By David Miron-Wapner, Board Chair, The Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development
I just returned from a glorious family holiday in northern Italy. Again and again, whether swimming in the sparkling waters of Lakes Maggiore, Varese and Orta, or ascending the forests of the Stelvio National Park in the Martello valley, I sensed the awesome majesty of the natural world. While we were travelling, the Jewish month of Elul began. For Jews, Elul is a time of repentance in preparation for the High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and is a particularly propitious time for repentance.
One afternoon, I sat on a bed of alpine moss in a forest clearing and meditated amidst a plethora of mushroom bursting from the underground purposeful intelligence linking the trees, roots, and mycelium. Tears of joy and gratitude for being alive mixed with sadness and pain at the retreating glaciers on the peaks around me, which stimulated my reflections on our place in the world.
Creation is awesome and mysterious, perhaps beyond human understanding. Not a static event, but an unfolding process, creation is the story of life’s miraculous emergence on Earth. The creation story in Genesis seems to place humanity at the pinnacle of Creation, with its highest expression, Adam and Eve, living in their own separate Garden. Adam, literally from the Hebrew word ‘Adama’, meaning ‘earth’ or ‘soil’, is just an earthling, who is destined to return to dust. Humans are a part of, not apart from, creation and the natural world. Pointedly, Genesis chapter 2 verse 15 calls upon us to ‘serve and conserve’ and be stewards of Creation.
Every day, I strive to do my utmost to meet our common challenge. None of us can do it alone, but each positive act we each perform leads to our collective success. I retain faith in the face of uncertainty and fear, that human society can summon the will to survive climate change still as a modern, progressive, evolving, enlightened civilization. I pray for humanity’s ability to meet the complex challenges we face collectively and individually, especially in the very moment we willfully diminish the vital life-sustaining systems humans and all biodiversity rely upon.
Each of us bears responsibility for our predicament. We all participate in the ongoing habits and behaviors supporting the extractivist, wasteful, polluting industrial energy economy. So too, we have the capacity to engage in actualizing the prophetic vison of tikkun olam, a Jewish concept literally meaning “repair of a broken world”. Will we, all of humanity hear the word, out there blowin’ in the winds of the forests like I engaged with in the Alps? Can we summon the will, the desire to repent? All of us sense that something very fundamental is wrong, even if as Bob Dylan sang “we don’t know what it is…”. We have the power within us to make it right, and though perhaps not just like it was before, still a place to develop and thrive.
From its earliest days, humanity has tried to make sense of the heavens and attribute meaning and order to nature. The awesome cosmos inspired us. As our knowledge expanded, many of the mysteries of life began to be illuminated. Faith in a common foundational creation myth offered us comfort in the face of cruel unfeeling nature. In seemingly random events we sought spiritual explanations. Now, in seemingly random “natural” extreme weather events, a summer tropical storm in southern California or the wildfires of Maui or Greece, we find a clear scientific basis for knowing that the hand of people, not God, or any other supernatural force, is the primary cause of the myriad ecological crises and the intensification of our weather. Science tells us that no less than 50%, but perhaps up to 80% of extreme weather events are linked to human-caused climate change. Everything is connected. Earth’s systems are all complex and integrated, each one feeding back on the other, in ways we only slowly and humbly are beginning to understand and appreciate.
In parallel with the acceleration of the climate crisis, we need to accelerate the pace of our shift in consciousness towards balance and harmony with the natural world. As a Jew living in Jerusalem, at this time of collective stock taking in advance of the new year, I seek forgiveness for my contribution to an unfolding tragedy wrought by misplaced trust in technology and abusive manipulation of the environment. Every day I ask: what more might I be blessed and able to do? What other small positive act can I commit to? Perhaps for the moment, just a deep breath in appreciation of the changing seasons. Each of us rising up daily similarly challenging ourselves will bring us all closer to collective realization of our goal.
* Featured image source
