Outdoors Celebration of Creation and Responsibility for Life

The first ever such service exuded joy on a beautiful fall day, where the animals and people gathered together to praise God, remember the stories of creation, bless the animals and the harvest and the children and expectant parents, and all those who do God's work with the land -- the farmers, gardeners, and wild lands and animals specialists, the foresters and tree planters. The youth, in Scripture readings and pageantry helped us celebrate, and then encouraged by words from John Paul II, we then, as adults, as forgiveness for all of creation and life that we have failed to care for as God asked us to.

For a recap and photos, go to www.stpatrickofhudson.org and http://www.stpatrickofhudson.org/pictures.aspx

IF you wish to organize this in your community, here is the template:

Celebration of Creation
and a Responsibility for LIFE Prayer Service
Following the Model of St. Francis

Held outdoors near St. Francis’s feast day. If it rains, we will have to do the blessings of the animals first under the car port. Then go in for the service. There needs to be a mix of male and female presiders – A number of children and youth have dowels with crepe paper streamers of various colors to wave as they process up the lawn to the front for the colors of the days of creation. Rainbow kites on tall poles are used for the rainbows. Jingle bells and other kinds of bells are handed out to the youth and others to ring at the right times. Numerous confirmants, youth, and children are encouraged to read or process up with ribbons or gifts of creation in the first part of the service. Various adults from different aspects of the community are encouraged to read one of the Lord Have Mercys in the latter part of the service to involve as many people as possible.

SING: Canticle of the Sun-- (by Marty Haugen-- songbook #417) Verse 1-5; sung as people are gathering

WELCOME & OPENING PRAYER FROM PASTOR:
We welcome all of you on this beautiful fall day. We are so happy to see you --especially all of you who are visitors. Thank you for joining us!. And a special thanks to all of you who of many faiths among us, you are our honored guests.

O Divine and Mysterious Creator, we are gathered here to give praise to you for the glorious creation and life you have given us and to ask us for your Spirit and Word to guide us in caring for it all. Help us to follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology. Help us to care as you care, to value as you value, to love as you have loved, and to help renew the face of the earth.

SONG: Canticle of the Sun -Verse 6

DEACON or LAY MINISTER #1: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

[pause ] – Procession of youth carrying cross and yellow banner together to the front and placed behind the round table and between the two big trees.

ALL: All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being.

DEACON OR LAY MINISTER #1: “What has come into being in Him was LIFE, and the life was the LIGHT of all people.”

FEMALE LAY MINISTER: Let us now go back to the stories of our beginnings:

CONFIRMANT #1:
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…”

[BLACK RIBBONS PROCESS UP WAVING]

CONFIRMANT #2“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light….”

[DRUM ROLL] – YELLOW RIBBONS WAVING PROCESS UP

“And God separated the light from the darkness, and… God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night”

[The yellow ribbons run to one side of the crowd and the black ribbons to the other, led by main ribbon leaders -- An individuals carrying a big image of a smiling sun on a stick and another with a moon on a stick and a number of others with stars on sticks dance and skip and twirl in to drumming….]

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

CONFIRMANT #3: Then God proceeded to create WATER in the Dome of the Sky and on the earth, and God separated the two of them.

( Blue ribbons waving process up ….A youth process up to the round table with a Jar of Water (holy water from the baptismal font) , and the Leaders sprinkle the people with holy water using spruce branches dipped in the water.}

CONFIRMANT #4: And the God created the land by pulling back the waters to reveal the earth….

(Brown Ribbons waving and a youth processes up with a clay pot filled with dirt.)

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

CONFIRMANT #5: “And God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants bearing seed of every kind and trees of every bearing fruit with seed in it.”

(Green Ribbons waving and a youth processes up with a bouquet of flowers to place on the table and on standing vase of branches with colored leaves in front of the table with the dirt and water.)

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

CONFIRMANT #6:
“And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swamps of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky… And God created every living thing that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swam and every winged bird of every kind…

CONFIRMANT #7: And God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, and everything creeps upon the ground of every kind.

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

ASSOCIATE PASTOR – “And God blessed them” saying ‘Be fruitful and multiply!” [Bells and whistles and tambourines ring out.]

PASTOR: Let those who have pets and animals bring them forward. Also, all those who work to preserve wild species and their habitats, please stand for a blessing. Let us all put out our hands in blessing:

O God,
You have done all things wisely;
In your goodness you have made us in your image
And given us care over other living things
Which are all beautiful and precious in your eyes.
Reach out with your right hand
And grant a blessing on these and on all animals
And on us, your servants,
that we may care for them kindly and carefully,
and treat them with respect.
Thank you for all those who work to care
for your wild species and their habitats.
Bless and keep them in their holy work.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

ALL: AMEN

CONFIRMANT #8: Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have lordly care over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing …”

CONFIRMANT #9: “So God created humankind in his image, and in the image of God he created them; male and female God created them. …”

CONFIRMANT #10 : “The Lord God formed a human from the dust of the ground and breathed into the nostrils the breath of life.”

[Everyone stands to drum roll!]

ALL: AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Bells and whistles and musical instruments]

ASSOCIATE PASTOR: “God blessed all of human kind and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and take care over it and guide it.’”

[more bells and tambourines]

PASTOR: Now we ask all the children and expecting parents to come forth for a blessing. We also would like to ask to stand all those in our midst who work with mothers and in the Respect for Life movement, and those who work to protect families from domestic abuse. Let us all put out our hands in blessing:

Gracious Father,
Your Word,
Spoken in love, created the human family.
Hear the prayers of all gathered here to bless all these children in our midst and these parents who await the birth of their children.
Calm their fears when they are anxious
Watch over and support them,
And help us to work with you
In caring for them
So that in safely and in good health
They may praise you and glorify you with us.
And please bless all of these,
Your servants,
Who work to care for families under stress of violence and abuse
And all those who care for the unborn
And the mothers who carry these children,
Please bless their holy work.
Through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ
Now and forever.

ALL: AMEN

CONFIRMANT 11: And then God said, “See, I have given into your care and use every plant, yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And every beast of the earth, and every bird of the air, and everything that has the breath of life… I put these all in your care.

God looked at everything that God had made:”

ALL: “AND GOD SAID IT WAS VERY GOOD!” {bells, whistles, ribbons waving!!}


SING: AWESOME GOD by Rich Mullins (second verse first, then first – a group of youth lead the hand gestures)

PASTOR: Now all of you who farm and bring forth life from the earth in your gardens, please bring up samples of your harvest that we may bless them and bless you in your holy work. And all those who are foresters and land conservationists, please stand as well. Let us put our hands out in blessing:

God our Creator,
Who bestows the rains of the heavens and riches of the soil,
We thank your loving majesty for this year’s harvest.
Bless those whose hands helped to bring forth the fruits of the earth.
Bless also those who tend your wild lands
And help preserve them for the future.
Bless your foresters and tree planters
Who are working to keep your lands lush and fertile.
Fill the hearts of your people with gratitude
For this harvest and these workers.
And help us ensure that from this abundance
All the hungry, the poor, and the needy may be filled with good things
And together we may all proclaim the glory of your name.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

ALL: AMEN!

CONFIRMANT 12: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitudes. And on the seventh day, God finished the work that God had done, and God RESTED on the seventh day…

MOMENT OF SILENCE

LAY PRESIDER: Let us give thanks for all that God created and for God’s caring command to rest each week to re-create our bodies and spirits:

SING: NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD (fast tempo #202 in Songbook)

[All ribbon holders stand up and weave through the crowds to the joyous music]

DEACON: God gave humans the work of loving and serving God -- taking care of each other and the earth, sharing its abundance with all the people and species. But people sinned and turned away from God, so God got angry and made it rain forty days and forty nights. [drumming sound of rain]

But God had asked Noah to save samples of the animals and his family in the ark, so that after the flood, God could renew the earth. Noah and his family gave thanks for being saved, and that is when God made a covenant with the human family and all the living creatures on the earth.

