The God Dance: Ecology

“I used to think that the top global environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that with 30 years of good science, we could address these problems. But I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, apathy, and greed, and to deal with these, we need a spiritual and cultural transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

                            -Gus Speth, Dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 2013

 

Start at time 1:06:40 to hear Peter Harris, co-founder of A Rocha International, explain 

why conservation is a Gospel issue

Almost every day, I take walks in the neighborhood to intentionally meet neighbors and be present. Walking alone can sometimes be difficult, so I seek to enjoy it by bird watching and inviting others to walk with me. As we go along, I often hear the chatter of a bird or see the flash of a wing and look up into the sky. This has the potential to interrupt conversations, but has led to greater interest in Urban Ecology. The relationships of creatures in an urban environment fascinate me. Wild things remain at the edge of human experience, even in a human environment.

Several weeks ago, I saw a Wild Turkey in the yard across the street from the Frank Lloyd Wright House. That was the second time I have seen it there. The South Hill Neighborhood Association Facebook page has plenty of pictures of turkeys that wander our area. There was mourning when a car hit one several years ago.  Despite the dangers and lack of habitat, turkeys make a living in this urban neighborhood.

Natural, undeveloped, or wild spaces are thought about and studied ecologically, but our back yards, our churches, and our businesses are not. A fallacy behind ecology is when we see it solely as study of wild things separate from ourselves. We don’t always think about ourselves as living things in relationship with other living things and our environment. But we participate in ecology.

Last week, my friend Shikuru and I went walking to meet neighbors

and hear stories. We met a couple on their porch who had laid cardboard, horse manure, and mulch over their lawn and planted all sorts of vegetables and trees. In front of their house, they planted several bushes of bright orange flowers. The flowers—poetically named Cosmos—attract hummingbirds. The couple gave us some seeds.

By planting these flowers, the couple committed an ecologically creative act. The flowers harness energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil to produce nectar, seeds, and beauty. Hummingbirds and souls are fed. Seeds are given to neighbors. And as the man said, he doesn’t have to mow his lawn any more.

We participate in ecology. In the South Hills area ecology, one living thing leads to another.  We have lots of squirrels, house sparrows, and European starlings. We also have skunks, raccoons, turkeys, wasps, flies, and bedbugs. We have these creatures in particular, because we have created a landscape in which these creatures thrive.

When someone lets their property turn into a jungle, woodchucks find a habitat. Sparrows find their homes in our gutters and chimney swifts in our chimneys. I have some suspicions about raccoons living under porches and know mice and bats take refuge in our walls. Many creatures, like house flies, live off the debris of human life. With other animals, the trees we plant, the gardens we create, and the bird feeders we fill create ecological space for more biodiversity.

The plants and animals for which we create space in turn shape the ecological space that we inhabit. The mulberry trees create sweet delight in the summer and sticky purple sidewalks. We create lawns that we have to mow and that our children can play on, and we plant tomatoes, zucchini, and chard that we consume. Our trees cool our streets with their shade and decrease the speed at which rain ends up in our storm drains. We shape the place and the place shapes us.

If we create our landscape for the animals that brighten our day and give us life by planting native species, we can attract hummingbirds and monarch butterflies. But even if we don’t intentionally give to create space for life, our waste is used. Life finds a way to keep living, and each entity gives to the other and receives from the other whether we are aware of it or not. We participate.  We are a part of the web of living things, connected to all of it.

The Last Wild Area in South Hills

As we seek to understand ecology, we must acknowledge our own creative role as well as how we are shaped by it. Such an admission quickly brings us to confront other words integrally connected with ecology: economy, theology, and development. Because ecology seeks to understand the systems of relationships between living things and with their environment, ecology is a discipline that seeks to understand the totality. These other words, though they have different starting points, similarly force us to consider our role in the cosmos and our interconnectedness.  As we continue along the path of seeking to understand ecology fully (or the economy or development), more and more must be included in the study. In this sense, ecology is a truth-seeking discipline, and if we pursue it, we will be forced to encounter our place, each other, and Christ.

To heal a landscape in which we are connected from ecological destruction, we can begin with our own property. With that alone, we are forced to reckon with the local climate, soils, and species already present and available and with our own habits and energy levels. But if we want to think about the health of the whole, we need to get to know one another and understand our habits and energy levels as a people. Community listening and Asset Based Community Development can play a role here. 

But our ecological crisis is a moral issue requiring a spiritual and cultural transformation away from greed, apathy, and selfishness. Who can bring about such a transformation? And how would such a transformation affect our network of living things? Next week, I will share a Christian response to the first question. The second question can only be answered in the living of it.

 by Peter Cahill