Progressive Christianity "Your monthly eBulletin - Personal and World Transformation through Environmental Stewardship" for Wednesday, 22 April 2015Happy Earth Day! Today, we celebrate the glorious gift of the earth with our whole-hearted commitment to restore and protect it. What can you do? Does environmental stewardship lead to personal and world transformation?
It Is Time For Us To Do Our Part...
I write and think about the effects that human beings are having on the health of this earth almost every day but it was still shocking when, in preparation of this eBulletin, I did a simple google image search on the environment and pollution. My heart sank and a rancid nausea rose in my stomach upon seeing images of children picking though gigantic piles of garbage, of sea animals swimming through the muck of spilled oil or suffocated on plastic bags, of smoke stacks sending infinite waves of toxic plumes into the air, of brown skies due to endless streams of cars on huge highways, of gorgeous, century old forests being completely erased, of piles of trash floating down water ways, of chemical and industrial factories dumping waste into our rivers...
Our earth home is innocent, it is a perfectly balanced system that provides all that every creature needs to thrive, and the plain, simple truth is that we are destroying it. We are also, in the process, destroying the chance of our future generations to live happily and well on this green-blue planet. I have no desire to hear about moving to another planet- to me that is the response of a spoiled child who didn't care for his toy, broke it and now wants to get another one. This is our home, this is the incredible, miraculous gift we have been provided. This gift includes plant medicine, food, shelter, water, beauty, art, music, clean air, resources to warm and protect our body, adventure, and Spirit manifested. As humans we have the final piece to the puzzle - the awareness to both appreciate it as well as nurture it.
Personal transformation occurs every time you enter into nature and stop to delight in its inherent divinity. World transformation occurs when we serve and protect our earth home. And, my friends, this CAN be done one person at a time. Our earth heroes and heroines have been showing us the way- it is time for us follow their lead, or become the new leaders for our future generations.
I hope you enjoy this eBulletin as much as I have! Read more here.
~Deshna
Fred Plumer
For the last several decades it is been clear to me that one of the primary goals of the Jesus path is a profound spiritual experience of Oneness with all life. At times I have used terms such as becoming awake to the interconnectedness or interdependency of all creation and creatures. Admittedly, these are only words which attempt to describe an awareness which defies an exact or precise definition. Other spiritual teachers had different ways of describing this phenomenon, though they may have emphasized different steps to experience it. In all cases, a common objective from all the great and enlightened teachers is learning how to live on this earth with awareness that we are all part of one living organism.
Jesus offered many ways we might experience this awareness, both by his specific teachings and his own life as a model. His path, when followed, provides ways we may learn to release our egoic tendencies. Like most spiritual paths we must first go through a kenotic process of self-emptying. Simply stated, this means letting go of those protective things we often use to protect our egos and separate ourselves from others. They are often things we use to bolster our self-esteem or sense of importance. Most of the time, we do not notice we hold on to these things. Unfortunately these egoic parts of us get in the way of true spiritual awareness and keep us from discovering who and what we really are.For the last several decades it is been clear to me that one of the primary goals of the Jesus path is a profound spiritual experience of Oneness with all life. At times I have used terms such as becoming awake to the interconnectedness or interdependency of all creation and creatures. Admittedly, these are only words which attempt to describe an awareness which defies an exact or precise definition. Other spiritual teachers had different ways of describing this phenomenon, though they may have emphasized different steps to experience it. In all cases, a common objective from all the great and enlightened teachers is learning how to live on this earth with awareness that we are all part of one living organism.
Jesus offered many ways we might experience this awareness, both by his specific teachings and his own life as a model. His path, when followed, provides ways we may learn to release our egoic tendencies. Like most spiritual paths we must first go through a kenotic process of self-emptying. Simply stated, this means letting go of those protective things we often use to protect our egos and separate ourselves from others. They are often things we use to bolster our self-esteem or sense of importance. Most of the time, we do not notice we hold on to these things. Unfortunately these egoic parts of us get in the way of true spiritual awareness and keep us from discovering who and what we really are.
It is not the place of this essay to explain these great teachings here. However there is an important common theme in most of Jesus’ teachings designed to break down the barriers that separate us from others. For example, John Dominic Crossan refers to the practice of radical egalitarianism in both Jesus’ practice and teachings. Sitting down to a meal with those who might be different than you changes something in the relationship. Reaching out to your enemy or helping someone on the road who hates you is another example. Forgiveness and compassion are all part of dissolving these humanly created lines. In fact reaching out compassionately across barriers of any kind can lead to a new awareness.
But it is important to understand that this personal awareness or awakening is not the end goal. I have often been criticized for this assumption. I am confident Jesus believed this was the path not only to personal transformation but the transformation of a new world. He suggested that someday people could create a world “on earth as it is in heaven.” And I do not believe he meant this was only in our heads but would someday be realized as a way of creating a new world.
Although it would have been impossible for Jesus to have realized humans would someday be destroying the earth, it seems obvious to me, living in Oneness with the Mother Earth would have been part of his teachings had he known our precious earth was endangered.
I believe most of our readers realize we are on a precipice of the life and death of our planet. If we continue in the direction we are currently headed, we are clearly going to destroy the earth and certainly end any kind of existence we might call human. The fact that powerful money interests, politics and incredibly large egos are involved in this struggle makes this all the more frightening. Most early human communities realized they should not make decisions based on short term gains but rather on how their decisions might impact generations to come. Today, powerful interests in our world are making decisions which impact our earth simply based on the impact on the company’s stock and their personal golden parachutes.
It seems incredible to me that we continue to ignore the poisons we are pouring into our atmosphere, into our foods and our waters while we seem to act as if nothing is happening or there is nothing we can do. Sadly the mantra of young people today is, “You screwed it up, now we will try and fix it.” What an unfortunate way to start a new life. And frankly they will be dealing with systems and powers that will make their efforts nearly impossible without some serious and committed support from those of us who allowed this to happen. Certainly there seems to be little thought being given to major decisions made today and how they might impact future generations.
I am sick and tired of listening to people who suggest they just don’t know who to listen to…that there are too many varying opinions about everything from global warming to a gas tax. We are poisoning the Mother earth folks and until we really get that, as progressive Christians, let alone as humans, we are giving this beautiful planet, who has given us so much, a death sentence. Our grandchildren and our great grandchildren will never know the oceans and streams we freely swam in or the air in the mountains we once enjoyed.
For over a decade now I have been enthralled with the witness and wisdom of Thomas Berry. I would have made a huge sacrifice to have spent a day at his feet had I known how much his writings would impact me today. Admittedly my growing appreciation and connectedness for the other animals on our precious earth has made me much more aware of the tragedies that are already happening all over the world. More and more I have come to believe intelligent animals of all types are trying to communicate with us. I believe they want us to be aware of the danger they perceive in the way we are destroying our common habitat. Someday, I will write more about these thoughts but for now I simply want to suggest we must go deeper spiritually as we become more aware of our connectedness with Mother Earth. I believe we need to be much more assertive about transforming the systems we have created which stop or at least impede our ability to make the changes we know we need to make.
Who are we listening to and what are we doing to make changes? Why are we not doing more? Where is our commitment to live the Christian life of Oneness with all Creation? It has to be a lot more than our limp attempts to recycle our plastic bags.
It might help to listen again to some of the words of Thomas Berry written over fifteen years ago:
“We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation. By breaking that conversation we have shattered the universe. All the disasters that are happening now are a consequence of that spiritual ‘autism.’”—
“The natural world itself is our primary language as it is our primary scripture, our primary awakening to the mysteries of existence. We might well put all our written scriptures on the shelf for twenty years until we learn what we are being told by unmediated experience of the world about us”. –
“In our totality we are born of the Earth. Our spirituality itself is earth-derived… If there is no spirituality in the earth, then there is no spirituality in ourselves”-Thomas Berry
Is it too late to make the changes we must make for human survival? Is it too late for a completely new consciousness? For my grandchildren and for yours, I hope not.