LAY PRESIDER: The Lord proclaimed “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature that is on the earth.” God said this three times so that we would remember:

{Two rainbow kites will be processed up and put on either side of the cross bewteen the trees and behind the round table -- All the colors come out and process with them in two rings around the congregation (one on either side) and back to their seats)

ALL: “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and every living creature that is on the earth.” [All the ribbons go together in the order of a rainbow, and a rainbow banner is unwound in front. Bells and music and drumming]

ASSOCIATE PASTOR: In our day, Pope John Paul II, in his 1990 address “Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation” warned the world that we were neglecting God and God’s statues. He said “the ecological crisis is a moral crisis” and “Today the ecological crisis has assumed such proportions as to be the responsibility of everyone….

He told all of us:
An education in ecological responsibility is urgent; responsibility for oneself, for others, and for the earth. …, a true education in responsibility entails a genuine conversion in ways of thoughts and behavior…

PASTOR: Pope John Paul II told us that all humans have an “ecological vocation” but he also specifically addressed all who believe in a Creator God
, most especially Catholics, saying:

I should like to address directly my brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church, in order to remind them of their solemn obligation to care for all of creation. The commitment of believers to a healthy environment for everyone stems directly from their belief in God the Creator, from their recognition of original and personal sin, and from the certainty of having been redeemed by Christ. Respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of creation, which is called to join humans in praising God….

It is my hope that the inspiration of St. Francis will help us to keep ever a sense of ‘fraternity’ with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created. And may God remind us of our serious obligation to respect and watch over them with care, in the light of the greater and higher fraternity that exists within the human family.”
LAY PRESIDER: And that is why we have gathered today. To celebrate God’s creation and give Glory to our God, and also to ask for forgiveness for how we have often ignored God’s values and decrees. How we have not been the best stewards and caretakers.
ADULT #1: Lord, we have not understood or cared enough for the systems of life that you have established on the earth to sustain and comfort us. We have watched your glaciers melt, your oceans warm and rise, the earth’s storms grow more violent, and the poor people of the planet suffer the most. Yet we stand in confusion. We are afraid of change and committing ourselves to new attitudes and new energies. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #2: Lord, you have blessed us with joyous life, and children, yet we have not cared for the gifts of human life as you asked us to do. We have allowed unborn children to be aborted, and we have at times abused our youth. We have neglected the hard lives of the elderly, the sick, the dying. We have used death as a penalty for crimes. Father, please forgive us, for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #3: Lord, you have showered our country with abundance and the ingenuity and drive of many people. Yet we have not shared enough of what we harvest and produce with those who have less. Every day, every minute, children, Your children, are starving to death or they lack clean water to drink or homes to come back to. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #4: Lord, we thank you for systems of commerce that bind us together. Yet throughout our country and world, our companies and corporations have laid off record numbers of workers and then rewarded stockholder with high profits. Many in our midst long for the dignity and security of jobs and work and food and shelter and health care. In so many ways, we have valued money over people and things over relationships. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD HAVE MERCY.
ADULT #5: Lord, We thank you for our ability to produce so many beautiful, needed, artistic, and entertaining things, but we forget about the waste they make. We heap trash in your lands. We let chemicals run into your rivers and lakes; we dump waste and spill oil in your oceans. We have not cared enough about the consequences of our actions. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #6: Lord, how diverse and amazing are the many species you have put on this earth. Yet many have gone extinct because of our actions, some without us even noticing. We clear cut forests and destroy grasslands We have a hard time discerning the difference between want and need, and we struggle to know how to use the gifts of this earth without harming the beauty, diversity, and stability of your creation. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #7: Lord, just as you have blessed this earth with a diversity of species, you have blessed us with a diversity of people – red, yellow, black, and white, and so many colors in between. Yet we often struggle to see Your face in those people of Yours who are different from us – whose color or culture is different; whose religion or language or culture or country is different; whose sexual orientations or abilities are different; whose politics are different. Too often we insult, mock, marginalize, or fight them rather than try to listen, understand, and treat them with respect and dignity as your children. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #8: Lord, time and time again you have asked us to live in peace, and to pass on your peace others. Yet we struggle with real fears. We have waged wars and do not know how to end them. We have used chemicals and landmines that leave your land unusable and children harmed even after the war ends. Teach us how to how to make peace in our homes, schools, communities, nation and world. Teach us how to pray for our enemies, and how to forgive and be forgiven to start afresh, as you have asked us to do. Father, please forgive us, for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY.
SING : Kyrie Elison (Celtic) chorus
DEACON: O Lord, we so little understand the true ripple effects of all we do. We cannot see as You do. You sent us your Son to show us the Way. He called the children to come onto him. He healed the sick and the lepers, and he fed the five thousand. In the desert, the garden, and by the lakeshore he prayed. He told us how dearly His Father loves even the lilies of the field and the sparrows of the sky. But most of all, He told us how God the Creator loves us each as a parent and has asked us to take care of all of life.
FEMALE LAY PRESIDER: So Lord, please send us Your Spirit to soften our hearts, open our minds, and stand up ready to do the work that you have given us. Help us to serve more humbly and tenderly, to listen more carefully and with our hearts, and to give joyous thanks every day and every moment so that we may become peacemakers and renew the face of the earth – now and for future generations.
SING : Lord Send Out Your Spirit and Renew the Face of the Earth by Joe Zsigray [chorus plus first verse and chorus]

FEMALE LAY PRESIDER:
Our Creator has made each made us unique, with so many different talents and skills and perspectives to offer to the world to try to heal it. With the Holy Spirit energizing and guiding us, let us now, each of us, take a moment in silence to prayerfully decide in our hearts some of the things that we can commit to do today, tomorrow, this week, this year to protect this planet and all of life on it.

SILENCE

ASSOCIATE PASTOR: Now let us stand and go to the front of the church and dedicate our hearts to these tasks as we dedicate our new statute of St. Francis.

SING: THE SUMMONS: WILL YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME IF I BUT CALLYOUR NAME? .{by John L. Bell, arrangement of trad. Scottish melody by Kelvin Grove, songbook 377 )

PASTOR
O Lord, you sent your dear and loving servant St. Francis,
as a model of how to follow you,
living simply, loving You, Your Son, and all Your Creation.
He served the poor
And loved all the birds and animals
And rocks and stars and moon.
Please bless this community and
Send us your spirit to guide us
And caring for all of life from
Conception of our children to
The very systems of air, water, land, and seas, forests and climate
upon which all of this earthly life depends.
Please watch over us, and
let us not lose heart when the tasks of caring look too big and overwhelming.
In Your Name we pray, Amen

FEMALE PRESIDER:
Dear St. Francis,
remind us of the power of every day acts of kindness, love, and caring.
Just as you rebuilt God’s Church with your example,
help us do the same.
Inspire us with new energy in our hearts, new ways in our thoughts,
new actions in our lives, and a new unity to work together.
Lead us on the paths to act now so we can pass on to our children and our children’s children and their children a livable, abundant, fertile, and still beautiful planet on which to live.
Through Jesus’s name we pray,
Amen.

Now, like St. Francis, let us pray or sing this each day in our hearts:

SING: PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS by Sebastian Temple (song book #495)

Celebrate Life and All of Creation Service

This October 10, 2010, grassroots work party events will be held all around the world, networked through www.350.org to try to push for greater, more immediate actions to slow climate change.

For myself, I looked around and felt the greatest immediate work that needed to be done in my community was to change hearts and minds to be ready to act. So I wrote a Christian prayer service, based in Scripture, celebrating life and calling all to responsibility and asking for help from the Holy Spirit.

Connected to this, tn the online journal Minding Nature from the Center for Humans and Nature, there is an article (starting on page 35) by me entitled "Conservation and the Catholic Imagination" at http://www.humansandnature.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Minding-Nature-v3n2-August-2010.pdf.

I hope it prompts some interesting discussions!

Hotter than Hades....McKibben's Great Call for Action

This year's hot temperatures along with all the other scientific date have proven that climate change is real and all who believe in a loving Creator who gave us this planet need to get to work. John Paul II said: When the ecological crisis is set within the broader context of the search for peace within society, we can understand better the importance of giving attention to what the earth and its atmosphere are telling us: namely, that there is an order in the universe which must be respected, and that the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being of future generations.
I wish to repeat. The ecological crisis is a moral crisis! {emphasis is the pope’s own}

It's time for all who treasure God's creation to join with others to call for national and international and individual actions to preserve it.

