A New Covenant with the Earth

About 20 years ago I was at a diocesan clergy conference with the Rev. Herbert O'Driscoll, an extraordinary Anglican preacher and educator on homiletics. His topic for the conference was developing what he considered to be important scripture themes for this time. One of those themes was "a new covenant with the earth." That thought of a new covenant has been for me a profound way into a spiritual re-framing of our relationship with the earth in a time of a growing ecological crisis that has been largely due to our wanton misuse and exploitation of the world's natural resources.

In Christianity we have had several "covenant" understandings that we should examine and see how often the fruit of those understandings have been destructive. Two ancient Judeo-Christian mythic stories come to mind for me. The first version of the creation story (yes, there are two versions) in Genesis tells of the "days" of creation culminating in the creation of humanity on the sixth day with this warrant:

God blessed them, and God said to [human beings], "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." (Genesis 1:28)

The theological warrant for domination of the earth is drawn from that story. The second version of the creation story in Genesis 2 is slightly different in that God places the human in a garden (of Eden) and the human's purpose there is "to till it and keep it" (Genesis 2:15). Husbandry is the purpose of humanity in that story rather than domination. In the first version humans are clearly at the top of an order of domination. Humans are more removed from the rest of creation and are given authority to subdue and dominate it. In the second version humans are closer to creation. Humans have a job tending the garden. They are still somewhat removed because they can name things (and therefore exert some control) and eat from everything but the forbidden fruit but the relationship is closer to being a steward of God's creation.

In a later mythic story a "covenant" is established between God and Noah after the great flood that destroys all living things except that which was saved on the ark. In Genesis 8 and 9 that covenant includes: God never again cursing the ground because of humans and never again destroying every living thing (8:21-22); and giving over every living thing to human control (9:1-3). The primary theological warrant that humans are removed from the rest of creation and given dominance by God over creation still seems to be in place. An anthropocentric hierarchy over creation gets firmly established.

This has largely been unquestioned (at least within Christian thought) until we began awakening to the ecological crisis we have been causing with this deadly sense of privileged domination. Native Americans with traditional spiritual understandings see things quite differently. Humans are a part of a whole community of creation, sharing a kinship with other beings. There is no radical separation from the rest of creation.

Eco-spirituality in Christian theology looks at the domination motif as something we need to repent from. Separating humanity from the rest of creation violates the relational basis in life--we are actually a web of interdependent, mutual relationships which we should tend and provide care for mutual benefit. All creation is a part of a sacred body--there is no separation or hierarchy between the material and spiritual. God, though not fully contained in creation, is not radically separate from the cosmos. And we are accountable for our relationship with the earth to Christ.

So as we look to Thanksgiving Day and other times of gratitude for what the earth so generously provides for us to sustain our lives, this would be a good time to make a new covenant--a new sacred promised relationship of mutuality with this good earth and with the God that so delights in all creation. We have much to do to repent from our exploitative ways and repair our relationship with this earth that is our home. Let this 21st century be the time of a major new Earth Covenant that embraces the wisdom of many faith traditions in the shared commitment to reformed practices, a renewed relationship of respect with the earth, and a boldness to challenge narrow economic, political, social, and personal privileged self-interests.

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Here’s a little postscript. After writing this meditation I took a walk by San Pablo Bay and it came to me that students of Celtic influences on Christian spirituality may take issue with my rather blanket indictment based on the later tradition’s relationship with nature. There are some medieval sources that see nature as graced and we benefit from this branch of a more “earthy” spiritual tradition in Christianity.

Containers

Many things need good containers and certainly that is the case with wine making. I use good food-grade plastic containers and glass carboys that hold up to 6.5 gallons of wine. These containers have fermentation locks which allows carbon dioxide to escape during with wine's fermentation process but also keeps outside airborne yeasts from coming in and contaminating the wine. There's a familiar saying attributed to Jesus in three of the gospels about not putting new wine in old wine skins (Matthew 9:17; Mark 2:22; Luke 5:37-39). In those days new wine would be put in new wine skins because fermentation would continue and the new skins would be flexible and pliant enough to expand. Old skins would harden and not expand with the continuing fermentation, resulting in burst skins and lost wine.

