Creation Restoring Lutherans? Creation Corner Column, August 2011

An article in the September 2011 issue of ODE: for intelligent optimists (http://www.odemagazine.com/) piqued my interest. Its title is "Take a Hike." The subtitle, "How attention restoration theory shows that nature sharpens the mind" and the pull-quote on p. 25 ("...exposure to nature restores our cognitive functions, enabling us to concentrate better") seemed to be ancient biblical wisdom that we all have experience with (see examples in The Green Bible: NRSV). And now it is being put to the scientific test.

For Lutherans, and anyone else, having trouble concentrating, cannot focus, perhaps diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), being mentally restless, unable to problem-solve, having mild memory loss, having "brain-fade" as our brains are being overloaded with our "multi-tasking" amidst a glut of information (sensory overload) in a complex world, all leads to our being "stressed out."

The "take-a-hike" solution comes from the therapeutic application of "attention restoration theory" (ART): a walk in the woods, perhaps sitting at the seashore, gazing at clouds, tending a garden (horticultural therapy). Nursing homes provide an "Eden" setting, trying to replicate some of the outside nature, inside. Post-surgical improvement may be enhanced in natural scene settings.

Spending time in some environmental or natural settings (nature, God's creation) potentially restores us. Green space within urban environments, green housing, urban forests, "certified" tree cities, parks, provisions for bike lanes, the relationship between how neighborhoods are designed with walkability and obesity in mind, anti-noise ordinances, architecture that is "open" to the outdoors, et cetera, may all point to what the field of environmental psychology says are "conditions under which people are more reasonable and more environmentally responsible" and "where the influence of fatigue-producing environments are reduced."

Perhaps our experience of "flow", a psychological concept proposed by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, "a mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement and success in the process of the activity" can be facilitated by attention restoration therapy in nature.

Perhaps we are genetically "hard-wired", given our origin "in the garden," to seek and experience benefits that are stimulated by our exposure to, and involvement with, creation (aka nature, the natural environment).

More study is warranted, of course. One "ecopsychology project "seeks to unravel the factors that either enhance or detract from an individual's sense of feeling connected to nature." There is the biophilia hypothesis to explore: it posits, according to Edward O. Wilson, that there is an instinctive bond between humans and other living systems (a "love of life" that would lead us to protect what we love?).

What role does an environment have in prompting people to be more reasonable, effective and psychologically healthy? What are the implications of sprawl or non-sprawl on our psychological well-being and sense of community? How can the municipal planning process anticipate the consequences? What results from window-less environments, and does it make a difference to us what we see from a window? Is our identity improved through environmental stewardship?

Much of this work in the field was stimulated by Rachel and Stephen Kaplan in their 1989 book The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. Today there is the International Association for the Study of People and their Surroundings. And many readers are acquainted with the phrase popularized by Richard Louv, nature-deficit disorder.

Note: ODE magazine, is according to the publisher, "the first independent, international magazine for positive change. ODE reports on whatever works in our world. It may seem strange but that is an exceptional editorial mission in today's world where most media focus daily on whatever, wherever wrong. ODE presents itself as the magazine 'for intelligent optimists'---for the people who know that there is (the beginning of) a solution for every problem.

ODE was founded in The Netherlands in 1995 and launched its first English edition in the United States in 2003. ODE is currently published monthly (except February and August) in Dutch and English from offices in Rotterdam, The Netherlands and Mill Valley, California.
______________________________

The Creation Corner Column compiler, Michael Ochs, earned a B.A. degree from Gettysburg College in 1965.