Here's Bill McKibben's prophetic voice:
We're Hot as Hell and We're Not Going to Take It Any More

Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming
By Bil McKibben (Cross Posted from TomDispatch.com)

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
* A "staggering" new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.
* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn't do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I've spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I'm a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you're supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking. They bent over backwards like Soviet gymnasts. Senator John Kerry, the legislator they worked most closely with, issued this rallying cry as the final negotiations began: "We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further."

And even that was not enough. They were left out to dry by everyone -- not just Reid, not just the Republicans. Even President Obama wouldn't lend a hand, investing not a penny of his political capital in the fight.

The result: total defeat, no moral victories.

Now What?

So now we know what we didn't before: making nice doesn't work. It was worth a try, and I'm completely serious when I say I'm grateful they made the effort, but it didn't even come close to working. So we better try something else.

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else -- energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that "green jobs" polled better than "cutting carbon."

No, really? In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone -- beginning with the president -- to start explaining that basic fact at every turn.

It is the heat, and also the humidity. Since warm air holds more water than cold, the atmosphere is about 5% moister than it was 40 years ago, which explains the freak downpours that seem to happen someplace on this continent every few days.

It is the carbon -- that's why the seas are turning acid, a point Obama could have made with ease while standing on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. "It's bad that it's black out there," he might have said, "but even if that oil had made it safely ashore and been burned in our cars, it would still be wrecking the oceans." Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on.

Mysteriously enough, this seems to be a particularly hard point for smart people to grasp. Even in the wake of the disastrous Senate non-vote, the Nature Conservancy's climate expert told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, "We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth, and show how it matters in people's everyday lives." Translation: ordinary average people can't possibly recognize the real stakes here, so let's put it in language they can understand, which is about their most immediate interests. It's both untrue, as I'll show below, and incredibly patronizing. It is, however, exactly what we've been doing for a decade and clearly, It Does Not Work.

Step two, we have to ask for what we actually need, not what we calculate we might possibly be able to get. If we're going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don't actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run. We need a stiff price on carbon, set by the scientific understanding that we can't still be burning black rocks a couple of decades hence. That undoubtedly means upending the future business plans of Exxon and BP, Peabody Coal and Duke Energy, not to speak of everyone else who's made a fortune by treating the atmosphere as an open sewer for the byproducts of their main business.

Instead they should pay through the nose for that sewer, and here's the crucial thing: most of the money raised in the process should be returned directly to American pockets. The monthly check sent to Americans would help fortify us against the rise in energy costs, and we'd still be getting the price signal at the pump to stop driving that SUV and start insulating the house. We also need to make real federal investments in energy research and development, to help drive down the price of alternatives -- the Breakthrough Institute points out, quite rightly, that we're crazy to spend more of our tax dollars on research into new drone aircraft and Mars orbiters than we do on photovoltaics.

Yes, these things are politically hard, but they're not impossible. A politician who really cared could certainly use, say, the platform offered by the White House to sell a plan that taxed BP and actually gave the money to ordinary Americans. (So far they haven't even used the platform offered by the White House to reinstall the rooftop solar panels that Jimmy Carter put there in the 1970s and Ronald Reagan took down in his term.)

Asking for what you need doesn't mean you'll get all of it. Compromise still happens. But as David Brower, the greatest environmentalist of the late twentieth century, explained amid the fight to save the Grand Canyon: "We are to hold fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else propose the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function."

Which leads to the third step in this process. If we're going to get any of this done, we're going to need a movement, the one thing we haven't had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we'd get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we'll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

Movement Time

As Tom Friedman put it in a strong column the day after the Senate punt, the problem was that the public "never got mobilized." Is it possible to get people out in the streets demanding action about climate change? Last year, with almost no money, our scruffy little outfit, 350.org, managed to organize what Foreign Policy called the "largest ever coordinated global rally of any kind" on any issue -- 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, 2,000 of them in the U.S.A.

People were rallying not just about climate change, but around a remarkably wonky scientific data point, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which NASA's James Hansen and his colleagues have demonstrated is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." Which, come to think of it, we do. And the "we," in this case, was not rich white folks. If you look at the 25,000 pictures in our Flickr account, you'll see that most of them were poor, black, brown, Asian, and young -- because that's what most of the world is. No need for vice-presidents of big conservation groups to patronize them: shrimpers in Louisiana and women in burqas and priests in Orthodox churches and slumdwellers in Mombasa turned out to be completely capable of understanding the threat to the future.

Those demonstrations were just a start (one we should have made long ago). We're following up in October -- on 10-10-10 -- with a Global Work Party. All around the country and the world people will be putting up solar panels and digging community gardens and laying out bike paths. Not because we can stop climate change one bike path at a time, but because we need to make a sharp political point to our leaders: we're getting to work, what about you?

We need to shame them, starting now. And we need everyone working together. This movement is starting to emerge on many fronts. In September, for instance, opponents of mountaintop removal are converging on DC to demand an end to the coal trade. That same month, Tim DeChristopher goes on trial in Salt Lake City for monkey-wrenching oil and gas auctions by submitting phony bids. (Naomi Klein and Terry Tempest Williams have called for folks to gather at the courthouse.)

The big environmental groups are starting to wake up, too. The Sierra Club has a dynamic new leader, Mike Brune, who's working hard with stalwarts like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. (Note to enviro groups: working together is fun and useful). Churches are getting involved, as well as mosques and synagogues. Kids are leading the fight, all over the world -- they have to live on this planet for another 70 years or so, and they have every right to be pissed off.

But no one will come out to fight for watered down and weak legislation. That's not how it works. You don't get a movement unless you take the other two steps I've described.

And in any event it won't work overnight. We're not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn't been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in… never. We may need to get arrested. We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger.

Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we've got. It's not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we're going to have to raise our voices.

Bill McKibben is founder of 350.org and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Earlier this year the Boston Globe called him "probably the country's leading environmentalist" and Time described him as "the planet's best green journalist." He's a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.

We need to be willing to sacrifice and do our part now so others may live. And so that we may live well in the garden of life God gave us. Let start today!

7 Scriptural Keystones for Care of the Creation -- Happy 40th Earth Day!

Forty years ago was the first Earth Day, when members of developed countries gathered to act in concern about the pollution and litter in their midst. We met, changed our ways and our laws, and triumphed over these challenges to some extent, thinking we finished the job. But we didn’t recreate ourselves from the inside out, from roots of faith and inner values, and we didn’t engage all of the world as partners or act as concerned for developing countries as for ourselves.

Ecology is the study and art of communities (natural communities that include people), built on the premises of strength through diversity in a connected whole, complementarity and solidarity, where all participants are needed, and everyone has a niche of contribution, no matter what species or how rich or poor or marginalized, no matter a person’s sex or religion. It's a concept that demands that everyone feel connected, able to participate and change for the common good, and through this everyone benefits, not just from the harmony of a healthier planet, but from the spiritual growth that the changes will generate from a renewed connection to each other, our God and the natural world -- God’s first gift to humans, every day renewed and renewing.


Here is a (copyrighted) chapter excerpt from my upcoming book: GREEN HOPE: John Paul II's Ecological Action Plan for Humanity's Spiritual and Physical Survival that explains the Biblical basis for Creation Care:

God also said, "I give you all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth, and every tree bearing fruit which yields seed; they shall be yours for food. All green plants I give for food to the wild animals, to all the birds of heaven and to all reptiles on earth, every living creature." So it was; and God saw all that he had made, and it was very good."
Genesis 1:29-31


In the book of Genesis, where we find God’s first self-revelation to humanity, there is a recurring refrain: “And God saw that it was good”. . . . God entrusted the whole of creation to the man and woman, and only then as we read – could He rest “from all his work.”

