Like There's No Tomorrow

I met Frances Ward probably only once or twice when she was the Dean of St Edmundsbury Cathedral in Bury St Edmunds and I was Moderator of the Eastern Synod for the United Reformed Church - but that was what made me notice  her book Like There's No Tomorrow: Climate Crisis, Eco-Anxiety and God - and what a great discovery. I think it's one of the best books that I have read for a while. She is describing a time of sabbatical spent on a narrowboat on the canals. The book is a mix of describing her travels and reflecting on 'stuff', particularly around the climate crisis and the anxieties it evokes in her. There is a good deal of theological reflection, in particular a dipping into the Psalms. It just really worked for me.

She is undoubtedly, and rightly, alarmed by the situation in which we find ourselves - but she cannot abandon the hope that we find in God. Hope is generated every time we turn towards the God who creates, seeking God’s love and forgiveness, looking for signs of the grace that energizes each particle of existence. Hope springs eternal, when we align ourselves with God’s creative power.

Again, she comments: Even as it seems the whole of creation plummets towards catastrophe, God does not give up on the wonderful creation that God continues to create.

Also: To focus on our own hopelessness is to miss the meaning of God.

I particularly liked a reference to Luther: Luther apparently said, “If I knew the world would end tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.” That impulse is a good and true one: that even in the face of utter disaster and tragedy, we can still do things as if there is a tomorrow, trusting, hopeful in a love that transcends death.

The book is abundantly clear as to the serious situation we face, but not to the exclusion of the God of hope. 

Peacework

I have been reading Henri Nouwen’s Peacework in which he offers a helpful, but challenging, look at the question of peace-making, but doing so through three particular lens, those of prayer, resistance and community.

 

I particularly like some of what he says about prayer in this volume. For example, he comments: “Prayer is such a radical act because it asks us to criticise our whole way of being in the world, to lay down our old selves, and to accept our new self, which is Christ. This is what Paul has in mind when he calls us to die with Christ so that we can live with Christ. It is to this experience of death and rebirth that Paul witnesses when he writes: “I live now not with my own life, but with the life of Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20).”

 

He also says: “Prayer can never be a panicky request to avoid disaster. In the daily life of the community prayer is first of all an expression of thanks for what we already have received. A life in community is a life lived in unceasing gratitude to the Lord with whom we dwell. Community reveals that true prayer always moves us to thanksgiving for what already has been given us. Even a cry for God's help cannot be separated from a spirit of gratitude.”

 

Prayer is at the centre of his thesis, but so is the fact that we need to treat people as people and recognise that how we are with each other is the proper expression of the principles and ideas we adopt.

 

So, Nouwen says: “When our “Yes” remains compassionate, that is, people-oriented, the complex issues of our time will not drag us down into despair and our hearts will burn with love. We cannot love issues, but we can love people, and the love of people reveals to us the way to deal with issues. A compassionate resister always looks straight into the eyes of real people and overcomes the human inclination to diagnose the “real problem” too soon. …….. Jesus understood the problems of the world in the most radical way, but wherever he went he responded to the concrete needs of people. A blind man saw again; a sick woman was healed; a mother saw her dead son come back to life; an embarrassed wedding host was given the wine he needed; thousands of hungry people received bread and fish to eat. Jesus left no doubt that the help he offered was only a sign of a much greater renewal. However, he never let that truth prevent him from responding to the concrete and immediate concerns of the people he met.”