The shootings at NIU are just the latest piece of evidence that we live in a sick world. I have been thinking about the health of the world all week after reading an essay by Wendell Berry last week-end.
Berry argues that we must attend to the health of our country and by country he means literally our dirt, if we wish to improve the health of our human communities. Here is a quote:
The health of nature is our primary ground of hope - if we can find the humility and wisdom to accept nature as our teacher. -- Berry, Sex Economy, Freedom, & Community p. 11
Why is the health of nature the ground of our hope? First b/c the continuation of our lives are dependent upon the air, water, and food we harvest from the world. I doubt we truly understand how contingent our lives are. But second the flourishing of the natural world is a source of beauty, joy, and intellectual stimulation. Nature can affect us with wonder and tenderness, or it can call forth courage and fortitude. It also challenges our minds to understand its complexity. Third, nature teaches us our limitations. This is often unwelcome lesson. Often the heat or cold of the natural world assail us, the pace of the natural world wearies us, and the decay of the natural world frightens us.
We chafe at these limits and attempt to isolate and overcome them. We insulate ourselves from the uncomfortable temperatures, we seek diversions that happen on our schedule and our under our control, finally and most decisively when come up with all types of schemes to deny, or actually reverse the decay we see in nature. Schemes, that draw little from the patterns of growth (often slow and difficult) and renewal (usually involving transition to new generations) nature provides. But unfortunately our pretensions at limitlessness often reduce the diversity and vitality of the natural world leaving it ugly and dull and denying our selves the joy and beauty once found there. And of course all of this ultimately threatens to poison the very essential sustenance upon which we (still) depend.
Maybe none of this is very new to you. This week as I've chewed on this I've been reminded of another role that nature fills. The role of divine revelation. Once considered God's second book, I think our increasing distance from nature, indeed posturing ourselves as nature's antagonist, is also taking us further from nature's God. I fear our distance from the created world only compounds our difficultly understanding a God whose plan takes generations to bring to fruition, who promises salvation through suffering, and who promises us an abundant life.
Finally, circling back around to NIU. I don't think you can blame our estrangement from the natural world for the crime, but if we seek to make crimes like this more rare I think we need to be open to asking some big questions. Especially questions about who we are as humans and how we are related to this world around. Leading to questions about what really satisfies us and allows us to live with joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment