Iris Murdoch, the English philosopher and novelist, once said that in philosophy you can never be entirely sure of when you're tackling a general question, and when you're just working out your own personal demons and fears. I've felt the force of these words as I write these reflections.
On the one hand, I have no doubt we live in times that are critical for the future of life on earth ― an issue of universal concern, to say the least. Scientists speak of our having entered a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, where for the first time in evolutionary history human activity has the capacity not only to shape but to disrupt radically the Earth-system processes necessary to sustain life.
It's well-known that we're exceeding planetary limits in a whole range of areas, from carbon emissions to ocean acidification to biodiversity loss, and that, in the words of French social theorist Jean-Pierre Dupuy, humanity is currently on a "suicidal course" towards a disaster comprised of "a whole system of disruptions, discontinuities, and basic structural changes that are the consequences of exceeding critical thresholds."
This news of looming ecological and social catastrophe leaves me feeling a combination of fear, grief and helpless complicity. It's like being strapped to a juggernaut I cannot get off, and we cannot stop. I feel frustrated and enraged by the stubborn refusal of many of the "powers that be" to take appropriate action (though the truth is that their capacity to "act" decisively and effectively is also doubtless limited). Indeed, what makes this such a complex issue ― a "wicked" problem ― is that, although we (especially we in the West) are collectively responsible, no one person or group is simply to blame or in overall control.
The political philosopher Hannah Arendt noted, it's a defining feature of the human condition that we have the power to act in such a way that our actions acquire autonomy "in relation to the intentions of actors." Whether by way of words or deeds, we set processes in motion or initiate a sequence of events whose outcome we do not control. This has always been the case ― as the writers of tragedy knew so well. What's new is the scale on which we're now capable collectively of acting. "The wholly novel character of modern societies founded on science and technology," Dupuy writes, "derives from the fact that they are capable of unleashing irreversible processes in and on nature itself."
It's in this sense that, as well as being responsible, we're also victims of our own action. And although we are awakening to the urgency of our situation and know at least some of what we need to do next, there are also real questions about whether we're waking up in time and can enact what we know effectively. Even now, some of the damage done is apparently irreversible.
Want the best of Religion & Ethics delivered to your mailbox?
Sign up for our weekly newsletter.
And here's where it becomes personal ― because what rises up in me in response to this terrifying state of affairs are not only questions like "what should we do?" and "what can I do?" but also "how can I live in the face of all this?" and "how must I be towards it?"
Can I hope, for example? Indeed, is hope in some sense a duty if I'm not to be paralysed by despair, or is it ― as some say ― a form of denial or evasion? Can I be happy? Can I let myself delight in the beauty of the world and savour the joy of my own life? Or is being happy a sign that I haven't grasped sufficiently the gravity and grief of our condition?
Etty Hillesum wrote in one of her letters from Westerbork concentration camp, after yet another train had left for Auschwitz: "There was a moment when I felt in all seriousness that after this night, it would be a sin ever to laugh again." But then, she went on, "I reminded myself that some of those who had gone away had been laughing, even if only a handful of them this time ..."
Can I be happy? And what of the question of vocation? Given that I'm not a climate scientist or someone with particular political influence, do I just get on with life as faithfully as I can, trusting that others better placed to affect the big picture are doing their best? Or is "just getting on with it" a form of culpable inattention ― fiddling while Rome burns, when really we should be sitting at city gates covered in sackcloth and ashes? I sometimes experience a sense of psychic vertigo as we make plans for the long-term vision of a particular work or community, wondering how much longer the conditions that support life on earth will be around.
At one level, questions like these might themselves seem an indulgence. Who cares how I orient and organise myself emotionally and spiritually, whether I'm despairing or hopeful, carefree or care-full? And yet, indulgent or not, they demand my attention. It feels as though my response matters. I'm daring to believe these concerns are not mine alone but may resonate with others, and that they may lead us to discover more of what it could mean for all of us to live well in the face of doom.
A sense of doom
When I initially began formulating my own sense of things in terms of "doom," I was seeking to name the painful and debilitating mixture of dread and impotence I sometimes feel. Hearing the nightly news, reading some of the literature, it sounds as though a devastating future is coming inexorably towards us and our precious planet, like a slow-moving tsunami we're powerless to avert or avoid.
My sense of impotence is only increased by the heedlessness of some of those in power who seem oblivious to the magnitude of what's unfolding. In 2017, for example, Scott Morrison, when he was still Treasurer, brought a lump of coal to Question Time, brandishing it as some kind of "argument" for the continued economic necessity for coal-fired power and the unabated use of fossil fuels. This at a time when Australia's carbon emissions continue to rise, and it would take five planets for everyone to live like Australians do. The barbarians are inside the gates ― grounds for a sense of helplessness and hopelessness, a sense of doom.
But I've since learned that the modern conception of "doom" intrinsically bound up with a looming disaster only emerged fully in the early 1600s. In Old English, "doom" meant simply law or judgement. Recall the "Domesday" book commissioned by William the Conqueror and completed in 1086 ― that's an instance of the earlier usage of the term. The book was a great survey which recorded landholdings and assets held in England and Wales, so as to determine the taxes owed to the Crown. Originally, the manuscript had no title, but it came to be known as the "Domesday Book" because it was considered the definitive judgement or reckoning of accounts.
