Metaphorical Icebergs?

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Metaphorical Icebergs?

Hooray, the humans are deconstructing metaphorical icebergs and decolonizing their minds!!

Being a bear of little brain, I can't tell if this will stop the melting trend -- and the breakup of the real, actually existing icebergs -- but it's nice to see at least someone is paying attention...

Climate Change Is Changing Theology
Theologians Consider the Shifts Needed in Thinking and Action
GENEVA, 30 October 2008 (LWI) –"Climate change is opening up horizons that are deeply spiritual, theological and cosmic inscope. [It] may literally be melting icebergs but it also exposes metaphorical icebergs of how God, human beings and the rest of creation have been conceptualized in ways that contribute to the injustices that have only increased under climate change."
This observation from a background paper prepared by the Lutheran World Federation (LWF) Department for Theology and Studies (DTS) set the stage for a consultation of biblical scholars,theologians and ethicists working in this area, 2-4 October, in Geneva.

Background information for the consultation included the grassroots survey initiated by DTS to get response to ordinary people’s theological questions about climate change, and the related extensive adaptation and mitigation work that the LWF Department for World Service (DWS) field programs have long been pursuing with local communities. (The LWF survey is presented in the LWI special edition titled, "Climate Change - Facing Our Vulnerability", available online at: www.lutheranworld.org/What_We_Do/OCS/LWI-2008-PDF/LWI-200805-EN-low.pdf )
Dr Sigurd Bergmann who teaches at the Norwegian University ofScience and Technology in Trondheim, Norway, emphasized the need for a "spatial turn" in
theology, taking Earth seriously as "ourhome where the Holy Spirit takes place."

Such a spatial turn resonates with how indigenous people view the sacred manifesting itself in space, added Rev. Tore Johnsen from his own Sami perspective as a pastor in the Church of Norway. He noted that indigenous people worldwide were the most vulnerable to climate changes, and they do not separate
nature and human beings as in much of Western theology.
Johnsen advocated pursuing theology within a "circle of life" that includes God, human beings and the rest of creation, proposing how this both relates to and revises traditional Christian understandings.

Spiritual Resources

Giving an account of what his students heard when they went out to local communities using the LWF survey, Dr George Zachariah,who teaches at the Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute in Chennai, India, focused on the spirituality of those displaced from their land and livelihood because of climate change. He argued that many prevailing climate change discourses were an attempt to "absolve the sins of neo-liberal capitalist plunder," and called for attention to the spiritual resources of subaltern communities that can "decolonize our minds, our faiths, our communities, and our planet."

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Penance -- Then and Now

In the Middle Ages, there was no buying and selling of carbon indulgences. Now it's a booming business. "The worst of the carbon-offset programs resemble the Catholic Church's sale of indulgences back before the Reformation," said Denis Hayes, the president of the Bullitt Foundation, an environmental grant-making group. "Instead of reducing their carbon footprints, people take private jets and stretch limos, and then think they can buy an indulgence to forgive their sins." The New York Times, 4/29/07

The 12 Steps of Carbon Awareness

1. We admit that we are selfish users of the earth's limited resources. Standing alone, we feel powerless to stop our wasteful ways. We resolve to manage our lifestyles more effectively, to address the rapidly mounting ecological crisis.

2. We believe that through increased social awareness we can reduce our individual and collective carbon footprint.

3. We have decided to step up our social activism until such time that global warming is effectively stabilized and reversed.

4. We will conduct a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our behavior together on this planet.

5. We will reveal the exact nature of our wrongs to the natural and social world.

6. We resolve to overcome the persistent defects of character that result in our imposing an excessive carbon burden on the planet and other human beings.

7. We invite other conscious consumers and natural beings to help us overcome our personal and collective shortcomings.

8. We will engage in a regular program of study and inquiry to understand all the persons, natural beings and planetary processes we may have harmed and disrupted, and to the extent possible, we commit to making amends to them all.

9. We will make direct amends to nature and other people injured by reckless use of resources wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. We will continue to take personal inventory, and when we are wrong, we will promptly admit it.

11. We will look within ourselves and our communities to mobilize a collective response that is fully commensurate with global warming and other pending ecological threats.

12. Having achieved profound clarification and inspiration through these steps, we will also carry this message to other compulsive consumers. By our example and leadership in increasing our social activism and changing our destructive lifestyles, we will encourage them to practice these principles in their affairs as well.

Common Carbon Sins

- Driving a gas guzzler
- Taking unnecessary personal car trips
- Failing to car pool
- Failing to take mass transit
- Using too much heat or air conditioning
- Buying a house that is too large
- Failing to us a programmable thermostat
- Overconsumption of clothes and footwear, when you already have plenty to wear
- Leaving lights on all over the house
- Using the dryer when you could use a clothesline
- Using disposable paper OR plastic bags, when you could have used a reusable canvas bag
- Printing large documents on only one side of the paper
- Using virgin paper when you could have used recycled paper
- Flying or driving a long way to meetings where little or nothing is accomplished
- Throwing away recyclables
- Using incandescent bulbs when you could use compact fluorescent bulbs

Confess Your Carbon Sins - CarbonConfession.org

Saturday, November 1, 2008