In his intro to his autobiography "Drama", John Lithgow relates a powerful moment he experienced while caring for his ailing father toward the end of his life. Following abdominal surgery his father became uncharacteristically quiet and depressed. He had enjoyed a vigorous life acting and directing Shakespeare on stages across the country. John's mother watched her husband silently disappear, as he slipped away into a heavy sense of waste and futility, his life drawing near to an end. Lithgow flew East to take care of the man who had punctuated his childhood with boistrous laughter and wit, and with a literary education that had instilled in John an early love for the greatest works of literature and stage. Desperate to reach his Father, John grabbed a book from the shelf in his parents home. It was a well-worn copy of short stories he had grown up listening to his Father read to him, snuggled beside him on the family couch. P.G. Wodehouse soon proved the key to provoke the belly laugh that had all but died away in his father. Lithgow describes the scene as pivotal in his life. He was in his mid-fifties, and suddenly realized story-telling was one of the greatest gifts he had experienced in his life, and the greatest gift he was capable of giving others. Nothing else forges bonds so well as a common story shared.
This is, I think, why Pope Francis felt so compelled as to send the world a letter regarding the "care of our common home." We find ourselves, whether conscious of it or not, whether willing or no, co-characters in a shared story. It is a story we share with those that came before us, and with those that will come after us. No matter what Religion you espouse, relationships hold the key to the answer to "why we are here". They are the source of all our strife and bliss. We are all connected. Rich and Poor. City-Dwelling and Rural living. In the developed world, and in the third world. Sharing the same story.
After reading the Pope's encyclical I find myself unable to walk by trash and not pick it up. Its a long overdue start. The encyclical is hefty, so I've written up a reader's digest version for those interested:
A look at Pope Francis’ Encyclical
“Laudato Si”
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Pope Francis’ encyclical letter “Laudato Si’, is addressed
to all people who share our common home, the earth. Not that it will be well
received by all people. Specifically mentioned in many passages, religious
conservatives may well wonder why the Pope of all people, has made so free as
to weigh in on Climate Change, Economics, the Free Market, and Private
Property. Those on the “left” will find the Pope’s linking the degradation of
our earth, and her rights, with the degradation of the unborn and the elderly,
and their rights little more than a political bait and switch, gaining an
international audience and ear on the subject of eco-conversion, and finding
the Pope quoting Pope Benedict and other Popes as often as he brings forth
something of his own, as for example in section 217 when he calls for an
interior conversion as an answer for solving our eco-crisis. “The external deserts in the world are
growing, because the internal deserts have become so vast.” (Benedict XVI,
Homily for the Solemn Inauguration of the Petrine Ministry, April 24, 2005)
Indeed one
could call this encyclical co-authored. So many other bishops from around the
world and past Popes are cited, John Paul II and Benedict the XVI especially,
it truly represents the mind of the church, past and present, and often reads
as a tutorial on the traditional longstanding Thomistic understanding of the
common good, and private property. But old teachings applied to fresh new
situations can yield much insight, and especially self-discovery.
Promoting Dialogue and Mutual Responsibility
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| Fungi Fascination |
The purpose of the encyclical is to promote dialogue between
men of all faiths and political persuasions about how best to care for the
earth, and for each other in the safeguarding of the earth’s precious
resources. It is evident that the Pope’s eyes are on the poor, whose
livelihoods are most at risk in the exploitation of the resources in the
developing world, and in the gearing of economies to big businesses, which not
only box the smaller producers out of the market, but create infrastructure and
products with profit in mind, and not the long view of the well being of local
economies, watersheds, and communities. It is a personal note to each citizen
of the earth: a call to “Dare to turn
what is happening to our world into our own personal suffering.” (Section 19)
It is something that many on the left have been doing for a while, but the Pope
calls even them to a deeper ecological consciousness and friendship, as he
links our maltreatment of the earth to our maltreatment of human beings, the
deterioration of nature with the deterioration of our culture.