How then did "doom" come to have the connotations we associate with it? You can see its modern sense emerging as early as the twelfth century in the words of Richard FitzNeal, treasurer of England under Henry II. He was describing how the "Domesday Book" came to have its name. Metaphorically, he wrote:
as the sentence of that strict and terrible last account cannot be evaded by any skilful subterfuge, so when this book is appealed to ... its sentence cannot be quashed or set aside with impunity. That is why we have called the book "the Book of Judgement" ... because its decisions, like those of the Last Judgement, are unalterable.
"Doom" here still means simply "judgement," but if judgement is being associated with the end of days and the end of days with a "strict and terrible last account," then it's little surprise that the notion of "doom" evolved to have the connotations it now does.
Well, all this may be (more or less) interesting for those of a linguistic bent, but what relevance does it have for us? For our purposes, what I find significant about this etymological detour is that it enables us to bring the felt experience of impending doom into conversation with a theology of judgement. How that helps is the question I turn to next.
The little apocalypse
In the apocalyptic imagination of the Bible, disruptions of the natural world ― earthquakes, floods, solar eclipses ― are understood to be cosmic reflections of social crisis. In mythical terms, natural disasters are markers of human disorder and the "feedback" loop of divine displeasure. We're used to thinking of this as a kind of primitive cosmology, but it's actually not so far from what we've managed to produce in reality.
I've already referred to the extent to which our ecological crisis is ― at least from the point of view of the West ― not simply an arbitrary fate befalling us from without; it's something we're bringing upon ourselves and others. And this means the crisis reveals something about us. In particular, it makes visible the planetary unsustainability of our form of life. It is, if you like, a judgement upon our culture's lack of care and integrity in relation to the web of life, the myriad "interactions, mutual givings and receivings, that makes up the world we inhabit." And the form this judgement will take, the consequences we will suffer, look likely to be dire, even apocalyptic to at least some significant degree.
Jesus, as it turns out, had something to say about how to live in such times, times when human alienation and violence bring about the collapse of the known world. Could his teaching have something to offer our situation? I want to explore this possibility, drawing in the first instance on chapter 13 of Mark's Gospel, the text known as the "Little Apocalypse."
This passage begins with Jesus coming out of the Temple. That act already seems theologically freighted. In the Jerusalem of Jesus's day, the Temple must have dominated everything. "Not merely," as James Alison has written, "because of its size, or the economic importance of the market in sacrificial beasts ... More important than that, the Temple was the centre of mimetic fascination." That is, it was a focus for people's sense of belonging in terms of their national identity, career, wealth and reputation as well as being the authorised source of divine legitimation. We can imagine how mesmerising the goings on in the Temple would have been, how necessary it may have felt to be perpetually monitoring (a bit like Facebook or Parliament or the Stock Exchange) "what was going on, who was in, who was out ... which faction was coming out on top ... and so on," for the Temple appeared to be at the centre of what mattered. Yet Jesus is leaving the building.
Meanwhile, his disciples are still admiring its edifice, its seemingly unshakeable structuring of their world. The text of the Gospel reads: "As he came out of the temple, one of his disciples said to him, 'Look, teacher, what large stones and what large buildings!'" Jesus is unimpressed: "Do you see these great buildings?" he asks. "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down" (Mark 13:1-2). He then proceeds to catalogue a whole series of disasters to come: "wars and rumours of wars," nation rising against nation, earthquakes and famines, and yet ― strikingly ― he warns his disciples not to make any of this mean too much. Don't be alarmed, he says, and don't think these catastrophes are signs of the end. As Dupuy remarks:
Jesus refuses to let himself be carried away by millenarian fervour. He desacralizes both the Temple and the event of its destruction, denying that this moment has any divine significance.
In terms of the theology of the New Testament, as James Alison has brilliantly argued, the import of Jesus's teaching here is twofold. To begin with, he is uncoupling our image of God from violence and mayhem. He's subverting our human tendency to attribute divine meaning to disaster and so to become morbidly fascinated by it. In this passage, Jesus describes events that likely refer to the fall of Jerusalem, which was indeed a terrible thing for those who suffered it. "But not even that, for all its horror, is to be read in a theological key," for Jesus insists "if anyone says to you at that time, 'Look! Here is the Messiah!' or 'Look! There he is!' ― do not believe it." In Alison's words, the disciples must "learn to distance themselves from attributing theological importance to the violent events of this world. They have no such importance."
It follows, then, that what Jesus is really interested in is teaching the disciples how to dwell in a new way amidst the violent cataclysms of history and the doom we bring upon ourselves. This new possibility for inhabiting life differently is one he speaks of before his death, but it's fully inaugurated and made available by the resurrection. It seems to me to have two main elements.
On the one hand, it's about no longer being run by death and the fear of death. This starts to become possible when, in the resurrection, Jesus returns to his disciples alive on the other side of death, and they glimpse in him a life that's no longer bound or threatened by death. It's not that his death is simply cancelled ― the risen Jesus bears the scars of his crucifixion ― but he exists now in a somehow larger life: a life over which death has no more dominion. "We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again" (Romans 6:9), writes St. Paul. Slowly, even painfully, through their encounters with Christ, the disciples come to trust that for them too death is no longer "the end," no longer the ultimate horizon of life. Because of him, there emerges for them the possibility of what Rowan Williams has called a "decisive transition to that new level of existence where God is the only ultimate horizon ― not death, or nothingness."
