ECOFEMINISM - THE SPIRAL OF LIFE: Lucy Reid

 

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DOMINATION AND ECOCIDE

Ecofeminism, a word first used in 1974 by French author Francoise d Eaubonne, goes beyond the ecological concerns of the Green movement and the social-gender concerns of the feminist movement by understanding that there is a deep and devastating link between the abuse of nature and the oppression of women. The same patriarchal forces which dominate women, children and other humans considered lesser or weaker, also dominate nature and the earth as subordinate resources to be controlled and exploited. Ecofeminist Julia Scofield Russell writes:

It s becoming clear to us that women s liberation cannot be separated from the liberation of all - men, women, children, old, middle aged, Black, White, Yellow, Red, and mixed, rich and poor, animals, plants, and Mother Earth herself - from the tyranny of the conqueror society that now dominates the world. Whether it calls itself capitalistic, communistic, socialist, democratic, republican, multinational... is incidental to the primary characteristic they all share - the drive to conquest, the exploitation of women, nature, and each other.

Similarly, ecofeminist author and activist Charlene Spretnak sees the fear and resentment which fuel patriarchy as giving rise to all forms of its culture of dominance, from ecological destruction which is driving thousands of species into extinction every year, to the global militarism which consumes trillions of dollars annually on armaments while millions of infants die each year from starvation and disease. A system based on power through exertion of control fears loss of that control and resents what cannot be tamed and brought to submission. The forces of nature, political enemies, societal movements, all are seen as threats to the power-brokers of dominance, and so all are to be repressed like the shadow in the psyche.

Rosemary Ruether writes in the introduction to her book Gaia and God that the quest of ecofeminism is for earth healing, whereby the broken relationships between men and women, between races, nations and classes, and between the earth and humanity, can be made whole again. She adds, however,
Such a healing is possible only through recognition and transformation of the way in which Western culture, enshrined in part in Christianity, has justified such domination.

Although Ruether has remained clearly within the Christian tradition, valuing and recovering its core commitment to justice and compassion, she also reveals what she calls the toxic waste of the Judeo-Christian tradition, in particular the way in which it has used theology to sanctify oppression and abuse. With a theology of creation which places God outside the universe as its maker, forming life either ex nihilo, or from previously lifeless chaos, a fundamental split between the divine and the earthly entered the human mind and widened into a rampant dualism. The same creation theology saw man (not woman) as the pinnacle of creation and the centre of the world, for whose use all other created things were given. So in Genesis we read that humanity alone is created in the image of God, and charged with the divinely sanctioned duty to fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over... every living thing that moves upon the earth. (Gen.1:27,28) While it is true that a theology of enlightened guardianship can develop from these texts, Ruether and others recognize that they have in fact been used to justify an abusive attitude to nature, seeing it as a resource to be exploited rather than the source of all life.

A theology of dominion names God as Lord, the supreme authority at the apex of a pyramid of power. Below God is the ruling-class male as God s authority on earth. (See Rom.13:1-7, where Paul expounds his understanding of earthly rulers as instituted by God... to execute wrath on the wrongdoer. ) A chain of command extends down to soul- less, passive Nature, from which, as Christian theology drew on Greek Platonic thought, the human soul is destined to escape, going home to immortality in heaven. Thus home is somewhere else with God, beyond this earth, and God is not revealed in Nature but is unknowable, except where he chooses to reveal himself in his sovereign freedom. Earth itself is merely a medium in which we exist until we go home; it is not itself of value beyond its usefulness to us, and neither does it have the capacity for immortality. It is essentially expendable.

