MARY BETZ describes spirituality and prayer grounded in appreciating and working to preserve creation. 

As soon as she could toddle she played under the branches of an old oak tree, admired the blossoming redbud and dogwood, fled from snakes and poison ivy — all the while serenaded by crested cardinals and mourning doves. Soon she was investigating swamps where red-winged blackbirds called from bulrushes, polliwogs metamorphosed into frogs and mosquitoes abounded. Later she biked to the riverbank, pine forest and patches of wild blackberries. In winter she listened to the snow crunching under her skis, watched for small animal tracks and gazed down at valleys from mountain ridges. In summer she was immersed in birdsong, the unfolding succession of wildflowers and the mysterious lives of beaver, porcupine and wood warblers. It was all wondrous.

She tried being a “good Catholic” in the formal sense but she couldn’t stay focused during long-winded prayers and rituals and then suffered quiet guilt at not maintaining a recognised discipline of prayer. She left the Church in early adulthood finding that it did not connect with her life. And she spent her days-off from her environmental work traversing snow-bound mountains and paddling among seals at sunset, asking God what life was all about.

After a time she felt drawn back to the Church and was asked to write her spiritual autobiography. She worried about explaining that she didn’t pray. But a life-changing revelation was in store. All the time she had despaired of mastering prayer, a different kind of prayer had found her. That prayer was of being in communion with the natural world. It was a well-known prayer in the Christian tradition, practised by desert fathers and mothers and mystics throughout the ages; but the Church had all but forgotten it.

Contemplating Creation – A Spiritual Work of Mercy

When Pope Francis established the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation earlier this year, he also took the astonishing step of designating the care of creation as both a spiritual and a corporal work of mercy. Drawing on Laudato Si’ to illustrate how caring for our common home can be spiritual, Francis said that we are called to a “grateful contemplation of God’s world” which allows us “to discover in each thing a teaching which God wishes to hand on to us.” Several times he harkens back to “the two sacred books” of the early desert contemplatives: the first book is the book of creation and the second is the book of the scriptures. He quotes Pope John Paul II who also spoke of God’s “precious book, ‘whose letters are the multitude of created things present in the universe.’”

To read and pray God’s first sacred book, we need only spend time in solitude with creation. The late Benedictine, Bede Griffiths, tells us how this is done: “I walked out alone in the evening and heard the birds singing in the full chorus of song . . . A lark rose suddenly from the ground beside the tree by which I was standing and poured out its song above my head and then sank, still singing, to rest . . . Everything then grew still as the sunset faded and the veil of dusk began to cover the earth. I remember now the feeling of awe which came over me. I felt inclined to kneel to the ground, as though I had been standing in the presence of an angel; and I hardly dared to look on the face of the sky because it seemed as though it was but a veil before the face of God.”

Through such contemplation or visio divina, we are led more deeply into the mystery of God and to profound gratitude for the beauty, magnificence and bounty of creation and Creator: “Through the greatness and beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker” (Wisdom 13:5). Practising this spiritual work of mercy as often as possible grounds us both in God and in the Earth and energises us to practise care of creation in its corporal form.

Protecting Creation – A Corporal Work of Mercy

Immersion in and gratitude for beauty changes how we feel, think and act. It forms us for the other work we have to do “to build a better world.” As Francis says: 

“If someone has not learned to stop and admire something beautiful, we should not be surprised if he or she treats everything as an object to be used and abused without scruple. If we want to bring about deep change, we need to realise that certain mindsets really do influence our behaviour.”

We bring about deep change in ourselves by our time in creation, and deep change in the world with “simple daily gestures which break with the logic of violence, exploitation and selfishness.” The more we see beauty and interrelationships between insects, flowers, birds, forests, atmosphere and oceans, the more likely we are to care for them. Our current lifestyles, often adopted without reflection, can harm ecosystems and the life they support. Francis lists specific actions to care for creation, adapted here for Aotearoa New Zealand:

• Reduce use of petrol cars and airplanes

• Eat more plant-based meals

• Source food locally, seasonally and ethically

• Minimise water consumption (and hence wastewater)

• Limit use of paper and plastics

• Turn off electronics overnight and lights when not in use

• Care for the natural environment, including planting trees

• Reduce consumption and consumerism (Ask: “Do I need this?”)

• Reuse, clean, repair whatever possible

• Recycle everything feasible; compost food scraps

The interconnections between human well-being, the health of our planet, our spiritual practice and life-styles are very clear now. Exploring the connections and taking action is crucial.

Being with God in Creation

While each of us discovers God in a myriad of ways and places, Francis has called our attention specifically to the need to allow God to meet us through creation. In our part of the world we have ready access to natural beauty where we can just contemplate. I sometimes hear friends say: “I spent a lot of time working in my garden and I’m just going to sit and look at it now.” And: “I see these trees every day but only by really gazing at them do I realise their intricacy and beauty.”

Francis reminds us that the whole world reveals God to us: “The entire material universe speaks of God’s love, God’s boundless affection for us. Soil, water, mountains: everything is, as it were, a caress of God.” And immersed in God’s beauty and love we feel an invitation to change some of the ways we relate to this beauty in order to protect and sustain it. Poet Mary Oliver puts it like this: 

“And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? 
And have you changed your life?”

Published in Tui Motu Magazine. Issue 210 Nov 2016: 6-7.