On the other hand, it's a revelation about the nature of God. Indeed, what makes the resurrection really good news for the disciples is what the manner of Jesus's return reveals about God. If the resurrection had been merely God's vindication of Jesus, God's overturning of the judgement against him, it would have been (as, in fact, it seemed initially) simply terrifying. After all, they've failed him, been in various ways complicit with the system that crucified him. But Jesus returns not condemning but restoring. He comes to renew their vocation and breathe out his Spirit upon them, so they may become again participants with him in God's redeeming work. He is with his disciples, Alison says, as the presence of forgiveness. So not only does the resurrection reveal that Jesus's life could not be annihilated by death and the violence of the world; it shows also that the nature of life's ultimate horizon is inexhaustibly inviting and hospitable. The risen Christ reveals the Father to be neither punishing judge nor indifferent fate, but active, re-creating and reconciling love.
And for this reason, it is in the light of the resurrection that we can better appreciate Jesus's teaching about living in violent and troubled times. For he insists that what matters most in times of tribulation is being able to recognise and keep your attention on the real dynamic of creation and of history. The violent collapse of the world's order signifies nothing about God, so do not become obsessed with or confused by such events. Instead, look for the presence and pattern of the One who seeks to transform and heal the life of the world from within, through self-giving, suffering love. "Therefore," Jesus tells his disciples, watch, be alert, keep awake, "for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn." And note, here, the temporal references are to the events of Jesus's Passion, when he lets himself be handed over at evening in the Last Supper, at midnight in Gethsemane, at cockcrow by Peter and at dawn to the Romans. This is how the master comes, this is how God acts ― by entering into the destructive and hateful dynamics of the world as the presence of steadfast and merciful love, to liberate life from within.
To be a disciple, Jesus says, is to participate in this same way of being, this same transforming mission. How do you live well in the face of doom? In this passage, the Little Apocalypse, Jesus appears to say: don't focus on the drama, the fire and fury ― all the collapsing structures ― and do not be alarmed. God has entered time and wills to liberate and heal. So look out for that reality, be ready to participate in it.
Apocalypse now
We too live in a time of the collapsing Temple, as our economic and political institutions totter; and for us, disorder in the natural world is not only metaphorically but literally manifesting. Is it possible that Jesus would tell us also not to get too alarmed about all this? Would he have us simply keep awake and look out for the coming of the master, the action of God in the midst? At first glance, this recommendation sounds horribly close to certain fundamentalist views ― we don't need to worry about the state of the planet because the second coming is imminent; we don't need to take responsibility for future generations, because we're only passing through and 'this world' is passing away. Well, if that's where our reflection has led, I think we've been led astray.
So if it doesn't mean this, what could Jesus's teaching mean in practice? How might it change our approach and our experience of life now? I've already mentioned the writing of Etty Hillesum, the Dutch Jew who died in Auschwitz in 1943 and who, for the two years before her deportation and death, kept a journal ― an extraordinary chronicle of life lived squarely in the face of doom. From her, I think we can pick out essential contours of what living well amounts to, in such times.
For one thing (and contrary to the fundamentalist picture) refusing to be fascinated or obsessively preoccupied with the "great catastrophes of the age" is not the same thing as ignoring what's happening or refusing to suffer its horror and grief. On 29 April 1942, Jews in Amsterdam were forced to wear the star of David. In early May, Etty wrote: the "threat grows ever greater, and terror increases from day to day." She spoke of "drawing prayer around her like a dark protective wall." Yet a few days later, her journal entry reads:
It is sometimes hard to take in and comprehend, oh God, what those created in Your likeness do to each other in these disjointed days. But I no longer shut myself away in my room, God. I try to look things straight in the face, even the worst crimes, and to discover the small, naked human being amidst the monstrous wreckage caused by man's senseless deeds.
Two weeks later, restrictions on Jews were drastically increased ― they could no longer visit the greengrocers, or travel by tram and would soon have to hand in their bicycles ― and she wrote on 9 June of feeling depressed about these measures: "this morning they weighed on me like a menacing lead mass ..." By 3 July she could clearly see that "what is at stake is our impending destruction and annihilation, we can have no more illusions about that ... Today I was filled with terrible despair, and I shall have to come to terms with that as well ..." But then she went on:
Very well then, this new certainty, that what they are after is our total destruction, I accept it. I know it now and I shall not burden others with my fears. I shall not be bitter if others fail to grasp what is happening to us Jews. I work and continue to live with the same conviction and I find life meaningful ― yes, meaningful ― although I hardly dare say so in company these days.
Of course, she continued to endure periods of intense grief and despair, but what was emerging in Etty was an extraordinary capacity neither to avoid, minimise nor deny what was happening, while at the same time not to be trapped by it or allow herself to be wholly determined by events. "Something has crystallised," she writes. "I have looked our destruction, our miserable end which has already begun in so many small ways in our daily life, straight in the eye and accepted it into my life, and my love of life has not been diminished." And the importance of this, she felt, was twofold: that she herself would continue to grow and continue to savour the gift of life through it all, and that being towards her doom in this way would offer (in some mysterious way) something for future generations. "I must try to live a good and faithful life to my last breath: so that those who come after me do not have to start all over again, need not face the same difficulties."
