A Green/Blue Liberation Theology

A Green/Blue Liberation Theology

“The Earth is groaning, and if she is in pain, all of us are in pain.  We need a new green theology of liberation.”

Preach it, Cardinal Bo! Charles Bo was recently appointed Myanmar’s first Cardinal by Pope Francis. Bo preached a dynamite sermon this week to hundreds of nuns at their regular AMOR conference (Asia Oceania Meeting of Religious Women.)  They’ve never invited men before, but organizers said this year’s theme, “A Call for a Global Ecological Conversion,” needs everyone on board. 

They got their money’s worth in Cardinal Bo.  Quoting Francis’ encyclical on climate change, “Laudato Si: On Care for our Common Home,” and Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew, who said that when humans cause climate change it is a sin, Bo challenged, “We need a major revolution — a revolution in thinking — a revolution in our theology.  We need to evolve an eco-theology.”

Talk about a revolution in theology: Bo said, “We are gathered here today not against ISIS terrorists.  We are gathered here against economic terrorists and ecological terrorists.  Rich countries bear the brunt of responsibility for global warming.  We are a poor nation.  Rich countries throw carbon into the atmosphere. We suffer and bury thousands after every natural disaster.  Rich nations should use their resources to help solve environmental problems. Science needs to really consider what the options are, because poor countries are really suffering because of global warming — I think that's a warning for the whole universe."

Myanmar is the second most vulnerable nation (after Honduras) for global warming, subject to cyclones, floods and other disasters spawned by climate change.  Just an increase of 4 degrees will inundate and destroy many islands of Oceania, and countries like Australia, the Philippines and Indonesia will see millions of environmental refugees, he said.

Bo outlined several concrete proposals that religious can undertake to help counter ecological degradation, including fighting for ecological justice, undertaking ecological evangelization, paying greater attention to indigenous religious traditions, and listening to Eastern religions and their concept of "interbeing" with nature that affirm the sacredness of ecology more than Judeo-Christian religions do.

Catholic religious life needs to be a counterculture to the greed and consumerism that are behind many environmental issues, and embrace a simplicity and an eco-spirituality exemplified in Eastern religions, Bo said. Buddhist monks are not allowed to own anything except a begging bowl and needle and thread. Catholic religious of the East "need to adopt a lifestyle that is more like Eastern religions: simplicity and veneration of nature."

I learned about Cardinal Bo and the fantastic AMOR women religious of Asia and Oceania from the “Eco-Catholic Blog” I get weekly from the National Catholic Reporter.  (I’m quoting extensively from the blog.)  This blog is full of hopeful examples of actions by local US churches and international Catholic activists for environmental justice. 

Although I call my ministry Blue Theology (for the blue ocean,) I’ll sign up for Bo’s Green Liberation Theology as well. It’s all one planet, and as Cardinal Bo says, she is in pain, that’s how drastic and dangerous the ecological crisis is.

I believe he is quoting scripture here, Paul’s description in his Letter to the Romans that the coming of the Cosmic Christ changes things so much that it’s like all of creation is groaning, he says, like a woman in labor.  It is the suffering pain before a new birth.

Let’s heal and liberate the suffering earth, and be midwives of her new blue/green birth.

I write about Blue Theology, ocean spirituality and stewardship, every Wednesday.  We host youth mission trips and adult pilgrimages in Pacific Grove, Ca.  Four different groups are coming this spring, kids, college students, intergenerational groups.  We still have some openings this summer.  Bluetheology.com

https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/eco-catholic/myanmars-cardinal-bo-calls-green-theology-liberation

Cyptic Sound

Cryptic Sound

In the foundation of Winchester Cathedral, the crypt, stands this solemn sculpture, a study in contrasts. 

Ancient is the arched stone undercroft, predating even the medieval Gothic sanctuary that soars above it.  But the sculpture is modern, 1986, installed by British artist Antony Gormley. 

The crypt is cold and hard and impersonal; we associate crypts with death and graves and fear.  People mostly stay upstairs in the nave.  But the statue depicts a very alive human figure, indeed it is a made from a cast of Gormley’s own living body.

Crypts form solid hard foundations, dug deep in the dense dark earth.  But this crypt becomes soft and fluid every winter when the region’s persistent groundwater floods it as much as three feet deep.  The dark space becomes shiny and shimmering, reflecting the water in motion.  The sculpture was fashioned intentionally to withstand and even embrace the months it is partially submerged, wet and fluid.

Crypts are quiet, silent as a tomb.  But Gormley named the statue “Sound II.”  Sound?  One writer suggests Gormely wants us to look at the sculpture and “be still for a moment, to ‘sound’ the depths of our own spirit.”

The hands of the human form are cupped and the face is looking down at what it gently holds – water.  Not only does the sculpture stand up to its waist in the winter water, but an inner pipe brings water up into the hands. (So we are told – no crypt tours in the winter, too wet.  I was there in June and it had just reopened two weeks earlier.  The floor was still damp.)

There are tombs in the crypt, but this sculpture is about life.  All life is born of water, seeping from ocean ancestors.  It reminded me of Venus rising from the sea atop a similar wet cup.  The dark fecundity of the space was like a womb.  All these wet sources of life.