In the past 25 years there has been interesting work done on approaching faith and human maturation developmentally. Building on Jean Piaget's theory of child cognitive development and Erik Erikson's work on adult psycho-social development, James Fowler, Robert Kegan, and Elizabeth Liebert are some of the writers who apply this approach to spiritual life and faith development. I think of increasingly large "containers" that hold our understanding of God, reality, relationships, faith, and meaning. Sometimes we grow out of an old container and need a new one that is larger and more expansive. At an earlier time in our life we probably needed a concrete, literal understanding of scripture. God was seen in human terms. Rules and laws gave a safe structure to understanding the "right way" to live. Later, as abstract reasoning develops we might begin to question some of the earlier ways of understanding. We might begin to understand that there is a place for myth and metaphor, the power of symbolic truth as well as literal truth. Hopefully, church and authority structures are flexible and expandable enough to hold us in our questioning. (Which is, unfortunately, not always the case.) And we might come to understand that the way we understand God changes over time--and that eventually we may find that no container can completely hold God or our spirit.

In spiritual guidance work we try to provide a safe and respectful container that is flexible and expandable enough to hold our group or directee so they can do the inner work they desire to do. We try to honor where the person is in their own faith/spiritual development and be available to them as they form their questions, discover their sense of wonder and mystery, explore meaning, and seek wisdom.

How flexible and expandable is the wine skin of your spirit? What would happen if you burst that container?

Connected in God's Love

I write this entry on the occasion of All Saints' Day in the church's liturgical year--November 1. Our society just widely celebrated Halloween, the evening before All Hallows' (Saints') Day. Today and the day following (All Souls Day or All Faithful Departed) is a special time for the Christian community to remember and give thanks for being connected through God's love with all those who support us in our lives, the saints who have gone before us who are witnesses to the spiritual foundation of our living, and also our personal circle of people who have touched our lives but have died.

That sense of being connected, even with those who are no longer living, is a powerful spiritual dynamic which can have a positive and negative side to it. In grief we might feel deeply connected to a deceased loved one and have that as a consolation--but we might also feel the pain of disconnection and insurmountable distance. Some of my directees or former parishioners have had things they wished to say to a loved one but death or incapacity came too soon for that to be expressed. And sometimes we miss people terribly. Times like All Saints' Day can be a special time, poignant and tearful perhaps, where we can be with a community that honors those who have been important to us and pray for them, and remember that by God's grace we are in communion with all the "saints" past, present, and yet to come.

Scripture gives us some hints of that connectedness. I think of Jesus' words in the gospel of John that he is the vine and we the branches (15:5); or Paul's moving statement of faith: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." (Romans 8:38-39).

That connectedness as a spiritual reality is something that I can occasionally intuitively, prayerfully, sense; and often just simply take on faith. There are times when I will pray to God to "pass" this or that little message onto my deceased loved one. Or some moment will come that reminds me of someone who has died or is geographically distant and I'll just speak to that person as an act of...how shall I name this...imagination?...faith?...trust that on some deep level we are all still connected? I know that in my heart, my inner world, there is room aplenty for the living and those who are no longer alive on this plane of reality; time and space are not such linear things there. That ancient Celtic intuition of "thin places" seems to be much more accessible.

I love this prayer from the Book of Common Prayer (p. 395):
Almighty God, by your Holy Spirit you have made us one with your saints in heaven and on earth: Grant that in our earthly pilgrimage we may always be supported by this fellowship of love and prayer, and know ourselves to be surrounded by their witness to your power and mercy. We ask this for the sake of Jesus Christ, in whom all our intercessions are acceptable through the Spirit, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

Celebrations

I am curious about the frequent association of wine and life celebrations. My wife and I just returned from a trip to New Jersey to join family and friends in celebrating her mother's 80th birthday. Wine was raised in toasts to her. The long table for the feast had flowers, food, water, and red and white wine ready for use. In this situation the occasion was to celebrate a major milestone birthday.
Earlier in the year another gathering of friends and family had celebrated the memory of my uncle and we grieved his loss and appreciated his legacy of love and care. Again, food and wine played a central role in our ritual of honoring a loved one.

