I’ve posted on the whole Circle of Life being broken and now the Washington Post (thanks to A Thinking Reed) is talking about the same thing. It’s more than just global warming or just extinction or just melting ice. It’s the feedback loop involving them all and how that loop is “breaking up, it’s breaking up” like Steve Austin’s plane.
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That’s the hakuna mattata way of thinking. No worries because God’s gonna save our asses before things get real bad. So all these environmental, racial, terrorism, educational, political, &c. issues are God’s problem, not ours. He’ll clean them all up before his 1000 year reign and he’ll have 7 long years to do it — piece of cake for the great omnipotent one.
Ah, t’would be easier, t’wouldn’t it!
But back on the sane planet Earth, I’m watching a show about the biggest science discoveries of 2007 and one of them was that we lost an amount of ice in the Arctic equal in surface area to half of the U.S.A.! They didn’t expect that amount of loss for another 30 years but it happened this year! Talk about ahead of schedule.
So, I’m watching this show and imagining cities under domes to protect them from the poisonous atmosphere and scorching temperatures; and cave dwelling, marauding hordes of starving, bear-skin-wearing pirates; and underground cities where the temperature is cool enough to sustain life but it’s completely dark so the people mutate into walking, talking mole-people. And I’m imagining all this happening in the next 20 years or so because it’s getting serious out there, folks. It’s all rather depressing.
Then I ran across “On Hopelessness” at Sacred Awe. Fitting title, I thought, for my mood. One of the excellent points made in this meditation is that of “committed action, non-attachment to outcome.” This comes from Buddhism but I think it can be equally stated as “love your neighbor as yourself, do not worry about tomorrow.” You know, maybe it’s because I grew up with the “Christian version” and I heard the words so often that I became almost numb to them, but a simple rephrasing in different words makes the difficulty in carrying it out much more clear. Non-attachment to outcome: it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game. Non-attachment to outcome: don’t lie awake at night worrying about all the changes that are raining into your life like fire and brimstone, just do what you have to do right now. Non-attachment to outcome: don’t worry about being annihilated but don’t expect God to save your ass, either.
Something else from the mediation was part of a poem by Patricia Lay-Dorsay:
But it’s OK if sometimes we’re out of balance because the Universe goes on whether we’re along for the ride or not. Nothing humanity can do will disrupt the perfect balance of the Universe. We are not that powerful. Even though our choices can throw certain elements like climate species survival land and water ecology out of whack nothing we can do will throw off the beauty of the Universe itself.
I appreciate the motivation behind this poem but, honestly, my first reaction was: knowing the Universe will outlast our globally-warmed, nuclear-weapon-destroyed, raped-to-the-point-of-sterility little planet is not a whole lot of comfort. Maybe I just need to get out and look at the stars more often but I live in a city and it was snowing all day so there weren’t any to see. But maybe there is more here . . .
I’m not really sure it is relevant, but the first thing I thought of was the following from Alan Watts’ Myth and Religion where he is talking about the Hindu and Buddhist concept that “everybody is a manifestation of the divine, playing this game and that game. Your not knowing it, if you do not know it, is part of the game. It makes it all the more fun.” Watts says:
I would say to those among you who are the most ignorant, unspiritual, and stuffy, Congratulations! You are so lost in the game you do not even know where you stand, and are taking a gorgeous risk. Because of you we might even blow up the planet, and how close are we going to get with that one? In the same way as that car racer watches the speedometer needle going up, up, and up, there are people feeling more and more self-righteously determined that good shall prevail in the world, all the while watching that needle of world tension go up. It is getting hotter and hotter and hotter, and finally we may all go out in a blaze of glory. When the dust settles they will say, “That was quite a dream we have just woken up from. What shall we do next?”
Talk about non-attachment to outcome! But how do you get there??? That seems to be the question I’m asking a lot these days. I can see — off in the distance, across the chasm — an alternative viewpoint, one that seems like it will actually work for me (unlike Fundamental Christianity) but the bridge is out, my GPS is broken and it’s the longest, moonless night of the year. So, for now, I’m walking around in circles waiting for sunrise.
Sphere: Related ContentYes, arc, as in an incomplete circle. Can you tell The Lion King is now one of my daughter’s favorite movies?
