1) So many peoples and cultures around the world depict the world as Mother Earth. How, we might wonder, would our behavior to the earth and all earth's creatures change if we took this image seriously? What stories could we tell that would evoke in us visceral - and not just economic or political - responses to the earth, the gifts we get from her and the damage we do to her?
(The 1970's commercial which says "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature" has become a classic. What if we mined that sentiment?)
This is a bit tricky for western religions, not least of all Judaism, for we shiver at the least sniff of paganism. But we can readily do this within the comfortable bounds of our beliefs, understanding the image as a metaphor. We speak every day in our morning and evening prayers of God's role in creation, bringing on the morning light, guiding the renewing and repeating patterns of day and night. Our theology would be secure.
But I would argue against that, even on this hallowed Mother's Day, not on theological grounds, but because I think it would not be effective. As books like The Giving Tree show us (I will write more about this is a future blog, at my peril, I know), we can easily abuse the loving mother, take all her resources and assets and not ever notice the degradation and pain we cause her.
Rather, I am thinking we need to go another route (and one that might more easily settle into the Jewish soul).
2) What if we began to see Earth as a child in need of our care. For that is now what it seems to be.
A quick step back: If any familial image emerges from Genesis One, it is earth as parent - the full, powerful one that can give to us what we need to flourish and emerge in charge and unscathed. Chapter Two, however, leans in the other direction. Earth is needy of us and we are put here to nourish it with our labors and bring it, and us, to our fullest blessings and potential.
Today, we have excelled at the story Genesis One, to the earth's detriment, taking resources from and subduing the earth in all sorts of ways. Just this weekend we learned that for the first time in 3 million years, the earth's daily average CO2 reached 400 parts per million (way beyond the 350 ppm scientists tell us are the safe zone for global human habitation).
As the story in the National Geographic tells it, the last time this happened, horses and camels lived in the Arctic. We are in an upward trend that we seem to refuse to abate. Truly we have become a geophysical force, somehow stronger than age-old cycles and influences that determine the very nature of the earth.
We have, in a way therefore, reversed roles, left the world of Genesis One and entered the earth of Genesis Two. We have become parent and the earth a child. While that is frightening, the good news is that maternal love is stronger and broader than filial piety. Perhaps this is just what we need to get the job of saving the earth, and ourselves, done.
(A few clarifications: I wanted to say "maternal or paternal love", to be fair to both parents, but the word "paternal" has been co-opted and possesses a - well - paternalistic, somewhat heavy-handed, "I-know-better-than-you-and-can-make-you-see-that" sense to it.
I could have said "parental" but that sounds too clinical.
So read the phrase "maternal love"as including the essence of both mother and father and all parenting caretakers. Regarding maternal love vs filial piety - while both are profound, run deep and create high levels of motivation, maternal love is of a different nature, and different quality than filial piety. For one, to honor our parents, especially as they age, means focusing mostly - though not exclusively - on them. Do they have the housing, health care, the daily attention, the honor, the comfort, the quality of life they need now? To tend to our parents, we focus on the way things are now. To tend to the quality of life of our children, however, requires us not only focus on them now and their immediate needs but on what the world will be like for them tomorrow and the day after for decades to come.
Which gets us back to the metaphor.)
Earth as mother calls upon us to thank her for what she did for us in the past. We are grateful for all that was done for us. We put ourselves in the center and our attention in the past. The image of Mother Earth does not readily encourage us to cast our vision into the future. Or look beyond ourselves.
Earth as child, however, calls upon us to imagine tomorrow. It puts the child, the next generation (of both earth and flesh), not us, in the center. Focussing on earth as child allows us to be both grateful for the gifts our parents bequeathed to us, and mindful of the earth we pass on to our children.
In other words, Mother Earth allows us to be grateful takers. Earth as child calls us to be loving, and worrying, givers. We cannot think of earth of child without thinking about the future of both the natural world and our own flesh-and-blood, for their futures are inexorably linked.
The problem is, what should we call this image? "Earth Child" doesn't work. Neither does "Child Earth". I welcome your ideas!
Happy Mother's Day!
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