Patristic views on ecology [Archive] - Monachos.net Discussion Community

Effie Ganatsios

19-11-2003, 06:36 AM

Richard's right when he says that "There was no need of being sure that nature remained in balance though since in comparison to the earth the human population was small as was the impact of cultivation and domestication on it as a system. ".

Ecology as we think of it today was not an issue then, so it would be unrealistic to expect the fathers to have commented on it. What they did do though was to concentrate on man's relationship to the earth. As I said in my previous message, if we live according to the advice given by the fathers, then we automatically ensure that we are doing what we can to help the environment.

Effie

p.s. I found this on the Greek Orthodox website :

This is the first paragraph :
An Orthodox View of the Ecological Crisis

Elias Oikonomou

1. PROLOGUE.It seems that a great number of nïn-educated and educated people, churchmen and theologians included, have not yet realized that ecology and the ecological crisis have both a positive and a negative relationship to the Christian faith itself. Most of the above-mentioned people readily tend to ascribe the crisis tï technology, industry and politics. Consequently, they believe that we Christians have a duty as citizens to contribute to every effort aimed at avoiding ecological catastrophy. They expect from clergy, theologians and believers to co-operate dutifully in the realization of programs planned by others, i.e. nïn-ecclesiastical authorities or religiously indifferent ecological movements, aimed at providing a political solution to the problem -without, however, uprooting the deeper causes of it. It is clear that they view the ecological crisis as a purely socio-technological problem, belonging to the same order of every otber social problem of past and present.

They overlook the very fact that this problem embraces the whole question ïf man's place ïn earth and in the universe; it is a wholistic and global problem provocated by man's self-proclaimed, absolute and autonomic domination of the Earth. "

Richard Leigh

19-11-2003, 07:11 PM

Dear Effie,

I am in your debt for the information regarding the ancients' knowledge of lead poisoning! Thank you for that. I suppose that is why mining it was a menial task.

I am also grateful for your alerting us to the essay on the Greek Orthodox site.

I thionk it is important to note the difference between the Western (Catholic/Protestant)concept of "Tradition" i.e., the compendium of all that has been rightly thought, said and taught in the past on a subject, and the Eastern (Orthodox): the continuing experience of the Church as guided by the Holy Spirit. Thus, by studying the Fathers and the Scriptures with the proper help one can gain a patristic mindset with which to tackle new and heretofore unheard of problems such as the ecological crisis we are in, whithout having to worry that no Father ever spoke that way (meaning "about that") before.

We are constantly in danger of either doing the right thing (e.g., managing resources) for the wrong reason (e.g., not hurting poor mother earth), or doing the wrong thing (such as not worrying about waste &/or pollution) for the right reasons (because the concern is idolatrous).
The Holy Spirit will lead us to do the right thing for hte right reason, I am sure, which I suppose is what the article you are citing is about, and which I shall read.

Thanks again,

Richard

John Curtis Dunn

23-11-2003, 08:19 PM

The Orthodox view is that we are stewards of this world and as such we
have a duty to preserve it.

This means that we must simplify our lives however unpleasant and
tiring this might seem.

Living moderately means that we consume less of the earth's resources.
------------------------
[my reply]
I prefer the verb *transform* over *preserve.* The wicked servant *preserved* his talent.

Adam's task to guard (preserve) the Garden did not mean that the world was to remain a wilderness. His task was to transform the whole world into Paradise, with he Garden as the pattern. God's completion of the world in six days does not mean the world was to remain in the state in which it was finished on the sixth day.

Fr. Dumitru Staniloae has stated it thus: "The spiritual and physical order of the created world develop together, by a mutual influence which holds for the whole universe. Thus, each person is responsible for the development of the whole of the physical and spiritual universe. Our smallest gesture makes the world vibrate and changes its state. At the same time, the existence of every person as well as of everything is continually dependent on the convergence of the factors produced by the unfolding of the whole world." [Orthodox Spirituality]

Moderation, in our Orthodox context, is not primarily aimed towards conservation of the earth's resources, but a humility imposed upon our own lusts, which act upon our physical enviroment as if the physical envioroment were the whole creation. Creation is given to us as a means to cultivate and harvest virtures

john dunn

Effie Ganatsios

24-11-2003, 07:26 AM

Reply to John Dunn :

John, I agree with the following :

"Moderation, in our Orthodox context, is not primarily aimed towards conservation of the earth's resources, but a humility imposed upon our own lusts, which act upon our physical enviroment as if the physical envioroment were the whole creation. Creation is given to us as a means to cultivate and harvest virtures "

Practising moderation in all things is for our own spiritual benefit, of course. It follows naturally though that when we live like this we consume less of the earth's resources.

Concerning the difference between "preserve" and "transform" : I can't answer now. I have to read a lot more on this subject and think about it.

Effie

M.C. Steenberg

24-11-2003, 01:37 PM

Dear Marcus, et al.,

Very interesting question on the nature of 'ecological discussions' in the Fathers. I think you are right to be suspicious: very few of the Fathers addressed the 'environment' in the sense that most of today's environmentalists and ecologists do. There is little, for example, on the nature of nature in its own, stand-alone right. Nature and the natural world are highly valued by the Fathers, and they do discuss (some at great length) the care of these; but this is so primarily from within the context of the unified witness to and participation in God's glory for which the natural world is seen as having been created. All creation manifests God unto itself and, ultimately, unto God's chief creation, the human person. The divine life which humanity is called to live is one in concert with the world which is the environment of salvation.

INXC, Matthew

Daniel Jeandet

27-11-2003, 02:36 PM

This will link you to an article by Philip Sherrard, one of the translators of the philokalia, about his views on ecology.

http://www.creationethics.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=webpage&page_id=126

He has written a few books on this subject and I would highly recommend "the rape of man and nature". It is hard to find his books in my country so this is the only one I have read, but I also have the text of a talk he gave called "everything that lives is holy" and it is also well worth reading. here is the link -

http://free.hostdepartment.com/a/away/

In my opinion, everything he says is in line with the Fathers and totally patristic. But I know some Orthodox people have a problem with him, so be careful http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif But really, I think he is very good and perhaps a doer as well as a talker.

John Curtis Dunn

27-11-2003, 03:21 PM

But really, I think he is very good and perhaps
a doer as well as a talker.

Was...!

john dunn

Owen Jones

28-11-2003, 09:27 PM

Regarding Orthodoxy and "ecology," I think it is important to state that there is no ecological "crisis" as such. Rather, the ecological "movement" which hinges on creating a sense of alienation from the world, from God and from culture and history, must falsely generated a mass sense of crisis, a feeling of victimhood and exploitation, in order to advance its political agenda, which is to place the means of production and the management of all production and consumption, in the hands of a gnostic elite. As such, it is an apocalyptic religious movement, in secularized form. That is not to say that pollution doesn't cause problems, sometimes serious problems, but it is not a crisis in the same sense that the ecological "movement" makes it out to be. It is really a practical problem that tends to be addressed primarily when people have the wealth to be able to devote considerable luxury resources to the containment costs of pollution. As a kind of romantic ideology, the eco-movement stems from the writings of Rousseau and the Spirit of that Age. It is grounded in the romantic notion that primitive man is pure and that civilized man is corrupt. So to purify the human race we must return to a kind of primitivism. This, of course, is consistent with a lot of neo-Marxist gibberish which says that if everyone is equally impoverished then we would be able to transform human nature.

Mr. Dunn is right in the sense that the classical Christian view of nature speaks of transformation. In the fall, a corruption has not only gotten into the individual souls of human beings, but nature itself has suffered some kind of degradation, so that the harmony intended has become subverted. So when a soul is saved (not just by believing in Christ as a personal Lord and Savior, but) through the transformation of the whole person, then a step is taken toward the restoration of the cosmos. Man, therefore, is the true cosmos, the complete cosmos. At the same time, Man and nature are not totally corrupt. We can see goodness in man, and harmony, beauty and cooperation in nature. One need only read a secularist such as Robert Ardrey to understand that nature works according to principles of harmony and cooperation, and not the survival of the fittest, as 19th Century English Victorians would have us believe.

I believe that, as Christians, we should be humble, yes, and be willing to live simply, but this is not an ideology to be imposed on others. It is man's nature to strive to improve himself and the condition of his family and society through economic endeavor. It is wrong to see this strictly as ruthless plunder. Also, we should strive to see in every thing an opportunity to understand God's purposes, and to view things in a spiritual light. In the Gospel, Our Lord does not rant against the pollution caused by the ever-burning garbage dump outside of Jerusalem, but uses this as a powerful spiritual analogy.

Unfortunately, ecclesiastical authorities today who kind of glom onto the ecology movement as a cause are evidence of how much we have strayed from the traditional Christian mindset.

On the other hand, some Christians, American protestants in particular, who view the Gospel as a kind of paean to personal fulfilment through wealth creation, are likewise missing the point.

Owen Jones

28-11-2003, 10:02 PM

Dear Richard,

The contemporary Gaia hypothesis or religion has nothing to do with Plato. I doubt anyone who believes in this tripe has ever read a word of Plato. The life of Reason as it was revealed to Plato results in a de-divinization of the cosmos -- that is to say, the cosmos is no longer consubstantial with divinity -- and the differentiation of reality into a Divine Beyond and a created cosmos. That is not to say that there is no animating spirit in nature, for the cosmos is iconic of the divine beyond and therefore exists in it, not totally apart from it.

The Gaia belief is a natural consequence of the loss of reason that afflicts a deracinated educated elite. When one rejects the divine beyond as the ground of the cosmos, one still has to have a ground of existence, and this is posited in nature, which is divine. This is not a continuation of Platonic theory about anything, but rather an effluvience of mass pneumopathology which Plato would have easily diagnosed as sophistry. A technical philosophical term for this specific form of sophistry is vitalism. Gaia is an even more quack version of vitalism. A recent very popular novel that commits the vitalist heresy is Cold Mountain.

Jurretta J. Heckscher

28-11-2003, 10:16 PM

Dear friends:

It is exciting to see this topic raised on the board, as it is one in which the world is literally dying for the life-giving truths of Orthodoxy.

To live as an Orthodox Christian is to join Christ in sacrificial love for the whole cosmos for which He died (Effie, isn’t it correct that in the passage "For God so loved the world, that He gave His Only-Begotten Son," the English "world" is "kosmos" in the original Greek?), and to offer the cosmos back to Him ("Thine own from Thine own we offer unto Thee, in all things and for all things [kata panta kai dia panta]") transformed by our love that it, like us, may live in His love for all eternity ("In his way to union with God, man in no way leaves creatures aside, but gathers together in his love the whole cosmos disordered by sin, that it may at last be transfigured by grace"—Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church, chapter 5).

This witness shines from the writings of the Fathers and those who have followed in their footsteps; from the lives of the ascetics, ancient and modern, monastic or in the world; from the treasury of our liturgical prayer, such as in the service for the Great Blessing of Waters on the Feast of Our Lord’s Theophany; and from each and every icon, which presents to us an image and foretaste of the cosmos "transfigured by grace."

If Orthodox grieve over today’s global environmental crisis, then, and the vast human sin that has precipitated it; if they pray and act with heart and soul and hands that it may be healed; it is not because we are trying to keep pace with the world, but because in all humility we recognize that we have been entrusted with the "chrism" which alone can restore man to his true relationship with the Earth and heal the Earth of its wounds.

Political and social action, changes in governmental policy and in private conduct, all are necessary, just as changes in law and personal conduct will be necessary to end the scourge of abortion. But (as Elias Oikonomou points out in the passage Effie quoted), in neither case will these external changes be in the end sufficient--and that is why, even as we join with non-Orthodox in supporting those changes, we recognize that at no time in human history has the proclamation of our faith been so starkly and visibly and urgently a matter of life and death, not only for our fellow men facing starvation, poison, and pestilence in the wake of environmental degradation and global warming, but for every creature on the planet. Truly, "the Kingdom of God is within you"—and so is the fate of the Earth.

And if you want to find a true model of environmental balance and environmental awareness, look to our monasteries and the traditional monastic life they live. Here as in so many other areas, Orthodox monks and nuns are showing us the way.

There are many good Orthodox books and articles that elaborate on these themes. Perhaps it is no coincidence—in light of what Effie has said about ancient Greek understanding—that contemporary Greek Orthodox seem to have taken a particularly important role in bringing these themes into the foreground of modern Orthodox witness. In addition to the works already mentioned by others, here are some useful ones to start with that (with one exception) should be relatively easy to find in the U.S. or the U.K.:

Chryssavgis, John. Beyond the Shattered Image. Minneapolis: Light and Life Publishing, 1999.
(An inspiring general introduction to the Orthodox Patristic and monastic tradition concerning man’s right relationship with the natural world.)

Chryssavgis, John, ed. Cosmic Grace + Humble Prayer: The Ecological Vision of the Green Patriarch Bartholomew I. With a foreword by Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon. Grand Rapids, Mich. : W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2003.
(This has just been published and I haven’t seen it yet, but Patriarch Bartholomew has rightly become known as the "green Patriarch" because of his powerful articulation and advocacy of the Orthodox understanding of the man-nature relationship as a response to today’s environmental crisis.)

Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon. "Man the Priest of Creation: A Response to the Ecological Problem." In Living Orthodoxy in the Modern World. Ed. Andrew Walker and Costa Carras. London: S.P.C.K., 1996.
(I believe this fine book has now also been published in the United States, perhaps by St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press? Here and elsewhere in other important articles, Metropolitan John draws on a deep understanding of the Fathers and Orthodox Tradition generally to write compellingly about the ways in which they summon us to transform our relationship with the natural world.)

Sherrard, Philip. The Rape of Man and Nature: An Enquiry into the Origins and Consequences of Modern Science. Ipswich, Suffolk : Golgonooza Press, 1987.

and by the same author:

Human Image: World Image: The Death and Resurrection of Sacred Cosmology. Ipswich, Suffolk : Golgonooza Press, 1993.
(As Daniel J. and Reader John have noted, Sherrard is a controversial figure, but as they have also pointed out, one need not subscribe to all that he says—such as his personal interpretation of the nature and meaning of Western science—to find much that is valuable and thoroughly Orthodox in his writings on the topic of man’s relationship to nature.)

Theokritoff, Elizabeth. "Embodied Word and New Creation: Some Modern Orthodox Insights Concerning the Material World." In Abba: The Tradition of Orthodoxy in the West: Festschrift for Bishop Kallistos Ware. Ed. John Behr, Andrew Louth, and Dimitri Conomos. Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2003.
(Theokritoff is another deeply learned writer who has written brilliantly on this topic on several occasions. Here she synthesizes a vast range of ancient and contemporary Orthodox writings to situate the Orthodox approach to the environment within the larger question of the nature and vocation of the material world.)

Ware, Kallistos (Bishop Kallistos of Diokleia). Through the Creation to the Creator. London: Friends of the Centre, 1997.
(A marvellously succinct summary of the Orthodox approach to the natural world and the environmental crisis, written with Bishop Kallistos’s typical combination of vast learning, gentle piety, and engaging grace. Unfortunately, being a pamphlet published by a small British organization, it is not easy to find, although the first half is available online at http://www.incommunion.org/incommunion/creation.asp.)

I apologize as I find I’ve again run on at such length. But thank you, Marcus, for beginning this thread! How very appropriate for you to have started this discussion at this holy season of the Nativity Fast, for our fasting is nothing other than a way of loving self-restraint that leads us toward God’s healing of our relationship with the whole of Creation and its consummation with us in His Kingdom.

Yours in Christ

--Jurretta

Owen Jones

28-11-2003, 11:37 PM

Dear Jurretta,

I confess that I don't share your apocalyptic vision of humanity in the face of what I consider to be an imaginary threat of an environmental holocaust. For example, there is no scientific evidence that global warming is anything but a natural, cyclical occurance. There is certainly no evidence that it is speeding up due to pollutants. Since the medieval period in Europe was warmer than today, what does that say about the models that claim to prove a current or future crisis? The science on the subject suggests a general 1 degree increase in world temparature averages over the past century. Hardly a crisis, and if you live in Siberia, it is a welcome sign!

The most polluted place I have been is Calcutta, and the pollution problem there is the direct result of a cruelly enforced poverty on the masses that has been orchestrated by a communist government.

The apocalyptic element in the pro-environment movement is really evidence of an aesthetic crisis that afflicts most educated people throughout the world. This is a spiritual problem within, not a problem that will be "solved" by passing laws that supposedly "protect" something called the "environment." These laws are not really designed to protect the environment at all. They are more like the laws of the Catholic INquisition -- designed to impose a kind of pure conformity of opinion in order to defend the politically correct social order against any questioning. By imposing these rules and regulations, the "environmentalist" believes he is serving a higher good which is making his own personal existence more meaningful and satisfying. But because the motivation is alienation, no amount of environmental regulation will satisfy the environmentalist. He will always be alientated, evidenced by the fact that as many pollution problems have improved dramatically over the years in the U.S., yet environmentalists are more radical in their demands than ever, more strident in their rhetoric, and more extreme in their fears and predictions.

So it is the spiritual environment that is the problem.

I personally believe, and I think the science backs this up, that the biosphere has much greater resilience than we give it credit for, and that human interference has minimal impact on its "health."

Should Christians try to live more simply, and not abuse the gifts God has given us? Of course. But that is not an ideology to be imposed on others by force. Most people who suffer the most from pollution care less about that than they do about earning money to feed their families and to acquire better housing. The communists in Calcutta can whip up a huge crowd to demonstrate against the "imperialist West" but I never saw anyone there protesting about the atmosphere, which is absolutely choking. But you get used to it. I caughed and hacked every day and had to stay in doors one day out of three. But the locals have gotten used to it. It's not killing millions of people. It is simply evidence of their economic stagnation that Calcutta is so polluted.

Jurretta J. Heckscher

29-11-2003, 05:56 AM

Dear Owen:

As a fellow Orthodox Christian who has had occasion to salute the learning evident in many of your posts, particularly in the realm of philosophy, I must respectfully and with deep dismay take issue with nearly everything you say in this last posting, and suggest instead that your remarks are grounded neither in scientific knowledge nor in an adequate understanding of cultural history.