The apocalyptic hope of a dualistic theology involves the total and violent destruction of the earth. Christian fundamentalism preaches the literal end of the world at the Second Coming of Jesus - that is, at the return of Jesus to the world as an omnipotent ruler and judge, when the faithful will be raptured or taken bodily into heaven, and sinners will be punished in a hell on earth. (See, e.g., Matt. 24:36-44; Rev. 14-16) In its contemporary form it contemplates global nuclear war as one vehicle for this expected end with escapist fatalism. Catherine Keller, writing in an ecofeminist collection of essays, Reweaving the World, points to the connection between the degradation of the environment and the renewed interest in apocalyptic myths of the imminent end of the world:

Here is how the melodramatic voice of the connection sounds to me:
Waste er! Go ahead, use er up! Devastate, consume, expend, squander, ravage, Daddy will give us a new one. The final rapture is almost here!

The sin of a dominator theology is in its fruits: it sets up a hierarchy of power and exploitation; it splits humans from one another, from God and from the earth; it operates through intimidation and enforcement; it is profoundly unjust and unbalanced. In his Creation Spirituality, an exploration of a spirituality which affirms creation as divine and inherently good, Matthew Fox sees the characteristics of an addictive personality in a society based on a dualistic, anti-nature, fundamentalist approach to religion: it exhibits a strong need to control, rather than an ability to relate in freedom and interdependence; it uses denial and dishonesty to support itself, refusing to see its destructiveness; and it is perfectionistic, inducing shame and demanding righteousness. It is alienated within itself, and cannot be life-giving. More than eight hundred years ago, Hildegard of Bingen wrote words which now seem prophetic:

Humankind does well to keep honesty,
to keep to truth.
Those that love lies bring suffering
not only to themselves but to others as well,
since they are driven to ever more lies...
Now in the people that were meant to be green,
there is no more life of any kind.
There is only shrivelled barrenness.
The winds are burdened
by the utterly awful stink of evil,
selfish goings-on...
The air belches out
the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples.
There pours forth an unnatural, a loathsome darkness,
that withers the green,
and wizens the fruit that was to serve
as food for the people.
Sometimes this layer of air is full,
full of a fog that is the source
of many destructive and barren creatures,
that destroy and damage the earth,
rendering it incapable of sustaining humanity...
The earth should not be injured.
The earth should not be destroyed.

It is paradoxical that the patriarchal theology, which is itself so quick to judge and condemn what is evil, can give rise to such appalling violence and destruction. It is too deeply flawed by its own inner disharmony to offer the healing which this world so badly needs.

 

PATHS TO HEALING

Ecofeminism seeks to heal the addictive dualisms which destroy life and stratify relationships. It identifies the fearfulness and escapism which lie behind patriarchal systems of exploitation, as well as the emptiness which gives rise to cultures of unsustainable greed. The problem is one of loss of connectedness, of amnesia: a culture which destroys its ecosystem and seeks to annihilate its enemies has forgotten that it is part of the whole, there is no other; it is destroying itself. The ecofeminist voice names the connections that have been severed, and speaks of reweaving, re-membering the dismembered world. It is engaged in a passionate, spiritual process which goes beyond theology and environmentalism to address a soul wound. As Carol Christ writes,

The crisis that threatens the destruction of the Earth is not only social, political, economic, and technological, but is at root spiritual.

Swimming against the tide of Christian fundamentalism which looks for the Second Coming of Christ to judge the world and destroy all evil, with the violent imagery of the book of Revelation as its inspiration, ecofeminist theology speaks of the return to the religious imagination of Gaia.

 

THE SECOND COMING... OF GAIA

If Gaia stands for an awareness of where humanity fits within creation, and a reverence for the earth, and a passionate love of the cycles of life, then we need Her now more than ever. We need Gaia s voice, according to Ruether, to balance what has come to be understood as the voice of God, although they are barely even on speaking terms in Western religious thought and practice. We need heart, compassion and love of life, as well as intellect, law and organization. Ruether refuses to be co-opted by a counter-dualism which sees Gaia, feminism and women s wisdom as all-good, and rejects God, traditional religion and male leadership as totally negative. When she states that we need the holy voices of both Gaia and God she is seeking the healing that comes from reintegration.

