Woodstock Report | Developing Ecological Consciousness

Susan Rakoczy, IHM, came to Woodstock Theological Center as an International Visiting Fellow in July 2006. She spent six months researching and writing a book on theology and the practice of discernment, an excerpt of which appears below. Rakoczy is a professor of religion and theology at the University of Kwa-zulu-natal in Hilton, South Africa. For more information on Woodstock’s International Visiting Fellows program, see the article, "Enriching Exchanges."

By Susan Rakoczy, IHM

Decisions large and small fill each day of our lives. Some are made casually, while others demand sustained reflection. Within a Christian perspective, we speak of discernment as a particular kind of decision-making in which we seek the direction of the Spirit of God in our lives.

Discernment involves both reason and affectivity, the interpretation of our inner experience and of external events. Key to interpretation of that which is external to us is “reading the signs of the times” which is a foundation of the post-Vatican II response to the world. The perspective of Gaudium et Spes, “…the Church has always had the duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel” (#4) provides a framework for assessing the events, ideas, and trends of church and society, together with the influence of significant people.

A central “sign of the times” in these early years of the 21st century centers around issues of ecology, the “universe story,” climate change, and global warming. We are totally beyond the mind-set which views “green issues” as the concern of fringe groups. In 2007 we are living on a planet in peril.

Ecological Intelligence: Living Connections with the World

Ian McCallum, a South African medical doctor, psychiatrist, naturalist, and poet, proposes that the development of ecological intelligence is now imperative. McCallum’s concept helps us to see more clearly the connections which are described in phrases such as the “web of life.” It teaches us to understand that together all the creation has one message: we are one.

Ecological intelligence is not about speech, but about action. It is many acts of choosing to live the connections that are within us and around us. It is acting on behalf of creation and with creation, making decisions, as Chief Seattle reminds us, for the welfare of the 7th generation ahead of us, which means today for those who will be born in 2182, 175 years from now.

Secondly, ecological intelligence recognizes that the past lives in our bodies, and thus we are connected to other living beings in our very anatomy. In the 1950s Paul Maclean developed the understanding of the human brain as a Triune Brain. This means that we operate with “three brains”: a reptilian brain, an early mammalian brain, and a neo-mammalian or human brain. Ecological intelligence acknowledges these ancient anatomical connections to other living beings as enduring signs that all creation is one.

Thirdly, ecological intelligence lives by the truth that ever since the Big Bang or Flaring Forth about 14 billion years ago, everything has and will always be connected. The first atoms of hydrogen of the Flaring Forth are within us today in 2007. The atoms of iron in our blood came from the supernova explosion that led to the earth.

Thus ecological intelligence is a new way of thinking about ourselves in the world, how we relate to the earth, to nature, to all of created reality. It removes us from our supposed “center of the universe” and, as people of faith, brings us to the awe and wonder of poetic and prayerful response.

Fourthly, ecological intelligence is about living in the framework of a mindfield, which is multi-dimensional, and brings together the past and future, together with the present. The mindfield includes language, culture, and the shared values of groups and humanity. For example, the internet is a significant part of the 21st century’s mindfield, easily connecting people across continents and cultures.

A final, and the most important, characteristic of ecological intelligence is its essence of connection. In many African languages there is a saying similar to “people are people through each other” or “I am because you are, and because you are, I am.” Ecological intelligence is living with the web of life as our primary image of reality and attempting to make it real in everything we do.

The Universe Story

The development of “ecological intelligence” facilitates one’s understanding of the importance of conceptual frameworks such as the Universe Story. This worldview also de-centers humanity from its supposed position as the apex of creation and presents a narrative that began long before the beginnings of pre-humans on earth. The “Flaring Forth” set in motion a creative, evolving process in which matter slowly developed, galaxies and stars emerged, earth took shape, life (in the shape of bacteria) appeared on earth about 3.8 billion years ago, and gradually all other forms of life – plant, animal, and human – developed.

To own the Universe Story as one’s own story expands the understanding of reading the “signs of the times” from attention to world events to a vision of created reality whose history is longer and more complex than we had imagined.

