Living in Eco-Spirituality

Living in Eco-Spirituality
By Dr. Michael A. Bengwayan

As we face a new year, we equally realize the gigantic problems mankind faces because of his own-making. That of destroying his own home. His own world.

A believing Christian may lead a fruitful spiritual life and reach union with God without being very concerned about ecology. Similarly, someone may be a good ecologist without practicing any religion or even believing in God as revealed in Judeo-Christian scriptures. Yet there is an area where contemporary ecology and Christian spirituality overlap.

The area of eco-spirituality.

This is one of what humans today lack. Among the billions of us, many  fail to seek and find God by reverencing life in all its diversity and non-living things in all their nobility as reflections of an all wise and loving Creator.

We should not limit our spirituality only in prayers, sacred scriptures, the sacraments and in loving service to our neighbors.

Spirituality and ecology deal with common reality--cosmos--the world where humanity dwells together with all plants and animals. No one escapes the fact of being situated in this world in physical and material reality. The living human spirit is always enfleshed in material body, always being in the world  with other beings, all interacting and interdependent.

When we live spiritually,  we breathe the same air, drink the same water, walk on the same Earth as people who are living ecologically.. Beyond this obvious commonality, we share many values such as reverence for life and appreciation for beauty.

We must explore ecology and spirituality to merge a single eco-spiritual vision and a style of life.

Because of my personal experiences for more than 30 years in working with the environment, local peoples, farmers, forest dwellers, indigenous people and social entrepreneurs in my own country in the Philippines, India, China, Taiwan, Nepal, Indonesia, Tanzania, Ireland, Sweden, United States and Germany,  I approach eco-spirituality from the side tradition--expanding awareness rather than seeking spiritual validation.

Rev 21:1 adheres that as believers in the Redeemer we should expect "a new heaven and a new Earth" as revealed to the seer of Patmos. We equally  believe in the value and meaning of the present material cosmos which is mysteriously foreordained to share in our human destiny.

Eco-spiritual style of living collaborates in the divine plan to bring about the new creation for the praise of God's glory.

I end my faint call from this obscure side of a forest by affirming my conviction that the land and all in it are holy by recalling Chief Seattle's voice:

    "..every part of this soil is sacred....every hillside, valley, plain, grove hallowed by     some sad or happy event in days long vanished; even the rocks which seem to be     dumb and dead as they swelter in the sun, thrill with memories connected to the     lives of my people"....