8/9/2019 July 2009 Resolutions to Action Leadership Conference of Women Religious

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/july-2009-resolutions-to-action-leadership-conference-of-women-religious 1/2

Resolutions LCWR Global Concerns Committee

Volume 18, Number 3  July 2009

To Action 

LCWR8808 Cameron StreetSilver Spring, MD 20910301-588-4955fax: 301-587-4575mlucey@lcwr.org

Miriam Therese MacGillis, OPDirector/Founder of Genesis Farm

www.lcwr.org

EXPERIENCE

Resolutions to Action is an occasional publica-tion of the Global Concerns Committee of the

Leadership Conference of Women Religious(LCWR). Members of the committee are: Jacquelyn Doepker, OSF; Janet Lehmann,

SC; Miriam Mitchell, SHSp; Andrea Nenzel,CSJP; Susan Schorsten, HM; Kathleen Storms,SSND; and Marie Lucey, OSF, staff. Pleaseaddress correspondence to:

Choosing Simplicity in a Context of Deep Time

Over these last decades, religioushave become versed in reflect-ing on the signs of the times

The primary source of these reflectionsare the writings of Thomas Berry andBrian Swimme as they have articulatedtheir insights on a new cosmology.

C

arbon-offsets, ecological foot-print, peak oil, global climate

change, habitat loss, levels oftoxicity…the list goes on and on.How are we to respond to these newdimensions of an ethical imperativewhich is core to the life of a vowedreligious attempting to give witness tothe presence of God in history?

When we were challenged in the lightof Vatican II to call ourselves to readthe signs of the times and respondwith gospel values to the plight of thehuman community, we ventured into

areas for which we had little prepara-tion. Confronting militarism, racism,sexism, and every other form ofinjustice, we committed to a profoundtransformation of the cultural valuesembedded in American society and inour own psyches. We also developedthe skills and tools necessary for sodeep a transformation. We learnedlistening and communication skills,conflict-resolution, consensus-build-

ing and creative problem-solving skills….all this at the service of life as the humanfamily was navigating the volatile lastdecades of the twentieth century.

Now, in these beginning years of the 21stcentury we have become aware that theresponse we make to global economicand social disparity must align with agrowing and radically new perception ofthe consequences our activities have on astarkly threatened living planet. Ecologi-cal devastation looms large. Just when weare being confronted with the end of anera of the cheap fossil fuels which gaverise to an explosion of material consump-tion, we are also faced with the evidenceof global climate change aggravated bythe same industrialized growth. Whetherwithin rich or poor nations this gen-eration faces a new complexity whichquestions the modern world’s expecta-

tion of unlimited growth and its beliefthat technology will fix every challengewe face.

Csmia Anaysisas e as Sia Anaysis

through the lens of social analysis, adiscernment process that has helped usunderstand the structural causes of somuch human suffering and injustice.While this lens has been invaluable fordiscerning the institutional violenceimposed on some people by others, it isinadequate for discerning the ecologicalcrisis that loom on all sides, threateningrich and poor alike, but also threateningthe very web of life itself.

However, we have a new lens capableof understanding the scope of theseecological crises as well as new under-standings for addressing them withperspectives beginning to emerge fromwithin the Judeo-Christian tradition.These perspectives were not available to

8/9/2019 July 2009 Resolutions to Action Leadership Conference of Women Religious

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/july-2009-resolutions-to-action-leadership-conference-of-women-religious 2/2

our forebears as they lay down the ethi-cal principles on which our Christiansocial analysis has developed. Theseare literal lenses, powerful instrumentslike the Hubble telescope which haveexpanded our capacities to see into the

far reaches of time and space. Theseranges are not available to the unaidedsenses and were beyond the capacitiesof our forebears to acquire.

We are now able to see into “deeptime” that is, into evolutionary timeand space. These observations havegiven rise to our knowledge of how theUniverse, galaxies, Earth, life, and hu-

man consciousness emerged as a singleunbroken sequence of events whichcontextualize our existence and out ofwhich we are called to participate in themiracle of life and meaning. In addition,this context of evolutionary time andspace reveals an inviolate unity thatexists within the entire order of being.This unity is exquisite and irrefutable.It is also demanding to our minds andhearts.

Deep time also reveals to us that the ca-pacity for life, spirit, and consciousnesshas been present within the universe

from its beginning and throughoutits 13 billion year development. Thus,if human life and consciousness arepresent now, they had to have beenpotentially present from the beginning,emerging from within the process notas an outside intervention. This under-standing changes everything. It shedslight on one of the deepest flaws withinour collective western worldview: thathumanity is inherently separate fromnature. It also points to some of the

religious limitations this worldview hasfor transforming our present dilemma.

Western civilization is the culturalexpression of the story our forebearscreated to explain the origin and nature

of the world. Some of the assumptionsthey made suggested that only the hu-man person had an immortal, transcen-dent soul which was directly infused

 by an eternal, transcendent Creator. Therest of the created order, while goodand worthy of respect and care, was in-trinsically different from humanity. Theessential difference was in its materialnature. All non-human beings lacked aspiritual soul and thus they lacked anyinherent rights to their own existence orto a meaning or value outside that sub-

scribed by human beings. We believedthis difference was fundamental.

The consequences of this sense ofseparation have resulted in a funda-mental dilemma that separates us fromany continuity with or guidance fromthe evolutionary process itself. It hasalso uprooted us from the unity of theuniverse. Not only have the humaninjustices of racism, sexism, militarism,and violence ensued, but more fun-damentally this world view has givenrise to the perception that nature washere for us to define and ultimately touse for our advantage. It also set thestage for giving all rights to the humanperson, as enshrined in our democraticinstitutions, but it cut off the interre-lated physical and spiritual bonding ofthe whole, thus diminishing a sense ofrights as belonging to the air, waters,forests, animals, and the whole web of

 being.

Without this understanding of thefundamental unity of all being, revealedonly recently in our scientific observa-tions of the inner and outer dimensionsof the Universe and Earth, we will makelittle progress in our efforts to curb theecological devastation threatening theplanet’s future, not only the rich andpoor of the human species.

From the perspective of biological andgeological time, our human species --

D m ves t s th t cpacty r f, s, n cscin hs r 

t t vr   ts egng n truh 

ts 13 bi er dvlm.

through our globalized, industrial econ-omies -- is unraveling the conditionsof the Cenozoic era. This 65 millionyear old period represents the beauty,diversity, health, and magnificence ofthe outer world as we have experienced

and understood it in our short his-tory as a species. All that beauty, thegrandeur of the skies, the life givingproperties of water, the nourishmentof food and the experience of health,

 joy and well-being were all essentialfor the development of our spiritual,emotional, and physical lives. Theywere also essential for the developmentof our images of God and of the sacreddimensions of existence.

We are the generation sharing life just

at the time when these conditions arediminishing. Not only is religious lifeat a point of diminishment, not onlyis western civilization and its majorinstitutions imploding, but the greatercontext of life itself is under gravethreat, precisely because of the humanactivity created and abetted by the verythinking and activities of these sameinstitutions.

It is a cosmological analysis that mustemerge to open the deeper understand-

ings not yet expressed in the social

analysis that has served us in the past.We cannot abandon social analysis. It iscritical to solving the human injusticesthat continue to perpetuate themselves.But it must be expanded by scientificrevelations only now available for ourobservation.

Part Two of this essay, which consists ofreflection and suggested actions, will bepublished in October 2009.

N ly s iis f   m, ly s 

wtr cvzi n ts jr is long, b t  gretr ct f tf s 

ndr grv tre...