With the Second Coming of Gaia we return to our origins, both in the sense of returning to something of the outlook of our ancient ancestors who worshipped the Great Mother as symbol of all that is, and in the sense of remembering that we are not separate from nature, superior to it, or even in charge of it like stewards, but are part of it. As humans we differ from the rest of nature only in our capacity to be conscious, to be aware that we exist, and - most tragically - to become destructively alienated from our origins. An Ojibwa prayer articulates the tragedy well:

Grandfather, look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation
only the human family
has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones
who are divided
and we are the ones
who must come back together
to walk in the Sacred Way.
Grandfather, Sacred One,
teach us love, compassion, and honour
that we may heal the earth
and heal each other.

When Gaia is permitted to return - or, rather, when we return to Gaia - a healing humility becomes possible, dissolving the human arrogance which denies that we are latecomers to this planet, merely one very recent form of life in a vast story which stretches back beyond human imagination. Gaia reminds us (as the story of Adam s creation from the dust of the earth hints) that humans come from humus - the earth. To be human is to be of the earth, of the original humus, humble. Again, aboriginal wisdom knows this and has tried to teach it to the colonizers who dismissed it as heathen:

Teach your children
what we have taught our children -
that the earth is our mother.
Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
If men spit upon the ground,
they spit upon themselves.
This we know:
the earth does not belong to us;
we belong to the earth.
This we know:
all things are connected
like the blood which unites one family.
All things are connected...
We did not weave the web of life;
we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves.

To honour Gaia is to learn to trust nature rather than dominate it, control it, tame it. It is to have the humility to learn from nature, to study and imitate nature s cycles, diversity and interdependency. Life on earth has evolved and sustained itself for billions of years, and now, with the power at our disposal to destroy all human life and much plant and animal life, we need to learn about survival. We are to work with nature, writes Hildegard. Without it we cannot survive. So Ruether lists the ways in which the study of nature can teach us how to live as sustaining members of the biotic communities on earth, rather than destroying those communities in arrogant ignorance. And Fox describes the gifts of Wisdom which come from knowing the universe deeply. He names them as extravagance, interconnectivity, expansion, variety, creativity, emptiness (the ability to let go, to know creative solitude), justice, beauty, community, sacrifice, suffering and resurrection, paradox and humour, work. These are not the vague, romanticized characteristics of nature which fill our fantasies as we dream of life in the country while trapped in the city: they are virtues, sources of strength and empowerment... ways to serve the universe. They are a far cry from the imperative to subdue the earth.

From the perspective of a theology which sees God as primarily transcendent, essentially separate from creation, the voice of Gaia is easy to ignore, Her wisdom irrelevant, the earth disposable. But as we are beginning to realize the damage this has done, those who care about the earth are finding their images of God softening, as Gaia draws closer, appearing in surprising places. Churches are starting to hold St. Francis Day celebrations, animal blessings, Earth Day liturgies and Environmental Sabbaths. Outdoor worship services are becoming more common. Wiccans and other Pagans dialogue and work with Jews and Christians. God is described in one contemporary and increasingly popular version of the Lord s Prayer as Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life- giver, Source of all that is and that shall be, Father and Mother of us all. Gaia is, it seems, on speaking terms with God.

Panentheism, the teaching that God is in all things, being both immanent and transcendent, is becoming not a marginal piece of theology of dubious orthodoxy, but the stated belief of mainstream Christian theologians and lay people. An extract from author Alice Walker s The Color Purple is frequently quoted to illustrate the move from theism to panentheism, from God to Gaia, in an accessible, almost anecdotal way. One character, Shug, a vibrant woman of colour, is describing to the younger, less confident woman Celie how her image of God changed:

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other peoples. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I ran all around the house. I knew just what it was... I think it pisses God off if you walk by the colour purple in a field and don t notice it... Everything want to be loved.

