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Spirituality and the Earth

Charles Brandt wrote many letters to the editor pointing towards a different way of living on this earth. The following is written to the readership of a Vancouver Island newspaper, the North Islander.

Quotes:

“…we have a Great Work, which we all must be involved in, and that is to make the transition from our present technological civilization which is having a direct disruptive influence on the world to a civilization that will have a benign influence, so that the human community in the natural world can go into the future as a single sacred community in a mutually enhancing manner. We make this transition primarily through experiencing creation as a source of wonder rather than a commodity for our personal use.”

“It is intended by God to provide for all of God’s creatures as they are in ecological relation. If the right ethical vision is realized, people will recognize the inherent value creation and the dignity of all living beings as creatures of God.”

“The universe is by its very nature pushing forever greater diversity, and a deeper interiority, in a more intimate communion. The greatest blessing for any being is to be known in its sacred depths by every other being. Only this will lead to communion. As McLean ended his marvelous memoir, A River Runs Through It: ‘and in the end all things are one, and a river runs through it.”

Spirituality and the Earth (Letter to the Editor in the North Islander July 19_2003

Ray Grigg’s article, Christianity’s silence on the environment which appeared in your paper June 29th has raised a lot of interest. His voice on the environment is one of the most forceful voices in the West.

Rather than respond directly to his article I submit an article that I wrote on the Columbia River which the bishops of the northwest have had a deep concern with and spoken out on.

Imagine, the US and Canadian Catholic bishops stating that the watershed of the Columbia River is a “Sacramental Commons” not just for people but for all creatures: fish, plants, trees and all non humans. In their soon to be released pastoral letter, the bishops call for a sacramental understanding of the watershed and justice for all of its inhabitants, and call for us to develop a spiritual relationship to the Columbia River.

The Columbia River Watershed: Realities and Possibilities: his reflection prepared by the US and Canadian Catholic bishops (The bishops of Nelson is the only Canadian Bishop involved, along with Fr Pat Monette, a priest of his diocese and a member of the standing committee) on the Columbia River regions in preparation for pastoral letter (complete reflections is available on the projects Website: http://www.columbiariver.org.)

The Columbia watershed includes 1200 miles of the great river known as the Columbia, the thousands of miles of its tributaries, and the 259,000 square miles of its extensive area. The Columbia River begins in British Columbia, flows in the US from the countless tributaries Montana and Idaho, through Washington and Oregon, and stretches to the Pacific Ocean.

The Pastoral Letter invokes the majesty of the Columbia River in the romance of the area filled with natural beauty.

Also the unromantic environmental, social and political issues. The bishops have come to grips with these issues,  issues which include ravage riverbanks, decimated forests, chemical and nuclear waste oozing toward the river, decline of salmon stocks, related cultural wars among First Nations and farmers and of variety of commercial interests, clear cut logging, the watershed becoming a battleground for competing interests, the violation of North American treaty rights that promise access to the river and its resources. These are some of the more important issues tackled in the Bishop’s pastoral. Of special alarm is pollution from the Hanford Reserve in Washington, a building site for atomic and nuclear and chemical weapons since World War II and widely regarded as the most polluted site in the nation. Bishop William Skylstad of Spokane, Washington, who heads up the steering committee for the pastoral letter, states that the cleanup up costs for the reserve will be between 50 and $60 billion.

There are specific proposals in the pastoral: providing financial support for family farms, developing and adopting new energy sources to reduce reliance on water and dams, ensuring justice for the regions poor, promoting responsible forestry practices, and combining conservation practices with restoration programs that provide new jobs.

“We hope that we can encourage a civil collaborative dialogue and help people to reflect in a spiritual way on the problems of the river in exert good stewardship,” Skylstad said. “In many cases environmental renewal is possible”. Using the biblical theme of Jubilee year 2000- so proclaimed by Pope John Paul II as in keeping with the biblical mandate in Leviticus 25 that calls for periodic redistribution of resource  – and describing the earth as a ‘Sacramental Commons’ the letter insists that “respect for life needs to include all creation”.

“This commons is not for humans alone”, the bishops write. “It is intended by God to provide for all of God’s creatures as they are in ecological relation. If the right ethical vision is realized, people will recognize the inherent value creation and the dignity of all living beings as creatures of God.”

The Bishops define the common good in a much broader sense than any pastoral letter has done before. Instead of talking about the common good in social, legal and political terms, the bishops used the term to refer to both people and other members of the community, calling for sacramental understanding of the watershed and justice for all of its inhabitants, persons, animals and plants, and call us to develop a spiritual relationship with the River. “We must allow the watershed to speak to us of God and where we are as a people have altered it so as to silence its teaching, we must restore its voice”, writes the bishops.

Bishop Skylstad said at a morning prayer service, “Nature has an integrity all it’s own, apart from human beings”. He called for recovery of the ‘aesthetic, sacramental and spiritual appreciation of creation’ in an integration ‘of religious values’ into the environmental debate.

The new millennium, Skylstad said is ‘one of those crisis moments in human history… a crossroads in time when we must make critical decisions and bring moral order to the public debate in ecology.

Fr Thomas Berry, perhaps the foremost ecologist in the world today, describes what he considers our Great Work. Each of us has work to do: teacher, farmer, logger, fisherman, housewife, etc. But in addition we have a Great Work, which we all must be involved in, and that is to make the transition from our present technological civilization which is having a direct disruptive influence on the world to a civilization that will have a benign influence, so that the human community in the natural world can go into the future as a single sacred community in a mutually enhancing manner. We make this transition primarily through experiencing creation as a source of wonder rather than a commodity for our personal use.

It seems to me that is exactly what the Canadian in US bishops have done and are doing in their pastoral letter: they are helping us to view creation, and especially the watershed of the Columbia River with a sense of wonder, telling us that all creatures have rights; that fish of rights, the trees have rights, that the river itself has rights to be respected and fostered by each of us. We cannot be ourselves without every other creature and being in the universe. The universe is by its very nature pushing forever greater diversity, and a deeper interiority, in a more intimate communion. The greatest blessing for any being is to be known in its sacred depths by every other being. Only this will lead to communion. As McLean ended his marvelous memoir, A River Runs Through It: ‘and in the end all things are one, and a river runs through it.

Father M. Charles Brandt

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