The oneness beneath all things

Source: Living City

Understanding the value of nature and our relationship to it

The relationship between people and nature is in crisis. There is the age-old controversy between the respect and protection of the natural world and the discovery and further development of nature through technological advances.

The debate is coloured by issues surrounding the rise in critical medical conditions, unusual climate events and serious ecological imbalances. Researchers continue to pursue the limitless possibilities of new life forms without regard for the material and ethical consequences.

To give a wider perspective on this subject and perhaps lead the conversation to a deeper level, we offer some reflections from Sergio Rondinara, a noted Italian physicist, on Focolare founder Chiara Lubich’s thoughts on nature. Rondinara’s reflections were presented at a conference in March celebrating Chiara’s many contributions to today’s culture.

Her vision captures the reality that nature is a reflection of a God’s relationship with his creation. God created the entire existing cosmos from nothing, through a free act of love; as a consequence, he is present in his creation.

During a mystical experience in the summer of 1949, she wrote: “I felt that I could perceive, perhaps because of a special grace from God, the presence of God beneath things.

Therefore, if the pine trees were gilded by the sun, if the brooks flowed into the glimmering falls, if the flowers and the sky were all decked out in summer array, stronger than all this was the vision of a sun beneath all creation. In a certain sense, I saw, I believe, God who supports, who upholds things … The vision of God beneath things, which gave unity to creation, was stronger than the things themselves; the unity of the whole was stronger than the distinction among them.”

We tend to think of creation as an event, but theologians have discovered that creation is not only an action of God, or the reality produced by such an act, but a continuous dynamic evolution of the relationship between God, people and nature. This implies that God has not left creation to the mercy of creation itself, but that his providential love works in all matters as he lovingly accompanies it on its journey toward him.

Rondinara observes how today the relationship between people and nature has become critical, an environmental crisis. Yet it leads us to consider a deeper crisis that affects humans as a whole. It is essentially an anthropological crisis that is a consequence of the way we see ourselves: namely, we have appointed ourselves as absolute masters of nature and its destiny.

He counters this with the belief that this crisis cannot be overcome by measures that are purely technical, scientific or economic, because their roots lie in the values and categories that our current Western culture embraces. Today, more than ever, people’s relationship to nature has to be renewed in order to meet the challenges of the environmental crisis. We need to recover the significance of the relationships that bind us to nature, which of course are closely connected to the relationships between people and God and nature and God.

Chiara Lubich perceived “love” as the immanent law of nature, and she meant love as a qualitative factor that regulates the relationship between the natural elements:

“And the fact that God was beneath things meant that they weren’t as we see them; they were all linked to one another by love; all, so to speak, in love with one another. So if the brook flowed into the lake, it was out of love. If the pine tree stood high next to another pine tree, it was out of love. I have been created as a gift for the person next to me, and the person next to me has been created by God as a gift for me … On earth everything stands in a relationship of love with everything. We have to be love, however, to discover the golden thread among all things that exist.”

Her vision of the reality of nature has a contribution to make as we recover the significance of the relationships that bind us to nature, and establish an ethos toward nature itself. Rondinara proposes that this vision overcomes the contrast between nature’s value and human innovation. In his view, recovering the original relationship between God, people and nature instils three values:

·         Nature is fully valued because its ultimate end purpose is made known.

·       The network of relationships that binds nature to us is valued as we acquire the consciousness that we are fellow travellers toward a common destiny.

·        The creative role that people play with nature is valued.

Chiara held that we have to learn to see each other not as oppressors, or as common biotic elements, but as conscious and responsible individuals who are part of nature and are fulfilled when we give of ourselves for our neighbours and nature.

Chiara’s way to form a mature ecological awareness is therefore love. It’s not just to evaluate the ecological problem from an ethical and moral viewpoint but to enter into a new perspective. One must acquire a perspective of communion between men and women, with God and with things, which stimulates and awakens in each of us the profound and mysterious dimension of human activity. Once this process is internalized, ethics will emerge accordingly.

So it’s not so much a matter of defending and preserving nature, but we need to make it more beautiful and bring it forward in accord with God’s plan for us and for nature.

Lubich’s concept of nature emerges as a mystery of love beyond words. It remains difficult to express because it is so closely linked to the mystery of humanity and God.