Call for religious role in combatting global warming

Why battling climate change requires a spiritual rebirth, The Gazette By: Matthew Fox November 30, 2015 On Monday (Nov. 30) representatives from 195 nations will gather in Paris to grapple with the greatest moral issue of our time — the war against Mother Earth. French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warns that “It is life on our planet itself which is at stake,” and there is an “absolute urgency” to turn things around.

This is not political rhetoric or religious apocalypticism — it is science that is drawing (finally) nations together around our real foe: the environmental danger to our planet. If our forays into space the past 40 years have demonstrated anything they have instructed us that Earth is very special in the universe. Yes, we have discovered exoplanets we hope might some day reveal other forms of life — and hopefully of intelligent life — but for now, and in our neighborhood, Earth stands alone.

We are being urged as a species to wake up and get out of our narcissistic anthropocentrism, that is to say our preoccupation with all things human, at the expense of all our relations with whales and dolphins, elephants and tigers, birds and redwoods, rain forests and rivers, oceans and lakes.

Will we take this opportunity to wake up from denial? Whole political parties in America as well as giant industries supporting such head-in-the-sand candidates seem to prefer denial to truth. Yet only the truth will set us free and get us working…….

Solutions must come from the Paris conference but they also must come from rapid education and change of values, from what the gospels call “metanoia” or change of consciousness. This is where spirituality comes in.

I define spirituality as “waking up” and I am not alone in this — the great Indian mystic of the 15th century, Kabir, said: “You have been sleeping for hundreds of millions of years. Why not wake up this morning?” Both St. Paul and Jesus talk about “waking up.” We humans have been in a deep sleep, especially in the West, mesmerized by our own doings and gadgets and projections, but the crisis at hand is a wake-up call.

Our religions must change and be part of the solution and not the problem. ……Each religion must act swiftly and work with, not against, science. Pope Francis’ encyclical “Laudato Si’” is a good example of this effort. Science too must work out of wisdom paradigms of justice and compassion. Education must be similarly reborn. The wisdom of indigenous tribes is indispensable for this change of consciousness for they have been in communion with Mother Earth and her creatures for thousands of years. They are leaders in a more-than-human awareness…….http://gazette.com/why-battling-climate-change-requires-a-spiritual-rebirth-commentary/article/1564615

December 2, 2015 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change, Religion and ethics

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