Green Options

Environmental care is a practical, worldly thing. But it is also a step in one’s personal evolution. On the one hand, it is a practical response to the environmental problems we are facing. It is also a foresighted response to the issues (economic and environmental) that we might be facing if we don’t think more about the environment we live in and rely on. But, on the other hand, it is much more than that.

“From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities — his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God.” (Romans I: 20)

“Have you not seen how God sets forth a parable? A good word is like a good tree whose roots are firm and whose branches reach heaven. It gives its fruit during every season, by leaves of its Lord. And God sets forth parables to people that they may remember.” (Al-Qur’an I4: 24-25)

As you likely know, people of faith and environmentalists don’t always see eye-to-eye. The narratives of faith and the green movement can seem to diverge pretty widely at points, and members of both sides have often viewed the other with suspicion and distrust. In recent years, though, we’ve seen efforts by both groups to “reach across the aisle,” and the development of concepts like “creation care,” which attempt to bridge religious beliefs with environmental concerns.

In November, the Sierra Club joined the conversation with its publication of Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. Bringing together clergy, lay people, and thinkers on the topics of religion/spirituality and the environment, Holy Ground is an anthology of meditations (essays just doesn’t seem to work) on the role of caring for the Earth while remaining faithful to the tenants of one’s faith.

In the sixties, Heineken created the beer bottle that could be used as a building brick. With similar inspiration, Buddhist monks have created the Wat Pa Maha Chedi Kaew temple in the Sisaket province of Thailand from one million recycled beer bottles:  Heineken bottles and Chang Beer bottles. 

Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be a rabbi in there somewhere?

Tonight was the Time 100 Gala, where Time Magazine celebrates 100 of the most influential people in the world today. This year, three religious leaders are included.

What Richard Cizik, Patriarch Bartholomew I, and the Dalai Lama have in common is that they’ve all made headlines from leading green movements within their respective faith traditions.

Richard Cizik

Cizik, an ordained Evangelical Presbyterian miniser and head of the Office of Governmental Affairs for the National Association of Evangelicals fights global warming by quoting the Bible and calling on congregations to practice “creation care.” Cizik challenges conservative evangelicals to recognize climate change as a serious threat to the health of the planet.

Cizik also makes friends with scientists such as Nobel Peace Prize winner Eric Chivian, ignoring a once perceived barrier between the religious and scientific communities.

David Loy, a Buddhism scholar, presented a lecture at Vanderbilt University recently describing a spiritual perspective on the challenge of consumerism.

There is a video available that is worth watching if you have a free hour and, like me, are into this kind of stuff! Otherwise, I will give an overly simplistic summary below.

The basic spiritual crisis we face as individuals is our failure to recognize that the sense of self is a construct. The construct creates a feeling of alienation. This causes us to try to find meaning in accumulating wealth and things to verify our existence, creating further anxiety and sense of lack. The solution to the problem is to realize that the sense of self is indeed a delusion. This results in a caring attitude toward everyone else because of the recognition that we are not separate but part of a whole.

If the foot feels the foot when it feels the ground, as the Buddha said, then does the hand feel the hand when it feels a tree?

Due to commercial and illegal logging, the rate of deforestation in Thailand has been one of the highest in Asia.

Most of the primary forest in Thailand is gone, with secondary forest only covering roughly 20% of the land area. This is compared to over 70% forest cover prior to World War II.

As Perry Garfinkel states in Buddha or Bust: “The environmental impact [of this deforestation] is inestimable—from silting that kills fish and leaves riverbeds dry, to the loss of nesting and feeding for birds and other wildlife.”

Enter the forest monks of Thailand, who have come to be known as environmental or, “Ecology Monks.”

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