Tithing Nature, Restoring Faith
The over-reach of human populations and appetites is threatening the existence of life on Earth as we know it and as we depend on it. Exploitation and pollution have to be reversed and serious work taken up to sustain and restore habitats and network ecologies. This urgent endeavor is nothing less than a global moral duty imposed by personal conscience acknowledging respect for and human dependency on nature and other life.
Life will not be restored and ecologies will not be saved unless humankind changes its ways from wasting to conservation and restoration. A mentality of change needs to be cultured by churches, by whole communities.
What shape should change take? In preparation for the Sacrament of Confirmation, for example, all “confirmandi” should be engaged in specific local works of habitat salvage and restoration. Service organizations, like Rotary, Knights of Columbus, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, should be eager to cooperate and encourage young people in altruistic works.
Salvage should involve works of cleaning up nature and in recycling all waste items that clutter air, water and land. Restoration should be in forms of habitat recovery and in reintroducing threatened flora and fauna. Restoration should involve “faith-tithing”, namely, local reclamation of swamps, prairies, woodland, lakes, streams, etc. Every landowner should be involved in the project by supporting reclamation and habitat recovery on their properties.
“Confirmandi” should be organized to contact property owners and explore ways of participating in “natural tithing”. Plans for clean up and reclamation should include setting aside (tithing) land for woodland planting, purification of run-off water and ways of water collection and holding for wildlife security.
Conservation professionals, landscape architects, nurseries, greenhouses, etc should be sought out in land-tithing and recovery work. All churches in the community can find common ground in non-controversial, real life works of faith building.
Retired women and men (grandparents!) are naturally, altruistically motivated in the spiritual/ secular work of exemplifying to grandchildren faith and good works. The work of “salvation” requires nothing less than total intergenerational commitment.
[An aside: Seven years ago today (June 12, 2008), family, relatives and friends, my wife and I, celebrated the Funeral Mass of our oldest daughter Monica (born April 5, 1960). She was broadly talented. What she loved most to do was to finely detail landscape proposals for people (without charge). Her drawings would specify in detail, land profiles, terrain flow, locations and types of plantings, etc. How helpful today would be her altruism and talent in developing strategies and designs of habitat recovery sensitive to local ecologies. I have faith though that there are many others eager for the opportunity of using their talents in the altruistic service of God, humankind and life on Earth. Let’s seek them out and work with them.]
Sylvester~ My heart goes out
Sylvester~ My heart goes out to you and yours in memory of your daughter.
The environment is so Jesus'like. Jesus totally immersed Himself in His father's creation by becoming fully human. What more obvious evidence do we need to be convinced that God sees what He created and sees that it is good. We are called to look at and be towards creation from the perspective of and with Jesus. We have largely missed the perspective of engaging in the completion of creation; but we have the choice to become engaged in its reclamation and then...maybe...staying on board for its nurturing and management as tenants of the Lord's farmland.
The underpinnings of philosophy, science and theology by man have their roots in the primordial elements- earth, air, fire and water.
We have for too long looked out and up as if God is somewhere else. We have for too long disdained being as we were and where we were created and we have presumed to become 'god'. That is another principle of the medieval church that must be put in its place.
We have lived the utilitarian principle of St.Augustine who saw creation and, as I recall, even fellow humans as instruments to be used towards personal holiness and salvation. The final 'conflagration' may not be a visitation from without but the finale of our slow, inexorable destruction of this beautiful flower that is earth.
So much of pre-christian religion was embued with the elan of creation and yes, the cruelty that is also part of nature. Christianity usurped, coopted much and extinguished much. That which it coopted it robed in religiosity and held, used for its 'other worldly' purpose as if it were its own until it lost its primordial link with its origin in creation and in us. Me must retreive that link somehow because that is where the creator is and what Jesus baptized into Himself in his immersion by John and by His death,burial and rising. It is required of us. It is where our bliss is.
I think that the summer solstice is very soon.
I feel for your memories of
I feel for your memories of your daughter. Living in he same area where I lost my son,I hurt every time I pass the places where my son worked,played and hung out.I remember the cars he drove and the tickets he got,the stores we visited together,and It's been almost seven years for me.
The time has come for more serious action than you cite on the environment. It is time for serious civil disobedience.