The Seven Scriptural Keystones of the Christian Ecological Vision

To understand a Christian moral and spiritual perspective on ecology, one needs to understand the Scriptural base upon which it is built. Pope John Paul II claimed that every human being has an inherent “ecological vocation,” by nature proclaimed in Genesis, where the Creator made humans out of the mud and then gave them “dominion” to care for creation for God (Dominus—the LORD), knowing it is all “good”, caring for the garden of creation with God’s value's, not ours.

However, over the centuries in the West, with the integration of Greco-Roman Platonic thought, the “good” became associated with ideals that do not exist in nature, a climbing of a ladder away from creation. Later the scientific revolution added the belief that all mysteries can be solved rationally by humans. Eventually the concept of capitalism and the “self-made man” evolved, and through the Industrial Revolution, business became disassociated with morality and work separate from a vocation or calling, becoming in the general populace only a mode to accumulate wealth. “Dominion” diminished into “domination” – humans creating their own values for their own reasons and living by them, “subduing” the world to fit their thought and use patterns rather than those of the earth or of the Creator. Dominion has meanings of God-given authority, but also of husbandry and loving care. It implies both the power to do something as well as the mandate to do it as God wishes it.

Pope John Paul (as well as Pope Paul VI and Pope Benedict and many prominent Protestant Christian leaders and religious leaders from other faiths) called the citizens of the planet to remember their original nature as a creature and fellow resident on the planet and seek out “an ecological conversion” and the common good of all in the garden:

A radical cultural change is necessary: there must be a "conversion" from the indiscriminate exploitation of its resources to a responsible stewardship of the goods that God gives us in creation. Angelus, November 10, 2002
But how can we do this? John Paul II turned to Judeo-Christian Scripture for guidance.

I. Responsible Dominion -- The Message from Genesis: To Act for God in God’s Image

The book of Genesis describes how God created the earth and let it bring forth vegetation and all kinds of animals. God then gave humans “dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, and the cattle, and over all the wild animals and all the creatures that crawl on the ground” (Gn1: 26, 28).

Pope John Paul II often referred to dominion because in Judeo-Christian Scripture, it is humans’ first God-given responsibility -– to care for what God has created. JPII saw pollution, resource degradation, species extinction, poverty, materialism, abortion, euthanasia, and war all as a sinful use of dominion. “If an irresponsible culture of ‘dominion’ has been advanced with regard to natural resources, especially under the pressure of industrialization, with results in devastating ecological consequences, this certainly does not correspond to God's plan. (Address to honor to JUBILEE OF THE AGRICULTURAL WORLD, Vatican, November 11, 2000).

“The task,” he wrote in the encyclical SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS “is ‘to have dominion’ over the other created beings . . . This is to be accomplished within the framework of obedience to the divine law and therefore with the respect for the image received. . . When man disobeys God and refuses to submit to his rule, nature rebels against him and no longer recognizes him as its ‘master’ for he has tarnished the divine image in himself.”

Thus, the famous words of dominion in Genesis entrust the earth to man's use, not abuse. “They do not make man the absolute arbiter of the earth's governance, but the Creator's ‘co-worker’: a stupendous mission, but one also marked by precise boundaries that can never be transgressed with impunity” (Address to honor to Jubilee of the Agricultural World, Vatican, November 11, 2000).
John Paul explained further:
As the Genesis account says, [the human] is placed in the garden with the duty of cultivating and watching over it, being superior to the others placed by God under his dominion. But at the same time, man must remain subject to the will of God, who imposes limits upon his use and dominion over things (Gen. 2-16-17), just as he promises his mortality (Gen. 2:9; Wis. 2:23).
On the basis of this teaching, development cannot consist only in the use, dominion over, and indiscriminate possession of created things and the product of human industry, but rather in subordinating the possession, dominion, and use to man’s divine likeness and to his vocation to immortality.
Encyclical SOLLICITUDO REI SOCIALIS, December 30, 1987


In many ways, this is a mind-blowing concept -- that a Creator, mysterious and powerful enough to form an entire universe with millions of planets and stars, would put the lives of all life on a planet in the hands of one of the species of its creatures. Yet that is the case, both as a physical reality and a Scriptural one.
There is a growing threat to the environment of humanity, to vegetation, animals, water, and air. Sacred Scripture hands on the image of Cain who rejected his responsibility: “Am I my brother’s keeper?”

The Bible shows the human person as his brother's keeper and the guardian of creation that as been entrusted to him.
Address: Representatives of Science, Art and Journalism, Salzburg, Austria, June 26, 1988

The caretaker image was a favorite for John Paul II:
Man often seems to see no other meaning in his natural environment than what serves for immediate use and consumption. Yet it was the Creator's will that man should communicate with nature as an intelligent and noble “master” and "guardian", and not as a heedless "exploiter" and "destroyer".... Encyclical, Redemptor Hominis, 1979
“Created in the image of God, humanity has the right to make use of other created realities but not to lord over nature, still less to ruin it. People are called to become God’s co-workers in caring for creation. Angelus, March 24, 1996

Far from being a burden, though, John Paul saw these obligations of keeper and guardian as the human vocation based on joy and love:
In such a Christ-centered light, Psalm 8 reveals … its hope, inviting us to exercise our sovereignty over creation not through domination but through love.
General Audience Meditation on Psalm 8 on Humankind's Proper Sovereignty Over Creation. July 6, 2002

Below is a further sampling of John Paul II’s voluminous teachings on this historically dodgy concept, often mistranslated and misinterpreted -- dominion:

We are dealing here with that which found expression in the Creator’s first message to man at the moment he was giving him the earth to ‘subdue’ it . … [which was] his call to share in the kingly function -- the munus regale -- of Christ himself. The essential meaning of this ‘kingship’ and ‘dominion’ of humankind over the visible world . . . consists in the priority of ethics over technology, in the primacy of the person over things, and in the superiority of spirit over matter. . . . Encyclical Letter REDEMPTOR HOMINIS, March 4, 1979

It is the duty of Christians and of all who look to God as the Creator to protect the environment by restoring a sense of reverence for the whole of God’s creation. It is the Creator’s will that man should treat nature not as a ruthless exploiter but as an intelligent and responsible administrator.
Post Synod Apostolic Exhortation “Ecclesia in Asia, 1998

As one called to till and look after the garden of the world (cf. Gen 2:15), man has a specific responsibility towards the environment in which he lives, towards the creation which God has put at the service of his personal dignity, of his life, not only for the present but also for future generations….
The task of accepting and serving life involves everyone; and this task must be fulfilled above all towards life when it is at its weakest.
Encyclical Evangelium Vitae, 1995

For the Christian, there is a moral commitment to care for the earth so that it may produce fruit and become a dwelling of the universal human family.
-Homily in Val Visdene, Italy, on the Feast Day of St. John Gualbert, Patron of Foresters, 1990

II. Creation Is Based in Diversity and Interdependence

Throughout the Bible, there is an emphasis on the importance of the many different members, with different roles, to make the whole. Genesis takes great time in describing the parts of the cosmos and types of species created each day, and after each day’s work, God looks in a self satisfied way and sees that “it is good.” Pope John Paul II emphasizes the ecological truths inherit in this: “By the very circumstance of their having been created, all things are endowed with their own stability, truth, goodness, proper laws and order. Man must respect these as he isolates them by the appropriate methods of the individual sciences or arts” (Pope Paul VI, GUADIUM ET SPES: Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, December 7, 1965)

However happy God is with the order of the cosmos in the start of Genesis, God is definitely not happy with the disorder his human guardians soon create, living according to their own rules and sewing seeds of disharmony and destruction. So God sends the flood over the earth to sweep it clean except for the righteous Noah and his family. But protecting Noah was not enough. God made a point to command Noah to build an ark and preserve the earth’s diversity, so after the flood the earth could be repopulated. All goes as God stated, and when the waters eventually recede, Noah offers his thanks:
Then Noah built an altar to the LORD, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And when the LORD smelled the pleasing odor, the LORD said in his heart: “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind, for the inclination of the human heart is evil from youth; nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done. As long as the earth endures, seedtimes and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease…”.