It's as if, we might say, she's entered into the essential dynamic of resurrection life. She's discovered an experience of goodness whose reality transcends the suffering of this present time, and lives no longer under the dominion of death. She wrote that "the reality of death has become a definite part of my life; my life has, so to speak, been extended by death ... by accepting destruction as part of life and no longer wasting my energies on fear of death or the refusal to acknowledge its inevitability."
Now I'm conscious some might think that Etty's example, inspiring as it is, is not directly analogous with ours. She and her fellow Jews really were doomed for destruction, whereas we still have the time to avert the worst. And if that's so, isn't there a danger that premature capitulation to or acceptance of "doom" might prevent us from proper protest and urgent action? Some would contend that rumours of the "end of the world" have come and gone many times and tend always to be exaggerated. That view may smack of denial, but from this perspective my talk of doom might seem paralysing and needlessly catastrophising.
Well, the truth is, we don't know for certain what the future holds. And neither, actually, did Etty. At the time she wrote her diary, it was possible (and she hoped it was possible) that she might be spared. Facing the possibility of the worst does not mean giving in to it, hastening it or ceasing to engage in meaningful action. In fact, I would argue, quite the opposite ― it's the precondition of meaningful action, action responsive to the clearest available perception of reality, free, powerful and undistorted by the temptation to grasp at false consolation. Dupuy calls it "enlightened doom-saying."
And here it matters to remember that "doom" is not simply about a feared end, but is also about judgement. Facing doom involves facing up to our way of being, confronting the consequences of our alienation and inattention, how we have contributed to where we are now. Without this kind of awakening and honesty, without repentance (metanoia), a change of mind and heart, how can the future become different? For Etty too, this was part of it. The diary reveals her ever-deepening commitment to truth-telling and her growing capacity to detect the pockets of falsehood in her life ― her tendencies to be self-dramatising or romanticising ― which were getting in the way of being really present, really true to the task before her.
Similarly, in our time, confronting doom in both senses ― facing up to the possibility of disaster and facing up to judgement ― is the precondition of meaningful action. And this means looking squarely at the devastation of natural systems already in evidence: the death of coral reefs, the extinction of species, the collapse of fish stocks and forests. It means not just admitting these as facts, but allowing ourselves to be truly present to the calamity this signifies and how we have contributed to the suffering of our fellow creatures and the blighting of the world's beauty: our plastic bags and bottles choking the oceans, our wastage of food and fuel, our chemical pollution of air and soil, and how little (really) we're willing to give up.
This sometimes feels unbearable. It's true that our degree of exposure makes a difference here ― if we're not Pacific Islanders or subsistence farmers or dedicated oceanographers, our sense of all this may be less immediately frightening, painful and debilitating. But even for those of us still relatively unaffected by the impact of these losses, don't we find it almost impossible really to look? Don't we want to deny it really is this bad?
How then is Etty able to "look" (as she says) straight in the eye of the coming destruction and (without bitterness) at those who are perpetrating or complicit in it? It's no accident, I think, that her capacity to do this grows as her prayer life deepens. Often she wrote of her conversations with God, her desire to fall to her knees. On 20 July, she remarked: "They are merciless, totally without pity. And we must be all the more merciful ourselves. That's why I prayed early this morning." And she reflected on the change in herself:
Had all of this happened to me only a year ago, I should certainly have collapsed within three days, committed suicide or pretended to a false kind of cheerfulness. But now I am filled with such equanimity, endurance and calmness that I can see things very clearly and have an inkling of how they fit together.
Jesus says to his disciples "keep awake" and from Etty we learn that this is about neither evading the truth of things, nor being overwhelmed by cynicism, rage, fear and despair. It involves coming to a certain interior stillness and spaciousness. Etty spoke of safeguarding "that little piece of You, God, in ourselves," and of being able to rest simply in God's arms. It takes something to come to this place. Contemplative prayer, meditation, is a way we can journey.
In times of meditation, we focus as simply as we can on the breath or mantra, facing towards God. Gradually we become less invested in and less attached to ourselves, our anxieties, plans, alarms. At times we may still be overwhelmed by them or aware of them hovering, seeking our attention, but more and more we're able to avoid getting "caught" by them. The more this happens during the dedicated time of meditation, the more we know the difference in life between serious, non-dramatising attention to the truth of things and agitated reactivity which may give us the illusion of engaging reality, but is ultimately futile.
It seems to me that if we seek to live well in the face of doom, it's this capacity truly to be and bear with what's happening that's a necessary first step. This is what transforms the experience of helpless and terrified impotence into poverty of spirit. Etty describes this as a place of "acceptance" which, she says, "is not at all the same as defeatism." And this is the ground of fruitful action and authentic hope.
What should we do?