On the energy crisis, there is a finite and limited amount of oil in the world. It is like real estate. There is no more being made. We know where most of it is and the only thing we need to do is conserve.
Taking oil out of the ground in Alaska and puting other oil into the ground in Louisiana is stupid. Partially develop Anwar but leave that oil for the last days.
Invading other people's land and stealing their oil does not make much sense either besides that can be Horribly expensive.
Nuclear power does not make lot of sense either Nobody here wants the spent fuel.We should settle the spent fuel question first before we build the first plant.Do you want it in space or in the bottomn of the ocean?
The current administration still gives tax incentives for people who buy 3000 lb pick up trucks.
The answer was give to us five presidents ago conserve,slow down and go solar but that president is considered dumb.
We spend billions on Ethanol development and give no heed to the food chain and it costs a 7/8 of a gallon of oil to make a gallon of gas.
We will be paying an ever increasing price for natural gas to get oil from the sands in Canada. There seems to be no end to this but that may be because the is no end to the stupidity of the present administration.
How much polution can we take? Elasticisers in vinyl are killing children throught their baby bottles.
We throw away 50 million plastic bottles each day. Everything that is sold in a store including the packaging has to be bought back. Every car that is sold must be bought back by the Automobile company.
To the naked eye rivers are improving a little but under it all, the pollution is still there. Don't eat the fish. Don't eat most of the fish from the ocean either.
We all live downstream. This is not a job for the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts or the Knights of Columbus. Send in the marines[after they have beeen retrained]
We are in desparate straits and we have Nero [or is it Caligula] is still fiddling. The church is doing nothing and I'm depressed.
Thank you, sevenup, I know
Thank you, sevenup, I know your feelings and sympathize with you and yours.
"The time has come for more serious action than you cite on the environment. It is time for serious civil disobedience." I do not disagree with you. Counter-action, including strong public witness against practices of cultural infidelity and insanity are needed.
The thrust of my point is the need to facilitate our children in the practiced experience of cultural fidelity in the work of universal human betterment. Churches have been notably remiss in their failure to teach moral responsibility in the God/ land/ human covenant. The young are morally more tuned in to this need than churches. Because of church irrelevance to the morality of natural necessities, it is experiencing, not surprisingly, serious and enduring erosion of public confidence.
Confirmation as a sacrament needs to pertain to contemporary reality if it is to have credibility and meaning.
It would help if the
It would help if the environmental movement would come up with solutions that don't revolve around fear. "Carbon credits" and other such nonsense get no popular support because people see it as a scam (if you're rich like Al Gore you can fly around the country, drive suv's, and just buy "offsets").
Simple things can be done: pass laws allowing rooftop turbines (at the Jersey shore it is nearly impossible to put one up, even though shore breezes are constant), solar panels, etc. Give tax breaks to companies that innovate in the field (gas station to carry hydrogen/alternative fuels?), to individuals that make improvements to their homes to make less of an impact.
The buy back programs you suggest will kill the economy, the tax cuts will drive that segment. Neither party has actually made any difference on this issue, nor have they rally proposed the small changes that will make the big difference.
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nightwalker on Catholic Answers
HT you say that neither
HT you say that neither party has made much sense. Has the church? It has a lot more influence or could have a lot more influence than either or both parties. I agree carbon credits are a joke but it might work somewhat [well a little,maybe ,somewhat]
When Reagan killed the incentives that Carter had in place none of us knew how bad that was but if we had followed Carter's program we could be free of foreign oil by now.
Again if the politicos and the church are too deep in the pockets of the oil and chemical companies the task comes back to us,not 'the environmentalists' US as in YOU and ME.
What has the church not done?,The list is endless but there are a few things that the church can do. The church can start by encouraging people to respect God's creation and it can do this by example and in it's prayers and celebrations. People can change. People used to recycle aluminum for the money.Most of it now is recycled for the sake of the earth. Things change through various means and the church needs to be on top of it.
Buy back programs don't kill the economy it could have the reverse effect if the government was smart enough to tax the buy back like it taxes the sale. Not buying back costs more money. Where do we put 60 billion plastic bottles annually?
EVERYTHING HAS TO BE RECYCLED-------RESOURCES ARE FINITE. That's the story of stuff.
