As the tragedy in the Gulf of Mexico continues to play out, the unfathomably devastating consequences of the oil spill are inescapable, even to those of us thousands of miles away from the lost and shattered lives of humans, animals, plants and entire ecosystems.
That the reality of this spill remains clearly before our eyes is important, not only as a sad reminder, but, even more so, as an urgent challenge for us, one for which the future of our planet rests. This is a moment to connect the dots and see things differently.
It’s easier — or at least more comfortable — to focus sole blame upon the failed actions of BP and its contractors, or those entrusted with regulatory oversight. But it gets a little more difficult when you look a little deeper. Conversations that revolve around cutting our use of fossil fuels still don’t dig deeply enough.
A few weeks before the Gulf spill, sitting informally around a seminar table at a large Ivy League university, experts researching the alarming effects of industrial toxins and failed environmental clean-ups struggled with how to best communicate their findings to the public at large. ‘How can we present facts in a way that will impact on people, on their actions and their lives?’ they asked.
Similarly, environmental journalist Andrew C. Revkin, in a recent post on his Dot Earth blog described a new website that lets visitors superimpose the oil slick onto their hometowns — or rather their own home states — to better appreciate its magnitude. Revkin wrote of his ongoing efforts “in a world overdosing on information, to make information matter.”
This is perhaps the greatest challenge before us. We can choose to skim the surface, or we can stop for a brief moment, try to understand the meaning of the catastrophe before us and then take action.
In a speech given during the 2010 PEN World Voices international literary festival, Swedish philosopher and writer, Jostein Gaarder pointed out a vertical dimension to the Golden Rule: ”You shall do to the next generation what you wished the previous generation had done to you … Those who come after us are also our fellow human beings, and we have no right to hand over a planet earth that [has] less worth than the planet earth that we, ourselves, had the great fortune to live on.”
“Never before in the history of our planet has humankind been asked to enter into such a long-range project [of ecological conservation] that involves change and sacrifice, one for which the long-term [positive] effects will not be seen for years to come,” said an ethicist at a recent Yale conference, “Environmental (Dis)locations.”
Time is slipping away. Words need to become lifestyle.
I wrestled with these thoughts while present, by chance, with elementary school principals who had gathered to hear teachers speak about using a simple educational tool in their classrooms, the Cube of Love. Developed originally by Chiara Lubich to help youngsters translate the Gospel into daily life, the six-sided cube can be thrown every morning to display a phrase for the day: love of neighbor, love for one’s enemy, loving your neighbor as yourself, etc. The teachers spoke of the immediateness with which children remembered the words and translated them into actions. Whole classrooms changed as a result, beginning from relationships between students and then overflowing onto whole schools and into the children’s families.
“The cube,” one teacher explained, “is not only our point of departure each morning but it is now the basis upon which we approach our social and global study lessons. We remind one another that we are all brothers and sisters all over the world. The children learn it’s possible to be protagonists of a new culture: one based not on having, but rather on giving.”
As a young college student years ago, idealistic and filled with dreams of working for global environmental issues, I quickly realized that, alone, I would never manage to change the world. Encountering this spirituality of communion, I remember thinking that here, in the Gospel put into practice, were solutions not only to violence and hatred, but to global issues of poverty and the destruction of our planet. The planet was a gift given to all — and all of creation spoke of God’s love.
“The hope in my heart,” concluded one teacher that day, “is that the concrete experience of the Gospel lived out in the lives of my students and through their projects will prepare them to contribute one day to building a better world.”
I reflected on our spirituality of communion and the cube. This spirituality, like the mustard seed, seemed more powerful than ever. Here lay an answer to the challenge of transforming words into life, ideas into actions. Suddenly the pieces began to take shape.
A civilization of love, a culture based on giving rather than having. A planet upon which we interact with one another, the creatures that inhabit it, and its natural resources with the respect deserving of a world created and guided by love. Children, families, people who understand that the planet earth has been given to us as a gift and the relationships and laws of nature have been created out of love and for love — a lifestyle based on giving rather than having.
Let us ask for the courage to translate words into our lifestyle, to give of ourselves so that we may build this new world together.
Susan Kopp is an affiliated scholar at Yale University Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and professor of health sciences at LaGuardia Community College (City University of New York).
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