Near the beginning of the movie, Mufasa explains life to Simba:
M: A King’s time as a ruler rises and falls like the sun. Everything you see exists together in a delicate balance. As King you need to understand that balance and respect all creatures, from the crawling ant to the leaping antelope.
S: But Dad, don’t we eat the antelope?
M: Yes, Simba, but let me explain. When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so, we are all connected in the great circle of life
And this is part of the whole environment/ecology problem: we humans do not see ourselves as part of the “circle of life.” We see ourselves as special, elite, superior to all of nature. So much so, that we don’t even let our bodies give back to the earth — the earth that we rape and pillage and from which we take so much. We bury our bodies in coffins that insulate our rotting remains from nature.
Sure, we are special among God’s creatures, but we are still creatures and all creation “declares the glory of God” so if we get recycled into grass, we would still declare the glory of God — probably more effectively than we did as a human being!
Is this some sort of bodily resurrection thingy — some idea that we are helping God out by keeping our remains all neat and tidy in one place where he can find them? I think that if it really were, we’d mummify ourselves. Wasn’t that the whole Egyptian idea — preserve the body for the next life? But when you think about it, is there really much of a difference whether we end up a pile of bones in a coffin or a pile of bones in the dirt? We are still a pile of bones.
We may have been the culmination of God’s creation, but we are still a creation, and in that respect, no different than the rocks, trees, ants, or antelope. We need to put ourselves back into the circle — mentally and physically — before it’s too late.
Sphere: Related ContentOver at The Fire and the Rose, D.W. Congdon has an excellent and provocative post. “What would Jesus drive? What would Jesus buy?” is the question. I fired off a comment that Jesus wouldn’t drive anything and a couple other people chimed in with agreement. But D.W. raised an excellent counter-point.
It seems to me that you (and other commentators thus far) are essentially saying that one cannot be a Christian in suburbia. And as much as I would like to say that Christians should not drive and should worship where they live, this is simply an impossibility on any kind of large scale.
. . .
But we live an hour away from the city, because of where I go to school. We have one car. I take the school shuttle so she can have the car. She drives an hour each way to her school. This is certainly not ideal, but it’s the best we can do. My wife, Amy, is working in the inner city, but in order to do this work, she needs a car to get there.
What would you say to her? Would you question whether she really needs a car? What do you have to say to the many Americans who actually do need cars to do things that are really worthwhile and need to be done?
The Christian ideal is to emulate Jesus. But the Jesus that is held up before us like the carrot on a stick is a first century Jesus. What are we supposed to do with that? Sure, the easy stuff is still easy — don’t kill, commit adultery, steal, blah, blah, blah. But Jesus doesn’t say anything about, for example, the environmental impact of our daily lives or the globalness of our culture and society. Sure the clothes we buy in WalMart that were made in China are cheaper for us. But what about the cost of transporting that shirt halfway around the world? Does that matter? Of course Jesus didn’t drive. He walked everywhere because his “parish” was small. (Or was his parish small because all he could do was walk?)
As D.W. asks, is it wrong to live in a place where you cannot commute to work by bus or bike or foot? If we all claim that Jesus would not drive, then what does that say about what we should be doing? There are people in the San Fransisco East Bay area who drive an hour or more each way to work. Some of them do this because they simply cannot afford to buy a house close to where they work. But what are they to do? There are not enough jobs in the area where they live.
The real question I’m asking is: “What would Jesus do … Today?” Answering what Jesus would have done 2000 years ago is a moot point. It doesn’t matter. The Old Testament Law is no longer “valid” for us today — we are not stoning homosexuals and adulterers. Things change. No matter how hard we try to keep things as they were, “as they were” was a change from what they were before that! Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek,” but what does that mean today? What does it mean to be meek today? Can you be both meek and a CEO, CFO, CIO, CTO, police officer, inner-city school teacher, politician, or mega-church pastor? I’ve posted on this before, but the early church sold all their property and gave to those in need. Why don’t we have to do this today if the early church is the gold standard? “Well, because things are different today,” you’ll no doubt say. “Exactly!” I’ll say. “Things are different but our Jesus hasn’t changed one iota. He’s still wearing sandals and walking everywhere with no money, home, car, savings account, IRA, or job.
How does this help me TODAY??
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