September 2001

ECOLOGICAL SPIRITUALITY

Spirituality is a sublime subject. Great minds and souls have reflected on it and left behind many illuminating insights. Yet we need to reflect on it again, if only because we wish to prove that we are spiritually alive. Our circumstances and problems are unprecedented and they require a new spiritual response, a new form of spirituality. Older spiritualities were created in response to different problems, within the context of a different world view, and in order to articulate different dimensions of the human condition.

Spirituality 1 an articulated essence of the human condition of a given time. This conception of spirituality enables us to cherish various forms of spirituality in various cultures and religions; but also informs us that there isn’t one form of spirituality for all times, for all people, for all the conditions of the human universe. As the world changes and unfolds, knowledge grows and unfolds, the human mind changes, the human psyche changes, the human condition is re-articulated, and thus human spirituality takes different forms.

In our times we witness the dawn of the Ecological Perspective, or the ecological world view. Within this perspective the universe is viewed as a sanctuary. To act in the world as if it were a sanctuary is to make it reverential and sacred. What the universe becomes depends on you. Treat it like a machine and it becomes a machine. Treat it like a divine place and it becomes a divine place. Reverence for life, and for all there is in the universe, is the first condition of ecological spirituality. To celebrate the miracle of creation is to behold the world reverentially.

An in-depth comprehension of ecology is reverence in action, is a deep identification with the beauty of life pulsating through the universe until we become part of it. Thus understanding becomes empathy. Empathy becomes universal reverence. This reverence is a form of spirituality. In our times the ecological and the spiritual become one.

To worship God in our times is to save the planet. If we lose the environment, we lose God. Healing the planet and healing ourselves is spiritual work of the first magnitude in our day and age. Whatever our race and religion, ecology binds us all together. Ecology is the universal religious project of our times. The idea of redemption acquires a new meaning—it means redeeming the world by healing the earth. We need to emphasize: healing the earth is spiritual work of our time.

To understand religious devotion is to recognize that all religions are forms of worship of the beauty and integrity of the planet. The greening of world religions in our times is a clear indication that the call of the crying earth is heard by the churches.

Spirituality is also, and has always been, the realization of our inner potential, the actualization of the inner god within us. We need to treat each other according to what we can potentially become: divine lights uplifting ourselves and helping others to heal, to integrate, to become more reverential Working on ourselves to release and articulate our inner divinity and working in the outside world to heal the earth are complementary aspects of ecological spirituality.

The waning of religious forms of spirituality does not absolve us from the responsibility of healing the earth, and from actualizing our spiritual potential. In spite of the religious crisis of our times, and perhaps because of it, we must have the courage to meet—in each of us individually—not only the Jesus of Nazareth but the Messiah of the Cosmos.

Henryk Skolimowski