Join the Feast of Creation
by Terrence Moran, CSJP-A
At the 2014 Congregation Chapter, a once in six years assembly of sisters and associates to pray and plan their future direction, the Congregation of Saint Joseph of Peace stated: “Disturbed by the Spirit, we recommit ourselves to Jesus’ way of radical hospitality.” Ever since then we have been probing the practical consequences of that challenging commitment. We have taken a public corporate stand on welcoming immigrants and refugees. We visit asylum seekers in detention centers in various parts of the United States. Several of our sisters and associates spent weeks accompanying refugees of violence in the Middle East in the infamous “Jungle” – the refugee camp in Calais, France. This kind of action is central to the CSJP mission and history. Since 1884 we have been involved in offering “radical hospitality.” But I suspect we haven’t given much thought to ourselves as the recipients of radical hospitality.
In the most obvious sense we are the beneficiaries of the labor of others. As Dr. Martin Luther King preached powerfully in an April 1967 sermon: And don’t forget in doing something for others that you have what you have because of others. Don’t forget that. We are tied together in life and in the world. And you may think you got all you got by yourself. But you know, before you got out here to church this morning, you were dependent on more than half of the world. You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom, and you reach over for a bar of soap, and that’s handed to you by a Frenchman. You reach over for a sponge, and that’s given to you by a Turk. You reach over for a towel, and that comes to your hand from the hands of a Pacific Islander. And then you go on to the kitchen to get your breakfast. You reach on over to get a little coffee, and that’s poured in your cup by a South American…Before you get through eating breakfast in the morning, you’re dependent on more than half the world. That’s the way God structured it; that’s the way God structured this world. So let us be concerned about others because we are dependent on others.
We are not just the unthinking recipients of human hospitality. We humans are the ungrateful guests at a banquet of unimaginable richness provided by “Earth” – Earth which we ignorantly imagine is a thing when in reality Earth is a community of kin of which we are a part. The CSJP community is in the process of developing a “Land Ethic” which invites us to radically re-envision our relationship to Earth and Earth’s life systems. The Land Ethic will call us to different kinds of actions in regard to water, air, land, energy – but more importantly it calls us to a transformation of imagination – a transformation that is caught well in a poem by Daniel Landinsky:
Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole Sky.
Have you ever looked up to the Sun in gratitude for its radical hospitality? On most days we barely register whether the Sun is “out” today before we rush off to the daily grind. But it is the Sun’s energy – captured by plants through photosynthesis, eaten by humans – that makes all human action possible. Every word of love you ever uttered, your most anguished prayer, your most tender caress, your proudest accomplishment; all were fueled by the radical generosity of the Sun. For many Christians, the Eucharist is a central act of worship in which Jesus is made present in the sacred transformation of bread and wine. Can we bring the same sense of sacred awe to the miracle of photosynthesis by which sunlight is transformed into energy for every human act of imagination, ingenuity and love?
What kind of imagination is revealed when we sell something at “rock bottom” prices and look for goods that are “cheaper than dirt”? The dirt under our feet is not a commodity but an incredibly rich community of life on whose radical hospitality we depend. In healthy soil live millions upon millions of microscopic animals. Because of the practices of industrial agriculture, these brothers and sisters of ours are dying off at an alarming rate. Mike Miles, who works at the Anathoth Catholic Worker Farm in Wisconsin, practices regenerative agriculture that heals the soil even as it is farmed. He says,” Regenerative farming is a work of Mercy, because when it is practiced, it respects all the life, even the microscopic animal we don’t see. It is the community of life that forms both above and below the soil that increases all that is good and joyful in creation.” Try throwing the phrase, “as rich as dirt” into a conversation!
Let’s wake up from our nightmare of selfish isolation to the radical hospitality of Earth. In the words of farmer and poet Wendell Berry, “Healing is impossible in loneliness; it is the opposite of loneliness. Conviviality is healing. To be healed we must come with all the other creatures to the feast of Creation.”
For Further Reflection and Action
Pause before meals and gaze contemplatively at the food you are about to eat. Ask yourself if you know where the food came from. Allow feelings of gratitude and connection to rise up in you for the creatures without number – humankind and other kind – who have generously brought this meal to you.
Join the Wendy’s boycott. Thousands of people of faith are boycotting Wendy’s for its refusal to join the Fair Food Program which ensures humane wages and working conditions for the workers who pick fruits and vegetables on participating farms. www.boycott-wendys.org
Learn about the practices of regenerative agriculture which attempts to heal the earth, cool the planet and feed people. http://regenerationinternational.org/why-regenerative-agriculture
Read the poetry of Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, or Pattiann Rogers celebrating the radical hospitality
of Earth.Reflect on Pope Francis’s landmark encyclical letter Laudato Sí – a call to all people of good will to learn new ways of relationship with Earth.
This article was published in the Summer 2017 issue of Living Peace.