Eco-Spirituality – a question of balance
Moy Hitchen, June 2006

I was just back from Papua New Guinea and enthusing about the eco-spirituality practised by people up there in the forests, the coastal wetlands and on the islands. They deal with the spirits of the forest or island on a daily basis, giving and receiving from them, in a mutual relationship that has preserved these ecosystems and these societies for some 50,000 years. My friend said bluntly, “But I don’t believe in spirits.”

This is a man, mind you, who loves the bush, who has hiked in some of the great wildernesses still left in Australia, who spends his free time preserving and restoring local ecosystems, killing weeds and planting local vegetation. So, obviously, the Australian bush has claimed him, has charmed him, has offered him experiences of wonder and happiness. He, in turn, gives hours to the care and nurture of his local ecosystem. Tell me this is not a relationship of mutual respect and care!

But he doesn’t believe in spirits. He would claim to be acting rationally, in full knowledge of what he has chosen to do, to support his ‘green’ principles. Nonsense! There is nothing rational about loving the bush. You are either charmed, seduced by its beauty, and its goodness, or you are not. I maintain a spiritual relationship is involved, not a clear self-serving logical decision.

I guess the problem is theology – again. Anselm of Canterbury wisely said theology is ‘faith seeking understanding’ (fides quaerens intellectum). John Paul II built on this with his vivid metaphor of faith and reason being our ‘two wings’ to Truth (in Fides et Ratio). Look at the centuries through which we have come, struggling with all that Jesus left us. Incarnation, Trinity, redemption, revelation are some of the huge monuments the human intellect has cast up.

I suspect ‘spirits’ are a product of Melanesian theology. They are not to be ‘believed’ in, as we believe in Jesus, or God, in relationship. They come from trying to understand what it is we do believe in! The relationship with the forest or ocean is primary. How we conceptualise it comes later.

I further suspect my friend has yet to begin his theologising about the love he has for the Australian bush, in all its lovely manifestations. These are early days for a product of western science and the Enlightenment, just beginning to go down on his knees to plant a young seedling.

The problem is as old as Paul, dashing along the old Roman roads, built for merchants and armies, lodging in the old cities of Turkey and Greece. Paul’s theologising was that of the urban middle class and social climbers, rootless and cut off from their rural backgrounds. Their word for the country-dwellers was ‘pagans’. Christians have yet to understand (theologise about) the primary relationships they have with their local ecosystem, relationships that are spiritual first and foremost.

We share such relationships with the Melanesians, and peoples everywhere on Earth. It’s just that they are more articulate about it – and have had more time to think upon such things. Western people have been distracted with the problems of being immigrants and colonisers. We developed a ‘portable’ Christianity, that could be quickly translated into any place (we thought). How wrong we were!

Let’s get into the main task of this millennium. The choice is to perish or to love our local ecosystem. Everything we know from Jesus suggests God prefers us alive, happy and loving. We need to stop the restless movement and learn to re-connect with the Earth. One day we may seek to understand this too.