Upstairs in the nave are fabulous ancient religious sculptures and icons, saints and deities.  Thank you to Winchester Cathedral for placing new religious art in the depths, honoring water, birth, baptism, and rebirth.

I write every Wednesday about ocean water spirituality.  I also post it at www.bluetheologytideings.blogspot.com.  Our Blue Theology Mission station offer youth mission trips and adult pilgrimage retreats in Pacific Grove, doing ocean stewardship, sharing in ocean spirituality – still some openings this summer.  Bluetheology.com

Whale Falls

Whale Falls

Where do whales go when they die? 

Most dead whales sink slowly to the ocean floor, until they rest in the deep, 3000 feet or more. 

Sometimes we see (and smell!) dead whales decomposing on the beach or in near shore waters, but those are very few of the many thousands of whales who die naturally every year.  (If we lived in Norway or Japan or Iceland we might see the carcasses of the 2000 whales they still slaughter annually in commercial hunts.) 

Those lucky enough to die naturally become what’s called “whale fall.”

Because it’s so cold in the deep, with lots of pressure, the whales decompose very slowly. Scavengers like hagfish and crabs show up first, and eat all their soft tissue in a few months.  Then furry worms and shrimp, called “enrichment opportunists,” move in and colonize the massive whale bones for two or more years.  Finally, the bacteria arrive and live for many decades, 50 years or more, off the bones’ lipids, feeding in turn many nearby mussels and clams. 

Researchers using a remotely operated vehicle studied one 40-ton grey whale carcass deep off the coast of Santa Barbara for over ten years and found more than 30,000 animals, representing 200 different species, living off the one animal.  A dead whale can be one of the most species-rich habitats in the ocean.

 ^“There is no greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

OK, this is a slightly morbid topic for my weekly post on ocean spirituality.  I’m pretty sure those are eels in this picture, feasting on the dead whale.  Creepy.  Of course we know that every animal body eventually ends up in the sea in some diffuse form, thanks to decomposition, gravity, run off and continental shift. OK, more dreariness.  I confess I’m feeling a bit dark these days; life and nation seem a little grim.  My brooding about life and death reminded me of what I have learned at the Aquarium about whale falls.

But I am a resurrection girl.  I do believe that life is always more powerful than death.  Even for a 40-ton dead whale.  In their one death they give life to tens of thousands of others.  In that miraculous balance of life and death and new life, there is no waste, everything has value and meaning.  Even in the darkest depths, a rich habitat.

They are haunting, pictures of whale falls, courtesy of deep sea technology.  I am moved, and strangely reassured, seeing both the death hidden in the dark and the new life blooming from it.  There is so much we know, and so much we have no idea about at all.  I like learning new things.  And I like letting the mystery be, down deep.

Where do whales go when they die?  To whale heaven of course.  From deep dark wet, they are transformed into new life.   Same as for all of us living beings.   We move from deep dark wet to light and life, again and again.

(Bluetheology.com.  We invite you to a Blue Theology Retreat and Resource Day May 9 in Pacific Grove for religious leaders, “Walking With Jesus By The Sea.”)

Mermaid's Purse

Mermaid’s Purse

 

See the little baby shark inside this egg case?  When found empty on the shore, after the shark is born, we call these  

cases “mermaid’s purses,” so precious was its content.

Dad Shark fertilizes Mom’s egg internally (shark sex!)  She lays the egg in a safe place, like the kelp forest, where it can hide for the nine months it takes to grow and hatch on its own.  (To our Aquarium guests I say, “She lays the egg and then she says, Goodbye! Good Luck!”  “Au Revoir, Bon Chance!” to the French guests.) 

Of the 400 different kinds of sharks, nearly half, the coastal ones, give birth this way.  (Open ocean sharks keep their babies inside until birth; no place to hide the egg case.)

Nine months all on its own!  How will it survive?  Mom Shark “packs it a lunch” (in the words of a British shark expert.)  The egg case includes a nutritious yoke (you can see that too), and when it’s gone, it’s time for birth. 

But the egg wall is not a solid shell, like a chicken’s.  No, the wall is permeable.  Ocean water can flow in and out, bringing in a nutritious sea soup and neatly draining away waste.  The scientists call this “osmo-regulating,” like osmosis, which means “to push” in Greek.  Mom has pushed, and now the ocean pushes and pulls through the permeable egg membrane.

Each of our own human cells has a permeable membrane – food in, waste out.  We need some  kind of cell walls or we would slop and bleed all over each other.  But without the push and pull of osmosis permeating through the membrane, we would starve and be poisoned by waste. 

Baby sharks have permeable egg walls.  We humans have osmo-regulaing cell walls.  Are they like national borders?  I was surprised to read in Outside Magazine about a group of ranchers and biologists who are concerned about the proposed expansion of the wall between the US and Mexico, because of the many border animals whose food, migration and reproduction are already being walled up and in.

Precious things we humans, and mermaids, keep in our purses.  But without food and flow, nothing survives.  Osmosis diplomacy.

Bluetheology.com.  We just booked another weekend youth group in March and a clergy couple spending a sabbatical week with us in May.  May 9 we host a Blue Theology Retreat and Resource Day for clergy and religious educators, following Jesus’ model of spending key ministry moments “By the Sea.”  Be in touch.