Tikkun (https://www.tikkun.org/category/ecological-transformation/page/9/)
Love is connectedness itself—connection with each other and to the Earth, fully congruent with stars, earthworms, and everything in between. To recognize the Earth in such a way is a deep spiritual practice, one that proceeds wholly beyond the terminal, parasitical relationship toward her into which humanity has fallen.
Our many inventions and devices are not only altering the face of the planet, but also radically changing our connection to nature, to each other, and to ourselves. These are profound changes worthy of our most serious attention.
Let us not forget our deep and intrinsic connection to the natural world—a bond that can motivate, sustain, and inform all our efforts. Nurturing children’s connection to nature is one crucial step in our multifaceted struggle to save the planet, and in turn the solace of the natural world can also become a lifeline for many children.
As the oceans rise to earth-destroying levels, the agricultural heartlands turn to desert, and the rate of skin cancer grows to match the rate of the common cold… now is the time to talk honestly with the American public about dramatically reducing consumption, combating the immense power of the 1 percent, and preparing ourselves to counter the mainstream media’s obfuscations of the urgency of the coming crisis.
If “sabbath, sunshine, and sexual intercourse” offer a foretaste of the world-that-is-coming, as the Talmud suggests, then could the Burning Man festival be understood as a taste of this messianic future?
People living in contaminated areas collect military waste to melt into household goods: they’re called war spoons, war chopsticks, war knives, etc. Houses are built on stilts made of bomb cases, which don’t rot in the monsoon mud. Householders make bomb gardens, using the largest bomb cases as raised planters. And, of course, bombs also explode and kill or injure more people every year.
A heresy with regard to Christian hope has arisen. I will call it “futilitarianism,” having stolen that name from one of its adherents. Futilitarianism is a fairly sober and comforting faith. It allows its believers to be honest about the current crises without having to think through how a positive outcome might be strategized and accomplished.
It’s time to usher in a new paradigm–one of the turning and returning to the earth, to each other, and to integrity.
Historically, the co-op model has offered a workplace theory far superior to capitalism. Not driven by the profit motive, co-ops ought to be worker-empowering, democratic, healthier, less expensive, and more responsive to employee and community needs— valuable traits during this period of capitalist meltdown.
The “Rights of Nature” approach promotes a structure of law that recognizes that our living planet has rights of its own. If a Rights of Nature legal framework were implemented, activities that harm the ability of ecosystems and natural communities to thrive and naturally restore themselves, would be in legal violation of nature’s rights.
Now it is time to educate, organize and mobilize around a strategy that will build the power of people and put in place the kind of sustainable economy and participatory government we urgently need.
Editor’s note: Perhaps the most generous teaching of the God or Spiritual Reality of the Universe comes in the second paragraph of the Shma prayer (in Deuteronomy) where it tells us that if we do not create a world based oon love, kindness, generosity, ethical and eoclogical sensitivity,social justice and peace then the world itself will not work, and there will be an environmental catastrophe and humans and all other animals are in danger of perishing. This is not the words of an angry patriarch threatening to do this to us, but rather the kind warning that the universe is sending us that tells us that the ethical and the physical are intrinsically bound together in such a way that when we build a society based on greed, selfishness, materialism and endless consumption without regard to the consequences for the earth, disaster will follow. Growing up, I thought this an extravagant and foolish claim tied to an authoritarian patriarchal and judgment god in whom I could not believe; but as an adult I encountered environmental science and learned that it was all true. There are now a host of books that show the concrete steps that lead from ethical irresponsibility toward the earth and toward each other to the resulting environmental crisis (and we regularly review them in Tikkun magazine). Hurricane Sandy is only the latest manifestation of this truth, and compared with what is coming, a relatively mild reminder.
Who Stole My Religion is an inspirational and prophetic book that explores the deep issues that are facing us today: how to heal the ecological world and save the soul of humanity.
Temperatures have been increasing every decade since the 1970s, producing increasingly severe storms, floods, wildfires, areas of drought, and other signs of climate change. Yet, an alarming percentage of Jews, especially among the Orthodox, still believe that climate change is nothing more than “liberal politics.”