This, of course, is the question posed by the crowd in Jerusalem in the wake of Jesus's resurrection from the dead. They'd been convicted by St. Peter's preaching of their complicity in an unholy act. Thinking they were doing God's will, they'd been party to the killing of God's anointed, and this means they'd failed to understand what it was they were really about. Brought to recognise this difficult, this "inconvenient" truth, they are, according to the Acts of the Apostles, "cut to the heart" and realise they cannot continue unchanged. "Brothers," they ask, "What should we do?" Peter's answer is direct and unequivocal: "Repent, and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit" (Acts 2:37-38).
To a striking extent, facing up to the import of how we've been living puts us in the same kind of position. Thinking we've been making "progress" and living relatively decent lives, we're now realising we've been party to unleashing violence and destruction on a planetary scale. We're appalled, "cut to the heart," and we're asking ourselves and each other: "What should we do?" and even, "What must we do to be saved?" And, unlikely as it might seem, I want to suggest that St; Peter's words still answer to our cry.
I'm conscious this could seem an unhelpfully "religious" approach to the question of how to respond to our ecological crisis. Surely, it might said, rather than introduce notions of "repentance" (let alone of baptism, forgiveness and the Holy Spirit), we'd do better to focus plainly on what we know are necessary actions ― such things as generating renewable energy, eliminating carbon emissions and other forms of pollution, reducing consumption and recycling waste, reimagining urban infrastructure and agricultural methods, regenerating ecosystems, and negotiating internationally agreed limits and targets.
Well, at one level, yes. I take it for granted that action of this kind ― scientific, legislative, political, communal, household and personal ― is vital. Much is already being done in these spheres, and much more must be ventured. I think it matters, however, where such actions are sourced. It's possible that these measures can be undertaken in the spirit of ameliorating symptoms or problems, making technical adjustments or concessions within an essentially unchanged paradigm. But I've argued that our crisis is bigger than this. It requires us to confront a lack of integrity in our whole way of being in the world. St. Peter was seeking to communicate to his fellow citizens, not simply that an injustice had been done to Jesus, but that this injustice revealed something amiss in their understanding of God, and their whole way of generating identity and community.
In the same way, our present crisis reveals something fundamentally amiss in our self-understanding and our relationship with life. And if this is so, then a truly effective response to our crisis and the possibility of deep healing for the world calls for something really radical ― like repentance, baptism and receptivity to grace. At least, that's one way of characterising what's needed if we're to do the work of love in the face of doom, as I hope to show.
Repenting
Rowan Williams has suggested that our ecological crisis has its roots in a shared "cultural and spiritual crisis" whose nature could be summed up by saying that we've lost our sense of being-in-relation to the larger web of life. He writes:
we must begin by recognising that our ecological crisis is part of a crisis of what we understand by our humanity; it is part of a general process of losing our "feel" for what is appropriately human, a loss that has been going on for some centuries and which some cultures and economies have been energetically exporting to the whole world.
This loss of "feel" for what is appropriately human manifests, he suggests, in various ways. It includes the erosion of rhythms of work and leisure ― we treat ourselves and others increasingly like machines. It shows up in our impatience with the passing of time "so that speed of communication has become a good in itself" and we find ourselves without "time" for the very old and the very young. It manifests in our impatience with other forms of limit (including our own finitude), and our ever more compulsive and heedless consumption. Crucially, it includes also our loss of felt connection with the rest of creation:
Many of the things which have moved us towards ecological disaster have been distortions in our sense of who and what we are, and their overall effect has been to isolate us more and more from the reality we're part of.
For this reason, then:
our response to the [ecological] crisis needs to be, in the most basic sense, a reality check, a re-acquaintance with the facts of our interdependence within the material world and a rediscovery of our responsibility for it.
If we take this seriously, it suggests that repenting involves more than turning from some of what we do. It's also about realising how alienated we've become from our own creatureliness and dissociated from the created order as a whole. Unless we wake up to this dimension of our condition, we will not be capable of reconceiving and sustaining the kind of properly respectful relationship with the rest of life on which our lives ultimately depend. And from a Christian point of view, this is not just about self-preservation ― waking up in time and doing the minimum to save ourselves. It's about recognising afresh our human vocation to care for and tend the earth, to reverence and celebrate the gift that life is, to offer our praise and thanksgiving, and participate in life's transmission and renewal.
It's one thing, however, to recognise the need for a new way of imagining and being human. It's quite another to live into this new form of life and discover its implications for us as persons and communities. In the passage from the Acts of the Apostles, this is what the exhortation to be baptised is about. And I wonder what being baptised for the forgiveness of sins might look like in relation to an ecological conversion?
Being baptised
Baptism involves dying to one life and being raised to newness of life. It means giving up or letting go destructive or untruthful bases of identity so as to become a new creation sourced in the eternally generative life of God. To be baptised is to enter into a new network of relationships and commit to practices which sustain us in the new way of being.
I think many of us find that the committed practice of meditation makes this baptismal dynamic something we know as a lived experience. In silent contemplative prayer, we consent to let go the old sources of our identity ― the stream of thoughts and feelings that constitute our sense of self ― and seek to be simply open, receptive to the person and pattern of Christ. As we persist in this way, we find ourselves increasingly liberated from destructive mindsets and habits, able to receive more freely and generously the gift of life.