The Earth Charter

While the cosmic vision of reality is extraordinarily important, the reality is that we live on earth. We have only one earth; it is our home and it is now at grave risk from global warming and climate change.

In 2000 the international Earth Charter Commission adapted the final text of this document. The Charter incorporates four sets of principles:

Respect and care for the community of life
Ecological integrity
Social and economic justice
Democracy, nonviolence, and peace

Ecological integrity includes protection and restoration of earth’s ecological systems, preventing harm to these systems, and adapting patterns of production and consumption that safeguard the earth. The Earth Charter challenges humanity to exercise ecological intelligence in order to develop a new sense of global interdependence and universal responsibility.

Global Warming and Climate Change

Although scientists and ecologists have been sending distress signals for a number of years that earth is in dire straits due to the build up of carbon emissions in the atmosphere, only recently has this begun to penetrate people’s consciousness and alarm them.

The earth is suffering from an escalation of the greenhouse effect, in which less and less of the heat energy generated on earth is reflected back into space. When agriculture began about 10,000 years ago, there were about 160 parts of carbon dioxide per million (ppm) in the atmosphere. The Industrial Revolution increased this to 280 ppm. Now it is estimated that there are 380 ppm. In the last 20 years, the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has increased at the unprecedented rate of 1.5 ppm a year.

The arctic ice pack has begun to melt; ice in Antarctica is diminishing; the snow caps and glaciers of the Alps are shrinking. Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is losing its snow cap. The melting of the arctic ice is affecting the life-style of the Inuit people. Polar bears are in distress as their habitat is changed. Rain-fall patterns in Africa are already severely disturbed, with some areas experiencing persistent drought and others inundated by floods.

As the ice and glaciers melts, the seas will rise. No one knows if we have passed what is termed “the tipping point” in which irreversible damage to the earth will have occurred. Scientists such as James Lovelock predict catastrophic flooding of coastal cities in North America, Europe, Asia, and Africa leading to the end of human civilization with only a few “breeding pairs of humans” (as he terms them) surviving in the arctic which will be the only place on earth where it is possible to grow food.

The effects of global warming and planetary climate change call for drastic changes in life-style to save the earth. Lovelock advocates the immediate conversion to nuclear power for energy, while others support stringent reduction of the use of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, use of solar and wind power together with rapid changes in personal use of energy.

Interpreting These Signs of the Times

It is not sufficient to understand ecological intelligence, the Universe Story and global warming and climate change as very significant “signs of the times.” The next step is, as Gaudium et Spes instructs us, to interpret them in the light of the Gospel.

Central to the Gospel is love of God and neighbor, the “two feet of love” as Catherine of Siena named them. Love is the energy of what Pierre Teilhard de Chardin has termed the divine milieu, the living context of our relationships with God, each other and all of created reality. Each act of love, no matter how small and hidden, moves all of creation closer to full union in Christ-Omega; each act of non-love moves all of creation away from Christ-Omega.

In responding to these ecological signs of the times, humanity is called to make new choices to save the earth. These are acts of ecological love, of planetary care. They demand a new kind of asceticism of life-style changes which will make people’s lives in the United States, for example, more difficult but ultimately will impact the future of the planet. This is, after all, the only home we have; if human civilization is destroyed or greatly changed because of the effects of climate change, we cannot escape to another planet. We are here together as one human family, riding on an earth in severe distress.

These dramatic signs of the times thus provide a new and key matrix for each act of discernment, both personal and communal. We are in uncharted discernment territory indeed and in fact.

For Further Reading

Cannato, Judy, Radical Amazement. (Notre Dame, Indiana: Sorin Books, 2006).

Edwards, Denis, Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2004).

The Earth Charter. http://www.earthcharter.org

Lovelock, James, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis and the Future of Humanity. (New York: Basic Books, 2006).

Ian McCallum, Ecological Intelligence. (Cape Town: Africa Geographic, 2005).

Wessels, Cletus, Jesus in the New Universe Story. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2003).