IT CAN get lonely when one is sick and recovering. To be sure, I have family and caregivers surrounding me all the time. Don’t get me wrong. I love them all. They are present in my hour need.
One thing I need is an intellectual discussion about the environment, human rights, the green economy, and the Christian dimensions along the line of Pope Francis’s “green” encyclical Laudato si.
The encyclical addresses for the first time in the church’s history the subject of the protection of the environment, “the care of our common home.” This rich and complex document analyzes the causes of today’s ecological challenges, acknowledging the scientific consensus but adding an original analysis of the social, cultural, ethical and spiritual dimensions that are associated with the degradation of the environment.
As an editor of The Feast Bacolod Bulletin, we ran a series on climate change and the ecological crisis. This has something to do with the Pope’s belief (and mine too) that the ecological crisis is ultimately linked to a crisis of values, a spiritual void that permeates today’s technocratic society.
What makes this document particularly innovative is the Pope’s appeal to action that, acknowledging the urgency and the immensity of the challenge we face, sees also its beauty, being a unique occasion for humankind to show what it is capable of doing, and that it is capable of taking responsibility.
These are the concepts that I have been putting into practice for most of my adult life. It made it easy for me to embrace the Catholic charismatic life in 2015 when I joined the Prayer and Life Workshop, with its strong emphasis on Franciscan spirituality.
Catholics are natural allies in the struggle for environmental justice. As a Catholic, I have been most drawn to the example of St. Francis of Assisi, who is the patron saint of the environment. As secular Franciscan I find it easy to develop intimate bonds with mountain and organic farm ecosystems that began to be disconnected from the land as a result of extensive monocultures such as sugarcanes.
I love—and miss—our monthly desert where we pray with nature. We start with a prayerful reading of Psalm 104, where we contemplate and admire the clouds, trees, birds, insects, the coasts and ocean at the back of CICM in Talisay. In admiration, we utter a prayer of praise, “My God, how great you are.”
Then from out of the blue, to assuage my loneliness, I received a message from Dante G. Simbulan Jr, a longtime colleague from the Philippine Greens. It has been a long time since I met Dante, if I remember right, back in in 2002 at the for Ecozoic Living and Learning (CELL) in Cavite and managed by the Columban missionaries.
I sent Dante the hyperlinks to my articles on the green economy and sustainable mountain development that Dante called “bioregionalism.”
Thank You, Abba. How Great You are indeed.