Our tradition has tended to emphasise the experience of being restored to communion with ourselves, other people and God as the fruit of this practice. I'm sure I'm not alone, however, in discovering that what also comes alive is a sense of connection with the natural world. As we're liberated from self-absorption and self-concern, we become more fully aware of the greater life around us ― the presence of a tree, the marvellous quickness of a bird or insect, the touch of wind and water, the immensity of sky. Contemplative practice helps us be more fully present and alive to the wonder of what is. It increases our sense of belonging to a larger whole and our reverence for its mysterious otherness.
If responding to our ecological crisis requires us to be reknitted with the natural world, reacquainted and reconciled with our place in the created order, then this suggests that contemplation is one important element of the work of love in our time. It is, I would say, a kind of baptism, a way of putting off our old mind and being forgiven ― that is, released from alienating habits of seeing and being so as to enter into renewed relationship.
Like all processes of transformation, however, our journey of re-union with the natural world can be more or less whole-hearted, more or less generous and self-yielding. Speaking of our contemplative journey into God, John Main consistently warned of the danger of false resting places, of our tendency to attain a certain degree of spiritual progress and think we've come far enough. Rather than allowing our practice to draw us on beyond egoic satisfaction, we settle for what he calls "the pernicious peace." I think something similar can happen in our journey towards renewed communion with the natural world. We're happy to be reconnected to a certain extent. Pleased by our new awareness and enjoyment of the world's richness, we feel more alive and at home.
But this can all remain essentially on our terms, an augmenting of our experience, rather than a real transformation of our being-in-relation to the world around us. Rowan Williams expresses the difference in the form of a question: "How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us?" Or, in other words, how do we discover our radical interdependence with the rest of life and be open to the risk of mutuality, answerability and real relationship?
In recent years, I've been part of a group that's met annually in central Australia seeking to learn from Aboriginal people something of their relationship to the natural world ― and, for me, this has been a profound yet elusive revelation of what this deepened understanding might entail. I want to sketch a couple of its elements, before saying a little more about its implications for us.
First, kinship with the natural world, the felt knowledge of radical interdependence. Aboriginal people traditionally come from a particular land or "country," a region they understand not only in terms of its geographical features, but also its stories, language and networks of human and nonhuman relationship. Rather than conceiving of their "country" as belonging to them, however, Aboriginal people speak of themselves as belonging to country.
More than that, they understand their land to be constitutive of their human being. Arrente woman M.K. Turner has said: "The roots of the country and its people are twined together. We are part of the Land. The Land is us, and we are the Land." She speaks of experiencing the veins in her country as running through her, as the veins in her arm. At a gathering where I heard her speak, someone asked how she felt about cattle stations and fences going up across "her" country, and she said: that happens on the surface, on the topsoil. But underneath the topsoil is the flesh of the earth and the flesh, she said, is us ― it cannot be taken away. For me, this was an electrifying moment ― a sudden window into a completely different way of experiencing what it is to be human, an experience of interbeing with the earth itself.
Theologian Ilia Delio has written:
We emerge from an evolutionary process and are biologically linked to the natural world. The same currents that run through our human blood also run through the swirling galaxies and the myriad of life-forms that pervade this planet.
Most of us can accept this theoretically, conceptually, but we don't know it deeply for ourselves, we don't experience it. Even the mystics of the Western tradition, who speak of communion with God and of feeling themselves one with other people, don't tend to speak of this level of communion, or inter-being with the whole created order. Perhaps St. Francis ― with his "Brother Sun, Sister Moon" ― is the exception. Yet what we glimpse in this "Aboriginal mysticism" is the possibility of human life lived in felt kinship with the earth, the cosmos itself.
Second, answerability or responsibility. If Aboriginal people feel their lives to be in some profound sense identified and continuous with the life of the world, their "country" is also other. It cares for the people and in turn the people must care for it and all that dwells in it. Listening to land, listening to country is at the heart of this relationship. Friends of mine tell a story of being out on country with an Aboriginal man ― John (Anyemi) ― who suddenly directed them to drive off track in a particular direction. After a kilometre or two, they came to a fence in which a camel was trapped and unable to extricate itself. When asked how he knew it was there, Anyemi said he just felt there was something "wrong" in that direction, and when asked about freeing the feral animal, something introduced to the land by settlers, he said that everything that lived on his country was his responsibility. He was answerable for its well-being.
It's clear that I can never have the same experience of land, of "country," as Australia's indigenous peoples ― I am formed by a totally different culture. At the same time, I sense something of the profound difference the Aboriginal perspective makes to how human beings may be in and towards the earth. Even to glimpse their experience of inter-subjectivity with the rich and mysterious life of the world makes aspects of our lifestyle and our assumptions about economic value look shallow and repugnant if not simply absurd. It makes visible how profoundly alienated our culture is from the matrix of our being.
And I wonder if being baptised and forgiven our ecological sins, being genuinely available for the kind of reconnection that is part of our and the world's healing, will involve something like learning to "listen" to land in the way of indigenous peoples? At present, we in the West think we're doing well if we commission an environmental impact assessment for a proposed development ― where the underlying assumptions are to do with minimising harm, determining the limits of allowable damage, deciding what the environment will "take." What would it mean, though, if we related to a river system or piece of country as a "subjectivity" ― a sharer with us in the web of life?
