CHRISTIE'S PROGRESS JOURNAL: SEPTEMBER 17-19, 2004

9-17-04 I read an article by Wendy Weisman, called: “Where Do Puppets Come From?” As I daily visualize the production of “The Firebird” folktale I plan to produce this spring, I think of many aspects that she addresses in her article. A long-time puppeteer, Hurlin, tells of his deciding what kind of puppets to use in plays, by saying: “Using the storyboard, I make a list of things a puppet needs to do. She needs to be able to hold things, kneel, walk, run and look behind her.” This is a great suggestion! I will make such a list when I finish translating and adapting the folktale.

In her article, Weisman says, “Critical to the construction process in puppetry are decisions as to how the character must interact with both operator and audience.”

I will have music accompanying the action in the production; a mandolin, bongos, etc.

9-18-04 I watched a movie called, “Living In Nature: Religion and Science in Dialogue on the Environment.” It was produced by The Boston Theological Institute in 1997. I learned from the movie that since early Christian times, all creation was thought to be one, because God is one. The narrator said: “Theologically, nature was seen as a symbolic system through which God teaches wisdom, but valuable only for pointing they way toward higher truth.” The original intent of science was to seek to understand the Divine. Many scientists still do so.

This way of thinking of nature as a set of systems, all interwoven, ultimately bringing us back to God, reminded me of a Kahlil Gibran quote from his 1923 book, The Prophet, in which he says: “And if you would know God be not therefore a solver of riddles. Rather look about you and you shall see Him playing with your children. And look into space; you shall see Him walking in the clouds, outstretching His arms in the lightning and descending in rain. You shall see Him smiling in flowers, then rising and waving His hands in trees.”

The movie pointed out that the industrious bee is an example of a model for humanity, among others. The connections made between humans and nature, and the paradoxes that can be inferred, are so refreshing. For instance, the movie stated that “Western Europeans viewed nature as a kindly and caring mother provider, a manifestation of the God who imprinted a designed, planned order on the world.” This is still very much a part of our language today; Mother Earth.

James W. Skehan, S.J., a geologist and priest at Boston College, said: “God is speaking to us, through nature, and we have to be very attentive to nature as having a sacramentality, as being sacred, because this is the word, the cosmic word of God.” Although many scientists still hold to such beliefs, much of Western science lost its religious roots during the Enlightenment.

The movie focused heavily on human power and biblical dominion over nature. In regards to this, Emmanuel Clapsis, a theologian at Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, said, “Theology becomes co-responsible with science and technology, for the ecological problem, the magnitude and urgency of the ecological crisis, requires that all religious communities in conversation with scientists, economies, social figures, politicians, and all people of good will, articulate ethical principles that may hold, or at least limit, the destruction of natural life and resources.”

It was interesting to hear from a Jewish woman, Elisheva Kaufman, who works with environmental education, about the Jewish understanding of creation being “an on-going co-creative relationship.” In other words, creation never stops. The earth is always being created, and that is why it is our duty to take care of it, all of it.

Optimistically, the movie made a point of relaying the current healthy environmental practices of many religious groups around the world, including: stewardship, honoring the web of creation, co-creative partnership, liberation theology, eco-feminism, and environmental justice.

Ecofeminism is a relatively new term, one with which I am somewhat unfamiliar. The movie explained the eco-feminist view as seeing environmental degradation as part of a larger pattern that includes gender, class, economic, and racial oppression. This is a profound thought…one that conveys the importance of humans within the web of nature, and how with the removal of things like division between the sexes and classes, and racial oppression, the environment would soon see a change for the better.

Humans are not often thought of as part of nature, though. In the movie, Byron Rushing, a legislator in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, said: “Our concern is nature. Our concern is with all that is natural, and people are natural. As long as we understand that people are natural, then we can have a discussion of environmental justice that does include everybody.” I agree. Humans are part of nature, not just visitors, wholly set apart from the natural environment. Later in the film, Rushing goes on to say: “People have been persuaded that it doesn’t matter what they do, nothing will change. That’s the powerlessness that has to be overcome.” It’s so true, isn’t it? We ask ourselves, What can insignificant little me do? Well, a whole lot of insignificant little me’s add up to a whole bunch of significant we’s!

