General Assembly of the Asia and Pacific Alliance of YMCAs
Tozanso, Japan
Biblical Reflection for Thursday, 5th September 2019
Theme: Ecological Crisis and Climate Change
Bart Shaha, PhD
Former Secretary-General, World Alliance of YMCAs
(Bible Readings: Psalm 65; Matthew 13: 1-8; John 4: 7-14)
Introduction
Let me at the very outset congratulate the APAY for selecting such a relevant Theme for today’s Worship and Reflection. The Ecological Crisis and Climate Change we face today has indeed become one of the most pressing issues of our time. That is because all over the world people are experiencing the brutal outcomes of the crisis in harsher and harsher ways. Look at the intensive cyclones, hurricanes, floods, storms, drought, heat-waves and forest fires. They are creating so much havoc on such a large number of people, making them homeless and destitute overnight! No wonder, more and more people, including students and even little children are gathering to express their urgent concerns and to take meaningful actions. Many climate advocacy and action groups, including some Governments are not calling it a ‘crisis’ any longer; they call it ‘climate emergency!’
In this Biblical Reflection I wish to ask ourselves first the question of who we are as human beings, then look at our connection with the Environment and the magnitude of the devastation humanity has caused on the Ecology, especially in the last 20 – 30 years. I then look at our Faith as Christians and the Vision of the YMCA in dealing with the issue as an Ecumenical Movement and finally share some thoughts on strategies for the future. Thus, this reflection consists of the following brief sections: the Poetry of Creation; the Mystery of Life; Life under Threat; Our Faith and Life; the YMCA Vision for Integral Ecology and Thoughts on Strategies for the Future.
The Poetry of Creation
Isn’t this Creation a mind-captivating Poetry? Look at the universe, the galaxies, the sun, moon, and the planets – Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and the Earth! What a wonderful art work they together make! What a poetic rhythm they create and every day continue to overwhelm us! Every time I look up at the morning or the evening sky, I am awe struck by their magnificence and beauty, and thank God for the gift of Life. Many of the Psalms of the Holy Bible express praise for the Poetry of Creation in a wonderful way – take for example Psalm 65.
Where from have you and I come to this beautiful and bountiful Mother Earth? Scientists say, we are made of star-dust – atoms, swung here after the Big Bang occurred billions of years ago! Recent books on Astrophysics, written in a simple language, tell us of the latest scientific understanding of where we human beings came from and how we became who we are. But let me begin by sharing with you a poem which I wrote some time ago on this subject matter. It’s titled: “A Verse for the Universe.”
A Verse for the Universe
I do not know yet if we were born
in a Universe or a Multiverse –
ever expanding, ever evolving.
Be what it may, I’m a dust
of Creation, a dust from molten stars…
descending from the Milky Way
of a hundred billion galaxies; landing on
Mother Earth, circling time and time
again, around the Sun - connecting cells,
evolving cells, becoming life!
Then on a bright sunny day,
I became mindful of my mind;
conscious of my consciousness !
And yet, there’s no reason why
I should not believe in you my God…
the Big Bang is a story of your love.
It was you who knitted my ancestry –
my species, my molecule, my atom.
It was nearly 14 billion years ago that the Big Bang occurred. Galaxies, stars, and planets were formed in an ever expanding, ever cooling Universe. After 9 billion years of high mass stars exploding and scattering chemically enriched matter throughout the Milky Way galaxy, the Sun was born. The gas cloud from which the Sun formed contained heavy supplies of elements that spawned many orbiting objects that included several rocky and gaseous planets. Thus was formed the Earth in a fortunate zone around the Sun where oceans could exist in liquid form. It was in these oceans that organic molecules came into being and began to replicate life. Single celled organisms became complex carbon-based molecules leading ultimately to our mammal ancestors. One branch of these mammals – the primates, evolved into the species Homo sapiens, who are endowed with unimaginable intelligence and who have an immensely creative mind. What an overwhelming story of Life this is! Indeed, we human beings - the atoms of which we are made of - are so connected to the stars that exploded billions of years ago. We are so intimately related to the environment and the ecology we see around us (1).
The Mystery of Life
I was very fortunate in my early student life to study the Sciences before Theology. I remember how overwhelmed I was when for the first time I looked at a drop of water under the microscope. The great dynamism with which so many kinds of life were moving around - dashing, playing or swimming - in that tiny drop of water is so vivid in my mind even to this day! The study of Biology enabled me to understand the making of cells and plant life. In Physics, I was introduced to the wonders of the sky and the natural laws of the physical world. I was so fascinated by the way life evolved. Therefore, when I began to study Theology, reading Genesis in the backdrop of the scientific theory of Evolution wasn’t really a problem for me. I could interpret each ‘day’ of Creation, as narrated in Genesis, as pertaining to a time-frame of a few billion years.
Life is so beautiful, so complex; yet so delicate and vulnerable! All life, including our human life, is so dependent on the earth’s environment and its ecosystems. However, endowed with intelligence and consciousness, and having a conscience, we human beings have the great gift of differentiating between good and evil – we can decide, through our free will, which direction to take.
In his enlightening Encyclical “Laudato Si” (On Care for our Common Home), Pope Francis reminds us that: “In this universe, shaped by open and intercommunicating systems, we can discern countless forms of relationship and participation. This leads us to think of the whole as open to God’s transcendence, within which it develops…We are free to apply our intelligence towards things evolving positively, or towards adding new ills, new causes of suffering and real setbacks” (2). Laudato Si further notes: “Human beings, even if we postulate a process of evolution, also possess a uniqueness which cannot be fully explained by the evolution of other open systems. Each of us has his or her own personal identity and is capable of entering into dialogue with others and with God himself.” (3)
Indeed, we are endowed with the power of discernment. We can make sacrifices for the common good. Love and compassion in the human heart goes out of its way to be helpful to a person needing help or is in danger. Parents take extra care of a child who is weak and fragile. Human beings suffer when others suffer. Human beings are not fully satisfied with material things alone. They look for the profound meaning of life. They seek spirituality. But human beings can also be very selfish, ruthless, violent and destructive. Indeed life is such a great mystery!