The LORD proceeds then to do a most extraordinary thing (from a human perspective) to pledge a covenant not only with the humans but with every species on the planet:
…”As for me I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animals of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark… This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creative that is with you, for all future generations. I have set my bow in the cloueds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth.”

To emphasize the point, lest humans not attend to this sacred contract, the LORD repeats the covenant three times with humans and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. For this reason, John Paul II urged the world to protect the earth’s biodiversity. He called a meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences to explore issues involved in species loss and extinction and habitat destruction. He spoke out numerous times, begging the world to take this issue seriously, especially in terms of deforestation and consequent species loss:
Unfortunately the rate at which these forests are being destroyed or altered is depleting their biodiversity so quickly that many species may never be cataloged or studied for their possible value to human beings.
Is it possible, then, that the indiscriminate destruction of tropical forests is going to prevent future generations from benefiting from the riches of these ecosystems in Asia, Africa, and Latin America?... Should a lack of foresight continue to harm the dynamic processes of the earth, civilization, and human life itself? Address to Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Study Week on Tropical Forest and the Conservation of Species, May 18, 1990
Building on Genesis, John Paul II’s stated the basic spiritual ecological principle: “This implies that life must be handled with care, including animal life and all of animate and inanimate nature” (Address, Representatives of Science and Art, Vienna, Austria, September 13, 1983).. The pope also noted how many of the principles of creation reflection spiritual principles as well. In the New Testament, the necessity of the planetary physical diversity is echoed in the description of the integral spiritual diversity and interdependence of the communal parts, most clearly described in 1 Corinthians 12: 4-26:
Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good…All these are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individual just as the Spirit chooses.

For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though man, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit, we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free – and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. …If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, …But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.

In much the same way as the human body and spiritual community, the body of the planet is comprised of many varied members – myriads of species, many races and religions, countries of more development and less, individuals of different perspectives, backgrounds, and gifts, and male and female gender. Pope John Paul II put the same sentiment this way:
Destruction to any part of creation harms the whole. The ensemble of creatures constitutes the universe. In its totality, as well as its parts, the visible and invisible cosmos reflects eternal Wisdom and expresses the inexhaustible love of the Creator (General audience, March 12, 1986).

He also emphasized the principle of interdependence underlying all the diversity of life:

Today, the dramatic threat of ecological breakdown is teaching us the extent to which greed and selfishness -- both individual and collective -- are contrary to the order of creation, an order that is characterized by mutual interdependence. MESSAGE FOR THE WORLD DAY OF PEACE, JANUARY 1, 1990, PEACE WITH GOD THE CREATOR, PEACE WITH ALL OF CREATION

Pope John Paul II was noted that not only biological diversity should be respected, but cultural, religious, economic class, and individual diversity.
With daily renewed wonder, we note the variety of manifestations of human life, from the complementarity of male and female, to a multiplicity of distinctive gifts belonging to the different cultures and traditions that form a multifaceted and versatile linguistic, cultural and artistic cosmos. This multiplicity is called to form a cohesive whole, in the contact and dialog that will enrich and bring joy to all.
World Day of Prayer for Peace Address to representatives of World Religions, Assisi, Italy, January 24, 2002

However much we know and are commanded by the Bible to respect and preserve diversity, difference is never easy to live with it, Pope John Paul II knew this well, as he visited war-torn, ecologically devastated places around the planet. He meditated sorrowfully on this:
Unhappily, the world has yet to learn how to live with diversity, as recent events in the Balkans and Central Africa have painfully reminded us. The fact of "difference", and the reality of "the other", can sometimes be felt as a burden, or even as a threat. General Assembly of the United Nations in Honor of Its 50th Anniversary, New York, October 5, 1995

In 2001, Pope John Paul decried the costs to communities and the world of racism and the denigration of human dignity, and he said that we could more easily handle difference well if we fostered new attitudes, appreciating the opportunities and gifts in multiple perspectives, gifts, talents, and resources, as the Bible taught. Instead, we often fall into the sin of racism and religious wars:
“Every upright conscience cannot but decisively condemn any racism, no matter in what heart or place it is found. Unfortunately it emerges in ever new and unexpected ways, offending and degrading the human family. Racism is a sin that constitutes a serious sin against God… ‘We cannot truly pray to God the Father of all if we treat any people in other than brotherly fashion, for all men are created in the images of God.’” [emphasis is pope’s own, Angelus, Sunday August 26, 2001]

So he called for an end to racism and the establishment of habits of dialog, tolerance, and understanding, and a sense of the universal values and Creator that are shared by all. After 9/11, he invited religious leaders of all faiths to join him in a peace conference at Assisi, Italy. He also remind countries and individuals with more wealth, education, and technology that they must respect those without access to these tools and see that they have wisdom and creativity to bring to situations based on hard won experience, ingenuity, and practicality. This, too, is part of the Biblical call of diversity and interdependence:
It is important to acknowledge that persons living in poverty must be considered as participating subjects. Individuals and peoples are not tools but protagonists of their future and agents of their own development. In their specific economic and political circumstances, they are to exercise the creativity that is characteristic of the human person and on which the wealth of a nation is dependent. Sustainable development is aimed at inclusion. It can only be attained through responsible and equitable international cooperation, participation and partnership. (The Holy See’s address to 11th Session of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development., New York, May 2003 ---a follow-up meeting to the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development held in South Africa).


III. The Earth Belongs to God

Christians have long struggled with how to best approach land and property, since Jesus preached radically against accumulating riches and storing up goods on earth. Christian ownership, then, was a kind of oxymoron in the early church. According to Acts in the New Testament, believers sold all they owned to give to the community and those less fortunate.

So, in considering the question of ownership, John Paul II went back to the beginning. How did people get land in the first place and for what intents did God present it? John Paul II wrote: “Without doubt, the most important value at stake when we look at the earth and at those who work is the principle that brings the earth back to her Creator: The earth belongs to God! It must therefore be treated according to his law.” (Jubilee of the Agricultural World Address, Vatican, November 11, 2000).

John Paul II also noted how each element of nature is beloved by God and given to humans as a sign of love. “In a territory where drought is common, as it is in the East, the first sign of divine love is the rain that makes the earth fertile. In this way, the Creator prepares food for the animals. Indeed, he even troubles to feed the tiniest of living creatures, like the young ravens that cry with hunger” (General Audience, Castel Gandolf, Italy, July 23, 2003).

In light of this, John Paul II reminds Christians, and humans in general, that according to Scripture they are aliens who have become tenants (Lev.25:23; Matthew 21: 33-43). God gave humanity the land as a gift, one to be shared by all and cared for through work, in dominion, for God’s purposes. One can see this theme in many writings, including these:

It was a common conviction, in fact, that to God alone, as Creator, belonged the . . . lordship over all Creation and over the earth in particular (cf. Lev 25:23). If, in his Providence, God had given the earth to humanity that meant that he had given it to everyone. Therefore, the riches of Creation were to be considered as a common good of the whole of humanity. Those who possessed these goods as personal property were really only stewards, ministers charged with working in the name of God, who remains the sole owner in the full sense… Apostolic Letter Tertio Millenium, November 10, 1994

The goods of this world are originally meant for all. The right to private property is valid and necessary, but it does not nullify the value of this principle. Private property, in fact, is under a 'social mortgage', which means that it has an intrinsically social function. Encyclical Solicitudo Rei Socialis , 1988


John Paul II looked at extreme poverty, where people are born without access to clean water, air, and a chance to make a living as a moral aberration of creation’s intents. The fruits of God’s lands and oceans, which were meant to feed all, were being mismanaged so that the few had too much and many had too little, a fate that was not destined, but chosen:

Every person, every people, has the right to live off the fruits of the earth. At the beginning of the new millennium, it is an intolerable scandal that so many people are still reduced to hunger and live in conditions unworthy of humans.
We can no longer limit ourselves to academic reflections: we must rid humanity of this disgrace through appropriate political and economic decisions with a global scope.
JUBILEE OF THE AGRICULTURAL WORLD ADDRESS, Vatican, November 11, 2000

It is thus painful to note how many millions of people are excluded from the table of creation. For those people and for all the dispossessed of the world, we must work hard and without delay so that they can occupy their proper place at the table of creation. -Lenten Message, 1992

VI. Work as an Act of Daily Dominion

Dominion and God’s ownership of the land were not just vague philosophical concepts for John Paul II. They had daily pertinence because they were at the core of who humans are and what they are created to be. Work, he pointed out, is how humans act out their dominion of God’s earth.