A philosopher from Worchester Polytechnic Institute, Roger S. Gottlieb, is quoted in the movie as saying: “We all live and breathe and drink the water and receive the food from the soil, and we know, very simply that all these things are threatened.” He goes on to tell of how living with an apathetic that’s-not-my-domain attitude is wrong. How can the life-giving natural environment upon which we all depend not be our domain?!?!?

Last year I read C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves, in which he states: “Nature gave the word glory a meaning for me.” This is the remark of a true nature theologian. I was reminded of his remark as I watched the film while Richard Wright, a biologist at Gordon College, spoke of God’s glory being revealed in nature. He said: “Our degradation of the creation actually ruins that aspect of the creation which is there to show God’s glory.” It is an interesting concept when one thinks of how difficult we find it most times to see God’s glory.

Yet, particularly in America, it is thought that the best way to save such a glorious nature is to fence it off, deem it untouchable. But is this the best thing for it? For us? In the movie, Bruce Babbitt, a geologist, policy maker, and Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, said in regard to the deterioration of a fenced-off section of the Florida Everglades: “Creation isn’t very susceptible to being partitioned into little squares, and say, Well, here’s a representative sample of God’s creation.”

One of the last clips in the movie is one in which Corbin Harney, a political activist, elder, and healer in the Western Shoshone Nation, addresses a crowd with these words: “Let’s protect our water the best way we can. Let’s not just talk about it and think it’s gonna continue to flow…it’s not. This is a message that I’m giving to you…what I’ve been given from the Creator out there. So, I’m giving it to you, so you people can do something about it.” These are powerful words for an oftentimes intentionally powerless generation.

9-19-04 I watched a movie called: “Keeping the Earth: Religious and Scientific Perspectives on the Environment.” It was produced by Joseph Seamans and the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1996. The movie begins with Ismar Schorsch, chancellor at the Jewish Theological Seminary, saying: “We relate to God through God’s handiwork. Nature is God’s textbook. It’s God’s gift to existence. So, to read God, we read nature.”

A main part of the movie is speculation about God giving humankind dominion over all life on earth. Calvin DeWitt, director at Au Sable Institute, shatters a common misconception, by saying: “Dominion does not mean abusive use. It means earth-keeping, creature-keeping.”

Drew Christiansen, S.J. of the U.S. Catholic Conference, goes on to say: “It’s there in Genesis, before you get the 10 commandments. Caring for the creation is a fundamental call that the LORD places upon us all.” Is he right? Could this, in fact, be the first, and therefore utmost important, commandment given to humankind? If so, we are all damnable, deserving the deteriorating world we are making for ourselves and our children. How far from God and truth we are if Christiansen is right.

Paul Gorman, director of the National Religious Partnership for the Environment, brings into light our distance from and inability to communicate with God saying, “In a certain sense, we conduct a continuing conversation with God, as we move through God’s creation in the natural world. If that’s true, somehow, every act which destroys a species circumscribes our conversation with our Creator.” What a tragedy, if these men are correct in their deductions.

One segment of the movie focuses on the idea of Sabbath. God had a Sabbath, a day of rest. And likewise, humans have (or are intended to have) a day set aside for rest and renewal. So, why is it such a foreign idea for the land to have a Sabbath? Without a chance to rest and replenish itself, it will become more and more worn out. The movie made this clear by showing forests that have been completely and repeatedly clear-cut, and mines that have completely and unrelentingly stripped the soil of its nutrients and resources, devastating the land with little hope of renewal.

Michal Smart, a member of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, tells this prayer said by her family every Sabbath:

Even if our own mouths were as full of song as the sea,

And our lips as full of praise as the breadths of the heaven,

And our eyes as bright as the sun,

And our hands as outstretched as the eagles of the sky,

And our feet as swift as gazelles,

We could not thank You enough.

Smart goes on to say, “All creation praises God, and every voice in the chorus is needed.”

When I finished the movie, I watched it in reverse so as to go back and find out the names of some of the people I’ve quoted. And ironically, I saw, in reverse, the environmental degradation shown throughout the film. It was beautiful to watch smoke being sucked back into giant belching smokestacks, and to see tall trees being unsawed and standing themselves back up, and to watch bull-dozers unleveling the earth, and to watch forest fires dissipate and singed leaves become restored to fervent life, and to see rigorously-digging mining shovels putting rock back into the earth. It was awesome… such a powerful irony. If only such a reversal of detrimental actions could happen in real life. (sigh) For the most part, our foolish actions show that we think it can.