Carl Krieg
Environmental stewardship is defined in Wikipedia as “…the responsible use and protection of the natural environment through conservation and sustainable practices.” Inasmuch as most business on the planet is controlled by a small number of corporations, these are the words that must apply to these biggest of multi-nationals: responsible, protection, conservation, and sustainable practices. Would that they did.The Problem
Early hominids hunted the wooly mammoth to extinction. In fact, one can trace the path of homo sapiens out of Africa, through Asia and into America by the path of animals that became extinct when humans arrived. Clearly, the issue of environmental stewardship is not new. It’s been around a long time, but the context today is new. Instead of paleolithic tribes we have governments, multi national corporations, often working in tandem with government, and an oligarchic elite that seems to be worldwide. Wooly mammoth step aside: the whole planet is in trouble. Fifty years ago picking up litter along the roadside was de rigueur, lest the observing Native American shed another tear. How naive it seems we were.
Environmental stewardship is defined in Wikipedia as “…the responsible use and protection of the natural environment through conservation and sustainable practices.” Inasmuch as most business on the planet is controlled by a small number of corporations, these are the words that must apply to these biggest of multi-nationals: responsible, protection, conservation, and sustainable practices. Would that they did.
The problem today is monumental. The impact of climate change is manifest everywhere, even as pseudo scientists on the payroll of big oil continue to deny the truth. Estimates are that in 15 years 30% of the globe will be short of fresh water. In the state of Nebraska signs in motels and restaurants warn against drinking the water, laced as it is with chemicals from agricultural runoff. The CEO of Nestle, one of the world’s largest bottlers of water believes that people should have to pay for this precious commodity. Water. Clean air. Waste disposal. 9 billion people. Non nutritious “food”. The list is endless.
The Players
The question is not about who is responsible for having created this situation. In one way or another, we all are. Nor is the question about who is responsible for fixing the mess. Again, we all are. The more urgent question is: who has the power? Rounding up the usual suspects, we find three: government, corporations, and populism.
Speaking from within the American context, the line of demarcation between government and business is quite fuzzy. The “revolving door” moves government officials into corporate positions of leadership, where they can influence their former colleagues, who are waiting their turn at the big money. Corporate lobbies often write the very laws that are supposed to regulate them. The government relies on industry for almost everything. Computers. Missiles. Feeding the army. Fighting wars. Cyber security. Without business expertise, legislators hardly know what to do. Witness the great recession, wherein only the banks understood the financial instruments that they themselves had created. How is an elected government to govern when they don’t understand the problem? How many officials are elected because they do in fact understand the issues? And we know that this situation is not limited to the American scene. The Eisenhower warning about the military industrial complex needs to be updated. The complex to be feared today is the government/corporate symbiosis.
There is, however, another level of complicity. Bankers called to testify before a senate hearing scoff at the questions being put to them. In Russia recently, a Putin critic with populist support was shot down, killed as were many other critics, but at the so-called Mercury Club, representing the leading business interests, the main speaker was critical of both Putin’s economic and foreign policy, but spoke with total impunity. When the US and other governments impose sanctions, they target not only vital interests of the nation involved, but also the interests of the business moguls supportive of that country’s leader. In the shadows of government and corporations there appears to be a group of powerful people who are very powerful indeed. If we ask about who has the power to address the environmental crisis that we face, one answer is government, another is business, and a third seems to lie with the oligarchy that inheres in both.
In the good old days, aristocracy had a sense of longevity and honor- they wanted the estate to last for future generations. The problem with a modern corporate based oligarchy is that it is interested primarily in immediate reward. Accumulation of profit and therefore power is measured in seconds. The definition of environmental stewardship which includes sustainability is a concept alien to modern money makers. It doesn’t have to be that way, but myopia seems to rule the markets.
Part of the problem are the investors. Of course, many of these phantoms are very wealthy people masquerading as hedge funds and the like. Their sole purpose is to make money fast, not build a factory in a town, not plant fields of grain. Other types of investors are somewhat more familiar, if not likable. Pension funds, for example, are charged with getting and maintaining and increasing the amount of money available to future retirees. Insurance companies need income from investments to pay claims. When the US government fined BP for the oil spill, a British pension fund heavily invested in BP lost a great deal of money as the share value declined, and pensioners were hurt. In various entanglements, we are all invested in the destruction of the environment and reap the short term benefits.
Another dimension of the problem is that we have sold our soul to quantification. At this very moment, the EPA has set forth guidelines to regulate the emission of mercury into the air via smokestacks at coal power plants. The coal interests challenged the Agency (while, surprise, the nuclear interests supported the agency!), and brought the issue to the US Supreme Court. The question is not whether mercury in the air we breathe is a good thing or a bad thing; no one would say it is good. The issue before the court is whether the EPA counted the cost of implementing its regulations. It’s not sufficient that we know people will die from bad air. We have to know how many, so that we can tabulate how much money should be spent to remove the mercury. The health and well- being of millions has to have a price tag, otherwise we can’t be sure that the regulations are “worth it”.
Solutions?
But what are we to say to oligarchic power? We could appeal to a sense of morality. Do the right thing, please! Likely not to have much effect. We could use Norway as an illustration of what can happen when the common good takes precedence over profit. But, in the US, at least, socialism has been made into a bad word- even though Bernie Sanders, socialist senator from the state of Vermont is being received by millions who prefer populism over oligarchy. Or we could appeal to a common sense survival instinct. Like- “if you destroy the planet, even you will have no clean air and clean water, and there will be no one with any money to buy your stuff”. When Henry Ford outrageously doubled the wages of his workers, he knew that a good capitalist relies upon a good market in a healthy environment, and his workers bought Fords. To whatever extent a global oligarchy exists, surely they must understand that the concept of a gated community does not apply to the planet as a whole, and that there is no escape from the destruction. Or not understand.
There is another way. There must be another way. There have always been captains of industry who worked hand in glove (or pocket) with the government. The oligarchy has always been there. But so have the people. Again, speaking from the American perspective, the power of the people has been the corrective voice that steered the ship of state safely between the twin threats of dictatorship and nihilistic chaos. Inasmuch as the US is the most powerful country on earth, it lies within our purview to be the defining influence in environmental stewardship. Common sense would show us the way.
Populism, however, can also go astray. Just because the people choose the path does not necessarily make it the right path.
And that brings us, inevitably and necessarily, to God’s will and those who dare to divine it as best they can. Whoever has the power to influence environmental policy, be it government, industry, oligarchy, or the populace, they need to hear a voice that speaks from the spirit.
as it may seem, there are those fundamentalist christian voices that proclaim that it is not the responsibility of Jesus’ followers to care for the earth, that when god wants to end it, he will do so. Jesus, it would seem, thought otherwise. Here was a man who reminded all he encountered that the earth was the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof, who incarnated the battle against oppression, be it of peasants or of the land they worked, and who challenged men and women to be what God called them to be, including good stewards of the earth.
Of course, he was crucified. The government did not tolerate sedition. Business liked matters as they stood. The oligarchy recognized an enemy when they saw one. And the people…clamoring, cheering…and then abandoning.
But that was not the end, at least if we can believe the witness of the men and women who became followers of Jesus. Though dead, they knew him to be alive in their midst, and they committed their lives to spreading the good news. And what was that good news? That God is love and love conquers all. Progressive Christians live in the knowledge that God loves the creation, and we are called to love likewise.
Have Me the Enemy and He Is Us
Rev. Tom Thresher
Perhaps it is time for us to look deeply at the hidden, interior story we hold and how it might be undermining our most dearly held objectives. This is the complementary side of the issue: “How can our personal transformation serve earth stewardship?” Our desire to care for the earth is genuine. But to live into that goal most fully, we must also have the courage to investigate the hidden motivations we hold that could be bushwhacking our most noble efforts.“Damn, did it again! I promised myself I’d sort out my recycling and compost, but I just threw everything in the trash. Why do I keep doing this? I really believe in being responsible for the earth. I really care, I do! But I don’t seem to be able to change something even this simple! It’s so frustrating!”
It’s a common complaint. I want to do one thing, but I find myself doing what I said I wouldn’t do. This is not new, Paul expressed the same dilemma two millennia ago: “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.”
When it comes to things like Earth Stewardship, we progressives think that because we hold the value so highly our actions will automatically conform to our aspirations. But this is seldom the case. In part, we fall short of our most noble aspirations because we are ignoring a big part of the issue. We forget that we are not nearly as rational as we believe, but are shaped by invisible core beliefs that thwart our genuine desire to act differently.