Nature-based spiritualities such as Wicca are centred on the belief that the earth is sacred, everything want to be loved, and humans are part of that mysterious, living, dying, regenerating whole. So Starhawk describes Wicca as a religion of ecology, and the Goddess as All-That-Is-One, earth, air, fire, water and spirit. She is divine and yet immanent in the world and manifested in nature. It is then precisely because the Divine is found within the earthy and natural that earth and nature are treated with respect and reverence.

This is not so different from the insight of mysticism that creation is a mirror of God that glistens and glitters, in Hildegard s words, revealing the Creator to us within it: As human persons view creation with compassion, in trust, they see the Lord. It is God which humankind is then able to recognize in every living thing.

Compassion and trust are necessary, in order that we see creation as more than a resource or object. Ruether refers to an attitude which sees and accepts the thouness of non-human forms of life, and refuses to treat them as mere things, available simply for human use. She believes that this attitude is vital if human and other forms of life on this planet are to survive; it is ethical, since there is a covenantal relation between humans and all other life forms, as one family united by one source of life; and it is theologically grounded once the anthropocentric God up in heaven has given way to the Divine who is present both within and beyond the complex web of all life.

HOMECOMING - HOMEMAKING

There is a sense of coming home in a spirituality which is rooted in the earth. The dualistic striving to get to heaven is replaced by a deep awareness that we are already at home, and we need go nowhere else to find God. The Greek word oikos from which ecology is derived means home : we are learning to be at home again in our bodies, in our earthy existence, in this universe, with our companion beings who share home with us. We do not need to mortify our bodies, shun the world, tame nature or subdue the earth; we simply need to come home, and to make our home with the earth, not just on it. Mary Oliver expresses this need and this invitation well:

 

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The home making metaphor has been used by Katherine Zappone, a feminist theologian, as an intentional reclamation of a lowly, diminished image of women s work. As a metaphor for restoring a healthy earth-human relationship she finds it both hopeful and creative, because it begins not with humanity as central and supreme, but with earth as our context and sustaining medium. It is biocentric, going beyond the concepts of stewardship or earth-keeping, and it acknowledges that all species, non- human and human, belong interdependently in this home. The task of home making, clearing up our toxicity, healing the wounds humans have inflicted on other species and on each other, is the task not only of women as supposedly closer to nature, but of all humanity.

As we grow to understand and love the earth more, so our desire to cease from harming it will grow. It is not necessary to believe in a divine imperative coming from outside to tell us to save the earth; it is not necessary to believe in a personal Gaia or Goddess who weeps as we damage Her body the earth. We simply have to love the earth enough to stop the destruction, and that means understanding that the earth is our home, not a bus stop along the way. With considerable honesty, Carol Christ writes:

I imagine, but I do not know, that the universe has an intelligence, a Great Spirit,
that it cares as we care. I imagine that all that is cares. Sometimes I feel that I hear the universe weeping or laughing, speaking to me. But I do not know. What I do know is that whether the universe has a centre of consciousness or not, the sight of a field of flowers in the colour purple, the rainbow, must be enough to stop us from destroying all that is and wants to be.

When we know that this earth is truly our home, then salvation is no longer an act in an apocalyptic future, but is healing and liberation here, now. We need no new heaven and Earth, writes Catherine Keller. We have this Earth, this sky, this water to renew. Sometimes, in fact, we simply have to step out of the way and let the earth save us, by teaching us its wisdom and schooling us in its ways. Save the Humans reads a whale-shaped bumper sticker on my friends car: we are the species who has forgotten who it is and where it belongs.