The opening page of the Bible presents God as a kind of exemplar of everyone who produces a work: the human craftsman mirrors the image of God as Creator. This relationship is particularly clear in the Polish language because of the lexical link between the words stwórca (creator) and twórca (craftsman). . . .
God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman's task. Through his “artistic creativity” man appears more than ever “in the image of God”, and he accomplishes this task above all in shaping the wondrous “material” of his own humanity and then exercising creative dominion over the universe which surrounds him. With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of his own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in his creative power. JPII, LETTER TO ARTISTS, 1999

Work is an inherently ecological principle, because all work must adhere to God’s mission of caretaking. Work must be ethical and help cultivate and restore the wholeness of the human community and the garden of earth and heaven.
“This description of creation, which we find in the very first chapter of the Book of Genesis, is also in a sense the first "gospel of work". For it shows what the dignity of work consists of: it teaches that man ought to imitate God, his Creator, in working, because man alone has the unique characteristic of likeness to God. …” JPII, Encyclical LABOREM EXERCENS; September 14, 1981

John Paul taught that people in all professions can do creative and manual acts to make a living and in small ways contribute to this work of restoration.
Awareness that man's work is a participation in God's activity ought to permeate . . . even the most ordinary everyday activities.
For, while providing the substance of life for themselves and their families, men and women are performing their activities in a way which appropriately benefits society. They can justly consider that by their labor they are unfolding the Creator's work, consulting the advantages of their brothers and sisters, and contributing by their personal industry to the realization in history of the divine plan. Encyclical LABOREM EXERCENS; September 14, 1981

St. Benedict and other Christians explained work as dominion this way: Laborare est orare – work is prayer. Work is meant to be an act of service to God, to others, to oneself, and to the larger community. Work that is unethical, selfish, petty, for mere profit, or that destroys the earth as home is an improper use of dominion.

In the best-selling memoir Father Joe, the Benedictan monk explains: “Laborare est orare doesn’t mean we actually mumble prayers while we work, does it? You’d drive the other chaps barmy. The work itself is prayer. Work done as well as possible. Work done for others first and yourself second. Work you are thankful for. Work you enjoy, that uplifts you. Work that celebrates existence, whether it’s growing grain in the fields or using God-given skills… All is prayer that binds us together and therefore to God.” All work that selfishly undercuts the common good or makes others less well off or destroys the gift of creation is a breaking of the trust of dominion.

These concepts are explored in John Paul II’s Encyclical LABOREM EXERCENS; (on Human Work): “The most profound motive for our work is this knowing that we share in creation. Learning the meaning of creation in our daily lives will help us to live holier lives. It will fill the world with the spirit of Christ, the spirit of justice, charity, and peace.”

All good work done, unselfishly, helps to heal the earth and restore the original garden. In this way, the Holy Spirit works through daily life to infuse the earth with continual re-creation, with humans as part of the process:
All work is collaboration with God to perfect the nature he created, and it is a service to others. It is necessary, therefore, to work with love and out of love!
JPII, Address to Christian workers, December 9, 1978

Every genuine inspiration, however, contains some tremor of that “breath” with which the Creator Spirit suffused the work of creation from the very beginning. Overseeing the mysterious laws governing the universe, the divine breath of the Creator Spirit reaches out to human genius and stirs its creative power. He touches it with a kind of inner illumination that brings together the sense of the good and the beautiful, and he awakens energies of mind and heart which enable it to conceive an idea and give it form in a work of art.
It is right then to speak, even if only analogically, of “moments of grace”, because the human being is able to experience in some way the Absolute who is utterly beyond. JPII, LETTER TO ARTISTS, 1999

With this in mind, all humans are not only helping to create the world each day, but also, themselves.

Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life . . . they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece. LETTER TO ARTISTS 1999



V. Rest For Proper Dominion

Intimately related to work as part of dominion and guardianship of the earth is rest -- the physical element necessary for regeneration as well as for spiritual and ecological health. Rest was decreed by God both by example (Gen 2:3) and by command, over and over again (Ex 20:8-11; 32:12-17;34:21;35:2-3;Lev. 23:3; 25:2-7; 26:34-35; 26:43, etc.).
We find this truth [about work] at the very beginning of Sacred Scripture, in the Book of Genesis, where the creation activity itself is presented in the form of "work" done by God during ‘six days’, ‘resting’ on the seventh day. . . . Humans ought to imitate God both in working and also in resting, since God himself wished to present his own creative activity under the form of work and rest. JPII, Encyclical LABOREN EXERCEN: September 14, 1981


This concept of rest was so important in Scripture that every seventh year was mandated as one of rest for the land as well as for the people and animals. Every fiftieth year was a Jubilee Year. During the Jubilee, God’s directed the people to return the land to its earliest caretaker, to remind people that they are merely tenants –- and that God is the only real, unending owner (Lev. 25:1-7). Sacrifices and tithing were then a kind of “rent,” or a gift of gratitude paid to God for the earthly gifts bestowed. The themes of rest and God’s ownership of the earth wind from the Old Testament through to the New Testamant, as seen in Hebrews (11:1-11).

This is precisely why it [Sabbath] is also the day of rest. Speaking vividly as it does of "renewal" and "detachment", the interruption of the often oppressive rhythm of work expresses the dependence of man and the cosmos upon God. Everything belongs to God! The Lord's Day returns again and again to declare this principle within the weekly reckoning of time. …It recalls that the universe and history belong to God; and without a constant awareness of this truth, man cannot serve in the world as co-worker of the Creator. Apostolic Letter, Deis Domini, on the significance of Sunday, Vatican, May 31, 1998

John Paul II explained that through rest, especially in meditation with God, humans become physically and spiritually re-created and refreshed, and the earth is made fertile once more. For this reason, the third of the Ten Commandments is focused on setting aside one day out of seven, not just for worship and prayer, but to restrain oneself from daily worries and tasks.

Through Sunday rest, daily concerns and tasks can find their proper perspective: the material things about which we worry give way to spiritual values; in a moment of encounter and less pressured exchange, we see the true face of the people with whom we live.
Even the beauties of nature — too often marred by the desire to exploit, which turns against man himself — can be rediscovered and enjoyed to the full. . . . Sunday becomes a moment when people can look anew upon the wonders of nature, allowing themselves to be caught up in that marvelous and mysterious harmony. Apostolic Letter, Deis Domini, on the significance of Sunday, Vatican, May 31, 1998

This commandment of rest is often dismissed as “outdated” in the United States and increasingly in other countries. But not without consequences.
This neglect of rest has great environmental repercussions. Consider the great expenditures in terms of energy and consumption resulting for nearly round the clock production and “on” time. Besides this cost in natural resources, the pope noted that rising levels of stress, exhaustion, apathy, and cynicism demonstrate that humans neglect the commandment to rest at their own risk. And in neglecting rest, people miss its promise, its gift. Rest has the power to re-create and renew relationships, bodies, and the earth itself.

This very goal [of rediscovering our fraternity with the earth] was foreshadowed by the Old Testament in the Hebrew Jubilee, when the earth rested and man gathered what the land spontaneously offered (Lev 25:11-12). If nature is not violated and humiliated, it returns to being the sister of humanity. General Audience, ZENIT Translation, January 26, 2000



VI. Presence of Christ in Creation and Necessity of Contemplation

Genesis laid down the law of environmental responsibility but the New Testament illuminated the essential reasons for it. “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through Him and without Him, nothing came to be”(John 1:1-3)..
Christ showed the way to a new relationship with God by being the link between humanity and creation and God.

