Loosening the knots in the cry of the earth

Ruth Holgate, a member of the Jesuit Young Adult Ministries team, based at the Laudato Si’ community in Clapham,

Building for the future

 

asks how might the gift of wisdom help us to untie the complicated knot of responding to the ‘cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’ as individuals and as communities?

 

Let us consider how such an approach might help to loosen that particular knot in all of our lives that I mentioned previously, our need for ecological conversion – to respond urgently, as individuals and as the whole human race, to the ‘cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’. When a person looks at the mess human beings have made of the world, the climate crisis, the extreme inequality between peoples, a culture of careless over-consumption, etc., how can considering God’s perspective help us to respond? We might initially guess that God is sad or angry at what we have done, inducing feelings of guilt, helplessness and a sense of being paralysed – after all, what can one person do in this awful mess? But if we sit longer with the question of how God sees things, perhaps we recall God as creator, as creative, as one who lovingly attends to the world. We may want God to intervene to make things right – but we also notice as we grapple with these thoughts that God invites us to notice our own sense of wonder at creation, perhaps the delicate blossom on a tree or the surprising amount of busy, noisy birdlife in a local park. As we attend to the creation we see around us, we might notice within ourselves a desire to care, to act more gently toward this created world, to exercise more self-control over our own consumption, recognising that we do have an impact on the created world, however small. Over time, as we continue to dwell on how God sees things, our perspective can change, can become more attuned to those fruits of the spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)  that can point us toward a greater care for others and for our world, and this wisdom will enable us to face small and great challenges.1

References

 1 (2021, April 19). Loosening the knots: Wisdom | Thinking Faith. Retrieved November 12, 2021, from https://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/loosening-knots-wisdom