In the Christian Sunday ritual of worship that I normally participate in bread and wine are central elements used to celebrate the life and death of Jesus and the empowerment of those who follow him. That these are nurturing gestures speak powerfully, even to our deep collective unconscious needs for life symbols. "This is my body broken for you, eat this in remembrance of me. This is my blood poured out for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins. Drink this in remembrance of me." That goes deep into the psyche, offering a pathway to restoration and wholeness.

I would expect that other religious traditions have powerful rituals involving wine as well (and would enjoy your sharing about those practices). How has wine been used with celebrations in your life?

Patient Waiting

A couple of days ago I put a sample of the new wines in a hydrometer and measured them to be sure they have completely fermented out. A while ago I was concerned that the fermentation had stuck, remember? Well, the good news is that they have completed fermentation. And there is no bad news!

Now the wines will sit for a while yet to let the lees (the dead yeast cells and other byproducts of fermentation) settle to the bottom of the containers. Then I'll "rack" the wine (transfer it using a plastic tube) into another container, being careful to leave as much of the lees and other sediment remaining on the bottom of the secondary fermenter.

Waiting plays a major part in wine making: waiting for complete fermentation (or you could have exploding bottles!), waiting for lees to settle and set on the bottom of the container, waiting for wine to clarify, and waiting for wine to mature. The waiting is active in that I know what needs to happen and what to anticipate, as well as how to look for the signs of when it is time to move the process to a new step. But the waiting requires patience, and trust in the process.

As a spiritual director, as well as a wine maker, waiting has a very important role in providing companionship to another person or group in their spiritual life. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a great 20th century French philosopher, paleontologist and geologist, and Jesuit priest had an evolutionary understanding of faith life, the cosmos, and the future of humanity. He was able to envision God at work over eons of time and in human spiritual history. He applied that vision of the slow and faithful work of God to a student who we was mentoring. I often share this letter of his to my own directees, and try to follow its wisdom in my own life:

Patient Trust in Ourselves and the Slow Work of God

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are, quite naturally, impatient
in everything to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown, something new.
And yet it is the law of all progress that
it is made by passing through some stages of instability—
And that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually—
let them grow, let them shape themselves,
without undue haste.
Don't try to force them on,
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new spirit
gradually forming within you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you; and accept the anxiety
of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete.

Depth Perspective

I have to admit that I was very anxious and agitated today as I was on my third trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles trying to get all the documentation and procedures in order so that I could finally complete my first registration of one of our cars and a camper trailer in the State of California. I knew that we would be paying heavy late fee penalties because it hadn’t been clear (to me, at least) what the rules and procedures were when we came to the Golden State. Well, things went fairly smoothly this time and I got it finished up. Whew!

On the drive back home I came upon a beautiful vista of the San Francisco Bay’s north part, San Pablo Bay. The wind had picked up lately and there were white-capping waves on the bay, and the scene was gorgeous. The view reminded me of an analogy I have of spiritual life/soul being multi-layered, with the possibility of being consciously aware of those different levels all operating at the same time.

The analogy is that of our soul being like the ocean. On the ocean there is a surface level where the sky meets the water. The sky might be clear or cloudy, the weather can vary, and the water might be calm or churning with violent waves. I too can see my own surface level and notice my anxiety today. I’d been all stirred up and felt out of control about getting that car and trailer through the DMV. It’s been pretty wavy, windy, and turbulent on my soul’s surface and I’ve felt vulnerable and a bit angry.