In Christ, we experience anew that original harmony that existed between Creator, creation, and humanity before people succumbed to the effects of sin. In Christ, man re-reads his original call to subdue the earth, which is the continuation of God's work of creation rather than the unbridled exploitation of creation. Liturgy of the Word celebrated in Zamosc, Poland on June 12, 1999

Jesus used metaphors from the earth to describe God’s loving relationships with his people and He showed way the way to seeing God’s love in nature’s blessings.
It is clear from the Gospel that Jesus also lived in close contact with nature. His teaching is filled with references to nature and human life. He spoke of the shepherd and his flock, the net cast into the sea, the mustard seed, the lilies of the field and so on. He even described his own mission in the world as that of "the Good Shepherd", and he compared his preaching to the work of a farmer going out to sow his seed. Representatives of Rural Australia, Melbourne November 30, 1986

Jesus teaches us to see the Father’s hand in the beauty of the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, the starry night, fields ripe for the harvest… If you look at the world with a pure heart, you too will see the face of God (Matthew 5:8) because it reveals the mystery of the Father’s provident love. JPII, World Youth Day; Homily, Denver, 1993

Pope John Paul II, like many saints of the early church, also witnessed to the truth of Christ’s presence in creation: “Even matter with its energy, life, and light bears the imprint of the Word of God –- ‘his beloved Son’ (Col 1: 13). The revelation of the New Testament casts new light on the words . . . ‘from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator’ (Wis. 13: 5)”(General audience, May 5, 2004).

Because of Christ’s example and His presence in creation, Pope John Paul II declared, Christians have ongoing, integral reasons to care for it. The pope observed: While on the one hand, Christ is superior to created realities, on the other hand, He is involved in their creation. …He can be seen by us as an ‘image of the invisible God’, brought close to us through the act of creation” (General Audience, November 24, 2004).

If Christ is in creation, then to draw nearer to Him, one would want to contemplate nature. By being attentive to nature and part of it, Christians can feel His presence, see His Light, hear His voice which leads them to the Creator, source of all life. Pope John Paul II explained:

Everything has its origin and receives its strength from the Most High Creator. In contact with creation, a person can better understand the eternal values upon which life is built. These are, among others, values of beauty and truth, of simplicity and love, of fidelity and solidarity. JPII, The Franciscan Environmental Prize, awarded to Costa Rica, 1991

Within the movement of nature, tranquil and silent but rich in life, there continues to palpitate the original delight of the Creator. Vatican, November 17, 2000

Like many religious leaders and early Christian saints, Pope John Paul II was passionate that nature is an inspiring book of revelation from God, and that it has to be respected and contemplated. “Along with the revelation specifically contained in Sacred Scripture, there is a divine manifestation in the shining sun and in the nightfall. In a certain sense, nature is also ‘God's book’" (General Audience Address, August 2, 2000).

Anyway, for those who have attentive ears and open eyes, creation is like a first revelation that has its own eloquent language: it is almost another sacred book whose letters are represented by the multitude of created things present in the universe. … St Athanasius says: "The firmament with its magnificence, its beauty, its order, is an admirable preacher of its Maker, whose eloquence fills the universe". General Audience, January 30, 2002

“Nature therefore becomes a Gospel that speaks to us of God: 'For from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator' (Wis 13:5). Paul teaches us that 'Ever since the creation of the world his (God's) eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made' (Rom 1:20). But this capacity for contemplation and knowledge, this discovery of a transcendent presence in creation, must also lead us also to rediscover our fraternity with the earth, to which we have been linked since creation (cf Gen 2:7) (General Audience, ZENIT Translation, January 26, 2000

Nature is also given to us to be admired and contemplated, like a great mirror of the world. It reflects the Creator’s covenant with his creature.
Apostolic Letter Amici Dilecti, 1985


JPII urged all people, but especially youth, to engage with nature through sports and leisure, but to go beyond that. While at rest in a natural setting, people may observe the natural order at work, catching a glimpse of God’s loving embrace, power, and beauty. “Reason can know God through the book of nature -- a personal God who is infinitely good, wise, powerful, and eternal, who transcends the world and, at the same time, is present in the depths of his creatures. . . .”(JPII, World Youth Day; Homily, Denver, 1993).

If people open themselves to God, they can also speak to God more intimately. He observed: “Close to nature, one can speak confidentially to God.“ (Address at Mentorella, Italy, October 29, 1978)

It was to the mountains that John Paul would go most often, and he referred many times to how restorative they were for him and how the contemplation of nature lifted his thoughts to God:

I thank the Lord for giving me the opportunity to spend a time of rest again this year in this charming mountainous locality, which brings to mind the majestic presence of God. --Angelus Message, July 16, 2000

The beauty of nature, things and people, seen as they are, can be stunning. How can we not see in a mountain sunset, in the immensity of the ocean, or in the features of a face, something that both attracts us and invites us to want to know more about the reality in which we live? …

Even what lies outside the tangible world has its own deep beauty that impresses the spirit and gives rise to admiration. Think of the powerful spiritual attraction of an act of justice, a gesture of forgiveness, a sacrifice made with joy and generosity for a great ideal. 23rd Meeting for Friendship Among the Peoples, by his secretary, Rimini, Italy, 2002

More difficult perhaps, but no less profound, is the contemplation of the works of human ingenuity. Even cities can have a beauty all their own, one that ought to motivate people to care for their surroundings.
World Day of Peace Message, January 1, 1990

Never simplistic or cliché, Pope John Paul II also proclaimed that scientists and artists are by vocation contemplators of nature, and he called upon them to use their work to explore the meaning and order of God’s cosmic works, thus leading others to greater understanding, appreciation, and respect. By seeing God’s hand in all of creation, everyone can catch a glimpse of the beyond:

Whoever really wants to find himself, must learn to savor nature whose charm is intimately linked with the silence of contemplation. The rhythms of creation are so many paths of extraordinary beauty along which the sensitive and believing heart easily catches the echo of the mysterious, loftier beauty that is God Himself, the Creator, the source and life of all reality. JPII, Address in the Dolomites, 1991

VII. The Spiritual Value of Wilderness

In the midst of hectic daily life, it is often difficult for a person to withdraw enough in silence to really contemplate creation. From his boyhood on, Karol Józef Wojtyła withdrew when he could to the isolated wildernesses of Europe, often with a small group of friends, to hike, backpack, canoe, or kayak. He’d go for the day or for weeks. These times energized him, like water for a drought-parched plant. During the first years of priesthood, he’d bring along groups of students to introduce them, as he was first introduced by his father and parish priest, to the spiritual and physical joys of these experiences. Even when he was elderly and ill, he would visit secluded village chalets where he could be with the mountains without traveling too far.

In wild secluded places, he would practice living as simply as possible, leaving behind all the many accumulations of life, to survive with only what one could transport on one’s own powers. It cut life to its essence -- the perfect cure for consumerism, over-burdened schedules, media messages, noise, stress, and too little time for prayer, thought, reflection. Far from the comforts of civilization, he found a humility (as well as exertion, exhaustion, discomfort, perseverance, and joy) before the wonder, glories, and life-threatening power of the natural world. He envisioned times where people need to take these kind of wilderness sabbaticals from everyday lives for recreation and re-creation.

This idea of seeking God in a secluded natural spot was a common one in Scripture, and John Paul II followed the example of Jesus, the many Biblical prophets, and the early saints:
Before he began his public activity, Jesus, moved by the Holy Spirit, withdrew into the wilderness for 40 days.
JPII, HOMILY March 1, 1998

He {Jesus Christ] himself, in the decisive moments of his life, before doing something, used to withdraw to an isolated place to give himself to prayer and contemplation, and he asked the Apostles to do the same. JPII, Apostolic Letter Ecclesia in America, 1999

In today’s liturgy the figure of John the Baptist appears, the prophet sent to prepare the way for the Messiah. His voice cries out "in the wilderness" where he had withdrawn and where, as the Evangelist Luke says, "the word of God came to [him]" (Lk 3:2), making him the herald of the divine kingdom.
How can we fail to accept his powerful call to conversion, recollection and austerity at a time — like our own —ever more subject to dissipation, to inner fragmentation, to the cultivation of appearances? JPII, Angelus, December 7, 1997

In Scripture it says that one must tithe the land in ways like tithing other goods, with a portion being left for God, for sanctuary: “When you apportion the land into inheritances, you shall set apart a sacred tract of land for the Lord, twenty-five thousand cubits long and twenty thousand wide; its whole area shall be sacred” {Ezeikia 45: 1}. This Scriptural passage goes on to apportion this further for certain purposes, but the message is clear, that some land is set aside for God’s uses, for meditation and ‘the holies of holies”, for places for the priests to live, and for some common preserved lands as wild sanctuary. After coming through the wilderness, the concept that the land is God’s to apportion as God sees fit makes more sense. Humans are not in control. They are vulnerable and waiting, waiting to be told what to do, listening and wondering in awe, humility, and obedience:

Moses speaks to us of God who feeds his people on their journey through the wilderness to the Promised Land: "Remember all the way which the Lord your God has led you these forty years in the wilderness, that he might humble you, testing you to know what was in your heart . . . [he] fed you in the wilderness with manna which your fathers did not know, that he might humble you and test you, to do you good in the end" (Dt 8:2,16).