It is a
simple and almost fatherly reminder to become students of Nature. It is the
cyclical order and pattern in nature herself that provides the whys and
wherefores for recycling and composting and re-using. As more and more of the
world’s population is becoming city-dwelling, it is often easy to forget the
closed circle of fertility that occurs in natural ecosystems, as the Pope
reminds us of in section 22, plants
synthesize nutrients which feed herbivores; these in turn become food for
carnivores, which produce significant quantities of organic waste which give
rise to new generations of plants.” The industrial system does not emulate
this model, found in nature. The Pope is suggesting we stop buying into the
“modern myth” which presupposes unlimited material growth as undeniably good
for us all, and which gives the industrial system a pass in the name of that
myth, despite the waste and injustices, which such a system incurs in its
process. He is asking us to question this system, and to use our modern talents
and ingenuity to devise new means of production that place the long term good
of both the earth and its inhabitants at their core, rather than profit. “Humanity is called to recognize the need
for changes of lifestyle, production and consumption.” (Section 23)
The Problem of Over-Consumption
Specifically the Pope draws attention to several issues in which
human over consumption has contributed to. Among them: water pollution and
waste, Climate Change, extinction of various species, loss of marine and forest
ecosystems of the world, and also mental pollution (brought on by the modern
“technocracy”.)
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| CSA Harvest Day |
Speaking to people of Christian faiths, he explores Genesis
to show that God’s gift of reason, which sets man apart from His other
creations, is not to encourage domination on the part of human beings, but
rather stewardship. God’s words to Adam and Eve in the garden, charging them to
“till and keep” creation, refer not to domineering exploitation, but to working
it and keeping/protecting it. “(The
creation accounts in Genesis) suggest that human life is grounded in three
fundamental and closely intertwined relationships: with God, with our neighbor
and with the earth itself.” (Section 66) The Pope points to sin as that
which causes the ruptures in these three relationships, both inward and
outwardly.
In Section 95 the Pope quotes the New Zealand Bishops who
suggest that the over consumption of the developed world is a sin against the 5th
commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” It’s a sobering thought. One that is backed
up by big guns, the likes of Pope Benedict XVI. Pope Francis quotes him in
section 206, when he urges us to vote with our food dollars for a more
eco-friendly world: “Purchasing is
always a moral-and not simply economic-act.” (Caritas in Veritate 2006)
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| Veggie Share Box Goodness |
Reminding us of our universal solidarity with all men and
creatures on this planet, the Pope has some important reminders about private
property: “If we make something our own,
it is only to administer it for the good of all. “ Section 95 And “The Christian tradition has never
recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has
stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property.” (Section 93).
This may prove to be something of a shocker to many politically conservative
Christians. Which brings us to perhaps the crux of this encyclical and why it’s
proving to be so pesky to so many. This letter suggests that there is really no
distinction and separation between what we do financially and what we do
morally, that our consumption is a civic act, not a private one. It suggests that
our Religious beliefs and our environmental actions are interconnected more
that we might care to think, that the action of buying mass-produced Chinese
goods in a big box store which underpays it’s workers, and contributes to
massive amounts of material waste, flooding lives with goods that are not
needed, and often discarded after a few uses, that this may not indeed be the
action of a Christian.
Any time the church seeks to infiltrate the part of our
lives spent outside of the pews, it gets pesky. Things get uncomfortable. At
rock bottom, we like our lives to be neatly separated into Tupperware
containers, faith and worship over here, shopping over there, what goes on in
our bedrooms in this box, and what we eat over in this other one. In his
encyclical the Pope is reminding us of the interconnectedness of things. Our
relationship with the earth is connected to our relationship with our fellow
human beings, and vice versa. What we believe in church affects where we should
shop, and what we should buy. It is not simply a matter of looking into the
companies that produce the goods we buy, we ought to ask ourselves how we can
better pursue a path of simplicity, and in this, we can be inspired by people
of other faiths and political persuasions, who have chosen to invest in time to
contemplate and renewable energy sources, and lifestyles which involve less
consumption as a whole.