Commentary on Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost in Year A

Following Jesus as Servant of Creation is for more than Self-Centered Reasons. It is pure Altruism!! Care for Creation Commentary on the Common Lectionary—Year A 2011 By Dennis Ormseth Readings for: Readings for Year A 2011 Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Psalm 26:1-8 Jeremiah 15:15-21 Romans 12:9-21 Matthew 16:21-28 In our comment on the lections for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost we presented an argument for the appropriateness of our identification of Jesus as “the Lord, the Servant of Creation.” Authorization for this new title, we suggested, grows out of Jesus’ promise that he would build his church on the basis of Peter’ confession and that it’s use constitutes a proper use of the powers vested in the church “to bind and loose” such matters as arise in the manifestation of God’s empire. The argument we have presented provides strong encouragement for the work of caring for creation on the part of the church, we believe, with the caution that this Sunday’s Gospel needs to be taken into consideration as one engages in such care. What might “taking up one’s cross and following Jesus” mean for the care of creation? Our concern is this: when ecological awareness and political action on environmental issues become part of the ethos of the Christian church, they should be governed by principles that Jesus laid down for his followers for their ministry. It follows, with respect to the Gospel reading, that just as Peter’s confidence in his confession of Jesus as Messiah is challenged in this Sunday’s Gospel by Jesus’ announcement that he “must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised,” so also does the authorization of care of creation entail an expectation that those who draw on Jesus for support and guidance for their care of creation will conform to the counsel set forth in his response to Peter’s rebuke: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?” Or what will they give in return for their life? (16:24-26). What, then, might “taking up one’s cross and following Jesus” mean for the care of creation? “Jesus does for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus as a human being might find more desirable and ‘wise.’” Our answer will of course be shaped by what we understand it to have meant for Jesus to take up his cross. Warren Carter explains the necessity of Jesus’ suffering in terms of two broad themes. First, there is the political imperative: “He must suffer in Jerusalem because the center is always threatened by the margins and the empire strikes back at those who expose its injustice and who promote an alternative empire. His suffering is the inevitable consequence of this collision course with the political, socioeconomic, and religious elite.” (Carter, Matthew and the Margins: A Sociopolitical and Religious Reading, p. 341). To care for creation as Jesus cares for it, accordingly, carries an expectation of coming into conflict with the economic and political structures of our society, with an awareness that this conflict will be costly to one’s status and power in relationship to the community where one lives. As we suggested in our comment on the readings for Passion Sunday, Jesus, who serves God by faithfully serving creation, suffers precisely on account of that service. “Jesus does for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus as a human being might find more desirable and ‘wise.’” In Jesus’ words from the Gospel, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” For, to follow Jesus, as Carter puts it, “is to renounce the practice of telling God and God’s agent how God’s purposes are best accomplished. It is to refuse to place oneself ahead of, or in the place of, the revealer.” It was in holding to this rule that Jesus came into conflict with the religious and political authorities. And so will we. Will we face the cost? At the same time, it is precisely this “cost” that can be expected to generate the spiritual power and churchly social capital needed to stand in steadfast opposition to the community’s disregard for creation, and the courage to await vindication. Coinciding with this first necessity is a second, more explicitly theological one: his suffering is “also inevitable because through Jesus’ suffering and death, God will expose the limits of the elite’s power to punish and control. God will raise him to show that while the political and religious elite trade in death, God’s sovereignty asserts life over death. They do not have the last word” (Ibid.). The appeal to care for creation is here grounded in a radically altruistic regard for others, irrespective of the consequences for one’s self. The difference of approach here, in comparison with standard appeals for action on environmental issues, is clear. The latter generally appeal to rationally calculated and/or emotionally awakened self-interest. Utilization of new technologies, it is urged, save a congregation money as well as reduce pollution; or, it is said, we must act so that our grandchildren can enjoy the same quality of life we enjoy, or better. Such appeals have their place, to be sure. But the appeal here is instead grounded in a radically altruistic regard for others, irrespective of consequences for one’s self. Again, in Jesus’ words, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?” Or, as Carter puts it, “Jesus’ scandalous call . . . is a call to martyrdom, to die as Jesus does . . . . Such is the risk of continuing Jesus’ countercultural work of proclaiming and demonstrating God’s empire (10:7-8).” Because the calculation involved here is a matter of life and death, both one’s own and others, the action provides the occasion for the manifestation of the living God’s creative sovereignty over life and death; only so can one actually hope for defeat of the demonic powers operative in the oppressive systems of the social and political order, which—because they are deeply rooted in self-concern and presuppose the existence of the self in unbroken continuity and undiminished power—cannot otherwise be overcome. Paul challenges us to oppose evil with goodness. The second lesson, Romans 12:9-21, provides an illuminating comparison of different ways of developing an ethic of care for creation. The ethical counsels offered by Paul also express a degree of altruistic regard for the other, informed as they are by the quest “to discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” offered in 12:2 as the basic principle of Christian life. Carol Dempsey appropriately characterizes the two main themes of the counsels as follows: . . . first, the ways that Christians are to manifest genuine love (vv. 10-13), and second, the obligations that one has towards one’s enemies (vv. 14-20). The final verse summarizes Paul’s comments: Christians are not to succumb to evil and evil’s ways but are to deal with evil according to the ways of goodness (Dempsey, ‘Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost/ Twenty-second Sunday in Ordinary Time, in New Proclamation Year A, 2002, p. 188). However, notably missing from the counsels in this passage is the eschatological life and death thrust of Jesus’ teaching. David Horrell, Cherryl Hunt, and Christopher Southgate make the argument that while Paul’s ethical teaching represents (in this and other passages such as Romans 12:14-17; Galatians 6:10; Philippians 4:5; 1 Thessalonians 3:12, 5:15) an ethic of universal human concern’ that offers the potential to undergird some forms of ecological reflection, since the injunction to love or do good to all (human) neighbors can promote action to mitigate the effects of environmental degradation or change where this influences human health or welfare, for example, in flooding exacerbated by global warming. But this remains a theological ethic that is essentially anthropocentric (Horrell, Hunt, and Southgate, Greening Paul: Rereading the Apostle in a Time of Ecological Crisis, pp. 195-95.) Paul encompasses the whole creation in the story of redemption! These authors propose to go beyond this exclusively anthropocentric concern by reading such passages in the light of Romans 8:19-23 and Colossians 1:15-20, where Paul more “clearly encompasses the whole creation” in his story of redemption. More helpful, as we look to developing a message for Christians gathered in worship, we suggest, is to read it in the light of today’s Gospel. This scripture supplies the missing kenotic and eschatological dimensions of the narrative of Jesus’ life that provide for the inclusion of the whole of creation as a proper object of Christian ethical concern. What might “taking up one’s cross and following Jesus” mean for the care of creation? “Jesus does for the creation what God knows the creation needs, not what Jesus as a human being might find more desirable and ‘wise.’” Will we face the cost? The appeal to care for creation is here grounded in a radically altruistic regard for others, irrespective of the consequences for one’s self. Paul challenges us to oppose evil with goodness. Paul encompasses the whole creation in the story of redemption!

Wolves not endangered?

Under the radar, the recent Congressional deficit deal included a rider to de-list wolves from the endangered species list, that aims to exterminate most of the wolves left in the lower 48: http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2011/08/1/jvm.wolves.endangered.list.hln?iref=allsearch