UNITARIAN
EARTH SPIRIT
NETWORK

Eco-Spirituality

In my introduction to this series in the last Faith and Freedom, I wrote:

"I would suggest that the twenty-first century is providing challenges to us the human species that require urgent collective answers.

The first and most critically important is the ecological crisis, which is often written about under such terms as Climate Change, Global Warming, Peak Oil and many others. Whatever the arguments of the global scientists, what now seems to be almost universally accepted is that our total biosphere is under threat and that the current ways of living in the European and North American worlds are unsustainable. If you add to this the fast rise of both the Chinese and Indian economies and their apparent desire to follow the same un-ecological forms of industrial, commercial and social development, then the crisis becomes more severe and more immanent. This is a challenge that can not be resolved without a fundamental evolution in how we think and engage the world."

This challenge cannot be met by either anthropocentric religions of the Book or by scientific rationalism. Science seeks to understand the whole through detailed and specialised study of the parts, separated from context and connection, and studies external materiality separated from spiritual interiority. Religions of the book (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), present a transcendental monotheistic God, with salvation in an afterlife and an earth there to be utilised by human beings.

As early as the late 1960's Gregory Bateson was writing about the dangers of the ecological crisis and how the roots of this crisis lay in the fundamental foundations of our ways of thinking and knowing – our epistemology. He posited seven "virulent epistemological errors that have come to dominate our ways of thinking since the Industrial Revolution: which he summarized as:

1. It's us against the environment.
2. It's us against other men.
3. It's the individual (or the individual congregation or individual company, or the individual nation) that matters.
4. We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that control.
5. We live in an infinitely expanding 'frontier'.
6. Economic determinism is common sense.
7. Technology will do it for us.

(Bateson,G. "Steps to an Ecology of Mind p468)

Bateson cogently argued that it is fruitless to attempt greening our behaviour, unless we also start to green our minds. He also showed how these beliefs are rooted in a theology that separates God from Creation and creates a merely transcendent God separate from Nature:

If you put God outside and set him vis-à-vis his creation and if you have the idea that you are created in his image, you will logically and naturally see yourself as outside and against the things around you. And as you arrogate all mind to yourself, you will see the world around you as mindless and therefore as not entitled to moral or ethical consideration. The environment will be yours to exploit…

If this is your estimate of your relation to nature and you have an advanced technology, your likelihood of survival will be that of a snowball in hell. You will die either of the toxic by-products of your own hate, or, simply, of over population and over-grazing.(Bateson, Steps to the ecology of Mind 1972b:462)

This is echoed by the great Catholic writer and ecologist Thomas Berry who in his brilliant collection of essays, "Evening Thoughts" writes:

The first thing that makes us vulnerable is a transcendent, personal, monotheistic creative deity. The constellation of the divine in a personal transcendent order tends to desacralize the phenomenal world." (Berry 2006 p 25)

Bateson also showed how the Darwinian thinking as developed by Huxley, Spencer and more recently Dawkins can lead us to a thinking that chooses the wrong unit of evolutionary survival.

"In accordance with the general climate of thinking in mid nineteenth century England, Darwin proposed a theory of natural selection and evolution, in which the unit of survival was either the family line or species of sub-species or something of that sort. But today it is quite obvious that this is not the unit of survival in the real biological world. The unit of survival is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism that destroys its environment destroys itself."

Bateson p435. And p459.

Without a new epistemology we will tend to face the biggest challenge of our times with either heroic hubris or a passive fatalism. If we now revisit the false dangerous beliefs that Bateson mentions, we can look at what we would put alongside them as an antidote or cure, that would help us overcome the human/nature dualism. You might at this point like to write your own antidotes for each of the Bateson statements before comparing them with the one's that I have written.

1. It's us against the environment. We and what we call environment are inter-dependent.
2. It's us against other men. Win-lose always becomes lose-lose.
3. It's the individual (or the individual company, or the individual nation) that matters. "The unit of survival is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism that destroys its environment destroys itself."
4. We can have unilateral control over the environment and must strive for that control. Nature was before, will be after and is greater than Humans.
5. We live in an infinitely expanding 'frontier'. There are limits to growth.
6. Economic determinism is common sense. 90% of what is most important cannot be measured by economics. "Money as the measure of all things, actually serves to impoverish us all." Maurice Ashe p15. "Economic man.. reduces all values exclusively to happiness."
7. Technology will do it for us. You cannot solve a problem, from within the thinking that created it.

Let Nature be our teacher. We and our environment are one.

I would also contend that the new epistemology is not just about mental constructs but requires humans to develop not only new levels of mental capacity (IQ), but greatly increased capacities to emotionally relate to the great range of life within our world (EQ) and a new spiritual intelligence (SQ) that includes:

• an inclusivity whereby we experience all people of the world as our sisters and brothers, as well as elders we can learn from and children for whom we have a responsibility
• a new connectedness to the totality of the biosphere in which we live and from which we have our being
• a new alignment in which we find our current place in the evolutionary drama and which equips us for facing the ecological challenge of our time with wide awake realism, humility and hope.

