“We must, however, reflect on what is happening. It is an urgent matter, especially for those of us who still live in a meaningful, even a numinous, earth community. We have not spoken. Nor even have we seen clearly what is happening. The issue goes far beyond economics, or commerce, or poetics, or an evening of pleasantries as we look out over a scenic view. Something is happening beyond all this. We are losing splendid and intimate modes of divine presence. We are, perhaps, losing ourselves.”
Thomas Berry
As I began to write this post I became aware of how often I talk about going to the natural areas and the spiritual impact they have on me, as if nature is some distant place I must travel to. The reality is I live in nature, it is all around me, our city is built within nature. I too often fail to remember I live in nature, because I can easily get lost in the chaos of the city, overwhelmed by the buildings and noise we create. My thinking, and in many ways society, suggests we are to look elsewhere for those intimate modes of divine presence of nature. This shows a thinking of society’s separation from nature. I feel sadness, as well as anger, knowing that we are taking places of natural beauty, even if that’s a farmer’s land, and making it into a housing development, shopping mall or warehouse. We change the natural area into concrete, asphalt jungle that has almost no resemblance to its previous existence. I see where we are losing splendid and intimate modes of divine presence to the hands of investors for their financial gain rather than setting aside a farmer’s land as a natural sanctuary. I pray we, which also includes me, can change this way of thinking and believing. End of rant. Clouds have moved in and the wind has picked up as we await rain.