Please forgive me if I sound harsh, but this is a subject on which one might adduce an astonishing amount of evidence to contradict your interpretation, evidence that humanity will ignore only at its great spiritual and physical peril.

However, may I also suggest also that this board is not the place for this particular debate, which will quickly take us outside the realm of Orthodox knowledge and inquiry to which it is dedicated and into areas such as conservation biology and atmospheric chemistry?

If our moderator believes otherwise, I am quite willing to pursue the question further on Monachos. But if I am correct that this is an inappropriate topic for our forum, anyone who wishes to read some of the scientific or historical writings that undergird my strong dissent from Owen's remarks is welcome to contact me privately.

Yours in Christ, and asking your forgiveness, Owen, if I have offended you,

--Jurretta

Owen Jones

29-11-2003, 03:56 PM

No, Juretta, you haven't offended me at all. Since my post was fairly blunt as well. The scientific debate aside, is there still an appropriate question for Orthodox Christians to answer? Let's even assume the worst, that there is some world-wide environmental catastrophe in the offing, in the near term, that may destroy most if not all of life as we know it. So what? From an Orthodox Christian perspective, the case can be made for detachment being the proper response, not political alliances with anti-Christians and a life frought with activist disruptions in an attempt to save the planet.

Other questions: How do we know that our "concerns" over the environment are not evidence of our own personal vanities? Is our activism an excuse to avoid the more important Christian exercises that the Church teaches us are more important? Do we really have the power to change anything fundamentally? If we do have the power, can we afford to involve ourselves with the power it would take to change behavior and opinion on a world scale? Is obtaining power in order to fix problems the Christian message? Or is that really something quite foreign to the Christian message? Isn't the activist temptation to do good really the essence of Christ's temptation in the desert?

Richard Leigh

29-11-2003, 05:23 PM

Dear Owen,

I stand technically corrected re. the so called Gaia Hypothesis. I was wrong to call it Plato's since it predated him by generations, and it was not only Greek. None-the-less, he did formalize the idea adequately.

I side with Jurretta on all points though, i.e., as to the crisis nature of the problem, and the inappropirateness of the debate to this forum, and that simply because of the difficulty to approach the problem patristically at this point.

Richard

Owen Jones

29-11-2003, 07:53 PM

Dear Richard,

Plato did not formalize anything. If he is read formalistically it's like reading the Bible Pharisaically, and he will be misunderstood.

One thing I don't understand is this: why is it OK to bring up a controversial topic and to assume everyone should be in agreement, and then when someone expresses disagreement, it no longer is an appropriate topic? It feels a bit Orwellian to me.

Effie Ganatsios

30-11-2003, 07:06 AM

In reference to the really curious theory that there is no ecological crisis, I have nothing to say other than that the increased cancer rate in the region in which I live due to the lignite power stations illegal discharging of lignite ash into the atmosphere is evidence, I would say, that man’s disrespect for nature and his greed have a high price. As Orthodox we are not saying that people should not work to feed their families and to improve their economical situation. Man has been doing this since the beginning of time. We are saying using more than we need is wrong. We have two cars while in other parts of the world people are starving. We throw away food while children are dying. We buy, and buy and buy when others have not even the essential things to survive.

Does what I do affect these people in any way? Isn’t it naive to suppose that not buying that additional article of clothing, or CD, or computer gadget has anything at all to do with the fact that babies in other parts of the world don’t get enough food to prevent their stomachs from bloating……….. yes, it has EVERYTHING to do with what happens in these countries. Why? Because everything is connected.

My greed means that more resources are needed to fulfill it – I am stealing that which could be used to help other people in other parts of the world. My greed means that companies grow rich supplying me with “things” that I think I need. To supply my wants and receive their “fair share” of the profits, these companies in turn do whatever they think they need to do to make a profit. It’s not Christian, it’s not Orthodox and it’s not human to live at the expense of other human beings. Does one person make that much of a difference?? Yes, yes, and yes. In my opinion, one person makes all the difference in the world and it’s just wishful thinking (greedy, selfish thinking) to believe otherwise.

It all really comes down to just one thing : Live as the Fathers advise us to live – simply, frugally and with humility. Will we feel deprived if we try and live like this? If we do, then there is obviously something wrong with how we perceive ourselves and our religion.

Effie

Effie Ganatsios

30-11-2003, 07:09 AM

In 1997 Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of the world's 200 million Orthodox made a declaration that made headlines around the world: "To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin."

The following can be found in the environment section at the “St. Luke the Evangelist Orthodox Church “ site in the Church and society section. – Environment, Orthodox Church’s view

XIII.2. Relations between man and nature were broken in pre-historic times because of the fall of man and his alienation from God. The sin that was born in the soul of man damaged not only himself, but also the entire world around him. “For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it in hope, because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birthpangs together until now” (Rom. 8:20-22). The first human crime was reflected in nature as in a mirror. The seed of sin, having produced an effect in the human heart, gave rise to “thorns and thistles,” as Holy Scripture testifies (Gen. 3:18). The full organic unity that existed between man and the world around him before the fall (Gen. 2:19-20) was made impossible. In their now consumer relations with nature, human beings began to be guided more often by egoistic motives. They began to forget that the only Lord of the Universe is God (Ps. 23:1), to Whom belong “the heaven... and the earth also, with all that is therein” (Deut. 10:14), while man, as St. John Chrysostom put it, is only a “housekeeper” entrusted with the riches of the earth. These riches, namely, “the air, sun, water, land, heaven, sea, light, stars,” as the same saint remarks, “God divided among all in equal measure as if among brothers.” “Dominion” over nature and “subjection” of the earth (Gen. 1:28)-to which man is called -- does not mean all-permissiveness in God’s design. It only means that man is the bearer of the image of the heavenly Housekeeper and as such should express, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, his royal dignity not in domination over the world around him or violence towards it, but in “caring for and “keeping” the magnificent kingdom of nature for which he is responsible before God.

XIII.4. The Orthodox Church appreciates the efforts for overcoming the ecological crisis and calls people to intensive cooperation in actions aimed at protecting God’s creation. At the same time, she notes that these efforts will be more fruitful if the basis on which man’s relations with nature are built will be not purely humanistic, but also Christian. One of the main principles of the Church’s stand on ecological issues is the unity and integrity of the world created by God. Orthodoxy does not view nature around us as an isolated and self-enclosed structure. The plant, animal and human worlds are interconnected. From the Christian point of view, nature is not a repository of resources intended for egoistic and irresponsible consumption, but a house in which man is not the master, but the housekeeper, and a temple in which he is the priest serving not nature, but the One Creator. The conception of nature as a temple is based on the idea of theocentrism: God, Who gives to everything “life, and breath, and all things” (Acts 17:25) is the Source of being. Therefore, life itself in its various manifestations is sacred, being a gift from God. Any encroachment on it is a challenge not only to God’s creation, but also to the Lord Himself. “

Effie Ganatsios

30-11-2003, 07:10 AM

The following is from the Greek Orthodox site :
“Introduction to Christian Environmental Initiatives”

“In his 1990 New Year message, the Pope also stated: "Christians, in particular, realize that their responsibility within creation and their duty towards nature and the Creator are an essential part of their faith."

In Orthodoxy this is brought out even more strongly, especially in the document produced by the Ecumenical Patriarchate Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis, in 1990. The Orthodox Church teaches that humanity, both individually and collectively, ought to perceive the natural order as a sign and sacrament of God. This is obviously not what happens today. Rather, humanity perceives the natural order as an object of exploitation. There is no one who is not guilty of disrespecting nature, for to respect nature is to recognize that all creatures and objects have a unique place in God's creation. When we become sensitive to God's world around us, we grow more conscious also of God's world within us. Beginning to see nature as a work of God, we begin to see our own place as human beings within nature. The true appreciation of any object is to discover the extraordinary in the ordinary.

The Orthodox Church teaches that it is the responsibility of humanity to restore the proper relationship between God and the world. Through repentance, two landscapes, the one human, the other natural, can become the objects of a caring and creative effort. But repentance must be accompanied by appropriate initiatives which manifest the ethos of Orthodox Christian faith. “

Rebecca

30-11-2003, 09:02 AM

Owen wrote very nicely:

In the fall, a corruption has not only gotten into the individual souls of human beings, but nature itself has suffered some kind of degradation, so that the harmony intended has become subverted. So when a soul is saved (not just by believing in Christ as a personal Lord and Savior, but) through the transformation of the whole person, then a step is taken toward the restoration of the cosmos.

Interestingly, just yesterday I was reading the last few pages of "The Theology of the Icon" by Leonid Ouspensky where he offers the following:

"the nature of holiness is to sanctify that which surrounds it; the deification of man is communicated to his surroundings. This is the beginning of the transfiguration of the world. The deification of human nature results in the liberation of the world from its chaotic division, in a return to unity...Just as creation fell with the fall of man, it is saved by the deification of man, for "creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will, but by the will of Him who subjected it in hope; because creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God (Rom: 8:20-21)

...Peace and harmony in creation, one Church embracing the entire world--this is the essential impulse of Orthodox sacred art...This explains why, in the icon, we find that everything which surrounds a saint changes its aspect. The world surrounding man--the bearer and announcer of the divine revelation--becomes an image of the world to come, transfigured and renewed. Everything loses its usual aspect of disorder, everything acquires a harmonious order--men, landscape, animals and architecture. Everything which surrounds the saint yeilds with him into a rhythmic order. Everything reflects the divine presence and is drawn--and draws us also--towards God. The earth, the vegetable world and the animal world are represented in the icon, not to bring us close to that which we always see around us, ie the fallen world in its corruptible state, but to show us the participation of this world in the deification of man. The effect of holiness on the entire created world, particularly on the wild animals, is a trait which often characterizes the lives of the saints."

So in reading this I'm reminded of icons like the nativity, where we see the transformed trees and animals..

Link to Icon of Nativity at Stavronikita Monastery, Mt Athos (http://www.culture.gr/2/21/218/218ab/00/l2-59.html)

M.C. Steenberg

30-11-2003, 01:52 PM

Dear friends,

I'm happy to see so many posts on various interesting topics. And I'm happy also to see the caution shown towards slipping into areas that will lead us wholly off topic. A definitively positive sign. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

Some have asked for my 'moderator's thoughts' regarding this thread on ecology, etc. These would be as follows: please can we simply remember that our focus here is patristic, monastic, liturgical and ecclesiastical thought as it pertains to various issues. The environment/ecology is certainly a realm to which such things apply; but let us try to keep our discussions focused on treating patristic, monastic, liturgical and/or ecclesiastical aspects of the issue, and not wander too far off into purely scientific questions over specific environmental issues, etc.

With fondness INXC, Matthew

John Curtis Dunn

30-11-2003, 03:21 PM

In reference to the really curious theory that there is no ecological
crisis, I have nothing to say other than that the increased cancer
rate in the region in which I live due to the lignite power stations
illegal discharging of lignite ash into the atmosphere is evidence, I
would say, that man’s disrespect for nature and his greed have a high
price.

The above shows man's disrespect for man, not nature, of course such disrespect is ultimately aimed towards God.

I take it you live in one of these states: Arkansas, Florida, Hawaii, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee & Vermont.

I suppose you know that 90% of the Lignite is burned leaving only 10% of inert ash, which consists of: silica, calcium, aluminum, magnesium, iron among others, all which is recyclable. The material can and is being used as filler for concrete and produces a superior concrete product, because of its spherical particles.

Are you aware that power producing plants have become the habit nesting choice of the peregrine falcon, which was almost extinct. It has been observed that nesting in the power plant buildings has increased their poplulation rapidly.

The above example show two [out of several others] enviromentally friendly by products of burning lignite, which is also a cheaper means to produce electric energy.

As for the ash, Mt. St. Helens produced more ash than all the lignite factorys combined, so perhaps nature likes ash?

john dunn

Owen Jones

30-11-2003, 04:37 PM

I don't claim to have either a learned or illumined understanding of the Fathers. So my comments here are possibly way off the mark. But I must say that it is unlikely that you would get anything close to contemporary Church statements regarding the environment for a couple of reasons. First of all, there was no industrialization and hence no industrial pollution. There was, no doubt, pollution, because there were cities, some pretty large ones, so there had to be sewage, there had to be foul air due to the burning of garbage and fuels for heating, etc. But without the technology for dealing with it that we have today. So while we have the technology today that produces more pollution, we also have technology that they did not have to clean things up. At the risk of defying the injunction not to get into a scientific debate, the air today in London is demonstrably better than it was a hundred and fifty years ago. The sewage problem is better, and there aren't thousands of horses fouling the streets and producing bacteria and methane gasses. This is an issue that a lot of people miss when bemoaning air quality issues, which presumably is the primary concern of people claiming that there is a global warming crisis.

But the deeper issue it seems to me is what, exactly, is the Patristic mind as it relates to man's relationship to nature?

Again, we still have a problem, because they did not focus on mega social problems. It's not that they never commented on specific social problems. They did -- the Roman Circus, the moral dissolution of Rome, the terrible treatment of unwanted children, etc. So perhaps they would have commented specifically on industrial pollution, had there been any. But we don't know for sure.

So here's my best theory. I think they would be even more likely today to flee from the world and eminent problems in the world than then. They would look at the non-culture we have created and flee from it, it's images, it's frantic nature, etc., as inherently damaging to the soul, and they would simply not comment on specific problems, because that would be missing the point.

We do, however, have some insight into how they might react, because the Church has produced saints in the industrial age who have acquired the patristic mind, and we can look at their words and actions for guidance. Again, I see little or no evidence of such problems being commented upon directly. Their answer to unspoken problems is always the same: we are the problem, and the problem has to due with an internal disorder and malfunction in human nature, which is broken down to the individual level, not treated en masse. because the human problem is always the same. They do not start with mega issues and work down from there to the individual moral responsibility to solve those problems. They look at the person, they properly define what the person is, and they teach what the Fathers have always taught regarding the transformation of the person. And since the person is defined as a cosmion, there is, presumably, a cosmic significance to the destiny of each and every soul. They do not become distracted by mega social issues. There is another factor, and that is the apocalyptic tradition, that is always present to some degree. But placed properly in balance, a patristic apocalyptic says that time is short for all of us, and that is how we should live. We should not fret about an eminent end to the world. (Augustine said that we shouldn't have children in order to hasten the end of the world!)

Also, the fear about the end of humanity due to global warning is not a unique fear at all. The plague was an even greater, more eminent threat to humanity. The fear of nuclear war is certainly equal to, if not greater than the fears being propounded by those focused on the pollution problem.

One could replace all of the concerns about the death of the planet and the human race from pollution, with concerns about nuclear war, which suggests that the eco-movement is, itself, a social phenomenon that man needs. Mankind needs mega fears, and will manufacture them in any age.

Modern saints, so far as I know, never bothered to address this specific mega fear, and for good reason, I think. Because it puts the cart before the horse. Fretting about such mega issues as nuclear war is really an example of worldliness, something to be shunned. Another mega social issue today for the Church is abortion. The Orthodox Church as a body says almost nothing about it. It does not organize conferences on how to organize against it. It does not fund research institutes, or public education campaigns, the Ecumenical Patriarch does not go on tours publicly denouncing abortion or moralizing about how humanity has lost it's mind on this issue. Which is more apocalyptic? Abortion, or pollution? Will not God punish humanity with mass destruction because of abortion? He promised us that he would never again destroy the world (as in the flood) as a punishment for our sins. So we believe in that promise, but do we not still stand condemned for this? Many anti-abortion people in the Church are very angry at the hierarchy for not DOING SOMETHING about this mega problem, which they phrase in apocalyptic terms not unlike the way that environmentalist phrase their concerns about pollution. But perhaps it is best that the Church does not seek to turn this into a social cause, and I think the same should be true for the pollution problem, because it causes great fretfulness and anxiety and distracts us from our primary purpose, to live iconically. That is the Patristic mind, I think, on the subject. The fear of global warning is an old fear dressed up in new clothing.

Richard Leigh

30-11-2003, 10:41 PM

Dear Owen,

By "formalized" I meant, "put form to," i.e., by writing it down, nothing more. I realize that there is a "formal" way to take that word and I should have known better than to use it in this context.

Richard

Daniel Jeandet

01-12-2003, 01:59 AM

I really liked your last post Owen, sometimes you take a while to warm up http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

I know where you are coming from when you question the ecological crisis, because I used to be very interested in conspiracy theories.

Sometimes its very hard to tell how much we are lied to, even for the sake of a "good cause".

I have even read that the idea of a nuclear winter that would wipe out all life was exagerated by those who posited the theory, including the populariser of science Carl Sagan, and that there is no way we could destroy the whole earth with our bombs, no way we could block out the sun the way they claimed. But those guys probably thought they should make it sound as bad as they could so people would take notice (and I think they liked being on t.v. too).

Effie Ganatsios

01-12-2003, 05:52 AM

Reply to John.

John, thank you for the information about the nesting habits of the peregrine falcon. It's good to see that something good has come from these power plants.

I don't live in the US, I live in northern Greece.

It's true that lignite ash is used for concrete production. But not when it's spewed out into the atmosphere for economical reasons. These plants are owned by PPC - Public Power Corporation of Greece. The ash is supposed to be conveyed via conveyor belts to trucks and then transported to the cement factories. However, when these conveyor belts break down (which happens more often than it should) the ash is routinely allowed to escape through the chimneys. Public servants here in Greece are notoriously lazy and being asked to manually shift the ash would almost definitely result in a strike - something they are experts at. I should also mention that the trucks used to transport the ash are sub-contracted. The cheapest and easiest way is for this company to just allow the ash to go up the chimneys. There are 12 units of 300 MW operating in this area - in a radius of about
30 klm (I forget whether 1 mile is 2 kilometres or the other way around). Another problem up until a couple of years ago was the filters themselves in the two older plants. These have now been replaced.

Nature likes ash - perhaps, but we have seen negative changes here in the last 20 - 30 years, changes in our trees that are the direct result of the pollution caused by these power plants.

The above information is entirely accurate because I worked (at a high level) for the German and French companies that built the last 3 power plants.

Yes, polluting this area is a sign of disrespect for the people that live here but it is also illegal and it is also the type of contempt that is becoming more and more common towards nature itself. Some people still apparently think that no matter how much we abuse the world we live in, it will somehow rejuvenate itself.... can we really still believe this.