Yes, we are dedicated to stewarding the earth. But we can also be our own worst enemies. As Pogo famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” Our progressive bias is reflected in our topic, “Personal and World Transformation through Earth Stewardship.” The implication is that by acting as earth stewards we can transform the world and ourselves. This is not wrong, it’s just incomplete. But this incomplete orientation can have dire consequences.
Take climate change as a case in point. In our passion to save the earth, we sometimes make things worse. At least this is the view of Peter Kareiva, chief scientist of the Nature Conservancy.[i] By being excessively apocalyptic, the environmental movement is hurting itself. “We love the horror story,” Kareiva said. “We just love it. The environmental movement has loved it. That, I think, is … [a] strategy failure. And it’s actually not supported by science…The message [has been that] humans degrade and destroy and really crucify the natural environment, and woe is me,” he said. “The reality is humans degrade and destroy and crucify the natural environment — and 80 percent of the time it recovers pretty well, and 20 percent of the time it doesn’t.”
We don’t want to hear this! It doesn’t conform to our story. And, unfortunately, by overstating the issue, we have actually made things worse: Between 2004 and 2009, the Nature Conservancy saw a 10-point drop in self-identified environmentalists. Teenagers, when asked whom they pictured as a “conservationist,” described a blond woman who was “preachy” and “not much fun.”
Perhaps it is time for us to look deeply at the hidden, interior story we hold and how it might be undermining our most dearly held objectives. This is the complementary side of the issue: “How can our personal transformation serve earth stewardship?” Our desire to care for the earth is genuine. But to live into that goal most fully, we must also have the courage to investigate the hidden motivations we hold that could be bushwhacking our most noble efforts.
For example, how often do I passionately enumerate the dire consequences of climate change, or tune out alternative explanations, so I can fit in with my peers? Do I take a narrow position so I can argue and feel powerful? …or to impress friends with my commitment? How much of my personal identity is caught up in a particular story? What would I risk if I didn’t state my opinion forcefully?
Earth Stewardship requires everyone’s participation, even (perhaps most importantly) the people we disagree with. The onus is on us to look deeply within to remove the plank from own eye, and not even worry about the speck in the other’s eye.
Rev. Tom Thresher, PhD, the Irreverent Reverend
Tom is a retired UCC minister and ordained Integral Minister. He is the author of Reverent Irreverence: Integral Church for the 21st Century and Crazy Wisdom: Tools for Evolving Consciousness. For more information see www.transformationalinquiry.us.
[i] For the whole story see https://www.eenews.net/stories/1059962401, Leviticus: Sacred Ecology
Sea Raven
Within the recommended verses from Leviticus are found the basics for a transformed stewardship – and a sacred ecology. The classic definition of “stewardship” derives from pre-modern agrarian economies. The steward was the one in charge of the land in the absence of the landlord. His job was to faithfully manage the crops and the harvest so that the landlord could make a profit. Post-modern “stewardship” usually means the successful management of money. Churches admonish members to be “good stewards” and set aside a minimum of 10% of their gross income to pledge to the church “general budget” which pays the minister and keeps the doors open. “Stewardship” has also evolved to mean assuring the “sustainability” of Earth’s resources. Good stewardship of the Planet is part of the movement for “Eco-justice”: leaving the resources in the ground; insuring a legacy of life for future generations; treating the Planet as an autonomous organism, whose continuing survival depends on the health of its interconnected systems: the earth, the air, the fire, the water.Leviticus 19:1-2, 15-18; Matthew 25:14-30Leviticus 19:1 Adonai said to Moshe, 2 “Speak to the entire community of Isra’el; tell them, ‘You people are to be holy because I, Adonai your God, am holy.
16 “‘Do not go around spreading slander among your people, but also don’t stand idly by when your neighbor’s life is at stake; I am Adonai.
17 “‘Do not hate your brother in your heart, but rebuke your neighbor frankly, so that you won’t carry sin because of him. 18 Don’t take vengeance on or bear a grudge against any of your people; rather, love your neighbor as yourself; I am Adonai.
Matthew 25:14 “For it will be like a man about to leave home for awhile, who entrusted his possessions to his servants. 15 To one he gave five talents [equivalent to a hundred years’ wages]; to another, two talents; and to another, one talent — to each according to his ability. Then he left. 16 The one who had received five talents immediately went out, invested it and earned another five. 17 Similarly, the one given two earned another two. 18 But the one given one talent went off, dug a hole in the ground and hid his master’s money.
19 “After a long time, the master of those servants returned to settle accounts with them. 20 The one who had received five talents came forward bringing the other five and said, ‘Sir, you gave me five talents; here, I have made five more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Excellent! You are a good and trustworthy servant. You have been faithful with a small amount, so I will put you in charge of a large amount. Come and join in your master’s happiness!’ 22 Also the one who had received two came forward and said, ‘Sir, you gave me two talents; here, I have made two more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Excellent! you are a good and trustworthy servant. You have been faithful with a small amount, so I will put you in charge of a large amount. Come and join in your master’s happiness!’
24 “Now the one who had received one talent came forward and said, ‘I knew you were a hard man. You harvest where you didn’t plant and gather where you didn’t sow seed. 25 I was afraid, so I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here! Take what belongs to you!’ 26 ‘You wicked, lazy servant!’ said his master, ‘So you knew, did you, that I harvest where I haven’t planted? and that I gather where I didn’t sow seed? 27 Then you should have deposited my money with the bankers, so that when I returned, I would at least have gotten back interest with my capital! 28 Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has ten. 29 For everyone who has something will be given more, so that he will have more than enough; but from anyone who has nothing, even what he does have will be taken away. 30 As for this worthless servant, throw him out in the dark, where people will wail and grind their teeth!’
The Old Testament book of Leviticus is often used by religious liberals who want to deride biblical literalists. One can certainly get very lost in the weeds of ancient Jewish regulations for living in beloved community. The most intimate of human activities are subject to specific rules, which may account for the decision by the creators of the Revised Common Lectionary to ignore all but 19:1-2 and 19:15-18. Those carefully cherry-picked verses appear twice in the readings for Year A (The Year of Matthew): Epiphany, and Proper 25, and it is very easy for worship planners and sermon writers to leave even those verses out. They demand judging your neighbor with justice; avoiding slander; prohibiting hate; and not keeping grudges – pretty tame stuff compared with some of the other recommendations in Chapter 19, such as verse 29a: “Do not profane your daughter by making her a prostitute,” which implies that doing so must have been fairly routine in some quarters. (The one about selling your daughter as a slave is actually Exodus 21:7-11, but that’s a digression into the economy of redemption.)Within the recommended verses from Leviticus are found the basics for a transformed stewardship – and a sacred ecology.
The classic definition of “stewardship” derives from pre-modern agrarian economies. The steward was the one in charge of the land in the absence of the landlord. His job was to faithfully manage the crops and the harvest so that the landlord could make a profit. Post-modern “stewardship” usually means the successful management of money. Churches admonish members to be “good stewards” and set aside a minimum of 10% of their gross income to pledge to the church “general budget” which pays the minister and keeps the doors open. “Stewardship” has also evolved to mean assuring the “sustainability” of Earth’s resources. Good stewardship of the Planet is part of the movement for “Eco-justice”: leaving the resources in the ground; insuring a legacy of life for future generations; treating the Planet as an autonomous organism, whose continuing survival depends on the health of its interconnected systems: the earth, the air, the fire, the water.
The parable most often associated with this understanding of stewardship is the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14-30). Because of that word “Talents” – which, for the 21st century really best translates as “dollars” or “investments” – preachers often appropriate the parable to mean one’s personal “talent” for art or medicine or engineering or any of the marketable “talents” any of us has to offer, including money in the bank. If you don’t use it, the end of the parable seems to say, you will lose it.
Most of the history of humanity’s use of the land has been to use it or lose it. Karen Armstrong, in her most recent book, “Fields of Blood – Religion and the History of Violence” (Knopf, 2014), points out the overriding principle behind the Western nations’ conquest and colonizing of land: “empty” land is up for grabs. “Empty” land is land that is not being used for the economic purposes of the colonizers; i.e., land the native people are living on. The prime example for the United States is the forced resettlement of Native American tribes, pushed ever farther westward until the only land left to them now is the reservation. Before the establishment of the modern State of Israel, the Zionists who first settled in Palestine had a slogan: “A land without a people for a people without a land. . . . Like other European colonists, they believed that an endangered people had a natural right to settle in ‘empty’ land. But the land was not empty . . .” (Armstrong, p. 297).
