Reflection paper :
1. Diversity of life and the Trinity: The three principles of the Cosmos
Look at the diversity of life on Earth, grown over 3.5 billion years of evolution.Sit with the delicate interconnectedness of all species, life forms and ecosystems.See how they are interdependent with each other: atmosphere, seas, rivers, lakes, land itself.
What has human presence over the past hundreds of years meant for the Earth community? What will happen if this trend will continue. All life will be radically impoverished.
2. The Call
We are faced with the greatest challenge ever. All our intelligence, generosity, commitment is needed.
For all religious traditions and spiritual movements there is a radical reason for commitment. It is more than scientific, medical, economic, aesthetic and cultural reasons that motivate a radical commitment to biodiversity.
Judaism. Christianity, Islam all profess faith in the One God who creates the universe.
The Creator breathes life in all living things. ( Gen. 2:7, Job., 34, 12-15, PS. 104, 29)
Diversity of creatures can be seen as self expression of the Trinity- ecological relationships are coming from the life of the Trinity.
Abundance of life, as expressed in the community of Life, stems from the abundance of the divine communion; God saving us, through Jesus and the Spirit.
See what God has been doing for us in the word made flesh and the Spirit poured out.
The Trinity is ecstatic in being with each other – but also in being with the whole of creation.
The diverse species we find on Earth can be seen as sacraments of God. All the species in their own way tell us who God is, Therefore no one can be missed.
Ruthless destruction of species and their habitats is a diminishment of the expression of who God is. We are challenged with the demand of an ethical practice that honors and celebrates diversity.
Inspirations: D. Edwards in Ecology at the Heart of Faith
3. Ecological Justice: the process
Take an inventory of the occasions and acts of injustice that you are aware of in your bioregion, in the institutions with which you interact.
What do you fee, think , and respond to from your collective awareness of injustice?
What does the new cosmology have to tell us about justice-making?
What can it mean in the causes you have discovered? How can the three principles of the universe be a guide in the process of transformation needed?
How does your understanding of new cosmology and ecological justice assist you in comprehending the magnitude of the problems and concerns that confront us?
What concrete action might you undertake to begin to heal the injustice that is present in the human-Earth community?
In your own way take time for prayer, reflection on the gift of abundance in nature. Celebrate this abundance, celebrate the divine communication between the Creator and every being and part of creation that you become aware of today.
What can a commitment to biodiversity mean for you today?
Write about the new insights, aspects of new worldview that you have discovered in the understandings of ecological justice, Earth Democracy and Earth Rights.
Write the ten commandments for Earth Justice
Mandala Hildegarde of Bingen,
4. Hildegard of Bingen on Justice in Creation
It is through water that the Holy Spirit overcomes all injustice, bringing to fulfillment all his gifts…
gifts, such that humankind might thrive in the moisture of justice and stream to spiritual things in the current of truth.
Has humankind never discovered God on the path of justice? Have people never observed how the earthly seeds comes to growth when it falls to the ground and is soaked by rain and dew?
As if this could come to pass thru any other than the creator of all things!…When a person understands Justice, the self is let go.
The first seed of the longing for Justice blows through the soul like the wind. The taste for good will plays in it like breeze. The consummation of this seed is a greening in the soul
That is like that of a ripening world. Now the soul honors God By the doing of just deeds.
Meditations with Hildegard of Bingen: G. Uelein. ISBN 0-939680-12-2
Elly Verrijt