Effie

M.C. Steenberg

01-12-2003, 12:13 PM

Dear all,

First, a reminder: patristics, patristics, patristics. Monasticism, monasticism, monasticism. Etc., etc., etc. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif Less on the chemical content of ash and the nesting pattern of birds; more on the theological issues relevant to this forum.

Secondly, I was very happy to read Owen's recent comment:

We are the problem, and the problem has to due with an internal disorder and malfunction in human nature, which is broken down to the individual level, not treated en masse. because the human problem is always the same.

This is likely at the heart of the matter here: what is the locus of 'crisis' of any kind in this world? Whether it be an immanent threat of nuclear winter, ozone depletion, terrorist attack, widespread moral degeneracy ... what is the real cause and source of the problem, and how does the Church instruct her faithful to 'deal' with the problem and its source?

I am always reminded of the words of St Theophilus of Antioch when coming into discussions such as this. In explaining why certain animals are hostile towards one another, rather than peaceable and cohabitive as Scripture describes their state both in Eden and in the eschaton, Theophilus notes that: 'Creation followed man in his sin. For just as the household workers, when their master is upright, are also pure in action, so also when the master sins do the workers follow him into his transgression'.

INXC, Matthew

Owen Jones

01-12-2003, 02:06 PM

Augustine has a wonderful sermon, a short part of I can only paraphrase, but it goes like this: the world is like an oil press, constantly under pressure. And in the oil press, the dregs of the oil sink to the bottom of the press and are emptied out and flow into the sewer. that part of the oil that is purified by the press rises to the top and sparkles and glistens. Likewise, the world. It is filled with wars and rumors of war, pestilence, poverty, injustice, disease and death. We can either wring our hands and cry, oh woe is me in these terrible times, or we can be like the fine oil.

So I think this is good advice for us today when it is so easy to be disturbed by these huge issues. I personally believe that New York and Washington DC will be incinerated by terrorists sometime in the next ten years. Can I afford to permit that conviction to turn into a mental obsession? Can I do anything about it? Should I spend my time wringing my hands about how terrible a world it is?

Rebecca

02-12-2003, 02:51 AM

I remember my dad once saying that although we may think that we are the ones in control of the world, it is really the Lord who is running things...

I also remember my brother saying that when things don't go according to our plans or when life [or the world] is not as we think it should be, that perhaps the way things actually are will result in something far better than the end goal that we, in our limited perspective and understanding focus on attaining.

Maybe I'm rambling here but it seemed relevant when I started typing this...

Anyway, below quote also seemed relevant somehow...at least it's something worth reading to make up for my disjoint thinking http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

"On no account, beloved, must you flee from what may be a chance for acquiring virtue. On the contrary, whenever such a chance offers itself, you should accept it with joy, regarding as best and most welcome such things as are unpleasant to your heart and evoke no sympathy in you .... [Y]ou should realize that the opportunities for virtue you meet with are the best means you can have for acquiring it, given you by God in answer to your prayer. Having formed a desire to gain virtue, you have, of course, prayed God to grant it to you; and in praying for it, you could not avoid praying also for the methods and means of acquiring this gift. But God does not give, for instance, the virtue of patience without afflictions, nor the virtue of humility without humbling occasions of degradation and dishonor. So, after your prayer about these virtues, He sends you corresponding opportunities. What are you doing, then, in running away and avoiding them? ..

So decide to welcome gladly the chances you meet for virtue, and the more gladly, the more difficulties they offer. For in such cases our virtuous actions evoke great courage and reveal great moral strength; and through this we make each time a considerable step forward on the path of virtue, which alone should be our constant aim."

-- Saint Nicodemos of the Holy Mountain, Unseen Warfare

Effie Ganatsios

02-12-2003, 06:48 AM

Mathew, the discussion about ash was an offshoot and it's sometimes hard to avoid these, no matter what we are discussing.

That our perception of ourselves and our relationship to God and the world he created is at the root of all problems is something that I have said from the very beginning. That's why I posted the excerpts from various essays that I did.

To claim that there is no ecological crisis is suspect when we can see the results of it ourselves.

Do we as Orthodox close our eyes and remain in our ivory towers believing that we are special and that these issues are somehow "beneath us". Our own spiritual leader Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has taken a very firm stand on this issue. That's a good enough example for me personally. I don't agree with absolutely everything he says and does but each time I have heard him speak I have been impressed by his humility and his intelligence.

Thank you for the reminder, but please understand how hard it is sometimes to keep to such rigid limits. We are human and our minds (or at least my own puny mind) usually relate personally to whatever we are discussing.

Thank you again for the reminder - I sometimes need it, I think.

Effie

M.C. Steenberg

02-12-2003, 10:24 AM

Of course, Effie. Your point is well understood, and appreciated. It's just that some 'off-shoots' have a way of sprouting up more quickly than others, till its right hard to see the forest. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

It would be interesting to see someone post a message (or messages) noting some examples of specific manners in which various Fathers can be seen to 'react' to major crises of their era -- issues that were as large-scale upon the conscience in their day as the environment is for many in our own.

INXC, Matthew

Jurretta J. Heckscher

02-12-2003, 02:27 PM

Dear Friends:

My thanks to Matthew for his wise guidance. In light of it, I think perhaps I should say little or nothing more on the question of whether or not there is a global environmental crisis, except to thank Effie for the very sound and sensible points she has made and to affirm what anyone who cares to read and listen—or talk to scientists--can quickly discover for him- or herself: that an overwhelming majority of scientists who study biological systems on the Earth’s lands and in its oceans and physical systems in the Earth's atmosphere believe that there is such a crisis--or rather, a series of accelerating and interlocking crises (such as rapidly declining biodiversity and accelerating global warming and rainforest destruction) precipitated by the sheer number of humans now on the planet, the greed of those among them who are wealthy (of whom I am of course one, in relative global terms), and the desperate needs of those who are poor.

And while the Fathers may have known nothing of the environmental problems man has created since their time, they surely knew and addressed the underlying issues of greed and need. (Can anyone, for example, give me an exact citation for that wonderful, and sobering, passage from St. Basil in which he says that the cloak you are not wearing belongs to your brother who has no cloak, the shoes in your cupboard belong to the one who has no shoes, and so forth? I have never been able to discover the exact source from which it comes.)

In another sense, though, today's environmental problems are nothing new: man has always and everywhere reshaped his environment (the myth of peaceful native peoples living on the land without changing it is just that, a myth); it is an inevitable part of being human. What has changed dramatically in the past century and a half is the scope, degree, and pace of that reshaping, and the fact that we do not yet have the scientific knowledge to understand (for example) what species we are destroying (and what benefits they might confer on us in the form of new medicines, for instance), or what the cumulative impact of our "greenhouse gas" output on the world's climate, crop-growing regions, and sea levels might be. Orthodoxy teaches us that God has given us the world to love, transfigure, and offer back to Him; instead, we are gambling with the destruction of vast parts of it, from the vanishing arctic ecosystems of Canada to the burning rainforests of Brazil to the lowlands of Bangladesh, from which hundreds of thousands of people will be forced to flee if global warming causes sea levels to rise. And we cannot separate humanity from the natural world, either in our sin or in our love.

Even if we cannot agree that there is a crisis, however, surely we can agree that the only course of action in response to this and all other questions is the same: to follow "the way of the ascetics" (with an appropriate salute to Tito Colliander's marvellous book), to strive relentlessly to live out of love towards God others and in radical restraint of our own appetites. The Fathers lived in a different age, and knew nothing of the specific environmental problems we face, but the fundamental truths they understood are timeless, and the Lord keeps presenting us with fresh opportunities to understand their wisdom, and that of those who have followed after them. (That passage from St. Nicodemos that Rebecca quoted is indeed relevant here!) Likewise, the monastic ideal is not only an answer to the dilemmas of the fourth century, but an answer to the challenges of the twenty-first. How can those of us who are "in the world" today learn to live it better?

Owen and I may disagree on the particular consequences of man's sin in our own age, then, but we can certainly agree that the ground of all our battles lies in the human heart--and that if we allow Christ to be victorious there, a thousand souls around us will share the victory (as St. Serafim of Sarov said), and with Christ we will have achieved "the one thing needful" to save the cosmos for which He gave His life.

Thanks, Rebecca, for reminding us of the relevance of Orthodox iconography to all these questions. Your offering of a Nativity icon for our contemplation is especially appropriate--thanks! And if we listen with all our mind and heart to the liturgical texts for the Feasts of the Nativity and the Theophany, we will learn enough for a lifetime's joyful, grateful reflection on the true relationship among nature, man, and God. May we truly, deeply hear, and heed!

Yours in Christ,

--Jurretta

Fr John Wehling

02-12-2003, 07:34 PM

A few thoughts and ramblings...

After the fall in Paradise, Adam and Eve were removed from the Garden and were left to live on the earth which was cursed (Gen. 3:17). One of the results of this curse was that they would now have to work and produce their food by the sweat of their face.

The Fathers tell us, however, that this curse was in truth a blessing, for man had to now work and labor for his food, which work was given to him as part of his ascesis in working out his salvation. In working the earth, in other words, he was working his own "earth of the heart." The Fathers, likewise, tell us that such labor is necessary and is part of overcoming the passions and producing virtue.

“An old man was asked, "What is humility?" and he said in reply, "Humility is a great work, and a work of God. The way of humility is to undertake bodily labour and believe yourself a sinner and make yourself subject to all."

The desert monks worked with their hands, not only to provide for their own needs, and not only to have something to give to the poor (alms), but also because such labor was part of their own ascesis and necessary for working out their salvation.

Now, it seems to me that, particularly in the modern world (defined loosely), much of our technology is designed precisely with the opposite in mind: that is, to make life easier, more convenient, etc. We seek after methods and means to avoid having to work with our hands. And whether it be the means of production of food, clothing, automobiles, electricity, or any of the other countless modern technologies that have contributed to our present ecological situation, most of them are based upon this principle of convenience, ease, and even luxury.

My question, then, is more basic and fundamental than whether or not there is an ecological crisis. It is whether, crisis or not, the conveniences of the modern world are a help or hindrance to the ascesis and labor necessary to salvation. I do not favor or promote a romantic return to "simpler times." I do wonder, though, if some sort of return--no matter how impractical--is better for us spiritually.

Fr John

Owen Jones

02-12-2003, 11:38 PM

Concerning the above post, I think an important distinction needs to be made. While the Church has a universal message to mankind, our preaching and teaching is designed for the faithful who are presumed to have illumined minds and are therefore receptive and understanding. Otherwise, if the same words are directed to the world at large, it is not understood and comes across as a kind of vain moralizing. So I think it best that the Church not presume that Christian standards are going to or should apply to everyone, certainly not by the same degree. When we presume that our message is for equal ears, then, when people refuse to hear, the Church gets frustrated and seeks power over others in order to control their moral behavior, and this, in addition to be wrong, is self-defeating, because it diverts the Church from its primary purpose, to exemplify the virtues for others who are moved to follow. That's why I think Church public pronouncements on the environment are generally misguided and do more harm than good (quite apart from the validity of the science. Much better for the Church to encourage and support the faithful in resisting the temptations of the world, and to lead others by example. Realistically, the Church is not going to make a dent on peoples' natural desires to improve themselves by acquiring more wealth. And as for pollution, most of it is caused by poor nations and people who do not have the luxury yet of spending excess capital on controlling pollution. So should the Church say to these people -- we do not want you to pollute, therefore we insist that you remain in a miserable state of poverty? And it is not a question of the rich not sharing their wealth. It has been proven over and over that just sharing wealth does not help people get out of poverty.

John Curtis Dunn

03-12-2003, 03:39 AM

My question, then, is more basic and fundamental than whether or not
there is an ecological crisis. It is whether, crisis or not, the
conveniences of the modern world are a help or hindrance to the
ascesis and labor necessary to salvation. I do not favor or promote a
romantic return to "simpler times." I do wonder, though, if some sort
of return--no matter how impractical--is better for us spiritually.

Fr John

It seems to me, the above proposed question might be restated thus:

Do modern medical methods help or hinder our ascesis and suffering necessary to our salvation?

We may bemoan the materialism of our culture, but it is not the conveniences of our modern age which make us sinful and lazy. We must avoid blaming our enviroment for our sinfulness.

The idea has been posted that we humans can commit crimes against nature, I agree, if by that we are speaking about human sins: homosexuality, kidnapping, murder, rape etc..., but these are not actions a human can commit against a tree, or a rock.

Certainly man can behave sinfully with the enviroment. He can dam up a stream and destroy the welfare of his neighbor's farm. But what if his neighbors farm is a poor piece of property? What if his neighbor can only produce 100 bushels of wheat, but if I dam the stream and resource the water so as to produce from my property 1000 bushels of wheat, have I still sinned against my neighbor?

Joseph was a wise man who hoarded wheat and then sold it for a price which increased Egypts wealth and power towards its neighbors. Was he wrong to have done so?

Energy is a valuable commodity in the world, and because of it wheat is relatively cheap. Did the Fathers ever address these issues? Yes, but we do not readily find their works on such topics available, some are simply lost, others are simply untranslated, but a few can be found if one searches diligently. There is a priority as the Apostles themselves declared, "It is not pleasing to us to leave behind the Word of God to serve tables." These words addressed a crisis, but the Apostles did not wholly skirt the issue, rather they instructed that an election should be held and certain men be chosen to address the crisis, these men the Apostles then ordained and thus was born the ministry of deacon.

The above crisis was about the allocation (or lack of equal representation therein) of resources. The Church addressed the crisis as it existed within her sphere of authority, meaning the Church and then later the Apostle Paul also addressed a similiar crisis.

Ecology is a modern concept for a modern world, but it is also a concept which carries much philosophical baggage which is often contra-Orthodox [I refer to the political dialectial tension in which the term ecology is used to create covetousness by dividing the world into the haves and have nots]. However, I am not arguing that being ecologically minded is a bad thing, but it might become so when it is used to incite animosity, anger, malice, rancour and covetousness.

It is possible for a poor man to be more greedy than the rich man if he has covetousness rooted into his heart, even a wooden spoon can become an object of wealth and covetousness. A sppon is a utensil of convience, but if it causes us to sin and fall away from the kingdom of God, we should throw it away, but usually we simply prefer to take such advise as hyperbole. That last works out to mean, "God really doesn't want us to throw away the spoon, He just wants us to abandon covetousness." Sometimes it seems to me that the hyperbolic path is the path of Saints. So perhaps simplicity is better spiritually?

john dunn

Daniel Jeandet

03-12-2003, 04:41 AM

That was a realy good post Fr John.

I do have a question though. Why did you say that a return to simplicity is impractical?

Effie Ganatsios

03-12-2003, 06:01 AM

Juretta, a wonderful post! You expressed plainly, clearly and with great insight what I myself was trying to say. Thank you.

"Even if we cannot agree that there is a crisis, however, surely we can agree that the only course of action in response to this and all other questions is the same: to follow "the way of the ascetics" (with an appropriate salute to Tito Colliander's marvellous book), to strive relentlessly to live out of love towards God others and in radical restraint of our own appetites. "

And Father John was also wise... we don't need to go back 100 years but we do need to use our bodies the way they were meant to be used (this is good both for our bodies and for our souls) and to restrain our greed. We need to put into practice what the Fathers have told us to do. A simple, pious life filled with work is the answer to the destruction we have created in the world entrusted to us by God.

Effie

R L Maximos Darnley

03-12-2003, 10:53 AM

I am impressed by the quotation from Juretta which reads in part , ". . .to strive relentlessly to live out of love towards God others and in radical restraint of our own appetites. "
This it seems is entirely consistent with an ecologically sustainable approach to life. Whether there is a global ecological crisis or not, and I tends to believe that there is, good stewardship is surely predicated on such an approach to life in general.

Daniel Jeandet

03-12-2003, 08:20 PM

St Maximus says that "misuse in all things is a sin".

He talks about this a lot. Sin is falling short of the purpose for which you were created, and to sin through things or against others is to first misuse our conceptual images of those things or people. So to try and stop the misuse of the earth on a mass scale you would have to transfoem the way of thinking of most of the people in a radical way, considering most of them think life is to experience the maximum possible pleasure or happiness they can within this short time they have. That this pleasure inevitably generates pain and distress as a chastising force for the instruction of the sinner and the setting aright of evil, is, as I understand it, a manifestation of God's judgement, and the pleasure within the soul that results form deliberate self-restraint is a form of God's providence, the continual increase of blessings as a reward for the right use and gratitude for the existing ones.

Sadly, today, the tension and anxiety over the ecological crisis (and whatever other crisis is being used to fill the "news") contributes in part to the cycle of seeking pleasure to overcome the pain it causes. Not sure what my point is, just rambling on with my thoughts here. Our problems on the earth have become so big, with wars and global media and extreme forms of greed and mindlessness, that most of these things are way out of our hands on the level that they are presented.

I remember reading in "the ascetic of love", one of Mother Gavrilia's sayings was that "the fridge of the faithful should be almost empty". I love this saying because to me, this sums up our faith so well. Thats why, and forgive me, but when I am at a priest's house, and I see a really well stocked fridge, and four cars in the driveway and just an abundance of things and luxuries, I just kind of feel that it says something about the quality of counsel I might receive, you know? It really sums up a persons attitude to life.

But if a worldy type of just normal person comes to your house and sees that your fridge is practically empty (not that its a big thing you try to do or display, its just a symptom of your way of life and trust and faith), they see this and they want to put you in a mental home. They panic for you, God bless them. And they might be a full-on environmentalist but they just cant make the connection, they live in fear of the planet, they dont trust its maker. Simple living isnt a better way to live, its actually life. modern (in)conveniences just complicate and fragment our souls but alot of the time we lose the sense that way of life and faith are as inseperable from each other as soul and body, so we really think we can live like the others but have this living fervent faith. Its like somehow expecting a different document to appear on the screen of your computer than the one encoded on the hard disk.