In contrast, the ancient priests leading the nomadic Hebrew tribes ritualized the relationship of the people to the lands they occupied, and included the alien – the people who were already there as well as outsiders from other nomadic tribes who arrived later:
“When you come into the land and plant all kinds of trees for food, then you shall regard their fruit as forbidden; three years it shall be forbidden to you, it must not be eaten. In the fourth year all their fruit shall be set apart for rejoicing in the Lord. But in the fifth year you may eat of their fruit, that their yield may be increased for you: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:23-25); “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Lev. 19:33-34).
In this “sacred ecology,” three years would give the non-native plantings time to establish themselves. Only after the dedication to God in a festival celebration were the people – all the people – allowed to eat the fruit so that the yield in future would become a surplus. The priests also anticipated the march of civilization into the normalcy of easy injustice. The surplus is soon taken for granted, and the temptation arises to try to keep more of the proceeds for the landowners. “[Y]ou shall not keep for yourself the wages of a laborer until morning,” write the priests in 19:13b. In other words, don’t delay your workers’ wages so that you can invest them overnight in your own wealth. Furthermore, “You shall not cheat in measuring length, weight, or quantity. You shall have honest balances, honest weights” (Lev. 19:35-36a).
In Jesus’s parable, the “slaves” that the landowner left in charge of his wealth were part of the ecology of that agrarian estate. But instead of participating in the sacred ecology called for by the Leviticans the slaves who invested the master’s money were collaborating with the seductive corruption of that wealthy system. In the hyperbole of Jesus’s stories, the landlord entrusted his slaves with more than 20 years’ wages. They were expected to invest this wealth and give it back when the master returned. But in a subversion of the whole concept of agrarian stewardship, the third slave declined to participate in the master’s corrupt practices and called the master on his exploitation and oppression of his workers. The ultimate act of defiance was to bury the money in the master’s own kitchen garden.
Both the rules in Leviticus 19 and Jesus’s parable call us today to go beyond simple stewardship to an embrace of sacred ecology that subverts and transforms. Itinerant farm workers world-wide are subject to exploitation and disrespect; as are the gardeners and landscapers who tend our green lawns and the flower beds most of us have no time for in our busy lives. They are not the only “aliens” in our land, seeking deliverance from injustice. Indeed the Earth itself is subject to exploitation and disrespect in our greed for technology, comfort, food, and money.
We all know the price for calling out the exploiters. At the end of the parable of the talents the writer of Matthew’s gospel has Jesus remind us of the normalcy of the injustice we all live in: “In fact, to everyone who has, more will be given and then some; and from those who don’t have, even what they do have will be taken away” (Scholars’ translation: “The Five Gospels,” Polebridge Press, 1993). But Jesus himself is unlikely to have closed the conversation with such futility, and neither should we.
In the 150th Anniversary Issue of The Nation, Ariel Dorfman reminds us of the need for celebration – mandated by the ancient Leviticans’ sacred ecology:
“The suffering is immense, the injustice intolerable, the stupidity widespread, . . . the future dark and dystopian, the planet on the verge of apocalypse. All the more reason to exult in our own liberation when we have the chance, to revel in the thrill of breaking conventions . . . All the more reason to recognize the re-enchantment that is reborn with each small act of hope and solidarity, and to extol the sheer joy that accompanies the certainty that we need not leave the world as we found it” (“Separated at Birth”: The Nation, April 6, 2015, p. 72).
(Author of the series “Theology from Exile” https://www.amazon.com/dp/1500635898)
Cassandra Farrin
All human effort is navigation. Human striving—confronted by the wreckage of the past moment, the state of the soil, the demands of both—finds orientation from a compass with two arrows: moral and physical. I was always interested in ethics, but it took a while for me to notice that the moral spins out from the physical more often than the reverse. “Each of us is made by—or, one might better say, made as—a set of unique associations with unique persons, places, and things,” writes farmer-poet Wendell Berry. “The world of love does not admit the principle of the interchangeability of parts.”All human effort is navigation. Human striving—confronted by the wreckage of the past moment, the state of the soil, the demands of both—finds orientation from a compass with two arrows: moral and physical. I was always interested in ethics, but it took a while for me to notice that the moral spins out from the physical more often than the reverse. “Each of us is made by—or, one might better say, made as—a set of unique associations with unique persons, places, and things,” writes farmer-poet Wendell Berry. “The world of love does not admit the principle of the interchangeability of parts.”
My sister and I adopted two children several years ago. Their parents emigrated from the Marshall Islands, where navigation is a precious and guarded art, to the United States, where the tools and know-how required to survive were different enough, at least for them, to prove incompatible with parenting these particular kids. There’s a whole world of emotion, and a lot of scars, behind that sentence. Sometimes our kids ask us, “Who is my mom?” To which we’ve found that the best and most understandable response is, “You’ve had many.” It helps all of us to find our way together. “Mom” is not one landmark but several. For the first two years they lived with us, I found it easier and less fraught to give them kisses by kissing my palm and touching it to their heads. Sometimes it’s hard to claim the role that failed them.
So it bears repeating: The world of love does not admit to the principle of the interchangeability of parts. Our reality is not mechanical, with parts traded in and out to improve functionality, but a living organism or sea that we voyagers traverse using homemade charts of sticks, shells, and coconut fibers.
Where the present landscape presses too much upon you, you can escape into the virtual, the apparent, but this only lasts so long until you crash into what Heidegger called a “moment of resolution”—a moment in which the specter of death confronts your immersion in everyday life. You’re forced at that point to acknowledge that the project of possibilities that makes up your life will end someday.
For me at least, that’s the moment when religion and my Christian heritage comes back to confront my otherwise fully humanistic life. I can easily immerse myself in my work, in the history of religion, which threatens to become the art of studying trees to avoid the forest. Ironically, for most people who study the Bible or early Christian history, observes Maia Kotrosits in Rethinking Early Christian Identity, such study “is not simply a strategic cultural or political intervention or an antiquarian fascination, … it is work fraught with deep affective entanglements, threaded as the Bible is into so many other attachments and burned injuriously into so many folks’ skin” (8). Bringing us still closer to the threat and promise of religion, Karen Armstrong writes in Fields of Blood, “Ancient philosophies were entranced by the order of the cosmos; they marveled at the mysterious power that kept the heavenly bodies in their orbits and the seas within bounds and that ensured that the earth regularly came to life again after the dearth of winter, and they longed to participate in this richer and more permanent existence” (6).
Here is a place where everydayness can take on a profound light. Confronted by the inevitability of death and lesser losses, we can immerse ourselves in the physical world around us, in the physical care of our loved ones, in planting and caring for plants, and so on—not because we’re lost but because we know exactly where we are. We’re leaving our mark in the most concrete terms possible. By immersing ourselves in it, we become so familiar with the landmarks that, in moments of danger and confusion, we can recover our orientation and put down roots in the right places. Ellen Davis in Scripture, Culture, and Agriculture writes:
[In Hebrew] ‘-b-d is the ordinary verb equivalent to English ‘work,’ and it normally means to work for someone, divine or human, as a servant, slave, or worshiper. Much less frequently, ‘-b-d denotes work done on or with some material, and in all cases but one, that material is soil. … The wider usage of the verb suggests that it is legitimate also to view the human task as working for the garden soil, serving its needs. … While biblical religion clearly forbids divination of the earth, one might recall that the English word ‘worship’ originally meant ‘to acknowledge worth.’ In that sense, Hebrew wordplay translates will into English. The soil is worthy of our service. (29)
This rings true for me. Is digging in the backyard a mundane, everyday task? The trees I planted will outlive me, all forces being equal. When a seed sprouts, I’m grateful. When the crows build their nest in our backyard, as they did this spring, I’m grateful. When I kiss my child on the cheek, I’m telling you I’m grateful. The gratitude I feel for the response of the world to my small, cumulative actions is the only emotion I can rightfully call spiritual.
