The Diocesan Dialogue
Current Issue
March 2008

Bishop's Reflections

"Reclaiming the Green Vocation"

"...the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being...The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till and keep it." (Gen 2:7, 15)

As you all know, there are deep, damaging and perhaps irreversible climate changes affecting "this fragile earth, our island home." Such changes warm the ice and raise ocean levels, destroy many species of creatures and their habitats, bring drought to the land, and use up many of the resources on which our lives depend. Thus our descendents and perhaps we ourselves face an uncertain and difficult future.

Scientists and naturalists who have long warned us of these dangers have conclusively demonstrated that the climate changes now taking place are directly caused by human behaviors, not by natural climate cycles. Not only that, but they can tell us what these behaviors are, and how (and at what pace) they affect our environment. Perhaps, in the not too distant past, we didn't know the risks and effects of our energy consumption, for example, but surely we are now living more in denial than in ignorance.

In any case stewards are not good stewards when they are the cause of the problems. We Christians like to call ourselves that, and the term does serve to indicate that we are neither the creators nor the owners of the earth. It is salutary to remember, however, that the world was doing fairly well until the stewards came along, as the director of the World Wildlife Fund, Russell Train, once said.

Perhaps we need a new way of thinking about ourselves and our responsibility for life on this planet. The above quotation comes from Genesis 2, which is the earlier-written of the two creation stories. As you know most of us do not read these texts as accounts of how the world began, but as religious—even mythological— narratives they do bear truths of a different kind.

I find it interesting to reflect on what it was in the experience of their human authors, inspired as they may have been, to describe the beginnings as they do. The author of the above text appears to be aware that a vocation was given to him along with life. God dignified him with a calling to "till and keep" the garden, and gave him the competence to do so—since human beings are the only creatures who can learn skills and see to the consequences of what they do.

In my reading of this story, that first human creature is now everyman, the 'green' vocation is universal, and the garden is God's precious earth. It is a vocation we must all reclaim—in whatever way and place that is given us to do.

In one of our Eucharistic prayers we speak of "this fragile earth, our island home." In many respects it is fragile, but it is also resilient if not endlessly forgiving; we now know more about all its creatures and ecosystems than any generation before us; and we understand the interdependence of all life and all the conditions of life. Still, time is not on our side.

I have often heard theologians say that all creation "fell" when Adam and Eve disobeyed God by eating of the fruit of the tree that was forbidden them. That seems to me an utterly simplistic and useless understanding of what has happened, and lets modern generations off much too easily. More truthfully, it is the vast technologies of the industrial revolution that have enabled and magnified our ongoing abuse of earth and her intricate systems of interdependence

It is late Lent, but it is still time for repentance and amendment of life.

Faithfully,
The Rt. Rev. Carolyn Tanner Irish

Return to current issue Table of Contents
or Dialogue main page »