Casual Comments From the Minister – May 2011
I’ve spent a fair amount of time in the past 7 weeks meeting with a small band of hearty souls to study “green theology”. I’ve learned wonderful things in the process — some of which quite surprised me.
For instance I’ve always thought that theology was either a story or a set of rules that someone propounds and a follower decides to accept as his or her own. As a result of the green theology class I’ve revised that definition significantly. Dr. Mike Hogue, who created the course, suggests that theology grows out of “seeing, judging, and acting.” We have to see what is there in front of us — what life is all about, or what it offers to us. Then we have to judge both the offering and our reaction to it. Finally we need to act out of the results of our seeing and our judging. Theology is actually how we live our lives and how we relate to life. It certainly can involve a story [or more than one] and it definitely involves rules, but the story is our own and the rules must evolve from our seeing and judging, not solely from what someone else has surmised. Certainly we can gain wisdom from others journeys and deliberations — we did that in our green theology class — but the decisions and stories of others should only be guideposts as we devise our own understanding and create our own rules. It brings whole new meaning to the idea of building one’s own theology!
In the course, as a result of our deliberations we became moved to act. At one point I decided that I was going to take my own glass to restaurants that use plastic containers for drinks and use it rather than the disposable [but not biodegradable] one’s the restaurants provide. This was a true living out of the theological process that Mike Hogue proposed [and that comes from liberationist theology]. I saw a problem that is devastating our earth, I judged that I cannot stand idly by and analyzed what contribution I was making to the problem [as opposed to the solution], and decided to act — to change the way I am in the world. Now for the really good news: I can’t begin to tell you how good it felt to do this small act or what a thrill it was when restaurants were happy to collaborate in my efforts! Perhaps the very best thing about this is that it inspires me to want to do even more.
But I’m going to go slowly, because I want this to become part of my personal theology and for that to happen I have to be intentional and give the change time to become a natural part of life. I need to feel the very special, sacredness of doing this for me and if I rush headlong in to the next change I want to make, I won’t get that sense of holy work. So I’m living with this change for the moment and savoring the intense feeling of connectedness that it brings me. And then, in a bit, I’ll go on to the next change — perhaps LED light bulbs or carrying my own cloth napkins to avoid using paper. I haven’t decided yet — that’s a piece of the work for another day.
Your passion may not be for the ecosystem — although I do hope it is — so the way for you to create and live a theology may not look like mine. But whatever it is, I invite you to take some time, see what the world is calling you to, evaluate or judge how you want to respond, and then act. In this sense, we are all theologians!
In the meantime, may you
Go shining,
Karen
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