Judaism has a strong tradition of calling for right relationships on earth between people and species, based on a right relationship with God. The prophets envisioned new heavens and a new earth resulting from transformation of the old and restoration of justice, not in a paradisal future after the destruction of the world. The words of Isaiah, for example, are decidedly earthy; his vision is of peace for this world, not in an other-worldly spiritual realm:

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth...
I will rejoice in Jerusalem...
no more shall the sound of
weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.
No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not
live out a lifetime...
They shall build houses
and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards
and eat their fruit...
The wolf and the lamb shall
feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox...
They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain,
says the Lord. (Isa.65:17f)

By contrast, Christianity often spiritualized the vision of a better future, so that Jerusalem becomes the new Jerusalem, descending from heaven, with angels at its gates, walls of jasper, buildings and streets of gold, gates of pearl, and jewels adorning its foundations. (See Rev.21) This is not a vision of earth as our home, restored and healed; it is a complete celestial make-over after global destruction, some time in the future.

Yet Jesus message of the coming of the kingdom of heaven or kingdom of God seems originally to have referred to a new way of being, seeing, relating now. Although it too has been spiritualized by a dualistic theology and equated with an apocalyptic day of judgment or day of Jesus return in power and glory (an image which brings to mind the warrior invasions of Old Europe), the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke suggest that Jesus saw the kingdom as a present possibility. And he often used images from nature to describe it: like yeast mixed into flour, or a tiny seed becoming a large plant, it is not always evident yet it has the potential to bring about transformation. (See Mk.4:26f; Matt.13:33) It can be entered into in the present, or be seen to be near. (See, e.g., Lk.10:11; Matt.23:14) When Jesus healed a man on one occasion, he declared that the kingdom had come.(Lk.11:20) Most significantly, when asked when the kingdom would come his reply was that it is not an external event that can be located, but is an inner, present reality:

The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, Look, here it is! or There it is! For, in fact, the kingdom of God is within [or among ] you. (Lk.17:20,21)

In accord with this non-futuristic understanding of heaven, one version of the Lord s Prayer as found in Luke s gospel has, in place of the familiar Your kingdom come, the words Your Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us. Heaven on earth, in Jesus teaching, is not a future post-apocalyptic hope, but a reality made possible by profound inner transformation through the Holy Spirit in the present. If heaven is not viewed spatially or temporally as somewhere else, some time in the future, then heaven and earth are not perceived as opposites, and we need not flee one to escape to the other. In fact the converse is true: in order to experience heaven we need to enter more deeply into the earth as our home, and work for the healing and transformation of ourselves, one another and all of creation, through the creative breath of the Spirit. Other-worldly fantasies and miracles are not necessary. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, in Living Buddha, Living Christ,

Our true home is in the present moment. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment. Peace is all around us - in the world and in nature - and within us - in our bodies and our spirits. Once we learn to touch this peace, we will be healed and transformed. It is not a matter of faith; it is a matter of practice.

Coming home means finding heaven-on-earth, the sacred in the earthy, God in our midst. Celtic spirituality is becoming more well-known and widely used today in part because it has been recognized as maintaining this integrating perspective, and resisting the pull to split heaven from earth. Like its complex and beautiful interwoven designs depicting birds and beasts, it weaves together the divine and the earthy because it sees the divine in the earthy. The daily prayers of Scottish highlanders, collected a century ago but prayed for many more, were spoken with eyes open in the midst of the chores and routines of life - while kindling a fire, milking a cow, cutting peat, rowing a boat. God was at home with them. It was not necessary to go into a church building, kneel down and close one s eyes to find God in prayer, because God was under my roof, upon my doorstep, between thy two shoulders, in my steps. All of nature was experienced as full of His blessing, proclaiming God s goodness. There was nowhere that God was not, and body and soul were understood to be intimately linked, not striving against each other. Some phrases from Celtic prayers illustrate this holistic faith:

God before me, God behind me,
God over me, God beneath me,
God within me, God without me,
The God of marvels leading me.

I am lying down tonight
... with God,
And God will lie down with me.

Who is there on wave?
Who is there on billow?
Who is there by door-post?
Who is along with us?
God and Lord.