The thanksgiving of the human who reaches you
is this alone:
that we know you.
… O womb of all that grows,
we have known you.
—The Prayer of Thanksgiving, Nag Hammadi
ANNT trans. vv. 6, 8
Cassandra Farrin is the Marketing & Outreach Director for Westar Institute, home of the Jesus Seminar. A US-UK Fulbright Scholar, she has an M.A. in Religious Studies from Lancaster University (England) and a B.A. in Religious Studies from Willamette University. She is passionate about books and projects that in some way address the intersection of ethics and early Christian history.
Can Progressive Christianity make a positive difference in the world? – Video
Gretta VosperRev. Gretta Vosper, of The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity weighs in on our question: Can Progressive Christianity make a positive difference in the world?
We asked several authors, pastors, theologians, and scholars questions about their beliefs, progressive Christianity, church, Jesus, social activism, spirituality, etc. We received this awesome answer from Gretta Vosper.
WATCH....<iframe width="650" height="488" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GdD8wQVft48" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Rev. Gretta Vosper, of The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity weighs in on our question: Can Progressive Christianity make a positive difference in the world?
We asked several authors, pastors, theologians, and scholars questions about their beliefs, progressive Christianity, church, Jesus, social activism, spirituality, etc. We received this awesome answer from Gretta Vosper.
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Visit: www.grettavosper.ca
Gretta Vosper trained for ministry at Queen’s Theological College where the foundations for her post-theistic work were laid. There, she learned that the Bible was a human construction. For the past thirteen years, she has applied the extrapolation of that truth to her work within and beyond the church. In 2013, she came out to her congregation as an atheist; few were surprised. For the most part, her denomination – considered to be one of the most progressive in the world – tolerates her as she continues to irritate it toward publicly stating what so many who lead within it believe: god is a metaphor for goodness and love lived out with compassion and justice, no more and no less.
She has been speaking publicly on the forefront of this work since launching the Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity in 2004. Her first book, With or Without God: Why the Way We Live is More Important than What We Believe, became a national bestseller within days of its publication in 2008. In 2009, she was named one of the most compelling women in Canada by More Magazine and With or Without God was placed on Amazon’s Top 25 Books to Cause a Commotion alongside To Kill a Mockingbird, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation.
She has spoken across Canada, in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States presenting keynotes and workshops at conferences and leading congregational events and Sunday services. She has appeared on programs on the Canadian, Australian, and British Broadcasting Corporations’ radio networks and talk and magazine shows across Canada. For six years, she was a weekly panelist on the Culture Wars segment of the John Oakley Show on AM640, Toronto’s most listened to Talk Radio program. She has participated in online lecture series, the most notable hosted by Michael Dowd and including thirty-seven spiritual leaders from across North America and been interviewed by numerous online media channels. Her work is regularly addressed in the national magazine of her denomination, The Observer, and fuels controversial conversations on Facebook. Twice, she has narrowly avoided heresy trials, once by a margin of three votes.
Her second book, Amen: What Prayer Can Be in a World Beyond Belief applies the reality of a godless world to a spiritual practice that holds incredible meaning for so many. Current scientific discoveries regarding the effects of prayer on the brain bring surprising elements to the fore and we recognize that belief is not as important in our spiritual nurture as we have thought it once was. Amen has become an important book in congregational study groups.
Prince Ea
An apology letter to future generations about the state of the environment and a commitment to make it better, to "correct and re-direct."
WATCH HERE...
<iframe width="650" height="366" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eRLJscAlk1M" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>An Apology Letter to Future Generations.
PRINCE EA – Richard Williams, better known by his stage name Prince EA, is an American rapper, spoken word artist, music video director and rights activist from St Louis, Missouri. My goal for this channel is to make people laugh, cry, think, and love with the ultimate goal to evolve.
Born and raised on the North Side of St. Louis Missouri, Prince Ea has a sound unlike most artists. Possessing a great song writing ability and stage presence, he combines both creative and thought-provoking songs that neatly tie-in humor, wit, passion, and hard hitting punch-lines.
From his YouTube videos, which have garnered millions of hits, Prince Ea has developed a loyal fan base. Along with Prince Ea’s internet success, he has also been featured in both national and local publications. In 2009 VIBE Magazine declared him Vibe Verses Grand Champion and he received a full page article in Vibe’s June 2009 edition. That same year, Prince Ea went on to found and form an organization called “Make SMART Cool” (SMART being an acronym for Sophisticating Millions and Revolutionizing Thought). The organization seeks to promote positive social change in various concrete ways from speaking at schools, organizing community events, benefit performances, partnering with community organizations and setting up educational mentorship programs.
Prince Ea was also featured in the 2010 December issue of DISCOVER magazine for his academically provocative single “The Brain,” where he was dubbed “The King of brainy hip-hop.” In 2011, Prince Ea graduated Summa Cum Laude from a full scholarship at the University of Missouri St. Louis, with his BA in Anthropology. In late 2011 Prince Ea released his “Backwards Rappers” video; the video was picked up by the Huffington Post, CBS, FOX, Yahoo Music and was ranked number 1 on content aggregator sites such as Reddit. In 2012 Prince Ea began to connect with his fan base on a more visceral level and focused on more than just music. Since then he has released several extremely popular spoken words that have been featured or referenced on countless morning shows, schools such as Harvard, and daytime talk shows such as the Queen Latifah Show, the Blaze with Glenn Beck and several others.
As Prince Ea continues to make strides in education with the Make SMART Cool movement, the music industry and in people’s lives, one thing is for certain— he is definitely someone to look out for in the near future.
Peia
For the ones who stand in bravery and humanity in the face of brutality and rampant disrespect. For our lost culture and the original peoples who fight tirelessly for their traditions, their sacred land, their lives. This is a song to breathe light into our darkest days and call back the light of sun. This is my humble offering. In Honor of Earth day my day my friends. I hope you all seize a moment to walk barefoot and give thanks to the Earth and the magnificent magnetic pull that hold us all together.
‘How many times have we circled this fire, a prayer upon our lips?
How many times have we gone to the water’s edge to give thanks for these gifts?
And we will rise again, we will rise again. My people will rise again, We’ll rise.
So many times I’ve looked out across the ocean, wondered what is it all for?
So many times I’ve raised my hands to the sky, I’ve prayed for more.
And that we will rise again, we will rise again.
And there is no time, and yet in the end all will be restored in wholeness my friends. And we will rise again'
WATCH HERE...
<iframe width="650" height="366" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/e5kM88gdE0s" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>For the ones who stand in bravery and humanity in the face of brutality and rampant disrespect. For our lost culture and the original peoples who fight tirelessly for their traditions, their sacred land, their lives. This is a song to breathe light into our darkest days and call back the light of sun. This is my humble offering.
In Honor of Earth day my day my friends. I hope you all seize a moment to walk barefoot and give thanks to the Earth and the magnificent magnetic pull that hold us all together.
‘How many times have we circled this fire, a prayer upon our lips?
How many times have we gone to the water’s edge to give thanks for these gifts?
And we will rise again, we will rise again. My people will rise again, We’ll rise.
So many times I’ve looked out across the ocean,
wondered what is it all for?
So many times I’ve raised my hands to the sky, I’ve prayed for more.
And that we will rise again, we will rise again. My people will rise again, We’ll rise.
And there is no time, and yet in the end
all will be restored in wholeness my friends.
And we will rise again, we will rise again. My people will rise again, We’ll rise.
Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah Hallelujah.’
-Uluwatu 2014
Video shot by the incredible Arterium
CD available for purchase here!
Lesson 5 from Year One of A Joyful Path, “Worms, Snails and Fairies”
Affirmation: All of nature holds the beauty and presence of Spirit.
The natural world constantly offers opportunities to experience the presence of spirit in endless variation. Nature is one of the most clear and obvious manifestations of God in our universe.
The variety we see in the natural world — in the plants, animals, insects, birds, and water creatures — shows us that spirit is not limited in form or expression. The world around us continually speaks of the presence of spirit in all forms and every setting.