Recall Rowan Williams's question: "How do we live in a way that shows an understanding that we genuinely live in a shared world, not one that simply belongs to us?" What would it mean if we determined our actions in the light of a commitment not just to the survival but the flourishing of all life, or if we assigned economic value to regenerative projects, or conceived our human vocation as primarily not to "develop" (in the sense of "exploit"), but to sing and celebrate the life of the world? The difference this could make to the way we relate to the environment would be analogous to the difference between a culture of slaveowners who seek to treat their slaves well, and a culture where slavery itself is simply unthinkable.
In Australia and around the world, many are finding themselves drawn into this unfamiliar journey of learning to listen to land and from the wisdom of indigenous peoples. We're spending time on "country," exploring practices for deep attending and then responding to what we hear. At one level, this "turn" can seem strange and destabilising. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just being caught in a kind of romanticism, a yearning for some supposedly "lost" communion with nature.
Then I remember that baptism is supposed to be destabilising ― it's supposed to undo aspects of our received identity and habits of relating, and draw us into a larger reality and responsiveness. It does not leave us as we are, but calls us deeper into participation with God's working in creation and redemption. And it seems no coincidence that our engagement with this practice of deep listening to land is increasing in intensity at a time when humankind is in such desperate need of recovering our connection to the living world.
Receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit
I now want to point to one final element involved in responding to the question, "What should we do?" In terms of the schema I introduced, it corresponds to the possibility that we may become participants in the life, the action of God by receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit. Three features of this promised possibility strike me as particularly important.
First is the faith that grace is available and that God is at work; that there is a power and love other than ours which seeks the world's liberation and healing. In Gerard Manley Hopkin's words, there remains the "dearest freshness deep down things" because "the Holy Ghost over the bent world broods with warm breast and with, ah, bright wings!" This is not a power that operates by magic; nor is it some divine guarantee that everything must turn out just fine. Rowan Williams writes: because the life of the world "reflects in varying degrees the eternal life of God, we have to say, as believers, that the possibility of life is never exhausted within creation: there is always a future." But, he goes on: "in this particular context, this specific planet, that future depends in significant ways on our co-operative, imaginative labour, on the actions of each of us."
I think this is true. The gift promised in the Spirit is not that we will be rescued willy-nilly, but that, as we undergo the death of our old way of being, the possibilities of our co-operative and imaginative labour may be transformed by grace. In the New Testament, the risen Christ breathed his Spirit on the disciples gathered and its gift empowered them to live more and more as he did ― sharing in his relationship with God and living as his redeeming presence in the world.
To the extent they remained faithful to it, they discovered that the Spirit gave them new strength to endure and to undergo suffering without turning from love. It led to a new sense of freedom and unthreatened-ness from the coercive powers of the world, and so to bold, prophetic speech. It deepened their trust in the prior reality of abundance and mercy, which was made manifest in their generosity, their desire to heal, offer hospitality and forgive those who injured or betrayed them. And it seems to me that our receptivity to and co-operation with this same gift of empowering grace matters enormously at a time when much of our public and corporate life is corrupted by falsehood, greed and systemic inequality; when fear for the future tempts us to cut loose those in need, seeking a spurious security at others' expense ― including at the expense of the natural world.
How exactly the Spirit will change each of us and expand the possibilities of our action will, of course, be different in different circumstances. For Etty Hillesum, in a situation of extreme constraint, she was enabled not to evade the truth of things despite grief and despair, to yield herself ever more deeply to love despite the provocation to hate. This may seem more like "inward" transformation than outward act, but I would not readily discount the public effect of her commitment of energy and will. Etty herself felt, in some obscure way, that her active participation in this work of love was contributing to the building of a new and quite different society.
As for us, we must each discern our calling, the shape of graced and faithful action in and through our lives. Receiving the Holy Spirit ― and this is the second feature I wish to highlight ― brings with it significant responsibility for discerning our part in God's work of reconciliation and redemption. Again, the emphasis here is on the notion of joining in what's already underway, and the commitment to be where God's action is. The depth of the world's need means we simply cannot afford to rush around generating activity just to make ourselves feel better. "We are tempted to do anything as long as it seems to be good," observed Thomas Merton, when wrestling with the question of how to respond to the nuclear threat of the early 1960s.
But this is a kind of delusion. In the context of the peace movement, Merton mentions the seductive pressure to "say something" ― anything ― and also notes the poet Czesław Miłosz's concern about "the danger of facile sloganeering on peace as on other subjects, and about the risks of making polarisation worse." At the same time, Merton was convinced that to say nothing, or to resile from action altogether is no solution. Writes Williams in a characteristically perceptive commentary on all this: "You cannot turn away from action, but not all action is wise or creative: what might right action be for a contemplative?"
At one level, there's no general answer to this question. "Grace-ful" action is fundamentally kenotic and obedient. It seeks not a life or "goodness" of its own but simply to be aligned with, transparent to the action of God. This requires deep listening and a strong dose of what the poet Keats called "negative capability" ― that is, the willingness to wait in unknowing until the next step is given; all fruits of contemplative labour. A corollary of seeking to participate in God's action, is that we cannot assume we know all that's needed, nor how the work of redemption may be effected in and through us. This means that the poet or artist, the loving parent, community worker, theologian, or walker of old ways may contribute as much as the climate scientist, solar technician, or political leader does by addressing more directly (as it might seem) the world's need. For this reason, daring to remain faithful (as best we can discern it) to our part in things is vital.