Going deeper in the ocean there are various creatures that live there. Some are quite beautiful, some seem ugly perhaps. Some are gentle, or shy, or skittish, or attractive, or powerful. Others might be aggressive and predatory. You get the idea. What creature in my inner world might be coming into view today? I suspect that with the way I was getting all twitchy with having to go to the DMV I was projecting my fear of some sea monster onto the agent I would meet! But likely the monster was more my own inner defensiveness than whomever was “out there.”

There are currents and tidal forces that run through the ocean’s waters. And so too in our soul. Less seen than gently or strongly felt, the currents and tidal forces of our lives pull at us and move us in our moods, emotions, feelings, and instincts. Attractions and repulsions inhabit these realms. We can try to move against those currents or with them but they are best recognized as real forces that have an impact upon us; and that we need to respect them, and discern as best we are able the wisest way to respond to them.

There is a place of great mystery and darkness in our inner spiritual world, just as in the depths of the ocean. This, too, is the place where the divine Mystery, the Holy Presence, dwells… and meets, and is, that which is beyond our normal consciousness of the self we think of as “me” or “you.” It is still and silent there, for the most part. Ancient…timeless. We cannot so much know with our rational knowledge about that place in ourselves as sense it through a graced-wisdom, a heart-knowing. But not everywhere is still and silent in that deep inner place. There are also vents in that dark floor bottom where springs of the Spirit gush powerfully, birthing new creativity, new possibilities, and renewed life.

In my better moments I am aware that something like this is going on inside me right now. I can send my awareness like a deep-sea diver to visit those various depths. And in visiting those parts of my soul, I will gain some wisdom. I may become aware that although a part of me is still trying to work through my feelings about the DMV and change my attitude, another part of me can – at the same time – be at peace in that dark, quiet place where the One abides and discover the new creativity that is gushing out right now and enjoy the new life that I’m being given.

Did you think this was only going to be about wine making?

Ignatius and Benedict

In wine making there is an intense period followed by a less intense, more gradual period of fermentation where the juice is converted into wine:  primary fermentation and secondary fermentation.  I've mentioned these in previous notes.   This activity of conversion or transformation has its rough analogy to spiritual life, although there are plenty of variations on this general movement.  William James, the psychologist that did early studies on spiritual development wrote of people that were "twice born" (having a rather dramatic spiritual awakening) and "once born" (those who had always sensed a spiritual connection in their life).

I've heard Ignatian spirituality contrasted with Benedictine spirituality as the difference between cooking with a pressure cooker and a slow cooker.   The Ignatian approach is systematic and employs imagination in meditations and devotional exercises in an extended intensive retreat to bring about change, commitment, and greater clarity in God's call.  However, there are modifications that can adapt Ignatian spiritual exercises over a much longer period of time than the intense eight day or thirty day retreat.   But there is a systematic and intensive focus on transformation that was part of Ignatius of Loyola's purpose in developing the 16th century Spiritual Exercises.  And Ignatian exercises primarily focus on the individual's spiritual life.  There are adaptations to community spiritual discernment, but it is more individual-oriented.  There was a time, especially in my mid-20's to early 30's, where the spiritual ferment was rapid and intense.  The tools I tended to employ in my spiritual life were more akin to Ignatian exercises, although I wasn't exposed to that particular tradition until later when I was studying Christian spiritual traditions and had contact with a spiritual director.

Benedictine spirituality is a community-based long-term shaping of its members so that they might become a "school of Christ's service."  The 6th century Rule of Benedict, drawing upon but moderating other monastic rules has been the basis for western monasticism to this day.  It has its influence beyond the monastery through retreatants seeking quiet and the rhythm of the daily prayer offices.   Some of these retreatants become regular visitors and later friends of the monastic community and find ways where the Rule influences their lives outside the cloister.  I'm in a vowed relationship as an oblate of St. Gregory's Abbey, a Benedictine community of men within the Episcopal Church, in Three Rivers, Michigan.  Having a relationship of 30 years with that community, reflecting on the Rule, and applying this spiritual tradition to my life has influenced and aided that slow, steady, process of spiritual deepening for me. 

Does this description of spiritual life bring up questions or comments about your own experience and thinking?