Getting Educated

I attended and really enjoyed the Social Action Summer Institute this past week. It is always invigorating to be with so many people who are passionate about social justice and the environment in particular. We were frequently reminded that Pope Francis is not saying anything new – the last few Popes have all spoken out strongly regarding the care of creation: Pope Benedict was actually known as the green Pope. He was the Pope who among other things, saw to it that the Vatican became a sustainable city with power generated by solar panels. The difference in my opinion is that Pope Francis not only advocates from his position of church leadership, he lives what he advocates in his own personal life, in the way he chooses to dress, to drive, to live in community and to constantly seek the company of the poor and powerless. He challenges everyone by the choices he makes.
 

The Encyclical, Laudato Si' was at the center of all conversations and workshops. There is so much to ponder and to take into account that the Encyclical will most likely be a major force in my thinking for some time to come. We were also reminded that we need to help one another in the process of changing to a simplified way of living that will promote healing for Creation and enhance the lives of the many poor and vulnerable people who have not had their basic needs met while others have continued to live with more than their share. 

On Monday I went up the gorge to Cascade Locks with a group of people to hear from Wilbur Slokish Jr. who is the hereditary chief of the Klickitat Tribe. He has been fighting all of his life, in the same way that his father and grandfather did, to maintain fishing rights for the River People. When he was a young man he was arrested for taking fish across the state line. He had traveled by boat from one side of the Columbia River to the other. Altogether there were 16 fish in his boat. Wilbur spent three years in jail because he would not renounce his right to fish – rights that belonged to his people according to signed treaties.      

He tells a powerful story of fighting for his people and the many obstacles and ignorant people he must encounter. At the same time he was very gracious, thanking us for listening to him. One of the group members asked him how he could be so generous and kind to us since we were mostly a group of white people descended from European conquerors. Chief Slokish said that many years ago he had prayed asking why God had allowed the Europeans to come and inhabit the land. God answered him saying that the Europeans had much to learn and Wilbur’s people could teach them. 

Wow! He is so right. 

I took the picture below near where the family home of Chief Slokish used to be on the edge of the Columbia River. Across the river are the train tracks and I saw at least one very long train while we were there. I hope and pray that we won't be seeing coal trains or oil tankers with the potential to further devastate this gorgeous habitat.  

eating my words

I keep getting myself in trouble because I can't keep my mouth closed.
Last January I fell into a rabbit hole. Some new information was given to me, or maybe old information given in a new way, and since that moment I can't bring myself to eat any animal products outside of the eggs my own chickens lay -- and even those I am feeling less and less open to.

Years ago when I stopped eating meat, but still ate fish and eggs and dairy, I discovered that I could no longer walk by the meat section of a store. When I looked at meat, I saw flesh, body parts, dead animals and other such things that I was not used to seeing before. But I could still purchase meat for guests or when shopping for my mom. I just detached myself from what I was looking at so that it became lean or fat or chops that were thick or thin, but not something that used to be living.

I stopped eating meat for political reasons. I was aware that the quantity of meat consumed by wealthier countries was impacting food availability in less affluent parts of the world. Slowly I realized that meat eating was detrimental to health and then last January I became aware first that the industrial animal agri-business was emitting more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector and right after that, I went down the hole. My eyes were opened to the reality that a real live animal with nerves to sense pain and sense enough to know that it was miserable, was being killed, was having its young murdered, all so that meat was available on the human table along with milk and cheese and other tasty delights. All such food products instantly lost their tastiness. No longer were they delights. I was finished with that part of my life. No longer could I participate in the intentional killing of other animals so that I could eat them.

When the lens that protected me from this obvious realization dropped away, I fell hard, down the rabbit hole of a reality that had always been right in front of me. I just never saw it before.

Now I can't stop talking about it. I want other people to know what happens to animals, how we raise them without any opportunity to have a real life, how we manipulate the lives they have - modifying their bodies whenever possible to augment their "tastiness," shorten the time it takes them to grow, multiple their offspring, or otherwise increase their dollar value to their owners. I am horrified in many ways by what I have learned and some part of me wants to believe that others will feel the same. So far, that is rarely true. I blurt out the truth or sometimes merely allude to it and immediately I wish I could eat my words.

How do people survive in a meat eating culture when their eyes are suddenly wide open?
There must be people to offer advice, consolation or support. (Are you out there?)

Meanwhile, I try to keep my words light and not too filling.
     

A Pope Challenges People to Change

The New Encyclical by Pope Francis, Laudato Si',  On Care for our Common Home marks Francis as a prophet for our time, but he also calls everyone who pays attention to live in a prophetic way. I think that this means, each person needs to pay closer attention to the way they live as creatures, interdependent upon one another and the natural world.

In Chapter IV of the Encyclical, Joy and Peace, section #222, Pope Francis has this to say:

Christian spirituality proposes an alternative understanding of the quality of life, and encourages a prophetic and contemplative lifestyle, one capable of deep enjoyment free of the obsession with consumption. We need to take up an ancient lesson, found in different religious traditions and also in the Bible. It is the conviction that “less is more”. A constant flood of new consumer goods can baffle the heart and prevent us from cherishing each thing and each moment. To be serenely present to each reality, however small it may be, opens us to much greater horizons of understanding and personal fulfillment. Christian spirituality proposes a growth marked by moderation and the capacity to be happy with little. It is a return to that simplicity which allows us to stop and appreciate the small things, to be grateful for the opportunities which life affords us, to be spiritually detached from what we possess, and not to succumb to sadness for what we lack. This implies avoiding the dynamic of dominion and the mere accumulation of pleasures.

In the last few weeks I have found myself immersed in the writings of Christian Theologians that I had not read before. One reference led me to the work of John Zizioulas who is the Metropolitan of Pergamon in Greece.(His title is the equivalent of an Archbishop but in the Orthodox Church.)

Zizioulas has very interesting things to say regarding the way that people are called to live in harmony or balance with creation. In the first of his Lectures on Preserving God’s Creation he says this.

 “I feel that our culture needs to realize that the superiority of the human being over the rest of creation does not consist in the reason it possesses, but in its ability to relate in such a way as to create events of communion, whereby individual beings are liberated from their limitations, and are referred to something greater than themselves – to God.”

He explains that men and women create events of communion not as thinking agents but as persons in relationship to other creatures in creation. This sense of relationship he defines as a "transcending relatedness more or less corresponding to love in its deepest sense."

The underlying assumption of his work is that there is an interdependence between the Human and Nature such that the human being is not fulfilled until it becomes the summing up of nature – in other words, humans are fulfilled when their lives reflect harmony with the natural environment.

How different that focus is from the typical striving of people in the western world where material goods are the sign of success. 

Pope Francis has thrown out a challenge to all people to live with greater simplicity and concern for Creation. People of faith he has challenged to live in a way that leads others to the changes needed. Communities of faith are not to wait for the example of leaders or the laws of the land to change, rather they are to be the leaders, living now in ways that guide and teach others - whether in family, neighborhood, work environment or larger communities- how to live in harmony with creation. First of course many will need to learn how.

The Metropolitan Zizioulas names relating to all other creatures with the deepest sense of love as being "priests of creation."

Love perseveres regardless of immediate outcome. Love puts the other first rather than the self. This way of living would indeed change a culture and positively impact the world. Wouldn't it be lovely if Christians did something so profound?