Margaret Swedish, an advocate for ecological wholeness, believes our time of planetary crisis invites us to a deeper, more expansive faith:
We are coming to the end of the world, or at least to the end of a world. How it ends will be very much up to us. We have many choices in front of us, but not this one—that the world we know is ending. What has been familiar to us as a framework in which we have lived our lives for a very long time is ending….
It is incumbent upon us to expand our experience of faith to embrace the full reality of our predicament and to inform the decisions we make from here on out. This is what Jesus did—face his world fully and honestly, not shying away from the suffering or the disquieting demands that it would make on him. We need a faith now that can help us face this world that we have made … and help us find a way through and beyond it.…
Because all of this can appear daunting and terrifying, we also search for an experience of God, a relationship, that is both large enough—and intimate enough—to counter the disorientation, dizziness, and sense of displacement we feel…. We seek … a place for an experience of the Divine within it, a new sense of our true home, of our cherished place in the cosmos and on this planet, a spiritual space large enough to contain all of our fears and our hopes, our questions and our bewilderment….
We need a sense of God that does not invite us to grow smaller, to retreat into personal sins with the expectation of some salvation apart from and outside this larger drama of our earth and cosmos. We need a sense of God that embraces that drama fully, with urgency, with passion, with love, as did the God revealed in Jesus Christ. [1]
Sharing our faith rituals and stories can strengthen and nourish us:
Our faith offers an insight into the way forward, a vision that can help us feel our way toward the new world we must create. We reach into its depths not for something spiritually superior, not for a holier way of life than others.… Relinquishment, simplicity, sharing things in common, becoming downwardly mobile, these things are no longer just admirable traits for the spiritually wise and advanced, they have become necessities for the future of life.
What kind of human beings will we become? As we embrace this difficult passage in our earth story, these shared stories and rituals [of faith] will be important to expressing our fears and hopes, our sense of purpose, our visions for a new world, for healing, regeneration, hope beyond the “end of the world.” They offer us a place to draw strength, build community, and find sustenance for the long haul as we make the necessary transformations. We are not carried outside faith, but deeper into it. [2]
References:
[1] Margaret Swedish, Living beyond the “End of the World”: A Spirituality of Hope (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008), 158, 160–161.
[2] Swedish, Living beyond the “End of the World,” 203.
Image credit: A path from one week to the next—Alma Thomas, White Daisies Rhapsody (detail), 1973, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian. Alma Thomas, Snoopy—Early Sun Display on Earth (detail), 1970, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian. Alma Thomas, Snow Reflection on Pond (detail), 1973, acrylic on canvas, Smithsonian. Click here to enlarge image.
A rainbow hope, curved and welcoming, bends toward the horizon.
Story from Our Community:
As a grateful 83-year-old person, I can now say I have grown beyond my conservative denominational upbringing to become an active participant in an inclusive church family. I read the Daily Meditations each morning with joy. I am continuing to work on contemplative practices that help me release discouraging situations and center myself in hope. My goal now is to live every day with the patience of the pair of beautiful mockingbirds nesting just outside my living room window. I’m continually inspired with the care and attention they give to their little nest and each other. I even can watch them from my recliner—what a gift! —Dot C.
