Several summers ago, a Sister friend and I took one of those “color tours” of the East Coast. But it was a bit too early for many colored trees, and so we felt badly for two women who had traveled all the way from England for the tour. But when we shared a meal with them, we learned they were delighted with it! They explained that because England is such an old, settled country, it no longer has anything like our forests. Riding hour after hour through our national forests, with their millions of beautiful towering green trees, was an awe-inspiring experience for them.
For me and you, and the psalmists before us, the beauty and creativity of our world lifts our hearts to God. This perspective is part of “Creation Spirituality.” When we use the word “spirituality” in this way, we don’t refer to our personal inner way of relating to God (“my spirituality”) or to a particular religious tradition (“Catholic Spirituality”). Rather we mean values and sensitivities and perspectives broadly conceived, which flow throughout our world, across lines of religion and nationality, and that nourish and inspire people as we all search for meaning. That creation is good, is infused with divine intent and energy, and is a blessing is part of the zeitgeist of our time.
When “new” spiritualities emerge, often they are responding to something missing or wrong with previous ones. As the industrial age dawned in the mid-19th century, and capitalistic economic systems matured, Western Christianity embraced what it understood to be a Biblical imperative (Gen 1:28 & 2:15): that God had told humans to take charge of the earth, have dominion over it and “subdue it.” Although some early prophetic voices protested, it took decades before enough of us paid attention to the unintended consequences of destroying forests and polluting the air and water of our earth.
Creation spirituality writers in the US like Thomas Berry, Matthew Fox, and more lately Elizabeth Johnson have joined with many others worldwide to shape the main ideas and lines of thought of current Creation Spirituality.
So, what are these main ideas and lines of thought? We have already mentioned one, our human awareness of the beauty and mystery of creation that leads to awe and awareness of the “higher power” we name “God.” The Jewish Jesus would often have prayed creation psalms like Ps 104 and Ps 148; St Francis gave us his Hymn of Creation; and our parishes sing Marty Haugan’s musical rendition of it, “The heavens are telling the glory of God, and all creation is shouting for joy!” Joy, in fact, is a trait of this spirituality, for all creation shares creativity and beauty, qualities all humans can see and be moved to delight, to joy. And because creativity and beauty are also found within human activity, this spirituality also has an affinity for music and art and dance and other expressions of human joy and creativity.
What is newest in Creation Spirituality is increased science-based understanding of the mystery of creation: its complexity, its history over time, its fragility, and our role in it. We live today in what some anthropologists call the Anthropocene—the current geological era, not named for geophysical features like glaciers but for the dominance of humans. The global climate crisis is only one example of human influence on the world’s very being. Creation Spirituality is not mostly about personal holiness, the individual’s soul journey, although one may become holy by living it. Creation Spirituality’s focus is the world’s original unity, wholeness, and wellness. It is about the repair work, the restoration work needed to return to or keep vibrant those essential qualities of the world on which we depend for our very existence. And so, a strong social justice trajectory is an essential element of Creation Spirituality.
All spiritual paths ask sacrifice on the part of their adherents. Understandably, we first world people want to hang on to our way of life. We don’t want to pay more for energy, but at least for some time it will be more expensive to use renewable energy. We don’t want to give up our steaks from methane producing cows. We don’t want to take the time to recycle, or pay for recycling and higher priced recycled products. We get compassion fatigue hearing about people starving and migrants moving because of increased draughts or rising sea levels. And like Archie Bunker, we “don’t want to hear that” we might be to blame for global warming! So, Creation Spirituality asks us to make considerable sacrifices.
Tapping into the resources of our own Catholic Spirituality can help with that because the cross is so central in it. The cross helps us look death in the face, as Jesus did, helps us pay attention to wounds and losses, suffering and sin, and other difficult aspects of life that Creation Spirituality tends to be a little light on. Thus +Pope Francis, famous for his creation encyclical Laudato Si, challenges readers to look at victims and reflect on social sin as we work with others to address the climate crisis. And he challenges us to act!
It’s high summertime now, a great time to appreciate nature and consider whether Creation Spirituality has a personal spiritual call for us. Are we being asked to learn something, reconsider something, do something, join something, say something, pray for something, plant a little seed? Creation Spirituality calls all of us to contemplate the creation that surrounds us. For as Pope Francis said once, “When we enter into silence and contemplate our interconnected world, we come to appreciate the true meaning and value of all creatures, for each in its own way reflects something of God’s infinite wisdom, goodness and beauty.” Or as Joyce Kilmer said, “I think that I shall never see a poem as lovely as a tree.”
The quote from Pope Francis is from his General Audience 9/16/20, #7: Care of the common home and contemplative dimension.
Sister Mary Garascia, PhD (Theology), is a member of the Sisters of the Precious Blood of Dayton, Ohio, where she now resides. She lived and ministered at The Holy Name of Jesus in Redlands for several years. You can follow her weekly Sunday scripture blogs at PreciousBloodSistersDayton.org.