Recently in Australia, we have had this really severe drought, and it affected alot of farmers really badly. A kind of benefit concert was arranged in order to raise money and assist them with enduring and surviving the effects of the drought. A friend of mine who is quite perceptive, while we were watching something about this benefit concert on t.v. pointed out that the idea to helping the farmers was presented as "we are going to help the farmers". God wasnt going to help them. No-one was going to appeal to Him for help. WE were going to set things aright. Now that the planet has stopped calling on God for help, or seeking afflictions willingly, we can only learn one way, by unsought trials. Needless to say, the drought continues and we are now forced to restrict our water usage or face fines from the authorities. Its not the deprivation of blessing for the setting aright of evil, its an official water restriction enforced by the authorities. I, for one, am not anticipating the end of the drought.

Fr John Wehling

03-12-2003, 09:36 PM

Dear friends,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

A few responses.

First of all, John responded to my post by saying:

>>We may bemoan the materialism of our culture, but it is not the conveniences of our modern age which make us sinful and lazy. We must avoid blaming our enviroment for our sinfulness. <<

John, I am not sure if you are attributing such attitude to my statement, but if so, this is not what I said or implied. My point is that, given that we are sinful already and that we need work as medicine for our sickness, modern conveniences might very well, in fact, be unhelpful to our ascetic labors.

Daniel, what I mean by impractical is simply that it might be inconvenient with the way most of us have become accustmed to living. But what is inconvenient and impractical in that sense might very well be the most practical thing spiritually. Sorry for the confusion.

Peace,
Fr John

M. Rallis

04-12-2003, 02:50 AM

http://www.alexanderpress.com/books.html

This is a link to a book titled "Ecology and Monasticism" by Archimandrite Vasileios of Iveron Monastery on Mt. Athos. I have not yet read this one, but have enjoyed several other books by the same author.

Effie Ganatsios

04-12-2003, 08:16 AM

Owen's below statement is not true :

"And as for pollution, most of it is caused by poor nations and people who do not have the luxury yet of spending excess capital on controlling pollution. "

According to Ken Davidson, the U.S. director of the World Meteorological Organization climate program department :"There are always skeptics on everything, but certainly the evidence we have today shows we do have global warming, and that most of this is due to human action."

"Carbon dioxide produced from burning fossil fuels is the most prevalent of the so-called greenhouse gases, whose growing concentration in the atmosphere is thought to be warming the Earth."

The US, with 20% of the world's population, is or was responsible for most of it.

The bad news : " Australia has overtaken the United States as the world's worst greenhouse gas polluter, according to an analysis of United Nations statistics.

Calculated on a per capita basis, Australia emits 25 per cent more carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, than the US and more than double that of most European Union countries." We have to keep in mind though that Australia has a population of 20.000.000 (4.12.03) while the US has a population of 290,342,554 (July 2003 est.)which makes the US the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels according to the CIA factsheet.

According to the University of Michigan : , Economic development has a very large impact on the global environment.
* Rich countries produce, consume, and pollute far more than do poor countries.

* The rapid population growth of the poor countries is overbalanced by the high individual consumption of the fewer people in the rich countries.

* HOWEVER: Rich countries are becoming more efficient in energy use, and are slowing the growth of consumption. Poor countries are increasing energy consumption and CO2 emissions, and are often getting less efficient in energy use.

So, it all comes back to one thing - greed. We want more and more. As Orthodox, we are not responsible for what other people do, but we can at least do what we should by lessening our own demands and we, who live in more comfortable circumstances can at least stop blaming poor countries for what we are responsible for.

Effie

(Message edited by admin on 04 December, 2003)

Rebecca

04-12-2003, 02:12 PM

I remember I took a course called "Language and Logic" in college. One of our texts was titled "How to Lie With Statistics." The premise was that statistics could be used on about any data set to support whatever conclusion was preferred.

Obviously I'm not suggesting that anyone here is guilty of doing that. Obviously, both "sides" of the ecology debate (as said debate is being worked out in the media, etc) use statistics. Obviously the above premise applies to both sides.

Just suggesting that there are things we can truly know...for example, the working of our conscience as it pertains to our daily sins, the experience of attending Divine Liturgy, and there are things that we will never have first hand knowledge of. On such things we form an opinion based on trusting those who feed us information and suggest conclusions.

It may be that one side of the ecology debate, as it is being worked out in the media etc, is Right and one side is Wrong. On the other hand it may be that both sides are Wrong, and the Truth is something (Someone) altogether different, with a different perspective on the whole matter.

John Curtis Dunn

04-12-2003, 02:40 PM

Fr. John bless:

In my reply I asked: "Do modern medical methods help or hinder our ascesis and suffering necessary to our salvation?"

We cannot bemoan modern conviences without also bemoaning the medical knowledge and technology used to further advance medical services.

There is a story about a Mother who is sitting with her six children and blurts out, "I wish I had only gotten pregnant four times." The first four assume that she meant she did not want the last two, the last two look at the four and wonder which one of the four did she not want?

Who is he unwanted child?

Which modern convenience"

Which modern convenience hinders our salvation? Is it the spoon?

Television was once cited as the most evil of all modern conveniences, but today it is perhaps the computer, or more likely our access to the internet?

Perhaps you only mean that our modern conveniences give us more time for play or entertainment? In my area there is at present a great concern because some bars are allowed to stay open and serve alcohol until four in the morning. This has become a neighborhood crisis because there have been several murders by people leaving, who then go outside and kill someone who offended them while thy were in the bar.

The City Council is attempting to determine who or what is at fault. Some believe it is the late hours and propose that the bars should close earlier, others say, "NO, that will only result in the murders taking place at an earlier hour, what we need is a greater police presence." Yet, that part of the city already has one of the largest and most present police forces. Who or what is to blame, "given that we are sinful already?"

Hopefully, there are no Orthodox Christians hanging out in these places, or at least not at those hours, but even if it were so, can we say that it is the fault of the power plant which burns lignite to produce energy which burns the night lights in the bar?

Can we assume that if we removed our conveniences, that men would simply begin seeking God? I am inclined to answer, "NO!" My failure to seek God is not the fault of modern conveniences. Man's failure to seek God is a heart condition, not an enviromental condition.

I do however agree, that hard physical work can be salvific, but not simply because it is hard work. I have performed hard physical work with men who work hard physically every day, yet they do not seek after God.

Please forgive me, I am not meaning to imply you think otherwise about these things, I am perhaps only replying to the voices in my own head.

john dunn

Owen Jones

04-12-2003, 02:58 PM

No, Effie, with due respect, we should stay out of other peoples' business, not fret about the evil other people do, and pay attention to our own individual selves. That, to me, is the Patristic mind distilled to its essence.

I am trying to avoid a debate on the science issue, as urged by our moderator.

Marie-Duquette

04-12-2003, 04:26 PM

Owen, thank you for your last post #716.

Often I read the many posts on this forum; and, must confess that often the too many words bog me down.

I liked what you said: "pay attention to our individual self . . . that is the Patristic mind distilled to its essence."

Would you clarify for me, please, the meaning of the "Patristic mind"? would you say that it is the same as having "the Mind of Christ" as St. Paul states it in his epistles?

thank you, Marie Duquette

Owen Jones

04-12-2003, 06:10 PM

It better!

xxx xxx xxx xxx

Richard Leigh

04-12-2003, 07:24 PM

Dear Rebecca,

About the possibilty of being lied to with statistics I would say what is needed is gift of discernment.

Of course, stats deal with whole populations "randomly chosen" if done properly, and this without prayer (we're not talking about casing lots to determine God's will, here), we're trying to relieve ourselves of as much human bias as mathematically possible, and thus look into the bare face of God's activity in creation (as Christianity, Orthodoxy ought view the matter IMO).

I understand from reading the Fathers that discernment comes from the personal ascetic struggle against sin, i.e., we learn most from our experience, particularly (but not only) our mistakes.

I believe the real crisis will always be one of faith, i.e., do we as a people "have it" or not and in either case how our living affects that.

I think it is always a good idea to take heed of warnings and ask God to show me my sins, be merciful and teach me to live better.

Richard

Owen Jones

04-12-2003, 11:07 PM

When I was in seminary, my wife was at home caring for three kids, two of whom were still in diapers. A Jehovah's Witness knocked on the door, passing out tracts about nuclear war. She told them that she was more concerned about the nuclear family. That's an example of holiness,not indifference.

Rebecca

05-12-2003, 03:44 AM

Dear Richard,

"if done properly."

That was the major point of the college text I mentioned (btw, I was just as surprised at the blunt title of that text as others may be...I'm using it as point of reference, an interesting read, not trying to say that statistics inherently evil or anything).

However, "when done properly" is where the trust factor comes in. imo, the trust part also comes in with how those stats are presented and used once the math is over (in general, not just with "the environment").

It's interesting your bringing in the "crisis of faith"...to some extent faith implies trust. Who do we trust? Who do we put our faith in?

I'm reminded of John Dunn's earlier post where he mentioned the concept that "people need a crisis"

I guess I'm wondering if it isn't just part of our constitution as people..."faith" is an attribute we all have, whether it be faith in God or faith (trust) in any of the countless "movements" in the world, or even if it's just that one only trusts oneself and ones own abilities (speaking generally).

I would also timidly venture that the need for "a crisis" could also be part of human nature in as much as it equates to a "need to worry" about something.

So, one might see the "environmental movement" (the "movement" aspect of it, regardless of whether the stats are done properly on either side) as a phenomenon arising from these needs in our nature (not suggesting this is a conspiracy, more that it's a phenomenon).

But if these needs (faith and worry) exist in our nature, it's interesting (at least to my pea brain) to look deeper, and from a Christian perspective, and wonder why they exist? For what reason were we created in a way such that we have these needs? What is the purpose they serve, and what is it that truly satisfies these needs?(faith is obvious, worry is a little more interesting, imo).

That said, I'm obviously just writing off the cuff and really haven't thought about this a whole lot. As the poster here who is the "low wattage bulb" when it comes to analytical thinking (and other things) I think I'll go focus on the beautiful blanket of snow that is covering the ground outside for a bit. http://www.monachos.net/mb/clipart/happy.gif

Best Regards...

Effie Ganatsios

05-12-2003, 05:11 AM

"No, Effie, with due respect, we should stay out of other peoples' business, not fret about the evil other people do, and pay attention to our own individual selves. That, to me, is the Patristic mind distilled to its essence. "

Owen, I agree with you absolutely and this is what I have been saying all along. As Orthodox we are responsible for ourselves and what we personally do.

I believe we have the same basic beliefs concerning this problem but that we are looking at it from different perspectives.

Can we really afford to bury our heads in the sand? We live in the world and in my opinion, those Orthodox who don't live simply are not living in an Orthodox manner. Study the lives of present-day monks and you will see that they live simply and that their monasteries are as self-sufficient as they can make them.

Should we join demonstrations and marches etc. - I don't but that's up to each individual Orthodox. Should we ignore what is happening in the world today and think that we are somehow special and that each family having two cars and two computers and two of everything (some families don't stop at two of course) is our God given right? Is this being Orthodox and is this in accordance with the teachings of the Fathers? I don't think anyone on this board would agree that we can live this way and still consider ourselves to be proper Orthodox.

Effie

Daniel Jeandet

05-12-2003, 11:57 AM

Simple life makes simple thoughts and then a simple heart.

Look at what Jesus Himself taught about cares and worries, how we should just let them go. Not that, as Christians, we no longer have the problems that "normally" generate our anxiety. Probably, if we struggle to be at peace internally, we will attract more of these things, but we would begin to see more clearly with our inner eye and the burden of the sense world would lighten. Its not a struggle between suffering and comfort. No-one escapes suffering. Outward comfort generates internal torment, North America and Australias anti-depressant habit proves this. But the willing acceptance of all types of suffering generates internal peace and divine consolation.

One pair of shoes, what a relief! One coat, a clear concience! Television out the window, bliss!

John Curtis Dunn

05-12-2003, 12:22 PM

Please do not read the following as a story, not a political accusation against anyone. The following story is intended to raise issues which are concerns of the Gospel not politics.
---------------------

E. Ganatsios wrote:
Should we ignore what is happening in the
world today and think that we are somehow special and that each family
having two cars and two computers and two of everything (some families
don't stop at two of course) is our God given right?
-----
It seems to me, as soon as you propose the observation with question using the olural pronoun "we" followed by "our", you have crossed the line into " other peoples' business."

I can only ask of myself, "Can I fulfill the commandments to Love God supremely and my neighbor equally [as myself], if I possess these things."

But even still, this question fails, IMO, because God is not oppossed to our possessions, whether much or little. He Himself rewards His faithful servants according to their labor, and we are told, "He who sows sparingly, reaps sparingly."

Now that is a concept which must be always present in our ecological discussions.

If my neighbor's land is a wet-land, but my land is fertile soil and my neighbor lets his land lie fallow [letting nature manage its wildlife], but the waters which feed my neighbor's wet-land runs accross my property, and if I dam that resourse in order to better manage my crop production, have I infringed upon my neighbor's "rights theologically?

Now, if my neighbor leases his property out during duck hunting season, perhaps my dam affects his livelihood, but what my neighbor's other neighbor loves duck, not to eat, but simply because he believes ducks are fearfully and wonderfully made by God?

Let us say I work out a managed water release which maintains his wet land through work [meaning controlled management on his part] enabling him to keep his wet-land as a resource from which he supplies his own household's welfare, and by this he enables others to hunt duck [whether out of need for their own welfare, or simply because they enjoy the experience of hunting], but his other neighbor can't bear the thought of the innocent ducks being shot at from behind blinds [the second neighbor believes this does not give the ducks a fair chance to escape from the hunter], so he petitions and finds other people likeminded and petitions the goverment to intervene and oversee my management of my dam and my neighbor's wetland.

Now this second neighbor campaigns for his cause calling it "ecological management" and then accuses my neighbor and myself of not being ecologically minded because we oppose his program to place himself and other parties as overseers of our property management. And then he envokes God's name by hiding it under the words, "These men are committing crimes against nature," and he must hide his convictions that ducks are fearfully and wonderfully made, because some of those in his policitical party do not fear God and are oppossed to joining any cause which would have them confessing [directly or indirectly] any belief in God. Therefore the laws which are now inacted to limit how much I can sow and reap on the property which I possess, and how many ducks can be shot on my neighbor's property are called "crimes against nature."

Now some of these atheists are school teachers who begin to teach children that certain entrepreneurs in their neighborhood are simply greedy capitalists who want to rape the land and destroy the ecological balance of nature. These atheists want to be the educators of the future [they feel they must teach men that God does not exist, but they cannot do this directly or openly], so they, in exchange for their political support of the "Save the ducks" convince others that my children and my neighbor's children should be required to attend their schools. They convince others that our home schooling is a form of "child abuse" because I am not able to instruct them socially and because my belief system is not oppossed to dams and duck shooting. And to pay for their education system they impose a tax on crops and duck hunting.

Now one year God holds back the rains causing my water resourses to drop and my neighbor's property to be incapable of supporting his usual duck population, so that the ducks choose to fly to a new wet-land. Meanwhile, I have to raise the cost of my wheat to off-set the financial loss of my drought, but taxes remain the same or increase [the latter being more likely since a good supply of bread and meat have attracted people to build a city nearby] to pay for new educational needs. This results in those in the city having a food shortage which causes them to accuse me and my neighbor of being greedy capitalists, so they campaign that the my property should become owned by the city and I and my neighbor should have our profits managed by an elected board of managers....

Now some call all this ecological management, but to me, it is simply covetousness on the part of others who want to manage my business.

john dunn

Owen Jones

05-12-2003, 05:55 PM

Yes, but as John has pointed out in his previous post, Daniel, we do not have the right to impose this model of voluntary poverty and simplicity on others.

And a word must be said about deliberate misinformation. The Canadian people were sold on the Kyoto Treaty and polls showed over 2/3d of Canadians support it. But when interviewed, people said they indeed supported it and would be willing to pay an additional $25 per year to support it. But the real cost would more than $2500. If they knew that, only about 10% -- the diehard ideologues -- would support it. Because there goes their daughter's education, or their son's braces, or, in some cases, the house! What's more, if it's all based on junk science, then Christian supporters of Kyoto are participants in a conspiracy to defraud.

Jurretta J. Heckscher

05-12-2003, 07:25 PM

Dear friends:

Members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) value the sense of prayerful listening that avoids unnecessary words, so when they want to support what someone has said but don't feel the need to add to it, they say simply, "This Friend speaks for me."

Regarding Effie's posts on this thread, then: this Orthodox sister in Christ speaks for me.

Yours in Christ, with gratitude to Effie and to all who are struggling to come to terms with this issue in His love,

--Jurretta

Richard Leigh

06-12-2003, 01:11 AM

Dear Rebecca,

I think the "need to worry" is a symptom of our unlikeness to (or is it failure to be image of?) God, and the only mending of that is God's incessant draw of us toward him.

Richard,

P.s. to John Curtis Dunn,

An old Jewish proverb says, "If you're in a boat full of people, you don't have the right to drill a hole under the seat just because it's your seat." --RL

Moses Anthony

06-12-2003, 04:23 AM

Hello Everyone,

Here are some very short observations:

We are; in the vein of St. Paul's epistle to the Romans, "...we are slaves of the one whom we obey." Someone else said that we have a problem if what we own, owns us. Would Fr. A. or Matthew be more holy if either of them didn't have a phone or a computer?

Am I wrong to believe that What Jesus did, and the Apostles and Fathers did likewise, was to confront evil wherever they found it. To only be concerned with the "evil/sin" in my own life would seem to me to ignore the command to show compassion and kindness, to be a "Good Samaritan." A phrase of in one of the prayer books I have says, "...as I go forth to do Thy works...', reminds me of Isaiah 51, Micah 6 and the passage in James' epistle which talks about true religion.

A part of my heritage is American Indian (two tribes actually), which speaks somewhat to this issue. Today campers know this as "If you pack it in, pack it out" If I was to shoot a deer or a buck, every piece of edible or useful carcus would be used. I wouldn't go overboard as the enviromentalists did in the Florida Everglades several years ago, when the deer population was threatened with drowning because of floods. They protested the wildlife suggestion of allowing hunters to kill the deer, until it was to late. Hunters shot a few, but the larger part of the herd either drowned or starved, because of supposed care for the enviroment.