Children have a natural affinity and wonder for the plants, animals, birds, and insects they encounter in their environment. Building on that curiosity and interest to help them feel their connection with all of creation is a great way to awaken their wonder, awe, and reverent feelings. While it is a challenge to do that in the context of an hour or so inside a building once a week, it is worth the challenge to bring nature into the curriculum and space in which you are teaching because it is so universally appealing.
Download the PDF of A Joyful Path, Year One, Lesson #5- “God in Nature ” right into your digital device. Just click on the blue “Buy Now” Button. A receipt will be sent to you with the link to download your lesson.
Each Year One Lesson includes:
Teacher Introduction/Getting to the Heart of the Lesson, Teacher Reflection, Spiritual Affirmation with full color Art, Original Story, and Activities, Bible Verses, Wisdom Quotes
Lesson 5 from Year One is about: God in Nature
“Worms, Snails and Fairies”
Affirmation: All of nature holds the beauty and presence of Spirit.
Getting to the Heart of the Lesson
The natural world constantly offers opportunities to experience the presence of spirit in endless variation. Nature is one of the most clear and obvious manifestations of God in our universe.
The variety we see in the natural world — in the plants, animals, insects, birds, and water creatures — shows us that spirit is not limited in form or expression. The world around us continually speaks of the presence of spirit in all forms and every setting.
Children have a natural affinity and wonder for the plants, animals, birds, and insects they encounter in their environment. Building on that curiosity and interest to help them feel their connection with all of creation is a great way to awaken their wonder, awe, and reverent feelings. While it is a challenge to do that in the context of an hour or so inside a building once a week, it is worth the challenge to bring nature into the curriculum and space in which you are teaching because it is so universally appealing.
Donate Today
PSR
Pacific School of Religion, a multi-denominational seminary in Berkeley, California, announced recently that its Board of Trustees has voted unanimously to adopt a policy to divest the institution from investments in fossil fuels. Pacific School of Religion is the first seminary in California to take this step and one of the first educational institutions in Berkeley to do so.Pacific School of Religion, a multi-denominational seminary in Berkeley, California, announced today that its Board of Trustees has voted unanimously to adopt a policy to divest the institution from investments in fossil fuels. Pacific School of Religion is the first seminary in California to take this step and one of the first educational institutions in Berkeley to do so.
“Divesting from fossil fuels is an issue in which not only students and trustees are in alignment, but faith and science as well,” said Pacific School of Religion President David Vásquez-Levy, who was inaugurated in January 2015. “Our new divestment policy recognizes that climate change has the potential to cause unimaginable environmental damage and human suffering with disproportionate impact on the poorest countries and the most impoverished people.”
A petition signed by a group of alumni and friends of the school asking Pacific School of Religion to divest itself from investments in major fossil fuel companies echoed conversations already under consideration at the school and provided the impetus to accelerate the adoption of new policies.
The policy directs Pacific School of Religion to divest of investments in the 200 major fossil fuel companies listed by the Carbon Tracker Initiative (CT200) and create a fossil fuel free option for future endowment donors.
This new investment policy is essential in bringing the school’s business practices into proper alignment with its stated values. Mindful of Pacific School of Religion’s duty to manage endowment investments prudently and carefully in order to fulfill its mission, Pacific School of Religion expects that the systematic approach adopted will harmonize the pursuit of optimal investment returns with its mission of social transformation.
A multi-denominational Christian seminary in Berkeley, California, Pacific School of Religion has been preparing bold leaders for historic and emerging faith communities since 1866. PSR’s graduates are known for innovative ministries of compassion and justice around the world—in urban and rural parishes, on city streets and college campuses, in the arts, public policy, and many other fields. PSR is a member of the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), an interfaith consortium of seminaries and institutes in the Bay Area.
More information here
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The Sentient Universe- Art Exhibit and Reception
Elta Wilson
An exhibit painting the nexus between art, science and religion: “The Sentient Universe”
Reception: May 7
5pm – 7pm
Exhibit: hangs open to the public
May 7 – May 31
First Congregational United Church of Christ
Downstairs in the Art Gallery
Portland, Oregon
MORE INFO....
Donate Today
Every Dinner Table Is an Altar: The "Cowbalah" of Jim Corbett
James Burklo
Sanctuary for All Life hallows humans' relationship to the earth in words that point to a realm beyond words, a Peaceable Kingdom beyond the thrall of kings and states, living a law that trumps all written codes because it is "in your mouth and in your heart" (Deuteronomy 30:14). To show the way, Corbett obstinately synthesized the disparate disciplines in which he had steeped himself, from analysis of the range-grasses of the Sonoran desert to dissection of the finer points of the medieval Jewish mysticism of Spain. But what else could we have expected from a Quaker cowboy with a masters in philosophy from Harvard? (2005: Howling Dog Press)
“I avoid eating anyone I have not known and cherished,” wrote Jim Corbett in Sanctuary for All Life, his final testament. “When slaughter breaks the bond, the killing must be hallowed. All food is sacramental.”
One sunset-streaked evening on the pasture near Jim and Pat Corbett’s place along the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona, I watched him commune with one of the cows he cherished, stroking its head with his arthritis-ravaged hand. I began to understand how he earned, among other roles, the status of the “cow-whisperer” of Cascabel. Neighbors brought animals to him for healing from gut impactions and cactus-spine wounds. No wonder that his heartfelt ambivalence about raising animals for slaughter was reflected in a sub-chapter entitled “On Killing and Eating One’s Friends” in his first book, Goatwalking (Viking Press, 1991).
Sanctuary for All Life hallows humans’ relationship to the earth in words that point to a realm beyond words, a Peaceable Kingdom beyond the thrall of kings and states, living a law that trumps all written codes because it is “in your mouth and in your heart” (Deuteronomy 30:14). To show the way, Corbett obstinately synthesized the disparate disciplines in which he had steeped himself, from analysis of the range-grasses of the Sonoran desert to dissection of the finer points of the medieval Jewish mysticism of Spain. But what else could we have expected from a Quaker cowboy with a masters in philosophy from Harvard? Added to these challenges for the reader was his death in 2001 at age 67 from a rare brain disease that cut short his completion of the book.
These difficulties are mitigated by the exceptional front-matter provided by Jim’s devoted friends, who put the book into print. Father Ricardo Elford’s touching foreword reflects his collaboration with Corbett in the Sanctuary Movement and in co-authoring a pamphlet entitled The Servant Church (1996: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #328). It is a manifesto for an earth-hallowing, justice-seeking church that exists beyond denominations and creeds. The poet David Ray says of Sanctuary for All Life in his preface that “one cannot remain the same after reading it.” And on Daniel Baker’s lengthy and very helpful Introduction hang many needed keys to unlock the treasures in Corbett’s dense prose. Daniel lives in Hot Springs Canyon near Jim and Pat’s place up the road from Cascabel. His deep understanding of Jim as a person and of the topics and texts to which the book refers, and his collaboration with Jim in the process of writing it, make his overview of the book invaluable.
The front-matter also includes a speech by Corbett when he received the Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award in 1991. He got the award on behalf of the Sanctuary Movement, which he co-founded in the 1980Ãs to protect asylum-seekers who crossed the border to escape death during the Central American civil wars. As a borderlands rancher who was fluent in Spanish, driven by a conscience steeped in the tradition of such Quakers as John Woolman, the colonial-era anti-slavery activist, Corbett began guiding Guatemalans and Salvadorans over the border. He partnered with a Presbyterian pastor in Tucson, John Fife, to create a network of churches and temples around the US which offered sanctuary to refugees who were being denied for asylum status and threatened with deportation. His speech described the foundation guiding his inception of the movement: civil initiative. Civil disobedience is the willful breach of unjust law. Passive resistance is non-cooperation with unjust force or law. But civil initiative is active fulfillment and expression of the higher, natural law that is written on the heart. When he and others in the movement were charged with being coyotes, smugglers of aliens across the border, their defense was based on the argument that the US government was breaking guarantees to asylum for refugees under the international law to which it was bound.
Corbett became nationally recognized for his personal heroism. (It was powerful for me to listen to the testimonials of some of the people whose lives he had saved, during his memorial service at John Fife’s church, Southside Presbyterian, in 2001.) But for Jim, the Sanctuary Movement (words he never capitalized) was a temporary distraction from the work that mattered to him most – the redemption of wildlands and the hallowing of human beings’ place in it.
