With floods again devastating parts of Queensland and New South Wales in Australia, we are seeing yet more evidence of climate change. Apart from war, climate change is the greatest threat to the future of the planet, to which the latest report from the IPCC*, released this week, attests. Long-time Christian meditator Roger Layet* says that if the planet is to have a sustainable future, then human beings must develop a contemplative way of seeing which understands that we are part of nature, not apart from it. Meditation, he says, can help us overcome the illusion of separation from nature and one another, and help us realise our essential oneness.
It seems incontrovertible that climate change is real, getting worse, and is largely caused by human activity. The planet, our common home, is melting, drying, acidifying, flooding and burning in ways that I never dreamt of when I was young.
Why? Listen to a secular voice, the distinguished physicist Carlo Rovelli:
We believed that we were a planet at the centre of the universe - and we are not.
We thought that we existed as unique beings, a race apart from the family of animals and plants - and we are not.
… We are descendants of the same parents as every living thing around us. We have ancestors in common with butterflies and larches. We are like an only child who on growing up realises that the world does not revolve around them alone …
… We are an integral part of nature; we are nature, in one of its innumerable and infinitely variable expressions.
As John Main OSB used to say: “We think we are the centre of the universe. But we are not.”
So now that humankind's normal self-centredness has been combined with the power of science and technology, our usual madness has become “catastrophically off scale”, as Laurence Freeman OSB has put it. Don't blame the technology - the problem is us.
Rovelli concluded:
We are perhaps the only species on earth to be conscious of the inevitability of our individual mortality. I feel that soon we shall also become the only species that will knowingly watch the coming of its own collective demise, or at least the demise of its civilisation.
Now, a religious voice. In 2015 Pope Francis wrote a letter to the world entitled Laudato Si’. It began:
"LAUDATO Si', mi1 Signore" - "Praise be to you, my Lord". In the words of this beautiful canticle, Francis of Assisi reminds us that our common home is like a sister with whom we share our life and a beautiful mother who opens her arms to embrace us.
"Praise be to you, my Lord, through our Sister, Mother Earth, who sustains and governs us, and who produces various fruit with coloured flowers and herbs.”
This sister now cries out to us because of the harm we have inflicted on her by our irresponsible use and abuse of the goods with which God has endowed her.
We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.
[The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life.]
This is why the earth herself, burdened and laid waste, is among the most abandoned and maltreated of our poor; she "groans in travail".
We have forgotten that we ourselves are dust of the earth; our very bodies are made up of her elements, we breathe her air and we receive life and refreshment from her waters.
Christian thinking has not always been helpful. We emphasise the divine as being transcendent to the natural world, thus minimizing ways in which God’s creation itself communicates God’s presence. We quote Genesis to suggest that God gave humans dominion over nature. In Laudato Si’ Francis was at pains to correct this interpretation, but it retains a powerful influence. I have twice recently heard Psalm 8 being used as an ecological prayer, though unfortunately it includes the statement that God will put all things, all of nature, under our feet!
Another difficulty has been our emphasis on the human as a spiritual being with an eternal destiny - unlike the other parts of the created world.
So, what is all this to do with meditation? In his letter Pope Francis quoted his predecessor Benedict XVI: “The external deserts of the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast.” The message is obvious, and he spelt it out: the climate crisis is also a summons to profound interior conversion. A message we might have inferred from Carlo Rovelli.
Clearly the crisis that we face necessitates drastic international action. And yet we also have this call to profound interior conversion. Decades ago Laurence Freeman was saying that great shifts in consciousness are needed - and must be worked out at the individual level. That’s you and me! Contemporary contemplative consciousness is needed. The practice of meditation is a way of effecting this change. Here are four examples:
1. Meditation is practising giving attention
An early prophet of the woes of planet Earth was the priest and cultural historian Thomas Berry. The subtext of his writings is that we cannot see and hear what is right before us. If we did, we would not carry out our assault on the earth. To the question of why we act so foolishly, Berry answers because we are blind and deaf. We have not been aware. We have not given our attention.
2. Meditation is practising interconnectedness
Franciscan writers, as well as Aquinas, spoke of a sacramental way of looking at the world. They saw Creation as the embodiment of divinity - understanding that life in its myriad forms embodies what no one form could ever express of God’s infinite diversity and creativity.
And we owe our very existence to the rest of creation - an enormous engine of care which has created us over millions of years of evolution and makes us possible today.
Despite this we think of ourselves as something separate and we look on our environment as objects separate from ourselves. Ecology, says author Jim Green, is the most subversive science – it teaches that everything is connected to everything else.