My amount of involvement in any "public issue" is directly proportionate to what God desires of me. Yes, there's no command about many of the choices we have to make every day, yet we are commanded in whatever we do to live a godly life. This life we sometimes lose sight of when we become 'overinvolved.'

Forgive me I have rambled.

a sinful and unworthy servant

Fr Averky

06-12-2003, 07:20 AM

Dear Friends,

I agree with Owen Jones when he speaks about the Church making statements on the environment insofar as such things as "Ecolological Cruises" go.

I do believe that we are responsible for the preservation of the natural resources and beauty of this world. I also mourn over the never-ending destruction of the environment,the loss of thousands of species of living creatures, and the terrible effect that pollution and global warming has on our world.

As we have seen on this thread, it is a very complex issue, the health and welfare of the peoples of our planet, concerns of governments, local economies, the needs of the poor and the enormous profits of major corporations, and our place in all of this.

In all of this, as Daniel has wisely said, God is forgotten, He who created all of the beauties and riches of this world-for us. About five years ago, during the Summer, day after day went by without rain, and the local farmers were desperate - it was approaching July, and the corn was only about a foot high. One Sunday at the end of lunch, the Archbishop asked all members of the Brotherhoood to pray fervently to God to show mercy and grant us rain. He also ordered the priests serving daily liturgy to add the special petitions for rain. He asked the laity to pray and to light candles. By the end of the week, the heavens opened and we got rain, and ovef the next few weeks, it rained enough to catch up with what had been lacking, and that year's crop was one of the best in years. As Daniel rightly indicated - we turned to God, and He blessed us with the rain and good crops. So many times in the Gospel our Lord says to us, "O you of little faith." We need to put our faith in Him.

Mr. Dunn says that "God is not opposed to our possessions, whether much or little." I certainly can understand and agree with him when he says this on the basis of an individual's relationship with God." However, when we as individuals or as large corporations make profit at the loss the livliehood of others, and especially the poor, then our lives our not pleasing to God. Yes, God blesses us with prosperity, but we also have to keep in mind the story of the man who had made so much profit, he was going to build bigger barns, and was taken that night. Unfortunately, there is no motivation on the part of governments or large corporations to to conduct business in a godly manner, other than to bow before the Idols of Greed, Profit and Power.

In the end, I find myself on the side of Owen, whose thoughtful considerations point out that even if we were to have the "power" to effect the preservation of the environment, would it be really to the benefit of the world, and would it be spiritually of any value to us? As Owen states, it is much more important for us to work on ourselves-to overcome our own passions, and those destructive aspects of our own character.

In the last several months we have had similar discusion on differebnt threads, such as social justice-what are we Orthodox Christians doing to better society, and we seem to be asking here, "What are we as Orthodox Christians doing to preserve the environment? Again, the seemingly "lame" answer is the same; that as Orthodox Christians we have to look at this question individually and spiritually, but to some, this might sound limited, selfish, and self-absorbed.

There is a wonderful video entitled "The Nile," which concerns itself with the sustenance this great river has provided for many peoples from the ancient Egyptians until today. The Nile goes through Etheopia, and we are told that a monastery along its banks is to be found one of the largets wild life preserve, in all of Africa. Here are to be found species of birds and animals that that can no longer be found anywhere else on the continent. A monk is shown, who has been a hermit for twenty five years. He spends all of his time kin ascetic labors, and a novice brings him his food once a day places it on something like a dumb waiter, and leaves. He broke his silence to speak to the company making the film. When asked how he views the beauty of nature around him, he replied, "When walking, if I accidently break a twig or step on an insect, or any such thing, I beg God's forgiveness for having destroyed, even unwillinmgly, something that He has lovingly created."

Thus, taking what Owen and Daniel has said, we have to keep before us always rememberance of God and to look at ourselves, our own failings and what we can do in our own small way to make our world a better place to live. If we can live a spiritual life, repenting for our sins, working to love God, and make a point of treating our neighbor with love and understanding, we will indeed improve and beautify the environment around us.

There might be those who will consider my answer too pious and simplistic, but be that as it may, there is truth in what I say. So many times when people come to me, or any priest for that matter, with very big problems, our most frequent answer, after listening, and giving words of comfort and advice as best we can, is that they need to "Pray." Many times people go away, thinking, "Why did I even bother to speak to the priest about such a major crisis in my life- 'pray,' what kind of answer is that?" Yet,most of the time, that is the answer, the best and only answer. For some reason, convincing people that they really need to have a communication with God by praying to Him, and taking everything to Him and trusting Him to help them is most difficult! We spend far too much time complicating our lives and our society by wanting to change things by our own "power," of which we have none. We have Will given to us by God, but that does not give us power. This is why the popular term "empowered" makes no sense. God is the Power, and everything is in His hands. Let us make every effort to work on bettering our own lives and the lives of those with whom we come in contact, and we will please God, for in giving our "Widow's Mite" we will make our small part of the world a better place to live in. Forgive me a sinner. Thank you and God bless you Owen and Daniel. My love to all of you!

Fr. A.

Effie Ganatsios

06-12-2003, 08:18 AM

Thank you Juretta for understanding what I am trying to say.

Reply to John Curtis dunn :

“I can only ask of myself, "Can I fulfill the commandments to Love God supremely and my neighbor equally [as myself], if I possess these things."

But even still, this question fails, IMO, because God is not oppossed to our possessions, whether much or little. He Himself rewards His faithful servants according to their labor, and we are told, "He who sows sparingly, reaps sparingly."

John, I think you’re missing the point. Christ himself gave us the parable about the rich man and everything I have read from the Fathers up to now has emphasized the fact that a simple life and few possessions are essential if we are truly sincere in our desire to come closer to God.

IF we follow their instructions faithfully, a logical after effect is a positive contribution to the environmental problem the world is facing today.

It is so simple ……

I don’t usually contribute to the complicated theological discussions on this forum because I have found that if you study the Fathers in e.g. the Philokalia then you will find that simplicity of thought is one of the most beautiful aspects of their writings and thoughts.

Why get into a complicated discussion about ecology? Can you ever agree with me or I with you when we can’t even agree on whether there is actually even an environmental problem in the first place? I post official statistics and am told that statistics are used to lie to us. OK, perhaps they are but if we can’t even refer to those that are official and not some crackpot’s own fantasies we might as well not offer any kind of opinion at all. I refer to my personal experience and get back some story that we might as well blame lignite burning plants for drunken murderers.

Let’s agree on one thing at least. The Fathers (I believe without exception although I’m probably wrong) advise us to live simply and frugally. To my mind that means that if I live like this I will help myself spiritually and at the same time, and in a more practical manner, help the world that I am a part of.

Can we agree on that?

Effie

Fr Averky

06-12-2003, 10:12 AM

My Dear John Dunn,

I would love to look into your brain and watch it as it clicks and whirls, coming up with your amazing posts! They make my head swirl. (smiling) All the best to you-keep thinking, and keep praying.

In Christ,

Fr. A.

John Curtis Dunn

06-12-2003, 04:39 PM

Dear in Christ Effie:

It was not my intention to trivialize any conditions where men and women live, work and pray and are subject to enviromental conditions which may be a factor in causing cancer. Forgive me if the following appears to be without compassion, it is not intended to be so: "Life is hard, then you die."

This has been the story of most of all who have ever been born, and it remains so today.

In the commandments which God wrote with His finger, He wrote: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife; thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house; nor his field, nor his (man-)servant, nor his maid, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor any of his cattle, nor whatever (anything) belongs to thy neighbor." [Ex.20:17; Deut.5:21)

The Apostle Paul in his Epistle to the Romans wrote: "So that the Law indeed is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good." St. Gennadios of Constantinople commented: "The commandment is called 'holy,' because with its righteousness it honors those who obey it and punishes those who transgress it; 'good,' because it leads usto the good, and this because of the goodness given by God."

What do we read in the commandment, is it not a commandment to live simply? This commandment seems to me to express that it is God's will that we all live simpler lives, but wht is it that clutters our lives? Is it the possession of a wife, a house, a field, having servants [male and female], oxen, donkey, cattle, or how about a possession of one spoon?

No, the commandment does not forbid possessions, it forbids covetousness. If my neighbor owns two coats, that is his business not mine. If my neighbor has two acres of Olive trees, that is his business not mine. If my neighbor decides to cut down his olive trees, that is his business not mine, even if I believe he grows the best tasting olives in the country, even if his olive trees produce enough olives to necessitate that in the past he had to hire me to pick olives and his cutting down these trees alters my future livelihood causing me to have to travel further to seek employment.

Covetousness is what complicates our lives, or as St. James expounds the commandment so that simpletons such as myself might easily understand it, "Ye desire and have not." You are familiar with the Gospel story about the Land owner who went out and hired people to work in his field and at the end of the day paying the late hired servant equal to those who had labored all day? "What did that land owner say in reply to the covetousness of those who begrudged his generosity? Covetous denys to another the right to do as he deems fit with that which God has given.

Covetousness forbids a man from building bigger barns, not God. The sin of the Rich fool was not building bigger barns [St Joseph being filled with the Spirit of Christ did that, see: Gen. 39:1-6a;; and Gen. 41:25-49], rather it was that he failed to become rich towards God. Immeaditely after this parable our Lord instructs his Apostles to "cease being anxious for your soul, what ye shall eat; nor for the body, what ye shall put on...For all these things the nations of the world seek after; and your Father knoweth that ye need these things. ....Make for yourselves purses which do not become old, an unfailing treasure in the heavens where no thief draweth near nor moth destroyet; for where your treasure is, there your heart is also..." [Luke 12]

What is it that the Lord's commandment relieves us from, is it not covetousness?

The Mosaic commandment, given by God, instructs us that covetousness is a sin. The Gospel of Christ gives to us the means to deliever ourselves from this sin. The Mosiac Law diagnoses our spiritual disease, the Lord, the Great Physician. through his Gospel gives to us the cure.

But the reality is that few of us have become perfect as the Lord told one rich man, "Go sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come follow me." [a paraphrase]. Even possessing a wife or husband can become an occassion for covetousness, and our Lord Jesus applies His radical cure as did the Apostle, "It is better if a man not marry." The Apostle goes so far as to say, "Cease seeking a wife. But even if thou marry, thou has not sinned." Few of us can swallow the medicine of the Gospel whole, we need a a spoon filled with honey to help the medicine go down.
Both are cured, but the cure is not so sudden or radical in those who cannot swallow the the medicine whole. "The unmarried careth for the things of the Lord, how he shall please the Lord. But he who is married careth for the things of the world, how he shall please his wife. The wife and teh virgin also differ. The unmarried careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit, but she who is married careth for he things of the world, how she shall please her husband." [1 Cor. 7]

I hope by presenting the above, I am able to convince you that I do understand how the Gospel alleviates the sin of Covetousness through simplicity. But remember, "If thou marry thou hast not sinned." If you own two coats and your neighbor only one, you have not sinned. If however, your neighbor needs a coat, and you have a coat but refuse to clothe him, then you show that the Gospel has not healed you [not you personally, but anyone].

Now, it is not my duty to coerce you to live according to the Gospel. It is not my business to inspect your closet, for as the Apostle Peter said, "While it remained, it did remain thine own, did it not? And after it was sold, was it not in thine authority?" The danger which lurks for us, is to fall into a pretense of having been healed of covetousness, when in fact our hearts are conspiring to steal from God; which is to mean to be known as a Saint, when you are yet a slave to covetousness. Only now, the covetousness aims to possess the Kingdom by a means other than Christ has commanded. Pretending to be perfect is a form of covetousness, and the Apostle calls it a "lie (not to men), but to God." [Acts 5]

I answered your orignial post saying, "The above [your reference to ash and cancer] shows man's disrespect for man, not nature, of course such disrespect is ultimately aimed towards God."

Now the question is how can we {as neighbors] help. Certainly if there was a virus we would seek to contain it so as not to infect others, perhaps by a policy of quarantine . If it were being threatened by a flood, we would pitch in and make sand bags and walls to redirect or at least contain the water. Both of these examples are directed towards our neighbor. The ecological crisis based upon a belief that we are harming the earth and that we must save the planet from mankind, however, God put the earth under man's dominion, and this is objectionable to many.

If the whole world returned to simplicity; turning off our power supply's and began burning wood, would that be better? I live in Atlanta, Geogia where the population is around 5 million people and growing. Whose trees should I chop down to burn when mine are consumed? If I sold my car, where will I work to pay for my meager home? I work with materials which are considered hazardorus to both man and our enviroment if released in unmanaged quantities, should I stop? The world does not absolutly need some of the products manufactored with the materials I use, should we cease and desist?

Greece has received 5. 4 million dollars in aid from the EU, shoudl Greece simply decline that aid?

Life is hard, and then you die. The rich and the poor suffer, some in this life, other sin the next, unless they repent and believe the Gospel. I can march against having a garbage dump in my neighborhood, but if it comes, God be praised. If I can move, God be thanked. If I cannot, God have mercy upon us all.

john dunn

Owen Jones

06-12-2003, 06:25 PM

The problem with the ecology debate is that it is really about power. There are those who believe that some people have too much power, and therefore they want them to be forced, through another type of power, to have to give up some of their power. So, covetousness, yes, but not necessarily as regards material possessions, but power.
The people in the pro-ecology movement want political power to dictate their moral concerns through coercion. It is not that the pro-ecology movement people want to steal the possessions of the people who have them in order to have more possessions themselves. They feel an inner anxiety due to their own lack of power, that leads to resentment toward the people who have economic power. So they rant against global corporations, they rant against the U.S., etc.

In any case like this it helps to focus on some pragmatic issues. Not everything is spiritual! The most pragmatic solution to any ecological problem is the creation and distribution of wealth that makes it possible for some people to have the "excess" wealth to be able to deal with the problem on a pragmatic level. The wealth of the U.S. is such that we can afford more expensive cars with pollution control devices. In Calcutta they cannot afford this. The air quality in Calcutta is demonstrably far worse than in any city in the U.S. Please go there and you will see what I mean. Pollution abatement is in fact a luxury of wealthy nations. And, indeed, air quality in the U.S. has improved, dramatically in some cases, over the past thirty years or so.

Regarding trees and animal life in the U.S. In the 19th century the country was virtually denuded. Great land barons such as Vanderbilt planted millions of acres of trees, with little or no financial benefit to himself. Now America has more trees than were here 150 years ago.

My father was in the citrus business. When the only pesticide available was parathion, it was devastating to local fauna. But when newer technologies were invented, it turned out that there is now more animal life in a citrus grove than in the natural scrub pine lands that citrus groves replaced. Water foul, snakes, bob cats, you name it.

While habitats and territories are being degraded by development, there are counter trends as well. Bears are coming back. The country is over-run by dear. I live in a residential neighborhood in which I often see red tailed hawks and foxes.

While species are dying out, there are billions of species. This is not necessarily a monumental spiritual problem, when we look at geological history. History is not a process of unward upward development but something that is punctuated by great catastrophic events. The recent forest fires in the U.S. are a good example. Had we been good stewards of the land, by properly thinning forests, there would be no catastrophic forest fires. But the eco-movement types have badgered public officials, through law suits, to prevent ANY logging to take place. Nature has its will, and many millions of acres are destroyed. There is no such thing as a pristine, pure nature. Man is placed here to properly act as stewards of nature, to subdue it, till it, and properly maintain it. Not to just leave it alone as if nature itself represents some kind of pure spiritual condition. It doesn't.
But the bottom line pragmatic problem is that you don't solve a problem by taking away another man's freedom. You cannot force a man to be virtuous. If you want society to be more virtuous, you lead by example, you don't pass more laws to force them to be virtuous. The history of law is couched in the negative, to punish wrong doers. That is a lot different than passing laws to create a perfect state of existence. The Calvinists tried that in Geneva and it didn't work, and later the Communists tried the same thing, and we all know what resulted from that. Because people will refuse to conform, then the arbiters of virtue want more and more power, and the ultimate power becomes state-sponsored murder. You just eliminate people! That would solve all of our problems!

Christians who are concerned about the natural environment have to ask themselves some very tough questions, I think, of profound moral and spiritual consequence. What are my motives? What are my solutions? Will they work? Will they be harmful to others? Will I do more harm than good? What is the impact on social/spiritual health in other areas? If I am to rely on the secular state to impose my agenda on others, what is the spiritual impact of that? These questions are not being asked.

Fr Averky

07-12-2003, 04:06 AM

My dear John Dunn,

I read your most recent post carefully, and as usual, it makes sense, it is logical and clear, it is backed up with quotes from Holy Scripture, yet I cannot help but feel, and I sincerely ask your forgiveness for this, that I have just finished reading an impassioned speech giving justification by a plantation owner for the owning of slaves. I have never heard such an amazing Apologia for Possessions!

Terrible monk that I am, I happen to have many myself, possessions and slaves, and although I have been giving them away by what seems the box load, they remind me of the pieces of chopped up broom in "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," for they seem to multiply geometrically! Several years back, one of our monks, who himself has reposed, cautioned me, "Father Averky, don't die suddenly, people would be hurt in the crush."

If only we could look at all of our accumulated possessions and see them as accumulated sins and failings, and we would want to put them all in a pile and burn them. However, like the Passions, we have gotten used to having them around, find comfort in them, and and are hard put to get them out of our lives.
O Woe!

Fr. A.

Fr Averky

07-12-2003, 05:31 AM

Dear Owen,

I thank you for your most recent post, for I believe you have come to the heart of the matter. We cannot look at this problem with anything but a spiritual view. The aim of this thread, so it seems, is Patrology and the Ecology; well, it does not seem much has been said in light of the fathers, so let us see what we can find.

I cannot imagine that the Fathers could have been that sentient or prophetic to anticipate the complexities of ecological issues, although they certainly would have been aware of the driving forces of those issues, namely profit, greed, politics, power, influence, the interests of government, and as John Curtis Dunns puts it covetousness, although I cannot quite understand how God is pleased by our having many possesions. To me the story of the bigger barns is not about covetousness at all but of self-satisaction and self-reliance.