In “Sanctuary for All Life”, Corbett, as a self-taught Hebrew scholar, delved into the nature of “torah”, the law of Israel. It is a law that he aimed to follow through “civil initiative”, a law written not only on human hearts, but on the hearts of cows, goats, javelinas, mescals, and saguaros.
The law of Israel specified the honoring of the Sabbath, which prohibits the exercise of “malacha”, a Hebrew word that is translated as “labor” but more precisely refers to any human interference in the processes of nature. Corbett explains that the ritual observance of Sabbath was the Jewish people’s way of keeping themselves connected to a way of life in symbiotic harmony with Nature. A way of life reminiscent of that of Abraham – the wandering Aramean who followed a herd in the wildlands of Palestine. Sanctuary for All Life might be described as a theology and practice of Sabbath, and not just from sundown on Friday till sundown on Saturday, or Sunday for the Christians. Rather, it is a year-round sabbath that re-integrates humanity into deep communion with all life. A sabbath with a haunting call for us to return to what Corbett calls the cimarron (Spanish for feral livestock) way of true freedom through re-integration into the natural order.
The focus of the book is intensely local, but its implications are global. The book begins and ends on a stretch of Sonoran Desert on the east side of the San Pedro River in Arizona, a place where he and other “associates” of the land made covenant with it. The Saguaro-Juniper Covenant, described in the book, is a “betrothal” of a group of Jim’s friends to this patch of earth, with a commitment to give the land back to itself. The Covenant is the land’s bill of rights. First on the list: “The land has a right to be free of human activity that accelerates erosion.” Many of the associates of the Covenant live in the Tucson area and are supportive with money and volunteer time on occasion. Several, including Daniel Baker, live on or near the land and either herd cattle on it according to the Covenant’s careful guidelines, or participate in other land-redemption efforts.
Corbett microcosmically explored the challenges of living and ranching in harmony with his homeland in Arizona. In so doing he modeled what it will take for the whole human family to go cimarron and live in harmonious communion with all life, while confessing the limits of his and his community’s ability to live out their vision of the liberation of the land. “(Jesus) doesn’t condemn anyone for failing to live in full accordance with the restitutional mitzvot(Hebrew for just actions) required for redemption. We are to forgive one another our failures. He just condemns those who would lead us to think that anything less will do.” (p 190)
Corbett saw Jesus as a Jewish rabbi who announced jubilee – the liberation of peasants from indenture, of Jews from Rome, of nature from human management. The Sermon on the Mount is a manifesto for the redemption not just of humanity, but of the natural order, called for in the Torah. The Jewish law required that after the 49th year (a sabbath of sabbath years, seven times seven), a time of jubilee was to be enacted in which all land was to be returned to itself. No plowing or planting was allowed, and all land divisions were erased to end unjust accumulation of property.
Sanctuary for All Life is a radical call to jubilee liberation of the natural world, but Corbett was emphatic that it was not about “eco-sainthood”. He described the person who recycles everything, gives up automobiles, eats no meat, takes no vacation trips. “Yet the saint’s perfect conservational thoughtfulness can never be as effective as a single case of contraception.” (p 168) “Individuals can denounce and resist a way of life, but only a community can live a way of life into being and bequeath it to succeeding generations.” (p 168) For Corbett, the hallowing way is one that integrates humans into the natural world as co-creating “associates”, unlike those who want to ban all human activity in wilderness. This integration is the task not primarily of governments, but rather of the “church” as Corbett described it: “a voluntary society based on communion” (p 150). And by communion he refers to a real meal, not just the ritual symbolism of wafers and chalices. “To awaken to the forgotten meaning of sacrifice is to see that all food is sacramental, that every dinner table is an altar, that life itself is the primal form of holy communion, and that God is Nature, the creative source for Whom there is no other. The way we live on life – our food – is of fundamental religious concern.” (p 110) “The hallowing of our food has to do with care of the land, care that the animals on the land flourish.” (p 111)
Corbett indicted capitalism for its half-hearted embrace of the free market. A full embrace would result in abandoning not only governmental interference in the “spontaneous order” of markets, but also the capitalists’ attempts to interfere in the “spontaneous order” of nature. Nowhere was this better exemplified for Corbett than through the Western cattle industry’s reduction of cows to cash, which has resulted in wholesale degradation of rangelands and unholy treatment of animals. The real idolaters aren’t the biblical apostates adoring golden images: “it is market morality that worships the golden calf, as a commodity, in the name of profits and property.” ( p 249)
“Go deep enough into eco-wisdom, and you’ll find a practicable, down-to-earth mysticism.” (p 247) “Cowbalah” is Corbett’s playful term to express his resonance with the Jewish system of “kabbalah”, a web of relations through which the creative energy of the universe flows. “A visionary myth rather than theosophical speculation, kabbalah is concerned with humanity’s quest to recover its homeland in Eden: an unfarmed, fruitful oasis; an untamed paradise of living waters. This key myth of kabbalah fuses the communion insight with the down-to-earth quest for Eden.” (p 258)
In his first book, Corbett remembered two incidents from earlier in his life. “On the prairie, when the wind wails a dirge and snow sifts in rivulets through the sagebrush, I’ve hugged the sticky-pink, death-chilled body of a newborn lamb under my coat, and its heart fluttered in reply. And on a desert mountain, amidst the hush of soaring granite, I’ve opened a forgotten spring. The few who remembered thought it had long ago gone dry, but I found the hidden place and dug down until a stream ran clear and cold in the summer sun. So what are epitaphs to me? I’ve shared life’s warmth with a lamb. I’ve opened a desert spring.” (pp 12-13, Goatwalking) Jim Corbett’s spring still runs with prophetic insight for our time, and times to come, through the practical mysticism of Sanctuary for All Life.
Obituary in the Economist Magazine for Jim Corbett (died Aug 2, 2001)
Sanctuary for all Life can be bought directly from the publisher: Howling Dog Press
..._____________________________
Elta Wilson
An exhibit painting the nexus between art, science and religion: “The Sentient Universe”
Reception: May 7
5pm – 7pm
Exhibit: hangs open to the public
May 7 – May 31
First Congregational United Church of Christ
Downstairs in the Art Gallery
Portland, Oregon
MORE INFO....
Donate Today
James Burklo
Sanctuary for All Life hallows humans' relationship to the earth in words that point to a realm beyond words, a Peaceable Kingdom beyond the thrall of kings and states, living a law that trumps all written codes because it is "in your mouth and in your heart" (Deuteronomy 30:14). To show the way, Corbett obstinately synthesized the disparate disciplines in which he had steeped himself, from analysis of the range-grasses of the Sonoran desert to dissection of the finer points of the medieval Jewish mysticism of Spain. But what else could we have expected from a Quaker cowboy with a masters in philosophy from Harvard? (2005: Howling Dog Press)
“I avoid eating anyone I have not known and cherished,” wrote Jim Corbett in Sanctuary for All Life, his final testament. “When slaughter breaks the bond, the killing must be hallowed. All food is sacramental.”
One sunset-streaked evening on the pasture near Jim and Pat Corbett’s place along the San Pedro River in southeastern Arizona, I watched him commune with one of the cows he cherished, stroking its head with his arthritis-ravaged hand. I began to understand how he earned, among other roles, the status of the “cow-whisperer” of Cascabel. Neighbors brought animals to him for healing from gut impactions and cactus-spine wounds. No wonder that his heartfelt ambivalence about raising animals for slaughter was reflected in a sub-chapter entitled “On Killing and Eating One’s Friends” in his first book, Goatwalking (Viking Press, 1991).
Sanctuary for All Life hallows humans’ relationship to the earth in words that point to a realm beyond words, a Peaceable Kingdom beyond the thrall of kings and states, living a law that trumps all written codes because it is “in your mouth and in your heart” (Deuteronomy 30:14). To show the way, Corbett obstinately synthesized the disparate disciplines in which he had steeped himself, from analysis of the range-grasses of the Sonoran desert to dissection of the finer points of the medieval Jewish mysticism of Spain. But what else could we have expected from a Quaker cowboy with a masters in philosophy from Harvard? Added to these challenges for the reader was his death in 2001 at age 67 from a rare brain disease that cut short his completion of the book.