I'm not talking about the
I'm not talking about the government's budget, I'm talking about companies. If Ford is required to buy back all of their cars, they will pass the cost of recycling the car on to consumers. Ditto for packaging materials. The effect is a sharp increase in inflation, which wages will not match (as history shows). With the nation teetering on the brink of a depression, economic factors will make the difference in whether or not any environmental action will succeed.
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nightwalker on Catholic Answers
We are not on the brink of a
We are not on the brink of a depression we are in one. If the car companies do not recycle those cars that cost will be handed on to us as well. Recycliong is and industry and will create jobs. The word 'recycling' is usually reserved for things that are worn out but that is not what is called for here. Large older cars are increasing the price of gasoline,they are polluting the air and creating danger for smaller cars. It may be morallywrong to pass such a car down the wealth chain. Buying those cars back would clean up the air,reduce the demand for gasoline and increase the sales of hybrids. In Singapore [where the tax on cars is about 5 thousand dollars] tax on older cars is even higher. In England there was a buy-back a few years ago and it still may be going on. If one listens to the BS that came from the government ever since Reagan through Bush,Clinton and the present mistake Your mind would think that there is only one way to do things. Other countries are beyong that type of thinking. As it is the Chinese will be buying them back soon to recycle them.
Don't listen to the talking heads----Think.
I am largely incommunicado
I am largely incommunicado except for the internet, a nice way to avoid the talking heads.
I was trying to be optimistic, but if you want to take the stand that we are in a depression, you only give me more ammunition. Car companies have been struggling for years. The union deals prevent them from laying off employees without closing whole plants (=laying off more employees). You are suggesting putting another burden on an industry that is collapsing. This will put companies out of business as there is less capital available to invest in retooling factories (as would be required by your proposal). Unless the price of hybrids comes down dramatically, people will be unable to afford them anyway.
Pulling old cars from the market through a buy-back program will also drive up the cost of used cars, an essential for many working class families. Further, supply of parts for cars will be cut off even sooner after their manufacture, driving up the cost of repairs. Fewer people with transportation will mean fewer people working, a fight into the cities (with slum lords, tenements, and increased crime). A few years ago, there was economic prosperity. China is growing as a financial power. The US is in a depression (although I still think we stretch here, certainly compared to the Depression) and in decline as a world power (we couldn't remain the one and only forever).
Each action has consequences, think them through in our current situation.
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nightwalker on Catholic Answers
The point HT is that the
The point HT is that the solution is personal and individual. Blaming others for the inadequacy of their proposals goes nowhere. We need to ask OURSELVES seventy-times-seven daily, "how do I authenticate life, nature?"
...and my post would be?
...and my post would be? sevenup cited the failures (of both parties), and proposed a government "fix" of mandatory buybacks. I proposed that it is the small changes that will make a bigger difference (and have a positive instead of negative economic impact).
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nightwalker on Catholic Answers
[An aside: Seven years ago
[An aside: Seven years ago today (June 12, 2008), family, relatives and friends, my wife and I, celebrated the Funeral Mass of our oldest daughter Monica (born April 5, 1960). She was broadly talented. What she loved most to do was to finely detail landscape proposals for people (without charge). Her drawings would specify in detail, land profiles, terrain flow, locations and types of plantings, etc. How helpful today would be her altruism and talent in developing strategies and designs of habitat recovery sensitive to local ecologies. I have faith though that there are many others eager for the opportunity of using their talents in the altruistic service of God, humankind and life on Earth. Let’s seek them out and work with them.]
God Bless You Sylvester. Thank you for your heartfelt and important post. As we learn more and more how to serve God on THIS WORLD even before we get to the next, we make and take steps, one step at a time, closer to making the promise of God of there being Heaven on Earth closer to becoming a reality.
In my heart the story of your daughter brings me Hope. I’m sure her talents and essence of “being� will be warmly and joyfully accepted and used in the next world as her NEW reality of being is expressed.
God Bless us here in the doing of God’s Will as your daughter and those in Heaven are blessed in the doing of God’s Will there.
May we learn how to Love and Serve God on Earth as it is done in Heaven.
God’s Peace be with us ALL! Amen/Awomen.
The more we discover how much we are Loved by God, the more we want to do God's Will