In his commentary on this parable, St. Theophylact the Bulgarian says in part:

"Yet the foolish man says, "I will pull down my barns and build greater." And if your land yields even more bountifully in the future, will you pull these down and build again? But what need is there to pull down and build? You have available to you as storehouses the stomachs of the poor which can hold much, and are indestructable and imperishable. They are in fact divine and heavenly storehouses, for he who feeds the pauper, feeds God. See something else that is foolish; "my fruits and my goods." The rich man did not consider that he had received these things from God. If he had, he would have treated these things as would a steward of God. But he imagined that these things were the fruits of his labors, which is why he usurped them for himself, calling them "my fruits and my goods." "I am the sole owner, " he thinks, "and there is no one else entitled to a share. These things are not God's but mine, and therefore I alone will enjoy them. I will not take in God as a partner to enjoy my profit."

Because he spoke foolishly, let us see what happened. He determines that he will have a long life, as if length of years was something else he could obtain by working his land. But a long life is not a crop you can grow, and it is not another of your belongings.

"Eat, drink, and be merry. Three cheers for the good things of my soul!" But to eat and drink are the good things only of an irrational soul. Because this man has an irrational soul, it is fitting that he plans to reward himself with these things. But the good things of a rational soul are to understand, to reason, and to be glad in the law of God and in good thoughts. Do eating and drinking not suffice for you, O fool, but you must also order up for your soul that which accompanies these things, namely shameful and base pleasure?"

Euphemistically did the Lord employ the words "be merry," indicating by them the most wanton passions which are the consequence of too much food and drink.

"But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night they shall require thy soul of thee." The words
"God said unto him" do not mean that God conversed with the rich man, although the parable puts it in this form. Instead, the thoughts that came into the man's mind are what God spoke. "Thou fool." He calls him a fool because evreything he wants is foolish, as we have shown. And every man like him is foolish and acts in vain, for as David says, "In vain doth every man disquiet himself."

As I was reading this passage of St. Theophylact, it struck me that God says to the rich man " Thou fool this night - THEY shall require thy soul of thee," and we can only see this as meaning that God will not require his soul, but the demons.

In my poor opinion, this very much tells us the necessity of protecting all that God has given us as stewards to be responsible for all that He has provided us, for it is not ours to grab, corrupt and destroy; and it is not something which we have produced, yet like the rich man in the parable, we want to build our bigger barns-increase our profit and influence, and who will be deprived as St. Theophylact says? Christ's poor. Like the rich man, we have taken that which is not ours, but given by God to us for the benefit of all, especially the helpless of the world, and in so doing, we too have become fools, also thinking that everything belongs to us and that we will have many years to enjoy all that we have gathered "our fruits and our goods" at the expense of others and at the price of the destruction of nature. This parable and the saint's explanation answers this question about the ecology for me. Glory be to God!

Fr. A.

Rebecca

07-12-2003, 06:16 AM

With all the discussion of 'living simply' it strikes me that the Orthodox have a rich history of exemplars of a simple life in an Orthodox context. Who? Obviously the monks.

How many monks egage themselves in "movements" in the world? How much of their time is spent striving against the secular forces that run counter to these "movements"? To what degree are these monastics struck with fear and alarm when hearing the statistical or anecdotal accounts that are the message of the movements?

Has anyone read the book by Archimandrite Vaselios that Michael posted link to? I have not yet but am curious of the perspective of the abbot of a monastery on Mt. Athos on the environmental issues...does the book present a call to action to align ourselves with the environmentalists or does it take the whole phenomenon and cast it in a different light? (not that those are the only two possibilities)...

--Rebecca the curious

Effie Ganatsios

07-12-2003, 09:04 AM

Reply to John's post no. 158
John, I absolutely agree with everything that you have written. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could just throw all these “words” out the window and see into each other’s hearts to understand each other.

I don’t advocate going back to an earlier age, I don’t advocate people going back to wood stoves (although you have to admit that with one wood stove you covered nearly all your energy needs – food, hot water, and heat…… ) and I don’t advocate us being busy bodies as some religious people are sadly, by trying to force our opinions and habits down the throats of others. I can only answer for myself. I have a very comfortable life and always have had – due to hard work on the part of both my husband and myself. The older I get though the more I see that having all these possessions is like carrying a burden on my back. They are dragging me down.. That’s why I have come to the conclusion that the Fathers knew what they were talking about. You can’t have it both ways……we want to be spiritual but we also don’t want to miss out on anything…… possessions themselves breed the need in us to acquire even more … why? I don’t know.

Am I making any sense? Can you see into my heart via these inadequate words and understand what I’m trying to say. I have a headache at the moment so might not be making much sense at all.

I truly believe that the Orthodox way is the best. After all these messages that basically say the same thing but in different ways I need to stop here and just pray that we all live the way we think we should but without harming our environment.

I understand the example you gave about the wetlands and home schooling – I know that some people become so wrapped up in what they believe and their need to assert themselves that they end up harming those they profess to want to help. Re the lignite plants – I am not against them. What I am against is the fact that in this area they are needlessly polluting the atmosphere because of greed. If the electricity company operated them the way they are supposed to we wouldn’t have a pollution problem in this area.

Effie

Just something that needs clarification – the money Greece has received from the European Union is not a gift. Our wonderful socialist government has ensured that I and probably my grandchildren (if I ever have any God willing) will have a fine time paying it back for many, many years. Nothing is free - and shouldn’t be because I don’t want people in other European countries working so that I can receive the benefit of their labour while sitting on my backside.

Fr Averky

08-12-2003, 07:32 AM

Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for your post. We had a thread a few months ago in which a young woman was upset because she felt that Orthodox Christians do no involve themselves enough in Social Justice. To me, this situation concerning ecology is the same, and answering only for my own monastery, we do not participate in "movements," but live our lives repenting for our sins, and we pray for the whole world every day, for we have a full round of daily services.

Not too long ago, a book came out which was the letters of a very well known hieromonk of our Russian Church Abroad to his spiritual son, a fellow priest. Eighty five percent of the book is taken up by the hieromonk's fretting over the difficulties that he and his co-founder are having with another group that was in our Church at the time. Our response to the book was decidedly cool. Our Abbot, the Metropolitan, has ruled us since 1976, and his firm belief is that we make only enough money too see to our needs, and will not allow any projects which are for "profit." We have enourmous expenses, but we help many people. If we did not spend more than half of the year in church services, we could make lots of money, but our abbot will not even allow for outside help to come in, so we live on what we produce.

I mention this about the hieromonk's book because even when my monastery has been attacked, and we have been slandered, condemned, attacked in print, avoided, and accused of the most amazing things, we have never defended ourselves in a book, an article or by word. This is because we know as monks we are to endure all manner of ill treatment. We are surronded by an evil world, and the devil fights againsts us in every way possible. A monastery must stand as an island in a storm, and its inhabitants must be firm in their faith and stable in their lives and shine as spiritual lights to others, and this despite the weaknesses of the monks themselves.

So too it is with what is going on in the world around us. We are aware of the terrible situatiions the world find itself in; we have access to news in many forms. We know of the evils of abortion, of injustice, of the homeless and the poor, and the destruction of the environment, and we do more to help others than people would ever know, for we do it very quietly. In one of his letters in the book I have mentioned, the famous hieromonk states that we are not teaching our seminarians to be missionaries or to be interested in the spiritual life. We have seen time and time again young priests who had studied here and who came back for a visit years after they were ordained, many times bringing pilgrims with them, how serious, pious, stable and concerned Christians and good pastors they were had become.

During the dark years of the godless authority in the Soviet Union, we published spiritual books and services and managed to get them into Russia. We spiritually, financially and materially maintained newly-formed parishes throughout the diaspora.

Our missionary labour, our "movement" is our Christian life, our monastic labours, and by providing a spiritual environment wherein young men can be prepared to serve Christ in His Church.

Our seminarians have the blessing to live in a monastery with a resident bishop, so they witness the Liturgical Year as it unfolds; the beauty of the services, the change in tone to singing in a minor key during Great Lent, the strict fasting during First Week, and the very strict fasting and hours of long services during Holy Week, and the delirium of Pascha. Hierarchical services add a majesty to our lives, and we witness ordinations, monastic tonsures, the washing of the feet and the Anathema services. We serve the ancient Liturgy of St. James, one of the few places in the Orthodox world which does. We have a school of iconography, and we are surrounded by Byzantine icons. Our small monastic church is truly like Heaven on earth.

So you might think, "Yeah, yeah, but what does that have to do with ecology?" One of the aspects of monasticism is that the monks who take the Angelic Habit take the place of one of the angels who fell. Where the demons sow hatred, we wish to sow love; where they love ugliness and the destruction of all that is beautiful, we restore beauty to the world through prayer, seeking God,carrying our crosses, struggling, and by creating harmony with heaven through beautiful icons and spiritually moving services. Where demons try to pull souls away from Christ by filling their minds with evil temptations and to despair, the monastery draws people and nourishes their souls with the Holy Gospel, with the possibility of speaking to someone who will take them seriously and will help them, urging them to have frequent confession and communion, and we sow the seed of salvation in their souls. The monastrery is a heavenly garden on earth, a place of light in darkness, and a cool drink of water in the desert.

We who live here are not always aware of what we have, but there are moment when the grace here is palpable. One of our new seminarians told me the other day that after the ninth ode of the canon for the Vigil of the Feast of the Entrance of the Theotokos into the Temple, the choirs sang the Exapostalarion in a very ancient melody, and that by the third time, he could tell that people were all but holding their breathe, and that there was not a sound in the church. He said for those precious minutes, he found that he felt that he had been transported and given a taste of heaven. This is our small offering for the betterment of the world.

Fr. A.

Effie Ganatsios

08-12-2003, 07:49 AM

Rebecca, as I mentioned in my post to John, we use words but sometimes they just don't seem to be enough.

Monks and movements?? If you would only study the way the monks on Mt. Athos live you would see that this way of life itself is their "statement" and their "protest" and, if you will, their prayer and their outward sign of respect towards the world God created.

Effie

Effie Ganatsios

08-12-2003, 09:01 AM

É think the below excerpt from a speech given by ECUMENICAL PATRIARCH BARTHOLOMEW concerning the Orthodox and the environment might prove interesting to some of us.

“Rather, purely out of pastoral concern, we wish to address a few thoughts on the topic, which perhaps from the onset place a finger on "the print of the nails" in favor of a God-pleasing assessment of the obligations and duties of all men and women created in the image and likeness of God towards everything in the created universe within and around them.

Therefore, permit us to state initially that the indeed awesome endowment which we so often voraciously lay claim to in nature, namely that we are created in the image and likeness of God, by definition also predetermines an analogous ethos that is imposed upon us, vis-a-vis ourselves and each other as well as vis-a-vis the microcosm and macrocosm around us. Only then can we truly satisfy God who created "out of nothing" everything that is "very good."

In other words, this means that as the visible and living image of God in the world man does not have the right to possess an ethos which is ungodly or does not love God, since, as a "partaker of the image but not a custodian of it," man becomes the inciter and chief perpetrator of evil, which God as a fair judge providentially terminates upon our natural death "in order that evil not be immortalized."

However, the ethos which springs forth from God and bears witness to the unapproachable and unknown essence of God is everywhere and always described as grace, throughout the Bible and God's revelation to us in general, as well as through the teachings of the God-bearing Fathers of the Church.

Speaking in the presence of Christian intellectuals, it would be meaningless and totally superfluous to clarify further that the most profound character of the grace of the All-beneficent God is that it is totally free, that is to say, absolutely nonreciprocal. We should like to remind you, however, that in the biblical account of creation the grace of God is manifested initially as beneficence, goodwill, compassion, philanthropy and the like; thereafter, following the fall and apostasy of humankind, as mercy, forbearance, expiation, restoration, reinstatement and adoption.

Nevertheless, we should unequivocally state that in both instances the divine will of God was always manifested in the form of law and order, which no one has the right to violate without being punished, since the entire design of the All-beneficent Creator constitutes a unique and indissoluble divine "economy." Thus, whether we speak of natural, moral or spiritual principles, we acknowledge and emphasize the same infinite grace of God, confident that Divine Economy is always the solid support of ecology as a whole.

All these things being preeminently indicative of the compassion of the Omniscient and Omnipotent God should, certainly, ceaselessly constitute a guiding policy of our own ethos in the world. For if God, according to Plato, "were perpetually to geometrize," it follows that humankind must always read and obey all the laws pertaining to the world.

Within the framework of this pious awareness concerning the world, we should seriously bear in mind also the rudimentary sequence within the entire order of creation in which God in the six days of creation classified, as is known, from the less to the more perfect. Recognizing and acknowledging such an inverse hierarchy, perhaps then we will respect anew the unquestionable and mystical sanctity possessed by the material world created before man not only for itself as a work of God "created out of nothing," but for the "being" and the "well-being" of humankind. Today, we are not so eloquent when, for the sake of brevity, we characterize the created material world as the "natural environment."

John Curtis Dunn

08-12-2003, 01:22 PM

I cannot help but feel, and I sincerely ask your
forgiveness for this, that I have just finished reading an impassioned
speech giving justification by a plantation owner for the owning of
slaves. I have never heard such an amazing Apologia for Possessions!

Terrible monk that I am, I happen to have many myself, possessions and
slaves, an

Father Averky bless:

Forgive me, but the most impassioned Apologia for Possessions was made by the Apostle Paul not myself, would you not say after reading the following words:

"My defense to those who examine me is this: We do not have authority to eat and to drink, dow we? We do not have authority to lead about a wife (who) is a sister (in the Lord), as also the rest of the apostles, and the brethren of the Lord, and Kephas, do we? Or do only I and Barnabas have no authority not to be working? Who at any time ssserveth as a soldier at his own pay? Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of its fruit? Or who shepherdeeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? I am not saying these things after the manner of man, am I? Or saith not the law these things also? For in the law of Moses it hath been written: "Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth the corn." It is not the care of the oxen tht matters with God, is it? Or saith He it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes it is written, that the one who ploweth ought to plow in hope, and the one who thresheth in hope ought to partake of his hope. If we did sow to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap of your carnal things? If others partake of this authority over you, sould not rather we? Nevertheless we did not use this authority; but we bear up against all things, lest we should give any hindrance to the Gospel of Christ. Ye know, do ye not, that those who labor at the holy thingss eat of the things of the temple, and those who wait upon the altar partake with the altar? Even so the Lord appointed to those who proclaim the Gospel to live of the Gospel. But I used none of these things. ... What then is my reward? That when I preach the Gospel, I might set forth the Gospel of Christ without charge, so as not to have made full use of my authority in the Gospel. For though I be free from all, I enslaved myself to all, that I might gain the more....""

My question is: where in the Gospel does our Lord appoint/ordain/command that those who proclaim the Gospel to live of the Gospel?

In the above passage, does not the Apostle argue that he possesses an authority [power] which he choses not to exercise? Of course it is also his argument that he and Barnabas have chosen not to exercise that authority, so as to labor and receive another reward which they value more highly. But does it not still remain evident that the Apostle did have the authority to "lead about a wife, a sister, as also the rest of the apostles, and brethren of the Lord?"

Can there be a more passionate defense for accumulation than that which the Apostle has made above? Only a few paragraphs back he had written: "But he who is married careth for the things of the world, how he shall please his wife." [1 Cor. 7:33] And only a few sentence prior to this latter passage, he wrote: "But even if thou marry, thou hast not sinned." Elsewhere, the Apostle reminds us that it is the duty of parents to lay up treasure for the children. Please do not misunderstand me, I belive the greatest treasure is the Orthodox Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, however, the Gospel does not forbid possessions and neither did the Law of Moses, but it does cure covetousness. Concerning this I wrote that this cure is not as radically applied to those who marry as compared to those who remain unmarried, but labor to serve the Lord. Am I incorrect, have I misunderstood?

In the above, simplicity is not the goal of the Apostle, but rather being a faithful steward of that which God has given him. But having noted this, simplicity of life was his freely chosen means [freely chosen, because he had the authority from Christ to "lead a wife," if he had chosen] , and this he seems to convey in his second epistle to the Corinthians: "For our boasting is this: the testimony of our conscience that we conducted ourselves [i]in the world in simplicity and sincerity of God, not in fleshly widom, but in the grace of God, and more abundantly toward you." [1:12] But this simplicity i, to which the Apostle wrote, is that which is free from hypocrisy.

Now then, concerning possessions, the Lord told the Rich young man to sell all that he possessed and give to the poor and come follow Him. This, as I previously referenced, is the path of perfection. As you, and all of us are familiar, the man went away sad, because he had many possessions. It was then that our Lord uttered those startling words about the difficulty of entering the Kingdom of Haven with riches. The disciples then replied, they had left everything to follow Him. In response to this, what did the Lord reply?

I don't cite these passages to justify an accumulation, or building bigger barns [but as I noted, the righteous St. Joseph did just that, only not for his own personal welfare or gain], for our Lord said told his disciples to not let their purses grow old. Yet, reading through the Prologue of Ohrid, we read of many people who chose the pathof perfection which was stored up for them by their godly Christian parents. This is precisely as the Apostle reminds us [as he applies the Law of Moses to the Christian dispensation], that it is the duty of parents to lay up an inheritance for their children. My point being, that the perfect path chosen by this illustrious Saints [such as the Hieromartyr Zenobius and his sister ZZenobia (October 30), to cite one example], was made possible only through the faithful keeping of the commandments of their parents.

I write this last, so that no one need feel ashamed or incumbered if God has given them the ability to prosper in carnal things. It is God who give to all men according to their need, if he gives one man more [ten talents] or another less [one talent], it is not for me to judge His distribution, that would be covetousness. There must be a precaution when bantering out the idea of living our lives with simplicity, if that latter term simply means: haveing less possessions. A man with ten talents to invest may need to live in one manner to increase the interest of his master's investment, while the man with only one talent may need less. It is not for me to examine God's servant, even our Lord refused to do this when He was approached by one man to make a judgement between himself and his brother concerning their inheritance.

That latter point being made, it certainly is necessary that we be exhorting one another to be continually examingin ourselves to see if we are living worthy of the Gospel. For it is a temptation with possessions to become entangled in the affairs of this life, so as to forget the one thing needful. It is possible to become cloudedwiththe fading flory of prosperous success in earthly possessions, so as to forget to lay up our treasures in heaven. And so we need to be exhortedby one another, by Monks who are following the perfect path, and by the examples of these many Saints remembered by the Church as examples.