In answering the question I posed in the first of these essays: "What can we uniquely do that the world of tomorrow needs" I would contend that probably the greatest service that Unitarianism can provide not only the current generation, but for our children and grandchildren is to dedicate itself to working with others to develop the collective processes for increasing our individual and collective spiritual intelligence necessary to address the ecological challenge.

Thomas Berry, Gregory Bateson, Brian Swimme, Mathew Fox and many others have been showing us how desperately the world needs not only a new Epistemology, but also:

• A new cosmology incorporating the new story of the universe that science has been uncovering
• A new language that overcomes the dualities of: Man and Nature, Human and Environment; Mind and Body, Transcendence and Immanence
• A new liturgy that connects us to "the great liturgy of the universe" (Berry p122) and develops our Awe, Humility, Hope and Service.
• A new morality based on serving the needs of the whole not sub-optimising the benefits of the parts
• A new politics that is based on biocracy not just democracy

What is it that Unitarianism has to contribute to this great calling?

1. In the 18th and 19th Centuries Unitarians were among the first to bravely embrace the new philosophies and sciences and to explore and experiment with new religious beliefs that could incorporate them. The time has now arrived where we need a new marriage of the extraordinary scientific discoveries of the last 50 years with a new religious cosmology and theology.
2. Unitarianism and universalism go hand in hand, not just in America where there is an organisational use of both terms, but throughout the many forms of Unitarian practice and belief. Universalism comes from the Latin word 'Universa', which is about turning back of the many to the one, seeing the oneness and connectedness in the plurality of life and phenomena.
3. We have a proud history of religious education which is based on: inquiry not answers; exploration not dogma; collaborative listening and learning from each other, not 'tell and sell'.
4. We have a tradition of worship that reconnects us to the wider nature beyond the human domain and to find the sacred in depth connection to the world that surrounds us.

So where do we see the first green shoots that can be nurtured?

1. Engagement groups that provide the opportunity for collective spiritual exploration, embracing differences of creed, culture and personal outlook.
2. Specific engagement groups that study the work of Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Joanna Macy and others who are providing the new spirituality for our time.
3. Discourse that goes beyond the rational theorising to incorporate the imaginal and emotional realms.
4. New forms of worship that are Gaia centric not human centric.
5. Forms of prayer and meditation that deeply connect us to our appropriate place in the Cosmos and in Gaia, that mourn the destruction we are doing to the earth that sustains us and grows our spiritual capacity to respond to the current challenge. Earth Prayers from around the world by Elizabeth Roberts and Elias Amidon is a great place to start.
6. Personal commitment to social action to reduce our own carbon footprint and do what little we can to heal the world.

A great place to start for immediate personal social action: www.carbonfootprint.com

And for worship ideas is: www.earthministry.org/Congregations/UN_Sabbath.htm.

There you will find some of the words of the UN environmental Sabbath Program and I will end with an excerpt from these prayers:

We join with the earth and with each other

To Bring new life to the land

To restore the waters

To refresh the air

We join with the earth and with each other

To renew the forests

To care for the plants

To protect the creatures

We join together as many and diverse expressions of one loving mystery for the healing of the earth and renewal of all life.

Bibliography

Ashe, M. (1994) Beyond the Age of Metaphysics. Bideford, Devon: Resurgence

Bateson, G and Bateson, M.C. (1987) Angels Fear: An investigation into the Nature and the Meaning of the Sacred. New York: Macmillan.

Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind, London:Palladin.

Bateson, G. (1979) Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity. New York: Dutton.

Berry, T. (2006) Evening Thoughts. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books.

Hawkins, P. (1991) 'The Spiritual Dimensions of the Learning Organisation' in Management Education and Development Vol 22 Part 3.

Joanna R. Macy, Molly Young Brown; Coming Back to Life : Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World; New Society Publishers (1998);

Reason, P (1994) Participation in Human Inquiry. London: Sage

Reason, P. & Hawkins P.(1988) Inquiry Through Storytelling in Reason, P.(ed) (1988) Human Inquiry in Action. London: Sage

Reed, C. (1999) "Unitarianism? What's that." London: Lindsey Press

Roberts, E. and Amidon, E. (1991) Earth Prayers From around the World. (San Francisco. HarperCollins
Swimme, B. (1992) The Universe Story. San Francisco:Harper.

Witteveeen, H.J. (1997) Universal Sufism Element Books: Dorset England.

Member of Unitarian Societies UK
Email: uesn@unitariansocieties.org.uk
WebMaster: John Wilkinson


Copyright © 2005-8 [Sharp Rock Graphics]
All rights reserved.