 2006
I mention in today's Lion Lamb blog that the Hebrew scripture lectionary passages for this Sunday speak strongly to God's embrace of the vulnerable, including migrants, which is then strongly supported by Jesus' call to love God and to love our neighbours as we love ourselves.
Of course, these passages are so topical as the "stranger danger" of migrants is spouted by the American president and his minions in the days before mid-term elections.
There has also been a lot of grim environmental news in recent days, so the reading from Mark's gospel also invites us to answer the question: "who is my neighbour?" Is it just the elderly person who lives two doors down or are the insects whose populations are collapsing, or the disappearing mammals and sea creatures our neighbours? In Luke's gospel Jesus follows up his comments about neighbourliness with the parable of the Good Samaritan, a story which pushes his listeners out of their comfort zone.
The respected United Church theologian Douglas John Hall was well ahead of his time when he claimed that the central significance of Imago Dei -- created in the image of God -- is the human responsibility to care for all of creation. In this view, God has given humankind unique responsibility to tend this planetary garden, the creation, as a wise, passionate, loving caregiver. The human calling within the created order is to reflect the Creator's loving purpose.
I may not have been filled with love of neighbour as I swatted mosquitoes this summer and I preferred not to meet my neighbour when we saw mounds of bear scat on our hikes in the wilds of Nova Scotia. But we don't always get to choose our neighbours and, truth be told, they may be thinking "there goes the neighbourhood" when we humans show up.
I'll attempt to listen to Jesus as he speaks to me, and expand my horizons. I figure that both God and the planet are depending on us.
Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal,
flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb
through the middle of the street of the city.
On either side of the river is the tree of lifewith its twelve kinds of fruit,
producing its fruit each month;
and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.
Revelation 22: 1-2
I read Richard Powers Man Booker nominated The Overstory while we were in Nova Scotia a few weeks ago and I can't stop thinking about it. It is a tour de force work which convinces me that I should never attempt writing a novel. I often mark significant passages in non-fiction books but rarely a novel. I did so repeatedly in The Overstory, as you can see. Here is the description by Judge Leanne Shapton of the Man Booker panel:
The Overstory, a novel about trees and people who understand them, is the eco-epic of the year and perhaps the decade. Unlike the Lorax, who spoke for the trees, Richard Powers prefers to let them do their own talking. Instead of a middle distance or landscape, he offers portraits: a gallery of species — Chestnut, Mulberry, Banyan, Redwood — placing his human characters correctly in scale with that royalty. The trees tell of cellular ancestry and transmission, cycles that take place along spans of time we cannot imagine, though Powers can and does. Nine powerfully written, interlinked stories play out in the understory.
Along the way there are stirring, lyrical paragraphs on love, photography, the culture of ancient China, game code, science, and maybe most impressively, faith, rendered without sanctimony or reprimand. By the end, the book's voices, human and arboreal, echo unforgettably.
I agree heartily with all of this, including the comment about faith. Shapton may not have been referring to religious faith but there is a profound sense of the biblical Tree of Life, which is a significant symbol in the "overstory" of scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
I
don't reread novels but I may be compelled to do so with this one. I hope you'll read it as well.