The image of a pilgrim people in the wilderness, which emerges from these words, speaks also to us who are approaching the end of the Second Millennium after Christ's birth. In this image, all the peoples and nations of the whole earth find a place, and especially those who suffer from hunger. JPII, 46th International Eucharist Conference homily Wroclaw, Poland, June 1, 1997

This wisdom of the wilderness is, of course, not limited to the Judeo-Christian tradition, but many cultures and religions throughout the world and history have recognized the connection between spiritual wisdom and this discipline of taking time and making vision quests by oneself in an isolated place in nature. “At first sight, the ‘wilderness’ evokes a feeling of solitude, bewilderment and fear ; the ‘wilderness’ however is also the providential place for meeting God” (Angelus, December 7, 1997).

He explained the importance of the wilderness, a place reserved from the sounds of human made machines: “The soul's ear must be free from sounds to hear this divine voice that resounds in the universe.” --General Audience Address, August 2, 2000. ZENIT Translation

Pope John Paul II understood intimately that the land belonged to God, and that it must be shared by all. But there is also a sense of the necessity to save some places, as noted in the Bible, for spiritual sanctuary, set aside for God and the common good, for the Spirit’s work to happen in all who visit. He did not speak much about tithing land for this, since so many people of the world struggle just to have a scrap of land on which to abide and feed themselves. In this, he taught by example.

Biblical Highlights of Creation Care

Judeo-Christian Scripture, from Genesis and the Garden of Eden on, emphasizes that what God made in creation is good (Genesis 1). Humans, made in God’s image, have been given the unique responsibility to act for God in this world -- to value as God values, to love as God loves, to care as God cares.

But because of disobedience, Adam and Eve were sent from the garden. Disorder came and people were at odds with nature. God then lovingly bound people and the animals into a covenant with the animals after the great flood, and placed the rainbow into the sky as a promise for all, linking the animals and people (Genesis 9: 8-17).

As the people survived and multiplied, they endured slavery and longed for their own lands. So God, through Moses, led them through the desert into the land of Canaan, flowing with milk and honey. But God reminded them that they do not own the land, that they are merely God’s tenants (Leviticus 25, Matt. 21:33-43).

If they don’t respect the earth, which was given in common to be shared, and if they don’t respect his command for Sabbath, to give the land and the animals and themselves periodic rest, the people shall be doomed to massive destruction (Leviticus 26, Hebrews 4:4-11).

Later, in the Christian testaments, Christ comes to renew and redeem Creation, to show people once more how to value as God values, live in ways that would bring back the harmony of the garden. Christ gives his followers examples of prayer, praying in places of solitude with nature – in the garden, by the seashore, in the wilderness, in the desert. And he reminds his followers of His Father’s great care for all of creation, especially for people (Matthew 6:26-29).

St. Paul reminds followers that Christ is in all creation (Colossians 1: 15-23) and the nearness of the end times is all the more reason to be vigilant with carrying out one’s duties before Christ (Hebrews 13:11-12).

Revelation reminds followers “hurt not the earth, neither the seas, nor the trees,” (7:3) and that those who destroy the earth, God will destroy (11:18).


A Christian Creation Ethic -- The Tipping Point?

The Dynamic Human Tipping Factor

What if just 10% of the world’s practicing Catholics and perhaps even those who have left the Church decided to take John Paul II’s counsel seriously, joining in solidarity with others already at work on these issues, pushing these questions to the forefront in every parish and community in which they live? What if 10% of other Christians also heeded the call, acknowledging the synergism of the pope’s voice with Scripture and their own leaders in creation care? What if 10% of leaders of all faiths and spiritual callings overcame the divisive aspects of inter-religious condemnation within their communities to seek out universal spiritual and ecological partnerships in the shared value of the earth itself? What if just a small percentage of everyday people around the world picked up John Paul II’s plan simply because the concept intrigued them and they started debating its principles and applying a few at a time? What if book clubs considered in lively and sometimes hot conversations the questions of whether or not every person does have an ecological vocation and if so, what does that really mean? What if environmental groups looked the plan over and asked themselves, are we going deep enough? Are we seeing all the connections? Are we supporting all the life issues and efforts?

And what if 10% of people around the globe of no faith affiliation or prior environmental concern but who share the values of the common good stepped up to join in the dialog to create a culture that embraces ecological ethics? The conservationist Aldo Leopold once defined ethics as “a kind of community-instinct-in-the-making,” and he posited ethical criteria for the ecological conscience: “A thing is right only when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the community, and the community includes the soil waters, fauna, and flora, as well as people. [A thing] is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

John Paul II talked often about the essential divine-infused beauty and integrity of the natural world and order of creation that needs to be observed and respected. Would he have substituted “creation” for “community” in his creation ethic – or would community have served him as well? What a great starting point for a discussion: could this land ethic of Leopold and the seven keystones of a Christian ecological vision explained in the next section form a starting point for discussions around definitions of Christian ecological virtue and vice – A Christian earth/creation ethic? What if all faiths crafted an earth ethic of their own or used the Earth Charter or Charter of Compassion as their guiding principles? What if just 10% of international leaders invited faith leaders and ethics experts into world councils to develop a grammar of shared moral terms, as John Paul II advocated, to facilitate deeper global discussions of interconnected underlying moral ecological issues?

Imagine the momentum. Think of how self-perpetuating, grooved paradigms would bust apart and be tossed out like 45 rpm records. After John Paul II’s death, Johan Vilhelm Eltvik, a Lutheran minister serving as the Secretary General of the European YMCA, described John Paul II’s part in the fall of communism in Europe:
Sometimes the good Lord above blesses us with leadership bigger than we deserve. . . The spiritual authority of John Paul II was joined by people like Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel -- just to mention a few -- and they became stronger than any other authority, physical or ideological, and like the old walls in Jericho, the Berlin wall came tumbling down and our continent changed dramatically…[15]

This could happen again, only this time it could be the great greenhouse wall of indifference and moral confusion that would come tumbling down. The new outlooks would be lively and surprising, revitalizing economies around the world with dynamic new technologies, products, approaches, goals, and sustainable patterns. That says nothing of what we could do to reduce terrorism, loss of diversity, and war while improving our mental and physical health and the quality of life and relationships. No doubt John Paul would say to us, as he said to a gathering of youth in 1988: “I hope that your discussions will bring about concrete ideas for the spread of an ecological culture. May the earth flourish again as a garden for all.”{Address: National Congress of Young Proprietor Farmers, Chosen Theme: Youth, Agriculture, Territory, Environment, January 9, 1988}

John Paul II designated as the patron saint of ecology St. Francis of Assisi -- a man admired beyond any religious boundaries because he lived simply and joyfully, viewing all elements of the cosmos as his brothers and sisters, from the sun and the moon, to the wolf and the sparrow, to the wildflowers of the fields and every poor person he met:
It is my hope that the inspiration of Saint Francis will help us to keep ever alive a sense of "fraternity" with all those good and beautiful things that Almighty God has created. And may he remind us of our serious obligation to respect and watch over them with care, in light of that greater and higher fraternity that exists within the human family. World Day of Peace Message 1990, Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All Creation.