It’s shortly before sunrise and I am sitting in my studio, watching as first light slowly reveals the contours of the landscape around my island haven here on the Shore. I’m thinking about Pope Francis’s encyclical, Laudate si, “Praise be to you.” He calls upon the privileged nations to care for and heal our “common home.” He is blunt. “If you have men who will exclude any of God’s creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who deal likewise with their fellow man.” He insists that ecological plunder is related to oppressing the poor. Third world nations are the first to suffer the impact of climate change and global warning. Ecological justice is our moral obligation.
Our planet is exquisitely beautiful, terribly fragile, and regularly mistreated.
The sun rises and I see deer roaming our yard. Little habitat is left for them now and even less food. Rabbits nibble grass, their noses to the ground. Squirrels leap erratically from limb to limb. A groundhog emerges cautiously from under our shed with his head raised. His nose twitches as if he can smell the light.
It’s low tide. A heron stands stone still in the shallows. She is lovely. Her throaty cry always alarms me. Could her cry be voicing the pain of the earth? The earth is very much in pain. The earth is drowning in toxic wastes and consumerist effluence.
About eight hundred years ago, the present Pope’s namesake, Francis of Assisi, was another prophetic voice long before anyone understood earth’s ecological interconnectedness. In his poem, Canticles of the Sun, he speaks of the earth and its creatures as though they’re his personal kin. He speaks of “Brother sun, sister moon, and brother wind.” St. Francis grasped the fundamental relationship between oppressing the poor and misusing the earth. “We are all creatures of one family.”
It was not until the sixties that I had any awareness of ecological processes. I summered then on the north fork of Long Island. It was mostly farmland. Yellow barrels from the Shell Oil Company filled with pesticides, specifically DDT, sat in the fields. Fields were sprayed regularly with their contents. I gave it no thought. Farmers didn’t either. It was only when one day I ran the tap and soap suds came out of the faucet that I began sensing the weight of our human footprint on the earth. Our detergents didn’t just go away. They’d begun infiltrating the water table. I wondered if pesticides, too, didn’t do the same.
The planet, according to the Gaia theory, is a self-regulating living organism. It manages ocean salinity, atmospheric oxygen and temperatures such that they remain within the narrow tolerances that sustain life, a miracle in itself. The earth, like the cells and organs of our bodies intentionally coordinate their activities toward one end – to sustain life of the whole. Modern industrial practices also act toward one end – to ensure profits for the company. If life gets in the way, well, it’s just collateral damage. In that regard, industries behave more like cancer cells. They don’t heed that they’re destroying the body that feeds them.
The Pope’s encyclical, a bold statement and a well-established scientific truth, is being marginalized. Surprisingly, many catholic clergy did not deliver the Pope’s message from their pulpits. Also, catholic presidential hopefuls are uncomfortable with “Laudate si” and remain evasive: “religion ought to be about making us better people,” says Jeb Bush. Marco Rubio doesn’t believe that human activity “ . . . is causing these dramatic changes to our environment the way these scientists are saying.” Rick Santorum thinks we’re better off “ . . . leaving science to the scientists and focusing on what we’re really good at . . . theology and morality.” The lone affirming Roman Catholic voice among presidential hopefuls is Martin O’Malley. He believes, as the Pope does, that addressing environmental abuses “is our moral obligation.”
We don’t stone our prophets any more. We blow them off, or discredit them like Allied Chemical did to Rachel Carson when she wrote Silent Spring.
I look out my window again.
I see a host of mergansers paddling along the creek like a tiny flotilla. Males stretch their necks high, rock backwards, and flap their wings demonstratively, slapping the water – the sound like drum rolls. The ducks dart directly at each other on a collision course, veering to one side just shy of impact. The females watch their suitors’ antics. I think they’re flirting. Then some, as if weary of the game, dive under. Next they all develop a diving frenzy. First they strut, patter about on the surface, feint to one side and the other, and then dive. And, as if there were more joy inside them than their tiny bodies are able to contain, the ducks reverence their Creator in as stunning a rite as any celebrated in the most inspiring liturgies of the world; they dive, strut, stretch, fuss, and finally rise again, ascending and disappearing somewhere ‘twixt the marsh and the skies.’
What can I say? I say, “Laudate si.”
Wilson Wyatt says
When I take the time to see, hear, and feel the nature that surrounds us, often at our feet, I realize how fortunate I am to share in this life. There is an emotional response to witnessing all the living things in my path. So as I read this piece, I am taken by its message. If I wince, I know truth has struck a nerve. Thank you for sharing these spiritual observations.
Carol Voyles says
I was recently taken aback by the comments of our good friends, devout Catholics, that the Pope should keep his nose out of politics. How ironic, that we, the fallen-away, should appreciate his words so much more.
Thank you for your observations, George.