Coming home: to survive as a species we must see connection between ourselves and our home

Living in a global, information (IT) community, we are well aware of by what means interconnected we are. In many ways, what affects single affects all. This was the theme of Miriam Therese MacGillis, OP Director of Genesis Farm, (New Jersey USA), when I heard her speak newly In her exploration of "The Fate of the Earth, A Spirituality of Healthy Living," she made the connections of interdependence between the health and sustainability of the earth and the health of our ecosystem and bioregions.

We are living upon a sick planet (e.g. toxicity of our natural resources: water, soil, tree ozone layer) because we have not to be found our sense of home and of place. We are alone now waking up to "deep time:" the reality of our planet's origin story. Despite the "bad report card" upon our care of the earth, MacGillis assured us we cannot diocese before we can see; there is a time of enlightenment, when we are able to diocese the connection between ourselves and our abiding-place She outlined the stages Of the universe story, reminding us of the necessity of living in a way that is sensitive to our place upon this earth. We cannot live in a healthy way upon a sick planet.

single Law

For millions of years before our arrival upon planet earth, all living beings, from one side their various stages of differentiation, subjectivity and communion, honoured individual law as sacrosanct for the sustainability of the ecosystem of the earth community. That law is simple: no single species can overpopulate, Overeat or dominate the quiescence of the community. When differentiation is greater, in the way that too is the richness and creativity of life. When the differentiation is les evident (as in monoculture), extinction is more inevitable.

With differentiation, each life form is important as a control in its own right and not just for what it can present another as an object. at the same time each subject depends on the health of the other to thrive and increase When this one law of cooperation and communion is not venerateed by a given species, that species will experience extinction.

State of our Home

In a vigorous and gentle manner, MacGillis told us that humans, as a species, have not however learned that one law essential to any ecosystem and bioregion. We have not notwithstanding learned our place in our domicile She told us that all major a whole s on our earth are in decline because of our use, abuse and misuse of the earth.

Before our appearance upon planet earth, the internal dominations related to our ecosystem's individual law were honoured. Now, our human activities are causing chemical, geological, biological changes to the whole earth community, including changing the chemistry of the soil and the endocrine combination of parts to form a wholes of animals.

Global warming, in part, is the spring of interference, which we have perpetrated from one side our industrial, petroleum, chemical "advances." For example, in our capitalist consumerism, we have waged wars for more mastery and dominance, using the chemical weaponry of mustard gas upon our "enemy." In peacetime economics, our fresh enemy became any interference in our advanced practices of consumerism with equal reason mustard gas was altered to become DDT

If we are to survive as a species, now is the time to assess our technology in view of our cooperation and communion with all life, not just human life, and not just human life in our Western world. Using the work of scientists, theologians of the like kind as Sallie McFague, Diarmuid O'Murchu Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have pointed on the outside that, at the rate at which we are consuming, it would take six more planets for other humans to have a comparable way of life.

Spirituality of Healthy Living

We cannot diocese before we can see. Now is the season for us humans to wake up from our amnesia and diocese what we are doing. Now is the time for us to awaken to the of great depth time of our origin story, recognizing that what we know tend hitherwards through our senses: our exterior world is the catalyst for our inner world of meaning, the sacred scripture of exterior revelation. We see toxic changes in this exterior world, without recognizing outer and inner are one

Now is the time for us

* to diocese the seamless web between a healthy planet and a healthy bodypsyche-spirit.

* to touch into the imagination of our bards artists, musicians who put into words and form what we know intuitively.

* to advance home to our place upon planet earth as part of a community ready to cooperate rather than dominate.

one time we've awakened, once we advance through that door of contemplative knowing, there is no turning back. Now is the time for us to move round around our lives and our futurity threatened on all levels.

Janet Malone writes from Cornwall, P.E.I.

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