It is not the acculumlation of possessions which I defend, but the freedom given to all by God to become faithful stewards. This freedom means, IMO, that I shold not be measuring the accumulation of my brother, for perhaps he is accumulating a treasure house for his posterity to become perfect.

In all these things, whether in having much or little possessions, the path is narrow and few find it.

Forgive me, pray for me.

john dunn

Daniel Jeandet

08-12-2003, 04:17 PM

Someone commented a way back that the idea that there were once people living in total harmony with thier environment was a myth. But Im not so sure, let me tell you a little about the Australian Aborigines.

When the first ship arrived in Australia the natives were right there on the beach, fishing and working. When they saw the ship sailing up, they looked at it for a moment and then went back to what they were doing, as if it were a passing cloud or something. Imagine that! The seemed genuinely unconcerned. An excellent quality in a monk apparently. They wore no clothes, built no houses, had no chiefs or leaders and yet they operated under a strict system of justice and adhered to a complicated set of rules that determined who could marry who so that breeding within families was kept to the minimum, precise genetic selection and judicial order without any form of centralised authority. They were complete non-possesors, used only the most basic required tools for the purpose of biological survival and (this is my favorite thing about them) they had no words for yesterday or tomorrow.

These are certainly the most mis-understood and mysterious people to ever have been. Think of how much of the gospel these people were living out, without ever having heard of Christ. Saint Maximus the confessor speaks about primitive people who, under the influence of the Holy Spirit clearly manifest within the creation, had turned from savagry and begun to follow the natural law. I think the Aborigines were like this. Sadly, the ones who came to live here, who were maybe trying to avoid the pain of "yesterday" by working for a more comfortable "tomorrow", brought with them lots of things the Aborigines were not able to cope with, like diseases and alchohol, also alot were simply killed, and today they are very rare in the urban areas and cities and mainly live in a terrible state in the outback. It seems they were never able to completely assimilate with civilisation as we know it.

Im not saying anyone should be in any way forced to anything they dont want to, or that we should all try to become bush people but wouldnt it be great if we could stop thinking about yesterday and tomorrow?

Funny how things all come together, two days ago I was sitting in a chair at home and my son (who is three) was playing on the floor. I was lost in thought and he woke me up with the words

"Daddy, you cant live in this world".

I was a bit freaked out and I just said "why"?

He replied "because you dont".

Then I realised with a creepy feeling that I had been dwelling nostalgicaly in the past in my imagination.

Daniel Jeandet

08-12-2003, 04:55 PM

Concerning posessions, Saint Maximus says something very good about it that helped me alot when I read it and maybe it will help here, I dont know.

He says that it is possible to posess things without having an un-natural attatchment to them, but the test comes when we are deprived of them.

He also says a posession is anything we lay hold of with willfull desire.

Of course we have a great way out of this with insurance. Personally I think insurance is a bit silly and a bit sad and certainly not appropraite for bush-people but I have found that many others can be easily convinced that it is a part of God's plan for us all.

Owen Jones

08-12-2003, 10:56 PM

When the insurance industry really got started in the early 19th Century, especially life insurance, Christian pastors almost universally preached against it.

Rebecca

09-12-2003, 06:59 AM

Effie,

you wrote:

Monks and movements?? If you would only study the way the monks on Mt. Athos live you would see that this way of life itself is their "statement" and their "protest" and, if you will, their prayer and their outward sign of respect towards the world God created.

I wonder whether the monks themselves would characterize the goal/focus of their lives in the way that you have above.

I wonder if we should we take up the standard and enlist with the Environmentalists in word and/or deed, contrary to the example set by the monks? Or should we follow their example, and tend to the plank in our own eyes while praying that we love rather than judge our brothers? (I speak of myself as one with plank in my eye).

Father A speaks of the environmental focus of his monastery, but in terms of the spiritual environment. Was Martha better off than Mary because Martha "got involved" in "taking care" of things?

Fr John Wehling

09-12-2003, 07:19 AM

Friends,

Glory to Jesus Christ!

I pray you are experiencing a blessed Nativity fast.

For those who are interested, here (http://www.incommunion.org/misc/xiii.asp) is a link to a statement that the Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church issued a couple of years ago on the "enviromental crisis."

Peace be with you,
Fr John

Fr Averky

09-12-2003, 08:48 AM

My Dear in Christ John Dunn,

I understand your point; I understood you the first time. I guess my question is, how does this defence of having possessions have to do with the question at hand? In the time of Christ, the Jews believed that if a person had wealth, positon and respect, he had found favour in the eyes of God. If a person was poor, blind, and was deemed of little worth, he or his parents had somehow displeased God.

I am in no way arguing against possessions, I just questioned the idea that your example of the "bigger barns" had to do with covetousness, and I do not see how desruction of land and wild life by large corporations leading to loss of livliehood and nature is an indication of that -profit and greed yes, but covetousness? That is all.

Yes, God does bless us with prosperity and many good things, and as you say, we must be but stewards of what he has given us, never thinking that it is by our efforts that we have all of "our" things. We will die and we and they shall turn to dust, but what love we will have shown will be what we take with us for eternity. Like our Saviour said, what good does it do if we gain the whole world, and lose our soul? I cannot particularly disagree with your words, but I cannot agree with the approach, but John, perhaps our views are mostly personal. My concern has been rather simple, John: Possessions are a matter of this world, but we we do with them is a consideration for the next

Love in Christ,

Fr. A.

Fr Averky

09-12-2003, 11:03 AM

My Dear Rebecca,

i am sorry, but you missed my point, so it seems-I was not emphasizing my monastery's environmental focus at all, but its spiritual aspects. That we have a lot of land, do not allow hunting and the like, in a sense is not done so to actively "protect" our environment, but a desire to have our surrounding properties left untouched. Last year some neighbors asked permision to hunt on our land, and the Metropolitan said, "But they are so gentle and beautiful, why would anyone want to shoot them?" I tried to explain that there are too many of them and he replied that we should let God see to that, not kill them. So, that was that.

There is not a single monk here who has ever expressed that we need to "protest" or participate in any "movement" As I described in my last post, our function is to create an environment which is conducive to the spiritual development of the monks seminarians, pilgrims and those who live around us. I do not think that we are even aware of looking at the splinters in the eyes of others when it comes to social issues, because our concentration is on matters not having to do with such things. And my dear Effie, I rather suspect that the monks on Mt. Athos also do not concern themselves with such matters, for they live an ascetic life, and they use those things of nature which God has provided for them in order to live. One of our monks spent five years on Mt. Athos, and he says that every single day monks have to work and work hard just to survive; tending gardens, harvesting olives if they have them, pressing olive oil, providing firewood, and so on. I personally do not think that we are the ones to look to as far as any kind of "protests." We say our prayers, we struggle, we live our lives, that's all. I cannot tell you much about the married life at this point, but I can tell you about the monastic life. Our Synod of Bishops is the one who make all public statements on behalf of our Church. Sometimes we here do not even know that certain events have transpired. Years ago, when Generalisimo Franco died, I told one of the very old monks. He said, "Is he Orthodox?" I said, "No." He then said, "So, why did you tell me, I can't pray for him." Of course, we can privately for anyone, but he meant as far as "officially."

The times that the Father on Mt. Athos speak up is when people like Patriarchs Athenagoras, Demetrios I, and Bartholomeos I participate in ecumenical activities with the Church of Rome, for these betrayals of Orthodoxy are very important to the life of the Church. Our monastery is also concerned about these matters, but we pray about them, but issue no statements, for we are not of the Greeks. ( No offense intended, Effie)

I hope this is a little more clear for you Rebecca. I do not think we are the ones to look to for your answers in this matter, I might be wrong, but that is how we see it here.

Respectfully

Fr. A.

Daniel Jeandet

09-12-2003, 11:18 AM

The thing is, the environment, or natural world, is spiritual. At the same time the spiritual world is manifest in the visible world, we exist in both these worlds simultaneously. That is why we cannot separate our faith from our way of life, because we are acting on our inner world (and other's inner world) with our outward acts and the state of our inner being is manifest in our actions. We cant make a mental separation between the two. God is distinct from the creation but it is his energies that give it being. Not just gave it being, but give it being and continue to give it being. That is why nothing is unclean, nothing is profane, except the illusions we overlay as a result of our religious immaturity or scientific arrogance.

Listen to what Sherrard says about this, I know its quite long but it is very good.

"In the type of theology to which I referred, and which became more and more influential in the late medieval and subsequent world, this understanding of the nature and function of our supreme cognitive faculty was increasingly eclipsed, to such a point indeed that it was no longer recognized that we possessed such a faculty, even in a potential state. Instead, the intellect (the term is still used) is regarded as no more than a higher aspect of our reason. Intellect and reason describe one and the same faculty, there is no spiritual visionary organ in man distinct from his reason, and the mode of knowledge proper to us is reasoning or discursive knowledge. And this means that it is no longer recognized that we can attain a direct visionary perception of divine and supranatural realities. And hence there can be no longer any question of our attaining what you might call a gnosis, or even perhaps, a theosophia, which enables us to read the book of nature in the light of this gnosis and to perceive in every natural form the spiritual dimension, the spiritual archetype of which it is the outward expression. Instead it is now thought that we can derive such knowledge of the natural world as is accessible to us only by turning to the natural world itself and by abstracting it from those aspects of this world which we can perceive by means of the senses. But those aspects are now defined by their physical qualities only, or rather, what we can perceive in them is now limited to their physical qualities only. And this, as I said is because unless our spiritual intellect is energizing within us, we cannot see in things anything more than their material qualities. This does not, or did not mean that the truths of Revelation, those given in the Holy Book, the Liber Revelatus, are to be rejected, but because they too are now regarded as beyond our capacity to know directly, we simply have to take them on faith. The things of faith, the truths of Revelation which must be believed by all, are equally unknown by all, and there can be no direct experiential knowledge of them. Thus we are now presented with these two orders of truth. On the one hand there are the truths of faith, which pertain to the supernatural sphere, and on the other hand there are the truths of science which pertain to the natural sphere and that can be abstracted by our reason from our observation of the natural world. These two orders are quite separate, the truths of the one being buried in one sphere, the truths of the other in another sphere.

It is this concept of the double truth, this duplicity in the true sense of the word, of what we might call double think, that constitutes the major premise that has to be reversed if ever we are to escape the clutches of our materialist world. For it is this concept that constitutes the bedrock of the major thought paradigms or mindsets responsible for shaping the course and character of this world, and it is inextricably built into them. It is the initial bifurcation or splitting asunder that has given rise to the whole crisis of fragmentation, which now threatens to disrupt whatever is left of anything that may be called civilisation. It marks the decisive breakthrough of that type of consciousness I have called our ego-consciousness, the consciousness which being enclosed to divine light and life simply reflects the self-deception and self-illusion that characterise our uprooted selfhood. And simultaneously it opens the door to the progressive secularisation and profanation of virtually every aspect of our life. Public and private, philosophical and scientific, political and social, educational and even domestic. For when, in obedience to the dictates of a theology that has separated the order of supernatural knowledge from the order of natural knowledge philosophy and science declare their independence of the truths of Revelation, declare their independence of the Holy Book and the spiritual hermeneutic that unveils its meaning, what they are also doing is attributing to the purely subjective and unsanctified human consciousness an autonomy that establishes it as the determining factor of not only the norms of knowledge but even of the norms of human existence itself. We are back where we started. With that type of mentality which can in all sincerity make the kind of statements that Hamlet and Descartes make, and with the agnosticism and materialism that are part and parcel of it. That an agnostic and materialistic science of nature is a contradiction in terms, and that its findings will necessarily correspond to the living reality of nature as little as a corpse corresponds to the reality of a living human being will be clear from all that I have already said. Just as it will also be clear that our tragedy and the tragedy of the world in which we live is due to nothing more, or nothing less, than that we prefer the desolation of our own destruction to having to expose ourselves to the trials, dedication and Love that are the touchstones of our re-generation. For it is because we have chosen, and continue to choose, to live according to this delusion of the double truth that we have ended up by shattering our ancestral universe, our spiritual cosmos, into a thousand fragments and have ejected ourselves into a world that is as nightmarish as it is artificial. It is this duplicity, or doublethink, that lies at the root of what has now become our endemic state of our schizophrenia. It is this that permits us to say that we are Christians or Muslims or Buddhists or whatever, and yet to live according to values and standards and ideals that not only have nothing to do with any religion but are entirely contrary to every form of spiritual life and practice. It is this finally that allows us not simply to tolerate but to actively promote a type of science that inevitably desecrates every area of life on which it impinges because desecration is written into the very view of nature according to which it operates. For this view is itself the progeny of this same misbegotten concept of the double truth, which would have us believe that nature is a self-subsistent reality independent of God with nothing holy or sacred about it, and that it is quite possible to acquire a valid form of knowledge of it by investigating it as such. So long as we fail to realise that this view of nature is a complete delusion, and that what we call our empirical and experimental knowledge of facts is itself an essential part of our ignorance, we will continue to destroy the earth and everything on it without even the slightest awareness of what we are doing and why we are doing it."

John Curtis Dunn

09-12-2003, 12:18 PM

but John, perhaps our views are mostly
personal.

Father Averky bless:

No doubt you are correct. When I was a small lad sitting at my parents table, they had a rule, "Do not take more than you can eat." This rule was always being reinforced and the fundamental principle was applied to all areas of my childhood life. This of course meant I [and my sisters] were required to eat what ever we put onto our plates. Whenever I had put more than I could eat [sometimes because what I saw looked delicious, but subsequently did not please my palate] my dear mother would say, "Your eyes were bigger than your stomach."

By this rule and commentary, my mother reinforced a lesson that "too much" is waste. I remember how she would take her Bible and have me read various passages to further reinforce her teaching witht he Word of God. One such lesson was were our Lord said to lay-up our treasures where moth and corruption would not be able to touch them. Perhaps, many of these early lessons lie buried within my memory and continue to affect how I read the scriptures.

Covetousness, as I have thus always understood it, is a spiritual eye affliction, meaning it jaundice's eye of the soul. Covetousness seeks to accumulate to itself possessions out of a selfish desire to possess what it does not yet possess. Seeing something new and untried, the covetous heart says, "I must possess."
In our affluent society and neighbor hoods, this spiritual ailment is expressed as "keeping up with the Joneses." Which if Effie and others are unaware of this USA euphimism, means to always be trying to possess as much as your neighbor.

The mere action of building bigger barns is not evidence of covetousness, for as I noted, the righteous Joseph was responsible for one of the "biggest barn raisings" of all time [meaning building for storage]. In the Gospel story, the issue was not just that the Rich man built bigger barns, but that he was not laboring to become rich towards God. I have understood this to mean he was open handed when taking things in and closed handed when giving things out.

Covetousness cannot see its neighbor;s need.

All this stemmed from the accusation that it was for greed that coorporations operate their production plants without regard to the enviromental hazards which they directly are responsible for, both to men [and mostly] to nature.

john dunn

Rebecca

09-12-2003, 04:41 PM

Father A.,

Please see my comment above regarding huge and obvious plank in my eye, and thank you for caring enough to give correction...I don't always understand people's posts and often write foolishly without thinking through impact to others. I think I understand what you're saying in your post 574 and if so it's enough (and hopefully not too much) for me to say that it's a blessing for all of us that the type of *spiritual* environment you describe exists and is and tended to with great care of its stewards.

Moving on to speak generally, I don't think it's inappropriate (at least I hope not) to compare the beauty of God's love to the beauty and majesty of, say the Grand Canyon, and find the Grand Canyon severly lacking and only a pale indicator of said Love. Kind of like the Icon is a reflection of spiritual beauty, but the painting itself is not the object of high regard, rather the subject depicted is, if that makes any sense.

In my opinion the typical "environmental" debate artifically polarizes participants into two extremes, neither of which extremes are really sound from a Christian or patristic perspective, which may, in fact, be either somewhere in the middle of the extremes, or perhaps at a different angle althogther. I'm not the one who knows the answer to that and so, perhaps foolishly, post lots of general "rhetorical" questions from the pea brain in my head :-)

Best Regards...

Fr Averky

09-12-2003, 04:47 PM

Dear John.

So you see, all is well. Glory to God for all things! May rich blessings be upon you and yours.

Love,

Fr. A.

Fr Averky

09-12-2003, 05:48 PM

My Dear Rebecca,

Thank you for your gracious response, and I am gratified to see that we understand each other now. So many times I find that I read a post, do not understand it fully, and hastily respond, only to find that my response either was inapropriate or simply did not make sense. As the saying goes, "We are only human."

As to the second part of your post, it is very lovely, as are so many of your posts, and I appreciate it, as I am sure will others. You have given this community much to think about, and many times in but a few beautiful and thoughtful words. Thank you, and God bless you.

Respectfully yours,

hieromonk Averky

Effie Ganatsios

10-12-2003, 06:39 AM

Father Averky, I wrote and posted my message no. 49 before your message no. 568 appeared on the board.

As usual, you say everything I wanted to in my message but in a much better way. Your words have so much more authority because anything I might say is only second hand, whereas you live what I can only read about.

There was a documentary on TV last night describing the monasteries in this area and the way the monks and nuns live. Their lives are dedicated to just two things – praise and union with God. Union with God is achieved through ascetic practices and prayer. They have three rules – obedience, chastity and poverty. I listed these from memory so I hope that I haven’t made a mistake.

Effie

Effie Ganatsios

10-12-2003, 07:06 AM

Rebecca, the reason I put the words statement and protest in italics was for this very reason.

No, of course I don't believe that this is their first objective. I have said all along that, if only we would live as the Fathers have advised us to, we would be contributing positively towards a better world, thus fulfilling our duty as stewards of the world that God has given us.

This positive contribution is a by product, a direct consequence, etc of the way we live. I don't know how else to put this and think that I will just stop here.

I have a journal in which I write down interesting things that I find in the books that I read. I go through 2 or 3 books a week (sometimes re-reading loved books quite a few times) so my journal has become a fascinating (to me) treasure that I love to go through from time to time.

Yesterday I started reading Tolstoy's "The death of Ivan Ilyich" and had my journal handy. I have become interested in Tolstoy since reading about his religious "crisis" concerning Orthodoxy. I want to read his "A confession" in which he describes his experience but haven't yet found it.

