Back to the thread started a few weeks ago. Today – what we have failed to do regarding the environment.
Those words ‘what I have failed to do’ still resonate in me. We tend to be do-ers which is interesting when reflecting on the environment and sins of omission. It is our doing that has damaged the environment so that falls into the ‘for what I have done’ part of the confiteor but it is our lack of action to fix things that I focus on today.
We make choices every day. These choices direct the production of items that we purchase. Do we choose throw-away for its convenience over the more environmentally-friendly option? How difficult is it really to bring a drink bottle from home and refill it?
We have failed to appreciate. How often do you get out in nature and take the time to appreciate it’s infinite beauty? In the words of Wordsworth, ‘I gazed and gazed but little thought the wealth the show to me had brought’. We are not looking or seeing, we are navigating our bodies through the physical – when we need to nurture our souls through the transcendent, actively looking for those moments, those breaths of something so much more than oxygen.
How often do you think about the ground on which you walk and feel grateful for all it provides? We profess a cultural awareness of our First Nations People but why then do we not let some of their perspectives shape our relationship to this environment that we share? We have focused on owning but Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples feel the land owns them not the reverse. These are polar opposite views – so how do we allow our own lens to be coloured with a more humble sense of place?
The earth is infinitely connected to our humanity. We co-exist. But more than this in Genesis we read that God made humans from dust of the earth and breathed his spirit into them. On Ash Wednesday (if we go old-school) we hear ‘remember you are dust unto dust you shall return’. Our nourishment spawns from the earth, our drinking water flows upon it. Yet we see earth as humble. If we consider the word humility it actually means to be made low to the ground. The closer to the earth the more humble. Think of when people used to bow before a ruler, the lower the bow the more humble. We should by nature be humble, if we do indeed stem from the humble earth, are sustained by the humble earth and eventually return to the humble earth and our bodies become one with it. We have failed to act as though we are humble. We waltz through the warm days with our purchasing power and blinkers blinding us to the wasteland we created.
We have failed to change our lifestyles, our mindsets and our consumption rates. If we keep failing to act, failing to challenge those in power to act, failing to choose sustainability over convenience perhaps some of the dystopian films will prove prophetic.
The Female Theologian 