Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Care for Creation, A Franciscan Spirituality of the Earth, by Ilia Delio, Keith Douglas Warner and Pamela Wood.

The book begins with a quote from Thomas Berry:  “The human community and the natural world will go into the future as a single sacred community or we will both perish in the desert.”  It is a very recent book, published in 2008.  It is small, but powerful, composed of Four basic parts:  Creation and the Incarnation; Creation as a Family;  Creation and Contemplation and Creation and Conversion.  Each part has three short chapters, and it also includes Methods of Reflective Action, Guided Prayer Experiences, and directions for Calculating Your Individual Carbon Emissions.

Unlike most of the newer books, it does not include the stipulation that no part of it may be reproduced in any form without the express permission of the publisher.  Therefore I presume that direct quotes are allowed.  So I will use some in this review.

The very first page begins with, “Earth, with all its creatures, is in crisis, and responding to this crisis will require every possible resource of our human community.” --“Life is amazing.  All life is utterly dependent upon our planet for everything it needs.”  -“In our solar system, only Earth provides the conditions necessary for life.” -  “In Earth’s ecosystem, plants are the primary producers.  Members of the animal kingdom are consumers.”  -   “Today we are changing creation as never before through various technologies.”  - “Francis of Assisi was at home in the cosmos.”  -  “The life of Francis shows us that right relation in creation is not easy.”  -  “Francis teaches us that God is incarnate in all of creation…”  -  “Do unto the earth as you would want done unto you.” – “Francis recognized the Incarnate Word of God in all creatures.” -  “To love God we must also love what God loves.”  -   “Francis came to realize that it is Christ who sanctifies creation and  transforms it into the sacrament of God.  The intimate link between creation and Incarnation revealed to Francis that the whole of creation is the place to encounter God.  He discovered himself to be a member of the large diverse family of creation.”  -  “To Francis’ approach to life, is the recognition that we are not separate, isolated entities, but are inter-related to all of creation.”  (With these quotes you can see something of the Franciscan spirituality of the earth.)

Grim statements to consider:  “It would take five earths full of resources to supply the entire human family with an American lifestyle. (!)  -  “Roughly 1.2 billion people could be sustained at our standard of living.  But…we share the planet with more than six billion other humans.   We…are taking more than our share of the earth’s goods, and throwing away too much waste.”  -  “Consuming resources beyond the earth’s capacity to regenerate them is a form of stealing from future generations or other places.

These are all the quotes I will offer.  But I will mention that the final chapter of this book is entitled “The Spirituality of Conversion.”  It does appear that some conversion is in order.  (If you think I have quoted out of context, perhaps I have.    To have an accurate view of this book, it would be best to read it in full. It’s only 216 pages.)

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