To continue : I opened my journal and the latest entry was something that I had liked in George Elliot's "The Mill on the Floss". "Coincidences" happen all the time to me and this was another.

I want to post what I had written down because I think it relates to our relationship to nature and how we feel about it and our duty towards it.
It might also explain why some people believe that we can take advantage of nature and not pay the consequences.

"We could never have loved the earth so well if we had had no childhood in it - if it were not the earth where the same flowers come up again every spring that we used to gather with our tiny fingers as we sat lisping to ourselves on the grass, the same hips and haws on the autumn hedgerows, the same redbreasts that we used to call "God's birds" because they did no harm to the precious crops. What novelty is worth that sweet monotony where everything is known, and loved because it is known.... these familiar flowers, these well-remembered birdnotes, this sky with its fitful brightness, those furrowed and grassy fields each with a sort of personality given to it by the capricious hedgerows (WHICH BY THE WAY ARE DISSAPEARING IN ENGLAND ACCORDING TO A DOCUMENTARY MADE IN THE 1990'S WITH DISASTROUS CONSEQUENCES FOR THE MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF SMALL CREATURES WHO LIVE IN THEM) - such things as these are the mother tongue of our imagination, the language that is laden with all the subtle inextricable associations the fleeting hours of our childhood left behind them. Our delight in the sunshine on the deep-bladed grass today might be no more than a faint perception of wearied souls if it were not for the sunshine and the grass in the far off years which still live in us and transform our perception into love."

The above was the excerpt from the book written in about 1860 (with my comment in capital letters regarding hedgerows) and my comment under it was : Man might be destroying the earth as he is doing because he has been born and brought up in concrete cities and has therefore not learnt to love it.

Sorry for the long and perhaps uninteresting post but I felt that this was more than coincidence since I have been thinking constantly about our discussion on this board.

Effie

Effie Ganatsios

10-12-2003, 07:25 AM

Reading through the messages I feel I need to say (once again) that we all agree on the basics but become confused perhaps by the words we use.

Father Averky, no offense taken concerning the statements made regarding the environmental problem by the Orthodox church. One of the characteristics of the Greeks is an intimate acquaintance with words - I have frequently felt awe listening to them discussing something - I think it's because Greek is such a rich and wonderful language. When we, in English, sometimes struggle to find the one word that we need they have already found 10.......

Personally, I am going to continue striving to live as I believe the Orthodox have been instructed to live i.e. as simply as I can (which is very, very hard living in the world as I do and not in a monastery), and I am going to recycle as much as I can, and I am going to use water wisely. If this makes me someone who is misguided or whatever else more "progressively minded" people might label me, so be it. Each person must do as his heart and his soul tell him to.

Effie

R.J.G.

10-12-2003, 04:52 PM

Hello,again.

Speaking of ecology and the environment, one complaint I hear often is that farm/factory animals are abused. Does that mean that we should refuse to participate in a "cruel" industry by becoming vegetarians?

Fr Averky

10-12-2003, 09:40 PM

Dear R.J.G.

That is a difficutlt question, and in a sense goes way beyond ecological issues. From the entire history of mankind, animals have been slaughtered either for food, sacrifice or sport. As to how "humane," it has been, I would think, is a matter of opinion.

I myself do not even like to think how some animals die: those to be used for fur for coats live in tiny cages and die by anal or genital electrocution, in the loved sport of "The Hunt" in England, the fox when exhausted, is caufght and torn to pieces by the hounds; cows cry out in fear, knowing instinctively that they are soon to die, and the older method of killing stray cats by putting them in a chamber and basically imploding them is simply gruesome; to fatten geese for liver pate, a feeding tube is forced down the throat and corn is poured in. Of course, through the efforts of powerful organizations, matterrs are improving, but again these horrible manners of death I have described are just another aspect of man's indifference to what God has created in order to make profit or merely to enjoy himself.

In some caes, killing animals is a mercy to them: the approximate deer population in the U.S. is twenty seven million - millions more than when the Pilgrims arrived in the 1600's. With such a staggering population, thousands and many thousands die of starvation every winter, and thousands more are killed in highwayaccidents, causing injury or death to hundreds of motorist annually. This summer, I killed a faun, and it troubled me for days, and did $1,600 damage to my car.

As to your conclusive question, I wish I could give you a satisfafctory answer, because we could say, "Since the rain forests are being destroyed, should we stop using wood products?' or, " If large corporations are taking over the cheese and dairy industry, putting smaller farms out of business, should we stop eating butter and cheese, and no longer drink milk?"

For me, this is a situation where again, I cannot see such things as effecting what I must eat or use in order to live. Because of my health problems, I must eat eight ounces of beef, fish or chicken every day. I also realize what a miserable existence chickens have, but, every time I have a dialysis treatment, I lose the greater portion of my body's stored protein. Yes, you can say that there are vegetables and fruits high in protein. Not wanting to eat meat. I tried this, and became weaker and weaker. In the end, I went to the bishop about it, and he said, "Consider what your physician has told you to do in this regard as an obedience rom God." Of course, this consoled me, and now I no longer worry about it.

In the end, what I would say, if a person feels strongly about the suffering of creatures killed for producing food, and wishes to be a "Vegen" as they now call it, he may, but, not with a venom, nor should that person impose their feelings or try to make others feel guilty. Such matters are highly individual. We know from the book of Acts that God told St. Peter to no longer keep the law about clean and unclean foods, but to eat everything.

Forgive me, this is all I could come up with; I am sure others can give you a better answer.

Fr. A.

Richard Leigh

10-12-2003, 10:37 PM

Dear R. J. G.,

No, it means we might consider eating Kosher meat. God does not want us to be cruel to animals. If we do what God does not want we place ourselves in the way of his "wrath", for disciplinary purposes, of course. I mean, if we get mad-cow disease from eating the beef of an animal that was fed meal that contained brain tissue from another bovine which died of the disease (i.e., had the virus or whatever in its tissue) then, so be it. Unfortunately for us, the connections and consequences are not so readily available to our attention, because, for self serving reasons, the industry lies to us. It pays to be informed.

The more naturally the food we eat fits into the food chain God provided before human interference, the healthier will be our diet.

Richard

Rebecca

11-12-2003, 01:09 AM

I took a communication course in college, and one of the topics covered was "persuasiveness in communication." Several approaches to pursuading others were covered, one of which was "the appeal to emotion."

The idea is that if one can successfully work up peoples' emotions, then people will be moved to follow the actions one suggests without calmly thinking through the impact of the actions.

Obviously, this is the typical approach of insurance salesmen...I've heard it referred to as "Fear Uncertainty and Doubt" (FUD)...

I guess I'm always skeptical when I see FUD coming along, especially when raising rational questions about the emotional appeal results in the questioner being characterized as somehow "uncaring" or "calloused" (another emotional appeal, this time to guilt/shame).

To try to be very clear: the above 4 paragraphs relate to the popular debate on "the environment" as it is played out in the media.

To try and make this relevant to monachos... I think it goes back to Mr. Leigh's insightful comment about a "crisis of faith"....Do we believe that a) God is active in the world He created, setting bounds on the degree to which we succeed in what we chose to do or b) that He sits back and gives "us" a completely free hand to do what we want with no bounds?

I look at a rainbow, and conclude it's a) and take heart, remembering that He cares for us even though we worry about temporary things, and even though we may not understand the mysterious ways in which He works.

John Curtis Dunn

11-12-2003, 12:15 PM

"....Do we
believe that a) God is active in the world He created, setting bounds
on the degree to which we succeed in what we chose to do or b) that He
sits back and gives "us" a completely free hand to do what we want
with no bounds?

I look at a rainbow, and conclude it's a) and take heart, remembering
that He cares for us even though we worry about temporary things, and
even though we may not understand the mysterious ways in which He
works.
----------------

OK, how much ash does God allow man to produce? Does He allow more ash in Greece than in USA? If my wood stove burns one cord of wood to heat and cook my porridge and you build a more efficient wood burning stove which uses less wood and and produces less ash, am I now required by God to buy a stove from you?

Now your other neighbor, who is a bit of a salesman, sees that 1" your stove is more efficient and would save more of the forest, so he decides to invest into your production and then begins to market the stove using both its efficeient wood burning qualities to emphasize its enviromental benifits, he then gets the local government to endorse and pass a law that all new stove purchases must meet the standards of your stove, which raises the demand for your stoves but lower demands of wood. This causes some of other citizens, who have been earning their daily bread by cutting wood to be laid off of work, and most of these have no skills for making stoves, if these latter grumble and murmer about their loss of income, are they sinning against God's desire to save the forest?

Should we limit the number of efficient stoves so as to limit the number of wood choppers lay-offs? Does God want stove producers to be successful, but wood choppers to fail, or the other way around?

Now then, your stoves are more efficient, but to produce them at a marketable price you must mine your iron in Spain in order to keep the cost of production low, but now you have created jobs for people in Spain while disenfrancising those in Greece, can we conclude that God wants people in Spain to work, but people not people in Greece?

Then one day an angry crowd of former wood choppers picket your home, because your stove manufactoring plant in Spain, has lowered the tax base of your home town [since people now earn less and have less to be taxed] so the roads are not being repaired. If you went outside and explained to the crowd how you are being ecologically and enviromentally responsible, and then a mist falls and the sun rays shine through the mist causing a rainbow, would you then attempt to convince them that that rainbow is a sign from God that God is on your side?

I know this is simplistic, but so are the three rules you have set out.

Some who argue to defend the science proving Global warming, also note that global warming began about eight thousand years ago, when prehistoric man discovered how to build a fire. That is probably when his palate also began to pavor meat. He probably chased a helpless deer or hid and surprised the deer to deth.

Was God angry at Cain because his fire did not burn wood efficiently? Was Able more enviromentally conscious than Cain?

john dunn

Owen Jones

11-12-2003, 03:44 PM

There is a fallacy of modern theology that reduces God to Will. So therefore, we are constantly asking ourselves questions as to what is and what isn't God's will regarding every minute detail of things. Or what is God's "decision" that is behind this or that event? But God is not only will. God is Parousia. His dynamic presence in all things. There is a flux or flow to that presence. Sometimes we go dry spiritually. Sometimes whole societies do. For a long time. That is not just a failure of human will but reflects the flux of God's Parousia, for some higher reason that we can never know. So when we try to parse reality into every event being one of God's will, we err. The training of the Church is to become open, not only to God's will, but to His presence, as formative of who we are and leading to some degree of discernment regarding how we should think and live. But there is no absolute in this. There are holy, holy men who give evidence of this in their lives, who have been virulently anti-semitic for example. Are we really to believe that because they know God's will in some things, they know it in all things? We are not expected to know God's will in all things, partly because he cannot be reduced to will.

This is particularly true in politics. Because a monk knows what he is talking about when it comes to prayer and living a holy life, does that mean that he knows God's will regarding national industrial policy? Most of what we do in life involves a lot of stumbling around. The only sure bet is that we know God's will in the negative. We know what we wants us not to do. But we have to be very careful in asserting that we know what he wants us TO do. There is a story of a solitary who lived in a rock cave, barely more than an indentation in a rock wall. He prayed for years as to whether or not it was God's will for him to scrape out an indentation in the rock in order to catch water when it rained in order to build up a supply of water, or whether or not that would be a sign of his lack of faith. This is an extreme example, but a good one, to expose the vanity behind our certitude that we know God's will, especially when we think we know God's will for the WHOLE WORLD!

Rebecca

11-12-2003, 03:53 PM

I know this is simplistic, but so are the three rules you have set out.

I didn't realize I was setting out three rules...I was just trying to say that our puny human brains and our eyes that are bound to "worldly things" don't see the depths of God's plans or His reasons for what He allows to happen and what He prevents. I believe that nothing happens except that He allows it to happen. He promised not to wipe out the whole human race again as He did with the flood, and that's the hope in the rainbow and imo, good reason to be calm.

this is relevant to the environmental discussion, imo, because the FUD I hear is that the earth is on the verge of being unable to support life, and the human race is moments away from extinction ---due to the actions of an ambiguous "them" who are destroying the earth--unless a *big change* happens.

However, calm, rational examination of the big changes are being suggested are often just met with more emotional appeals, rather than reasoned discussions.

One of my favorite quotes from St. Macarius says that the demons don't harass someone as much as they want but only as much as God allows. Another example is that Stalin did terrible things, but I don't believe he did do as much as he wanted to do.

I spent a year as a biology major and what I learned was the incredible complexity that exists in living things. Interactions between molecules are complex, interactions between cells are complex, interactions between whole beings (animals and plants of various species) are complex. the complexity of the whole system, where everything affects everything else to me, makes absurd any human claims to be able to completely control the natural world.

for example, a couple of decades ago some environmentalists imported an aquatic plant and set it in a polluted river to "clean it up." Well, the plant grew uncontrollably causing a worse impact to the local food web than the pollution was causing...

However, in the emotionally charged context of the "environmental debate" I seldom see a calm and rational discussion of the *big* suggested actions to be taken and the potential negative impact of some of the bigger actions on the agenda. To me, this destroys a lot of the credibility of the environmentalist position.

At the end of the day, though, I find myself wondering what the Saints tell us we *should* worry about, given the human capacity to worry and have fear. The answer I come up with is that they tell us to worry about the final judgement when we will have to answer for all our words and actions in the context of God's perspective on things. If following His commandments should have occasion to violate the sensibilities of an environmentalist then so be it. Better to follow God and be ridiculed/attacked than conform to a more worldly philosophy that may be out of harmony with what God tells us.

And I'm not trying to judge the environmental movement as being either Christian or anti Christian, but trying to point out that the measure for what is the right thing for any of us to do is based on our faith...I think that's consistent with what one of the EP's statements...he said something about concern for the environment needing to be in the context of Orthodox Christianity. In other words, we have responsibility to think about things and not just react to emotional appeals or peer pressure.

Richard Leigh

11-12-2003, 06:56 PM

Hellow John Dunn,

Thank you for your entertaining essay.

I would say our human problem is the inability to be motivated to do anything by anything other than a profit motive, and that on a right quick return on our investment.
The trees are part of a larger system in place to keep the oxygen-carbon-nitrogen cycle going as raw material for living organisms, ultimately human ones.

I'm of the opinion that "Global Warming" is partly due to simple cycles in nature of great sweep, much longer than human lifetimes, but I don't think we can deny the human hand in speeding up the process.

I think we do better to live frugally for the benifit of others in as conscious a way as we possibly can, and by that latter I mean being aware of the long term consequences of what we do to the environment, and learn from our mistakes.

Richard

R.J.G.

11-12-2003, 08:51 PM

Thank you for answering my questions on animals. After I read a disturbing article on dog fighting in Reader's Digest, I thought about joining an animal rights group. But then I got the impression that animal rights and environmental groups usually have some sort of hippie, pro-abortion, or pagan agenda. Is that true? Should Orthodox people try to stay away from activism all together? (Have these questions been answered already somewhere else?)

Richard Leigh

12-12-2003, 01:33 AM

Dear R.J.G.,

Not necessarily. Most are pretty individuallistic.
My daughter "belongs to" PETA without buying into the notion that animals actually have "rights," but that none the less, humans have responsibilities for them.

My advice is to ask the particular group. And I would never fear being up front about my own proplife, ant-abortion etc., stance. (If I were in a totalitarian state, that might be a different story...)

Richard

Fr Averky

13-12-2003, 03:50 AM

Dear Friends,

Owen you are right, I am still struggling to attain the spiritual life, and I know nothing about national industrial policy, thus my comment that monks are not exactly experts on ecological issues.

While it is true that we are more aware of what God's will is not, certainly we are capable of being aware of what it is for us, although it is not always clearly written out. God speaks to us and shows us the way all the time, we just have to have the desire to see His will and then to do it.

John Curtis Dunn, where do you get all of those ideas? (smile)

R.J. G. Not ever having been one to join groups having issues, I always feel it is better to do something to better a situation by doing some good quietly and privately. By contributing to a local animal shelter, either by donating cat and dog food, or writing a check to me is more postive than spraying fake blood in a fur sales show room. And of course, there are so many ways to help the poor and homeless right in your own town. Many many people doing many small good deeds do make a difference, especially when done for the sake of Christ. Sitting back complaining or judging does no one any good. Each of us has an opportunity to give our Widow's Mite every day, and if done or given from our hearts, God will notice it.

Love in Christ,

Fr. A.

John Curtis Dunn

13-12-2003, 03:05 PM

The Ecological Crisis, IMO, as it confronts and challanges the Orthodox Church and her members is about two worldviews: Consumerism versus Contemplation. The former is viewed as being materialistic by the latter, and the latter is perceived as being out of touch with modern civilization. Perhaps, man is driven in both of these directions by his dual-nature: spirit and flesh. He is at once a creature who moves outwards towards his physical enviroment and inward towards his spiritual enviroment.

Perhaps, the tension exists because of how we answer, why and for what purpose was man Created as both a physical and spirtiutal Creation?

john dunn

Owen Jones

13-12-2003, 04:01 PM

There are no new questions. How far should the Church go in imposing its will on society? The Church opposed autopsies. Should we have given up on that issue? The Church opposed charging interest on loans. Should it have given up on that policy? The Church opposed changing the calender.

The Church is now asked to oppose pollution and industrialization that causes pollution. It is demanding that people be taxed in order to pay for the elimination of pollution. Is this just another in a long line of social policy demands by the Church that will be overtaken by events?

Also, what is more important as causing death and suffering? Pollution? Abortion? There are millions dying of AIDS. Should we not also take the same stern moral approach on this issue that we are asked to take regarding pollution? Should the Church not condemn the behavior leading to so many millions of deaths, and countless orphans. Should we not advocate laws making sodomy illegal and imposing harsh sanctions? Is there really any difference? In fact, we can clearly see the suffering and death in the countless millions from abortion and from sodomy. It is much more difficult to make a scientific case that people are dying or will die, certainly in mass numbers, from industrial pollutants. Mostly what we hear are the extreme, isolated cases, such as Chernobyl. But the rest of it is statistical projection. A theory. That sodomy causes many millions of deaths and orphans is not a theory. it is a demonstrable fact. Why one moral imperative and not another? Why this moral imperative and not that moral imperative?