These difficulties are mitigated by the exceptional front-matter provided by Jim’s devoted friends, who put the book into print. Father Ricardo Elford’s touching foreword reflects his collaboration with Corbett in the Sanctuary Movement and in co-authoring a pamphlet entitled The Servant Church (1996: Pendle Hill Pamphlet #328). It is a manifesto for an earth-hallowing, justice-seeking church that exists beyond denominations and creeds. The poet David Ray says of Sanctuary for All Life in his preface that “one cannot remain the same after reading it.” And on Daniel Baker’s lengthy and very helpful Introduction hang many needed keys to unlock the treasures in Corbett’s dense prose. Daniel lives in Hot Springs Canyon near Jim and Pat’s place up the road from Cascabel. His deep understanding of Jim as a person and of the topics and texts to which the book refers, and his collaboration with Jim in the process of writing it, make his overview of the book invaluable.
The front-matter also includes a speech by Corbett when he received the Letelier-Moffit Human Rights Award in 1991. He got the award on behalf of the Sanctuary Movement, which he co-founded in the 1980Ãs to protect asylum-seekers who crossed the border to escape death during the Central American civil wars. As a borderlands rancher who was fluent in Spanish, driven by a conscience steeped in the tradition of such Quakers as John Woolman, the colonial-era anti-slavery activist, Corbett began guiding Guatemalans and Salvadorans over the border. He partnered with a Presbyterian pastor in Tucson, John Fife, to create a network of churches and temples around the US which offered sanctuary to refugees who were being denied for asylum status and threatened with deportation. His speech described the foundation guiding his inception of the movement: civil initiative. Civil disobedience is the willful breach of unjust law. Passive resistance is non-cooperation with unjust force or law. But civil initiative is active fulfillment and expression of the higher, natural law that is written on the heart. When he and others in the movement were charged with being coyotes, smugglers of aliens across the border, their defense was based on the argument that the US government was breaking guarantees to asylum for refugees under the international law to which it was bound.
Corbett became nationally recognized for his personal heroism. (It was powerful for me to listen to the testimonials of some of the people whose lives he had saved, during his memorial service at John Fife’s church, Southside Presbyterian, in 2001.) But for Jim, the Sanctuary Movement (words he never capitalized) was a temporary distraction from the work that mattered to him most – the redemption of wildlands and the hallowing of human beings’ place in it.
In “Sanctuary for All Life”, Corbett, as a self-taught Hebrew scholar, delved into the nature of “torah”, the law of Israel. It is a law that he aimed to follow through “civil initiative”, a law written not only on human hearts, but on the hearts of cows, goats, javelinas, mescals, and saguaros.
The law of Israel specified the honoring of the Sabbath, which prohibits the exercise of “malacha”, a Hebrew word that is translated as “labor” but more precisely refers to any human interference in the processes of nature. Corbett explains that the ritual observance of Sabbath was the Jewish people’s way of keeping themselves connected to a way of life in symbiotic harmony with Nature. A way of life reminiscent of that of Abraham – the wandering Aramean who followed a herd in the wildlands of Palestine. Sanctuary for All Life might be described as a theology and practice of Sabbath, and not just from sundown on Friday till sundown on Saturday, or Sunday for the Christians. Rather, it is a year-round sabbath that re-integrates humanity into deep communion with all life. A sabbath with a haunting call for us to return to what Corbett calls the cimarron (Spanish for feral livestock) way of true freedom through re-integration into the natural order.
The focus of the book is intensely local, but its implications are global. The book begins and ends on a stretch of Sonoran Desert on the east side of the San Pedro River in Arizona, a place where he and other “associates” of the land made covenant with it. The Saguaro-Juniper Covenant, described in the book, is a “betrothal” of a group of Jim’s friends to this patch of earth, with a commitment to give the land back to itself. The Covenant is the land’s bill of rights. First on the list: “The land has a right to be free of human activity that accelerates erosion.” Many of the associates of the Covenant live in the Tucson area and are supportive with money and volunteer time on occasion. Several, including Daniel Baker, live on or near the land and either herd cattle on it according to the Covenant’s careful guidelines, or participate in other land-redemption efforts.
Corbett microcosmically explored the challenges of living and ranching in harmony with his homeland in Arizona. In so doing he modeled what it will take for the whole human family to go cimarron and live in harmonious communion with all life, while confessing the limits of his and his community’s ability to live out their vision of the liberation of the land. “(Jesus) doesn’t condemn anyone for failing to live in full accordance with the restitutional mitzvot(Hebrew for just actions) required for redemption. We are to forgive one another our failures. He just condemns those who would lead us to think that anything less will do.” (p 190)
Corbett saw Jesus as a Jewish rabbi who announced jubilee – the liberation of peasants from indenture, of Jews from Rome, of nature from human management. The Sermon on the Mount is a manifesto for the redemption not just of humanity, but of the natural order, called for in the Torah. The Jewish law required that after the 49th year (a sabbath of sabbath years, seven times seven), a time of jubilee was to be enacted in which all land was to be returned to itself. No plowing or planting was allowed, and all land divisions were erased to end unjust accumulation of property.
Sanctuary for All Life is a radical call to jubilee liberation of the natural world, but Corbett was emphatic that it was not about “eco-sainthood”. He described the person who recycles everything, gives up automobiles, eats no meat, takes no vacation trips. “Yet the saint’s perfect conservational thoughtfulness can never be as effective as a single case of contraception.” (p 168) “Individuals can denounce and resist a way of life, but only a community can live a way of life into being and bequeath it to succeeding generations.” (p 168) For Corbett, the hallowing way is one that integrates humans into the natural world as co-creating “associates”, unlike those who want to ban all human activity in wilderness. This integration is the task not primarily of governments, but rather of the “church” as Corbett described it: “a voluntary society based on communion” (p 150). And by communion he refers to a real meal, not just the ritual symbolism of wafers and chalices. “To awaken to the forgotten meaning of sacrifice is to see that all food is sacramental, that every dinner table is an altar, that life itself is the primal form of holy communion, and that God is Nature, the creative source for Whom there is no other. The way we live on life – our food – is of fundamental religious concern.” (p 110) “The hallowing of our food has to do with care of the land, care that the animals on the land flourish.” (p 111)
Corbett indicted capitalism for its half-hearted embrace of the free market. A full embrace would result in abandoning not only governmental interference in the “spontaneous order” of markets, but also the capitalists’ attempts to interfere in the “spontaneous order” of nature. Nowhere was this better exemplified for Corbett than through the Western cattle industry’s reduction of cows to cash, which has resulted in wholesale degradation of rangelands and unholy treatment of animals. The real idolaters aren’t the biblical apostates adoring golden images: “it is market morality that worships the golden calf, as a commodity, in the name of profits and property.” ( p 249)
“Go deep enough into eco-wisdom, and you’ll find a practicable, down-to-earth mysticism.” (p 247) “Cowbalah” is Corbett’s playful term to express his resonance with the Jewish system of “kabbalah”, a web of relations through which the creative energy of the universe flows. “A visionary myth rather than theosophical speculation, kabbalah is concerned with humanity’s quest to recover its homeland in Eden: an unfarmed, fruitful oasis; an untamed paradise of living waters. This key myth of kabbalah fuses the communion insight with the down-to-earth quest for Eden.” (p 258)
In his first book, Corbett remembered two incidents from earlier in his life. “On the prairie, when the wind wails a dirge and snow sifts in rivulets through the sagebrush, I’ve hugged the sticky-pink, death-chilled body of a newborn lamb under my coat, and its heart fluttered in reply. And on a desert mountain, amidst the hush of soaring granite, I’ve opened a forgotten spring. The few who remembered thought it had long ago gone dry, but I found the hidden place and dug down until a stream ran clear and cold in the summer sun. So what are epitaphs to me? I’ve shared life’s warmth with a lamb. I’ve opened a desert spring.” (pp 12-13, Goatwalking) Jim Corbett’s spring still runs with prophetic insight for our time, and times to come, through the practical mysticism of Sanctuary for All Life.
Obituary in the Economist Magazine for Jim Corbett (died Aug 2, 2001)
Sanctuary for all Life can be bought directly from the publisher: Howling Dog Press
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