Thus Esther de Waal, historian and Christian author, writes of the Celtic people:

[They] found it entirely natural to see God in every moment and at every level of their ordinary life... The material things of daily life almost inevitably became a way to God for a people who always speak of body and soul with equal respect and for whom the borderline of secular and sacred seems irrelevant.

Contempt for the body and distrust of the world characterize a theology of alienation. Much of the oppressive desire to control therefore springs from fear and distaste. By contrast, a spirituality of being at home in our bodies and on the earth fosters trust, respect and - further - a celebration of sensuality. There is nothing in the universe as sensuous as God, says contemporary Celtic author John O Donohue. The tangible, aesthetic, physical realm can be a revelation of the Divine as much as the invisible, ascetic and spiritual, although much of Western theology elevates the latter and rejects the former. Sensuality, indeed, used to be the word for the sin of loving the world too much. But Eckhart, who describes God as voluptuous and delicious, teaches a way to find God within the stuff of life:

Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather... we must learn to penetrate things and find God there.

Women have been both over-identified with our bodies (as though men are somehow less physical) and at the same time denigrated along with physicality as unholy. In the Christian tradition a hostility to bodiliness has been evident in prohibitions against nudity, obligatory celibacy for priests and members of religious orders, restrictions against menstruating women setting foot within the church sanctuary, and restriction of sexual acts to the intended purpose of procreation. Such attitudes have been harmful both to women and to men, creating an inner split between body and soul which is artificial and destructive. The idea that the body is the angel of the soul or the mirror of the soul, a beautiful sacrament that allows the soul to become visible, has been lost to many, who have instead ingested a diet of shame, discomfort and alienation with regard to the body.

Matthew Fox advocates a celebration of sensuality as one way to return home to the body as holy. Sensual experiences, he points out, have a way of making us participants in life and its natural processes, not commanders exerting control over them. He lists as sensual such experiences as walking barefoot, making love, dancing, smelling lilacs, crying, making or listening to music, hugging a baby, getting a back rub, being alive and aware of being alive. Immersion in the physical world need not mean surrendering undiscerningly to any bodily appetite or dulling the life of the spirit: rather, it can be part of a deeply spiritual process of coming back home to ourselves, to each other, to this world of which we are a part, in profound awareness and gratitude.

Thich Nhat Hanh tells the story of a person asking the Buddha, Sir, what do you and your monks practise? The Buddha replied, We sit, we walk, and we eat. When the questioner objected that everyone sits, walks and eats - the practice did not seem very spiritual at all - the Buddha answered, When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating.

Thus a walk can be a prayer, a drink of tea a sacrament, a dance an embodied liturgy. Slowly, as this wisdom enters mainstream Christianity (often through women s initiatives), the cerebral worship of Protestantism and the congregationally passive rites of Catholicism are becoming balanced with drama, dance, the involvement of children, the intentional use of colour, sound and silence, the honouring of the four directions, elements or seasons. Ritual is used consciously, not mechanically, with creativity and imagination, to concretize or embody truths we need to touch in times of transition, loss or celebration. Christianity, as a faith based on the concept of incarnation, Wisdom enfleshed in Jesus, badly needs to recover its trust in the body and respect for physicality. It may then be possible to move beyond the fearfulness which leads to fundamentalism to a stance of awe at the complexities and mysteries of the world which is our sacred home. As Catherine Keller states, echoing Jesus words, Anxiety is healed not by elimination of complexity but by the cosmic trust of the lilies.

