I was asked to write this piece for the Inter-faith Council of Wales - Cyngor Rhyng-Ffydd Cymru.
In some of his speeches and writings, former Archbishop Desmond Tutu has used the South African word, “Ubuntu”. He explains that ubuntu is difficult to define as there is no English word for it. However, persevering Tutu explains ubuntu as, “You are only a human through other humans …through your relations to other humans.” The word expresses a caring for each other. Fellow Nobel Peace Laureate, His Holiness the Dalai Lama speaks of the need for “Universal Responsibility”. Our world is getting smaller, he says. While in the past we might only need to be concerned about our village, modern communication has seen the actions of one part of the world have a corresponding effect elsewhere in the world.
Two faith leaders of different cultures and faith highlighting the same need for care amongst the peoples of this planet. In this short essay I use their words as a call for a greater awareness from our faith communities towards the environmental problems facing this planet.
The US Apollo missions of the 1960’s and 1970’s enabled the human inhabitants of the Earth to view their planet in a way that their predecessors never had. The astronauts took pictures of the Earth as they sped on their way towards the moon. There, sitting alone in the vastness of space was our home, the Earth. Talk there might be of space stations, bases on the Moon and Mars, but those are for the very few, and more likely than not not a permanent home. We are able to visit the coast for our holidays, or perhaps a foreign country, but we can’t visit a distant planet should the urge take us, let alone make it home. Earth is all that we have.
The founders of many of the great spiritual traditions came to their awakening through time spent in the outdoors. The contemplatives alive in this world today still turn to the natural world as a place to retire to in search for their insights. In our own daily lives the natural world continually courses through our body. The air that we breath, our food and drink. All that we interact with, however remote it might feel, is of the natural world. Sit silently; a few moments contemplation will reveal that.
However, all these natural resources come from that small planet floating in space. We cannot reach outside of it for more. Demand for more increases; that to which we turn to satisfy the demand, the Earth, does not increase in its ability to give. Our urbanised society finds itself increasingly alienated from the natural world. Despite some founders of world faiths choosing to practice in nature, our modern day faith communities spend little time in the natural world. We find ourselves further from the source of our food, water and electricity. Subconsciously they have become commodities which we expect to be there when we go to the shops, turn on a tap, or flick a switch. Our psychological distance from nature has created a society that starts to take the very necessities of life for granted, and in doing so takes it source, the Earth, for granted. The world appears to have become smaller as the Dalai Lama says, but in some ways our outlook has become smaller instead of growing with compassion to embrace that which has come into our larger awareness. The individual thinking more of the immediate future and their immediate wants appears to be the predominant thought. In the rush to fulfil our desires, we are now feeling the consequences in our own lives; the speed, the stress, the restlessness. So many of us spend so little time in that of which we are part, the natural world. It is the natural world that enables us to print our holy books, build our places of worship, and to feed and clothe our families.
Climate change and the impending decrease in the abundance of cheap energy, namely oil, are huge problems facing this planet, but the faith communities have so far been very quiet on these issues. However, I feel that the source of these problems are already addressed by the faith traditions. They ask us to live our lives content with what we have, to not live in excess and to think of others more than ourselves. The teachings of the great spiritual masters do not have to be questioned, they just need to be presented in a contemporary way, aimed at changing our outlook on Mother Earth and the beings that we share the planet with.
The Earth is calling us to awaken from a slumber and to extend our arms of caring to all those beings that we share life with. As the great teachers have shown us, we have that capacity within ourselves to reach out to those we share the Earth with, and we can do so as a community with joy, secure in the knowledge that we are working for a better world for all.