For more than two hundred years we have been pulling former life out of the ground to heat our buildings, power our cars, run our machines, illuminate our lights. Fossil fuels, so named because they are the remnants of plants, animals and living microbes which, over millions of years through heat and pressure, have created pockets of oil, seams of coal, and caverns of natural gas. We have developed a dependence on these fossil fuels, and most of the economies of the world are built around the reliability and efficiency of their extraction, refinement and use. We literally consume these former forms of life. Fine-tuned predictions have not been made as to when these fuels will run out, but there is a growing data bank which has calculated the current and future damage to the earth, ocean and air once these resources are brought above the ground and up from the sea. There are well-orchestrated campaigns of denial of the ongoing destruction of life on the planet, and investment in renewable energy sources get a tiny fraction of the funds that have been directed to consuming our botanical and zoological ancestors.
As the disrespect for the planet continues apace, there is a corresponding escalation of disrespecting one another. Whole categories of people are being rounded up and relocated to places where they won’t be seen, which is not exactly pushing them into the ground, but has the same effect. It is a vicious and life-denying cycle: pulling former life out of the ground which causes preventable damage; and grinding people into the ground by deporting legal immigrants out of the country, pushing transgender people out of bathrooms, and locking suspected gang members up in a foreign prison — causing preventable damage. It is a grinding wheel of disrespect, the damage of which is being denied by those at the wheel, which has the effect of ratcheting up levels of outrage and fear.
On Sunday the entire Christian world celebrated the annual observance of Jesus rising up out of the ground from death into new life. I don’t know how Easter happened, but in faith I said that it did. As I continue to go through cycle of doubt and faith (a lifelong spiritual spiral which I have discovered serves to deepen my faith), I have found that even a tentative embrace of the Resurrection generates new life in me, which comes in the form of renewed hope, deeper compassion for both myself and others, a stronger desire to assist others in realizing new life, and a more fierce commitment to do whatever I can to disable the grinding wheel.
I also have a relatively new take on the Resurrection, which I have received from the Eastern Orthodox Christian tradition. In the Western Christian tradition, in which I was raised and claim as my spiritual home, belief in the risen Christ tends to be an individual enterprise. Each of us chooses, on our own, to join Jesus in the new life. The Orthodox tradition depicts the risen Christ as far more active.The Anastasis icon (the image of which accompanies this post), which means “rising up” in Greek, and before which I often pray, shows Jesus reaching back and pulling Adam and Eve up from death into new life. For the Orthodox, Easter is a communal event. It is not as selective or as restrictive as it is in the Western Church, which can result in some being favored and some being ignored or kept down (and which we are seeing more often in some western Christian churches today).
On Monday we learned the sad news of Pope Francis’ death. His life was a veritable icon of reaching out to anyone and everyone and insisting that no one be denied of their humanity, that no one be ground into the ground, that all have the opportunity to live in the fullness of life. For the Pope, everyone needed to be accorded dignity. At the same time, his 2015 encyclical Laudato Si (Praise Be to You in Latin) decries the extraction of fossil fuels from the ground and their threat to life above it. In 2015 I joined with religious and political leaders at the 9/11 Memorial Museum in New York City for an interfaith service. Limping in (he had a bad knee) after speaking at the United Nations, he addressed the gathering in Italian and English. He was tired. He looked old. Yet one could easily tell that he was fierce – fierce in his faith, fierce in his commitment to assist humanity living their best life, if not new life, and fierce in his devotion to this planet earth, our island home.
What an amazing model of hope, commitment and faith. Well done, good and faithful servant. We should follow his example.