 

REWEAVING

Like liberation theology, the ecofeminist path is by nature activist. The vision of a healed world calls for engagement in the process of making that possible, in the face of the widespread cynicism or despair which views the destructive end of the world as inevitable. The process, however, goes far beyond band-aiding the surface with, for example, more recycling, less emission of greenhouse gases: a transformation of the entire fabric of relationships of domination is necessary. We cannot graft peace and ecological balance on a dominator system, writes Riane Eisler. A just and egalitarian society is impossible without the full and equal partnership of men and women. And this partnership must extend to people of every culture and status, as well as to non- human species. All are affected by the present patterns of domination and exploitation, so all are involved in the reweaving. Starhawk explains how the issues are interconnected:

For example, environmental issues are social justice issues, for it is the poor who are forced to work directly with unsafe chemicals, in whose neighbourhoods toxic waste incinerators are planned, who cannot afford to buy bottled water and organic vegetables or pay for medical care. Environmental issues are international issues, for we cannot simply export unsafe pesticides, toxic wastes, and destructive technologies without poisoning the whole living body of the Earth.

Once we understand deeply that the whole earth is our home, and all its inhabitants our family, then the Not-In-My-Backyard mentality expands to the knowledge that no place is acceptable for dumping toxic waste, testing nuclear weapons, harvesting to extinction, cleansing for ethnic purity. The worldview of global partnership in the complex web of life leads to an ethic of widening responsibility whereby one species cannot poison another, one nation cannot sell land-mines to another, one sector of society cannot economically enslave another. Albert Einstein spoke of our need today to widen the circle of compassion - to infuse our biological connectedness with a connection of mutual care, so that not only do we acknowledge that all of life springs from one source, reaching back to the origins of the cosmos, but we also learn to live with empathy and concern beyond our narrow self-interest. In this we can learn from nature, which sustains itself through a delicate balance of interdependency. As Fox observes, the human quest for compassion and justice-making is simply our part in the dance of all creation for balance.

Fox's four paths of creation spirituality outline ways in which reweaving the world becomes possible. On the Via Positiva we fall in love with all of creation, so that we no longer take it for granted, use it, fail to notice it, but delight in it, stand in awe of it, seek to know it more deeply. On the Via Negativa we allow our hearts to be broken open in order for compassion to flow; we see the woundedness of the world, and we grieve for it; we do not turn away in numbness or despair, but love enough to feel the pain. On the Via Creativa we develop imaginative, passionate ways in which to co-create with the Divine, taking seriously our ability to birth ideas, become conscious, affect life on this planet for good or ill. And the Via Trans- formativa, finally, brings together celebration and justice as we work to relieve suffering, find balance, live lives of wide compassion. This way calls for prophetic interference as visionaries such as ecofeminists, creation theologians and mystics cry out for an all-embracing justice which will bring healing and peace.

Good people, wrote Hildegard, God hugs you. You are encircled by the arms of the mystery of God... Humankind full of all creative possibilities is God s work. Humankind alone is called to assist God. Humankind is called to co-create... With nature s help, humankind can set into creation all that is necessary and life- sustaining... This is possible through the right and holy utilization of the earth, the earth in which humankind has its source. The sum total of heaven and earth, everything in nature, is thus won to use and purpose.

This is possible. We need to hear that, repeatedly, to be saved from falling into laissez-faire hopelessness. Ecofeminists suggest that activism be rooted always in community, so that the efforts of individuals are supported by a greater whole, and are thus sustainable. How do we carry on a struggle to heal the world and to build a new biospheric community in the face of this intransigent system of death? asks Ruether. It is my belief that those who want to carry on this struggle in a sustained way must build strong base communities of celebration and resistance.

Against the prevalent cultures of dominance and deceit, she calls for the creation of cultures of critique and compassion. Beginning with ourselves, but in small groups of those who share the global concerns, we must start the process of metanoia, of deep turning around and away from destructive life-styles, politics, theologies. We must challenge the thinking and practice which make human poverty and war seem inevitable, and earth s degradation a necessary evil. From base communities we can create a mental and spiritual climate which makes it possible to dream, create, invent, lobby, organize, activate for a better world. Together, in local and global partnerships, we can co-create the kingdom of heaven (or kin-ship of God) on earth.

