NJPN Blog: Ashes and Ecology

Fr Rob Esdaile

"Remember (wo)man that thou art dust and unto dust thou shalt return."

Could these words be the key to tackling the ecological crisis? Could the ritualised remembrance of our earth-born frailty that marks the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday transform our relationship with our Common Home?

Dear reader, I am the ultimate example of upcycling - and so are you. We are stardust in a surprisingly literal sense - and that's not an exercise in self-aggrandisement. Every atom in our bodies used to be something or someone else. And every atom will be bequeathed, passed on, reused. We are tomorrow's mulch. Perhaps the road to sane relations with our Mother Earth is the befriending of this glorious truth.

The late Thich Nhat Hanh put it thus: "We often forget that the planet we are living on has given us all the elements that make up our bodies. The water in our flesh, our bones, and all the microscopic cells inside our bodies all come from the Earth and are part of the Earth. The Earth is not just the environment we live in. We are the Earth and we are always carrying her within us … We need to recognise that the planet and the people on it are ultimately one and the same." (Love Letter To The Earth, pp.10-11)

I hold physical life in me only by letting it pass through me and beyond; by receiving and yielding, in reciprocation. Holding my breath, doing my own thing in isolation, hoarding life as mine and mine alone, is not an option that can last or lead to long-term flourishing. Only flow, interchange, inspiring and expiring (a loaded word, I know), gives life at all. I belong. We belong. To the earth and to each other. Ubuntu: I am because you are. Yet in a capitalist economy that sounds the wrong way round. Belongings, in our consumer culture, are what we have, not what we are, even if we ruefully acknowledge in our later years that "you can't take it with you."

What then of eternal life? What becomes of Resurrection faith if my molecules will have been thus shared around by the time the last trumpet sounds? Perhaps science has at last released us from individualistic, rather silly imaginings of glorious resuscitated me indefinitely preserved (now wrinkle-free and at my imagined ideal age and weight). Nor should we view our carbon-based life forms as mere husk, fit only for the discard pile when death shall liberate our souls. Our bodies are our only access to ourselves; and Eternal Life has the same character of flow, breath, communion and wholeness, in both the Now and the Hereafter. Salvation will always mean a being earthed, belonging to the cosmic whole, even after corporeal death. Divine love embraces all Creation, not little bits of it.

Vatican II already taught that God willed to make people holy and to serve Him "not as individuals without any bond or link between them but rather … [as] a People." (Lumen Gentium n.9) Now we need to go further in our understanding of Communion, extending it to embrace the link between our bodies and our Common Home. We need to discover again what St Francis knew eight centuries ago. Laudato Si' says: "For to him each and every creature was a sister united to him by bonds of affection. That is why he felt called to care for all that exists." Let him be our teacher, then: "If we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder, … our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs. By contrast, if we feel intimately united with all that exists, then sobriety and care will well up spontaneously … Rather than a problem to be solved, the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise." (Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter, Laudato Si', nn.11-12)

All flesh is dust. From the earth we came; to the earth we shall return. Our planet, at every moment held in being by divine creativity, will outlast us all; but in the end all that is shall find its Consummation in the Lord; shall be raised up in Christ. With that realisation let us reverence with far greater care our dear sister, Mother Earth. With that faith let us begin together our Spirit-driven Lenten journey, ashed with hope and with humility.

Fr Rob Esdaile is parish priest of Our Lady of Lourdes, Thames Ditton