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| Jam Making Day |
Technocracy and the “Modern Myth”
One of the most interesting critiques of the encyclical is
the one of modern technology. The Pope points out that over-mechinization has
not only unemployed a great deal of humanity, it has also furthered our ability
to dominate nature while at the same time separating us farther from it. “Technological products are not neutral,
for they create a framework which ends up conditioning lifestyles and shaping
social possibilities along the lines dictated by the interests of certain
powerful groups.” (Section 107) He points to the fruits of the Technocracy
as bitter indeed. Already they are clearly seen: “ environmental degradation, anxiety, loss of the purpose of life, and
of community living.”(Section 110) The fragmented knowledge imparted in
this modern technocracy that we live in, often leaves us with no clear sense of
the whole, nor any means with which to answer deeper questions of philosophy
and ethics, which underpin the whole of our existence on earth. Life in a
technocracy also lends itself to a frenetic pace, we are constantly “connected”
electronically, and consequently never really in one place wholly, for any
amount of time, a fraction of ourselves somewhere else via text, or twitter, or
any of the other social media outlets. #Half There Anywhere. In response to the
technocracy the Pope advocates a big SLOW DOWN, a recovering “of the values and the great goals swept
away by our unrestrained delusions of grandeur.” (Section 114) He reminds
us to reacquaint ourselves with reality, and its limits. Limits, which our
over-consumption and our use of technology in the pursuit of our wants have
obscured.
The free market is profit driven, and is governed by wants
rather than needs. This is why, the Pope points out, it is insufficient to
leave to the “invisible hands” of the free-market the job of governing the
economy and solving the eco-crises we find ourselves in today.
The Dignity of Work
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One of the ways to
self govern our impulse toward over consumption is developing a vivifying
understanding of work. If more people choose to do more for themselves, and not
rely on the expensive and elaborate system of distribution of goods and food
that we find ourselves in in the developed world, there would be less of a
burden placed on local economies, many of which, (in developing nations),
export commodity crops to their detriment. “We
were created with a vocation to work. The goal should not be that technological
progress increasingly replace human work, for this would be detrimental to
humanity. Work is a necessity, part of the meaning of life on this earth, a
path to growth, human development and personal fulfillment.” (Section 128)
Global Eco-Initiatives and Oversight
Some global goals that the pope sets are:
1. Sustainable and Diverse agriculture
2. Renewable Energy
3. Efficient Use of Energy
4.Better use of Marine and Forest Resources of the World
5. Universal Access to Drinking water. (Section 164)
Regarding Energy:
1. Favoring Production with maximum energy efficiency
2.Diminishing the Use of Raw Materials
3. Removing from the market products which are less energy
efficient or more polluting
4.Improving transport systems
5. Encouraging construction and repair of buildings aimed at
reducing energy consumption and pollution. (Section 180)
He makes it very clear that there needs to be global
authority (with the claws and teeth necessary to enforce the laws) to hold
nations and states and businesses accountable with regard to eco-abuse. The
responsibility is Universal, but the developed world, being as it has helped
itself to more of a piece of the global resource pie, has a responsibility to
contribute more to these efforts at accountability.
Personal Responsibility and New Paths of Simplicity
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| Strawberry Season is Here! |
While making it very clear that the actions of concerned
individuals will not be enough to stave off further ecological disaster, and coming
class and resource wars, he does encourage us to follow the example of St.
Therese of Lisiuex, performing little acts with great love, in solidarity with
our fellow man and with the earth we co-inhabit. Using less energy, avoiding
plastic and paper, reducing water consumption, recycling, composting, using
public transportation or carpooling whenever we can, planting trees, turning
out lights when not using them, all these things “reflect a generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in
human beings. They benefit society, often unbeknownst to us for they call forth
a goodness which albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread.” (Sections 211,
212)
In the end, Pope Francis reminds us that “though capable of the worst, (we) are also
capable of rising above (ourselves), choosing again what is good and making a
new start…I appeal to everyone throughout the world not to forget this dignity
which is ours.”
It is hoped, that in following paths of greater simplicity
we will be freed up to respond to the poverty our heedless actions have caused
in our neighbors, our planet, and in our own hearts. Listening to and deeply
considering the words of Pope Francis in his encyclical “Laudato Si” will help
carve out a space in us internally, and in our lives externally, which love
will fill.