This is radically alternative: it challenges what has been established as the status quo, normal life, the way things are, for many centuries. It can seem an impossibly huge undertaking. What we need, according to Ruether, is neither optimism nor pessimism... but committed love. This means that we remain committed to a vision and to concrete communities of life no matter what the trends may be.

Starhawk also stresses the need for community, both as a reality which emerges once we understand that, in Hildegard s words, all things are penetrated with connectedness, so that we overcome our alienation from others, and as a place for empowerment and activism. She refutes the assumption of Christian fundamentalism, which sees the goal of faith as individual salvation, and says that the goal of an earth- based spirituality is the creation of a community in which relationships with the earth and all its species are restored. It is no coincidence that such fundamentalism typically has little to say about injustice, environmental concerns, global cultures of warfare and oppression, other than to see them as caused by the enemy, Satan, or anyone else other than God s elect, since it is rooted in a theology of dualism and alienation, and it is not at home on the earth. In Chung s word, it otherizes those who are different, that which is broken or evil. It cannot integrate and heal, because it lacks com-passion, the ability to feel with another as though the other were the self.

The fundamentalist or dualist in all of us makes it possible for us to send our armies to bomb Iraqi civilians because they are not us; or to eat food from factory farms because we did not have to see the animals inhumane living and dying; or to enjoy affluent, consumerist lifestyles because the poor are not there to beseech us to share, they are elsewhere, voiceless, rendered invisible at the pressing of a television control button.

The gospel of Jesus calls us to love our neighbour as we love ourselves, not to otherize, split and distance ourselves from our neighbour. And who is our neighbour? Every living being with which we share this planet, for we are all children of the one Great Spirit; perhaps especially, according to the parable of the Good Samaritan, those who are least like us, those we tend to look down on or ignore. When we are challenged to be perfect, as God is perfect (Matt.5:48), we understand that the deeper meaning of this is to be compassionate, as Luke wrote (Lk.6:36), or to be all-embracing, as the original sense of the word might have been - to live with a heart opened wide to inclusivity and justice, as we become conscious that our own pulse beats in every stranger s throat... and... we can hear it in water, in wood, and even in stone.

One evening at the university Starhawk and Donna Read visited to present a preview of Starhawk's novel, The Fifth Sacred Thing, in which she conveys her spirituality and politics in the form of a story, and Donna Read s film, Full Circle, completing the National Film Board trilogy on women s spirituality. The event began with a woman dancing with snakes entwined around her arms, as dancers to the Goddess performed in ancient cultures. I leaned across to a colleague and whispered that I hoped our bishops would never hear of this! It felt like feasting on forbidden fruit and finding it miraculously nourishing. The evening continued with the screening of the film and a reading from the novel. Although organized at short notice with mainly word of mouth publicity, the room was packed with more than two hundred people, mostly women. The atmosphere was informal but intense, as we saw images and heard words that have been missing from our religious consciousness for so long.

At the end, Starhawk led us in a chant. Too crowded to form a spiral and dance, we held hands as we stood in rows, and sang to a drumming rhythm over and over again, She changes everything She touches and everything She touches changes. And She does. The Feminine Divine, Goddess, Sophia, God as Mother and Spirit of Life, whatever we name Her, She changes our androcentric theology, our relationships of domination and control, our view of ourselves, our place in the cosmos. She pushes us where we get stuck, connects us where we are separated, dares us when we want to play safe. She blows where She wills (Jn.3:8), makes dry bones live (Ezek.37:5), comes as the kiss between justice and peace (Ps.85:10), breathes courage and passion into Her people (Ac.2:1-4). She is green and juicy - a warm, moist, salty God. Without Her, we cannot be healed or save our world. T. S. Eliot s words are our prayer:

Sister, mother,
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea.
Suffer me not to be separated
And let my cry come unto Thee.

Rev. Lucy Reid is an Anglican Priest and university Chaplain at the University of Guelph. This is a chapter from a manuscript from a work-in-progress book.