Yet having said this, I find myself uneasy at leaving this question of "right action" solely as a matter for individual discernment. Is there nothing we can say more generally about the demands of this time on us all? I think there is.
Faithfulness simply to being human, being true to creaturely life, now entails the awakening of ecological consciousness. It's no longer possible to live authentically as if we have no impact on or responsibility for the integrity and flourishing of the life of the world. Which means that, whatever we're called to do and be, we must also cultivate a more acute sense of its implications for the ecology, the interconnectedness and life of all things. I wonder what difference it might make if we each approached our vocations in this way? Bring to mind the way you parent, create, think, preach, teach, lead; think about your way of being citizens, consumers and members of community. Whatever the particularities of our various vocations and life situations, we cannot live as if the crisis facing the life of the world has nothing to do with us and how we live ― and it's in this sense, I think, that we're all called to be ecologists now.
This leads, finally, to the third sense in which receptivity to the Holy Spirit is so important in our context. It's to do with the way the gift of the Spirit is intrinsically connected to the formation of a new kind of community ― a communion of persons-in-relation.
Recently, several commentators have argued that much of our current trouble can be traced to the evolution of false notions of human anthropology and sociality. Our neo-liberal economic system is based on a picture of human beings as fundamentally self-interested, self-sufficient and ruthlessly competitive. This fiction of homo oeconomicus generates a culture of hyper-individualism (recall Margaret Thatcher's infamous claim, "there's no such thing as society"), and is profoundly implicated in the loss of a felt sense of interdependence and so of commitment to a common good. This culture then becomes a reinforcing and downward spiral, since it seems the only "rational" response in such a competitive and atomised world is to secure one's own interest apart from others, rather than to live generously, even sacrificially, with a view to the long term well-being of the whole.
Accordingly, economists such as Kate Raworth and Charles Eisenstein, political commentator George Monbiot, and community organiser Jeremy Heimans, call for reimagining and reconfiguring of society on the basis of a new picture of human being. They invite us to recover our faith in basic human altruism, our sense of mutual dependence and commitment to common life, and they seek to demonstrate the viability of economic and political structures that nurture these "better angels of our nature." In place of dysfunctional two-party politics, participatory democracy; in place of an extractive and exploitative economy based on resource use, an economic system and agricultural production that's regenerative by design; in place of a monetary system that promotes scarcity and hoarding, one that serves abundance and exchange, and so on.
These proposals are profoundly inspiring, energising ― and they feel truly possible. I agree wholeheartedly with their debunking of the fiction of "rational economic man" and the spurious "economic laws" that are supposed to follow from his existence. At the same time, I suspect these accounts offer an insufficiently robust account of the difficulty of sustaining communities of good will, and an insufficiently realistic sense of the transformation required even for those disposed to altruistic interdependence to become capable of the honesty, sacrifice and love that enables communal stability and flourishing under conditions of strain.
The failure of idealised forms of community in the 1960s and 70s suggests that utopian reliance on basic human "goodness" will not do. And though admittedly the witness of the church is not hugely encouraging in this regard, this is where a community founded not on human aspiration but on the gift and call of the Spirit promises different possibilities. This is because, through its commitment to the journey of maturing into "adulthood" and shared answerability to the One who judges and is "for" each of us equally, such a community allows for the development of practices such as self-reflection, discernment and accountability, the acknowledgment of injury and failure in the context of mercy and forgiveness, and transformation of the egoic self through disciplined openness to grace.
This is where I believe contemplative communities and the recovery of contemplative Christianity has something distinctive and vitally important to offer those seeking to bring about transformation of human sociality for the renewal of life of earth.
The deeper work of love
What then should we do? For contemplative Christians, the question of action in times such as ours throws us back to the roots of our faith. Repent ― that is, acknowledge what's amiss and how we're part of that; be baptised for the forgiveness of sins ― that is, let go destructive ways of seeing and being, let yourself be drawn into practices and commitments that deepen your attunement to the real source of your life; and as this happens, receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, find yourself empowered by the energy of God's life and so joined to God's action in the world ― capable of speaking truth, communicating love, generating real community.
John Main said it takes nerve to become really quiet. In the same way, it seems to me, it takes nerve to commit to the deeper work of love in the face of doom. It's so difficult not to become fascinated by the prospect of catastrophe. Depending on temperament or circumstance, this means some of us become paralysed and despairing, some hyper-active, while others pretend nothing much has changed and business will go on as usual.
The contemplative work of love calls for something other than this. It invites us to become ever more deeply attuned and responsive to the Life of the world so that, whatever our particular gifts and skills and callings, and in whatever context we find ourselves, our actions flow out of this healing, reconciling reality and help realise it more fully. This is the ground of authentic hope and the possibility of gratitude and joy, come what may.
Rev. Dr Sarah Bachelard is the founder and leader of Benedictus Contemplative Church in Canberra and an honorary fellow at the Australian Catholic University. She is the author of Experiencing God in a Time of Crisis and Resurrection and Moral Imagination.