One of John Main’s talks (published in his book The Way of Unknowing) is titled ‘Recovering Oneness’. There he lamented that humankind has lost the sense of oneness that is intrinsic to what it means to be human. The consequence of this, he added over 40 years ago, is that we are living on the edge of an ecological disaster. Therefore he urged us to meditate for, as he said, “in meditation we seek the way towards the basis of all perception of unity … the essential oneness”.
In meditation we begin to overcome the illusion of separateness. As Laurence Freeman says, we are so often caught in the net of the illusion of our independence. Untangling ourselves from that net is the daily work of meditation. To build unified consciousness.
3. Meditation practises being rooted in love and compassion
There are images in John Main’s writings of our connexion to a power source – we plug in to the energy of God - so that “the energy of creation flows in our hearts and this power is the energy of love”. In meditation we practise plugging ourselves into this energy. Pope Francis said last year that we need an ecology of the heart that is made up of rest, contemplation and compassion. Compassion, he said, is born from contemplation – and from rest.
4. Meditation practises letting go of ego centredness
What a contrast there is between us and the myriad forms of the rest of the natural world which function without ego. Take the tree. I like these words from Jewish philosopher Roger Gottlieb: “The tree offers shade, processes CO2, prevents erosion, serves as home to birds and squirrels, and offers them its seeds as food. It does this without arrogance, self-aggrandisement, jealousy of other trees who get more water or sunlight, anxiety about the future, or fear of death. It will give every bit of energy to growing tall and strong and not one bit to anger over the corporation that will log it.”
Meditation helps us towards letting go of our egos. It helps to preserve us from the excessive individualism of our culture and restrains our inherent self-centredness.
Do you sometimes feel despair in the face of the climate emergency? It would be rational to do so. Perhaps what is called for is neither hope nor hopelessness, but the courage to live with fear. After all, one aspect of the contemplative mind is the ability to live peacefully with uncertainty. We do not need to know what the future holds to express our love now. Why spend our energy on an uncertain future … instead let us reserve some for the miracle of life and nature now. Gratitude is an essential component of happiness - and health.
As Laurence Freeman has said, answers to the world’s problems lie in human hearts, so we must start by looking after the inner life. John Main wrote that, “if our life is rooted in Christ, rooted in his love and the conscious knowledge of his love, then we need have no anxiety about regulating our action. Our action will always spring from, and be informed and shaped by, that love.”
The more active we are the more important it is that our actions spring from, and are grounded in contemplation. Thomas Merton offers important testimony here. He was extremely active in the peace movement yet was deeply concerned with the dangers of activism. If it became all-consuming it would neutralise the work for peace, by destroying the individual’s own capacity for peace. Thereby killing the root of inner wisdom which makes the activism fruitful. Being always precedes doing. So I think Jim Green’s phrase “contemplative action” hits the right note. We are surely obliged to act, whether by lifestyle changes, or campaigning, or probably both. But where to start? And how much? Words from the Talmud are appropriate here: “You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”
I conclude with a prayer from the Australian cartoonist, Michael Leunig:
Dear God,
We give thanks for places of simplicity and peace. Let us find such a place within ourselves.
We give thanks for places of refuge and beauty. Let us find such a place within ourselves.
We give thanks for places of nature's truth and freedom, of joy, inspiration and renewal, places where all creatures may find acceptance and belonging. Let us search for these places: in the world, in ourselves and in others. Let us restore them. Let us strengthen and protect them and let us create them.
May we mend this outer world according to the truth of our inner life and may our souls be shaped and nourished by nature's eternal wisdom.
amen.
*Roger Layet is a former Chair of the international Guiding Board of the World Community for Christian Meditation (WCCM) and a former UK national co-ordinator of the WCCM.
Roger’s article is a slightly edited version of a talk given at Benedict’s Well on 31 January 2022. See: https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=benedict%27s+well+philippines+youtube&&view=detail&mid=44C611CB86E4C2F0848D44C611CB86E4C2F0848D&&FORM=VRDGAR&ru=%2Fvideos%2Fsearch%3Fq%3Dbenedict%2527s%2Bwell%2Bphilippines%2Byoutube%26qpvt%3Dbenedict%2527s%2Bwell%2Bphilippines%2Byoutube%26FORM%3DVDRE
Benedict’s Well is an outreach of the Benedictine Oblates of the WCCM. The weekly event (Mondays) consists of a period of meditation followed by an inspirational talk.
*The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can be seen here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg2/
For more information about John Main, how to meditate and the WCCM see: https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/christian-meditation
Contributing Editor of Living Water, Roland Ashby, leads two online groups in Christian meditation: 7.30pm on Tuesdays and 12 midday on Wednesdays (Melbourne, Australia time). Email editor@thelivingwater.com.au for more information.