Life Under Threat
Considering the history of life on Earth, we are told that after the age of reptiles (Mesozoic Era) there came the age of mammals (Cenozoic Era). Human beings are the final result of this period. Geologists have divided this period into seven epochs, the last being the Holocene Epoch, the period when the earth experienced a milder climate and so reached the highest peak in the numbers of species of life. However, looking at the environmental and ecological conditions of today, many believe that we have already replaced the Holocene epoch with another geological epoch, now widely known as Anthropocene. This epoch is characterised generally by a drastic deterioration of the natural world, rise of concentration of greenhouse gases mainly carbon dioxide and methane, global warming, rising sea levels, climate changes affecting agricultural production, chemically altered soil and many other characteristics including deadly weapons. As a result, the Earth’s biodiversity which took hundreds of millions of years to make, is being extinguished at an alarming rate. We can see how all life, including human life is under increased threat, mainly because of humanity’s most selfish and shameful greed! (4)
Our Faith and Life
As followers of Jesus Christ we are always reminded of his life and teachings. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John note that when he spoke, great crowds followed him. Why? Because most of the time in his sermons and parables, Jesus talked about Life. In John 10: 10 we find: “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.”
During his life on earth, Jesus fed the hungry (Mt. 14:13-23); gave sight to the blind (Mt. 20:29-34); cured the sick, and even restored life to the dead (Mk. 5:21-43). He preached the coming of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom characterised by justice, love and peace. His Kingdom is the Kingdom of life, the Kingdom of love; and so he asked his disciples to “love one another. Just as I have loved you, love one another” (Jn. 13:34); which is absolutely a different teaching from the past, where the common practice was “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Mt. 5:38). He asked people to be kind and caring: “for I was hungry and you gave me food… I was a stranger and you welcomed me… I was sick and you took care of me…” (Mt. 25: 35-46). He asked people to forgive each other (Mt. 18: 21-22; and the Lord’s Prayer).
His language was very poetic and he used symbols from the natural world. For example, in the Parable of the Sower (Mt. 13: 1-8) he talks about the seeds and how they “fell on the path and the birds came and ate them up; some fell on rocky ground where they did not have much soil, and they sprang up quickly, since they had no depth of soil. But when the sun rose, they were scorched; and since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell on good soil and brought forth grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” I think through this parable Jesus is asking us to think about who we are as human beings. Are we the good soil with a heart of flesh (i.e. being connected, having a feeling for Creation and acting justly)? Or are we the dry path or the rocky ground (ego-centric, selfish and exploitative) with no potentials to bear abundant fruit?
But Jesus goes further. He talks of Life not only in this world, but also of Life after we conclude our respective journeys on Earth. And so, to the woman of Samaria (John 4:7-14) he says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Obviously, Jesus is teaching us that there is a deeper meaning to Life. That this journey on Earth is the preparation of an eternal journey. If we drink the water that Jesus gives, we will never be thirsty again – we will be fulfilled eternally! Jesus is telling us that everything does not end here. But, what we do in this journey on Earth is of vital importance, as seen in the Parable of the Sower. The Kingdom of God (the reign of justice, peace and love) will increase and multiply and reach its ultimate fruition only if we reject evil (selfishness, violence and ego-centrism) and be good – i.e., doing justice to Creation and to fellow human beings. So, the ultimate question for all of us is: Through our daily living, are we fostering Life? How are we engaged in spiritual growth?
YMCA Vision for Integral Ecology
On 6 June this year (2019) we celebrated the 175th anniversary of the founding of the YMCA in London, United Kingdom. I was fortunate to participate in the event with two other former Secretary Generals of the World Alliance of YMCAs – Nick Nightingale and Johan Vilhelm Eltvik, and the current Secretary General, Carlos Madjiri Sanvee. The program included a Thanksgiving Worship wherein the four of us from the World Alliance were asked to pray from a prepared text written by the Organisers. The text that I was asked to pray with was this:
“Heavenly Father, Lord of the Earth … we recognise the beauty and glory of your world. We pray you would help us to protect and nurture our environment. As icecaps melt, climate change escalates and the conditions in which we live change, we ask for your mercy. Teach us to understand how our organisations can be positive influences for good in our changing world. We ask this in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.”
What a beautiful prayer this is, recognising the current ecological condition of the Earth, asking God for mercy for the damage done to it, and expressing our commitment to change the situation.
George Williams, founder of the YMCA in London in 1844, had a great Ecumenical vision of uniting young people in prayer and social action. Observing the impacts of the Industrial Revolution in the city of London then, he organised a Prayer Group of young people from different denominations (Ecumenical). Their hearts moved with compassion to address a critical issue of that time - the issue of youth who had come to London to work and who lived in very deprived and dire conditions. The YMCA engaged in uplifting their lives, offering them a secure and healthy place to live. Gradually it organised programs for the development of the whole person in Body, Mind and Spirit (represented in the equilateral triangle – the traditional YMCA emblem). Later, as the YMCA spread all over the world it organised communities to address their critical needs. Its focus was not only on individual development but also on the development of entire communities - on Building Community (5).
As far back as 1855, the YMCA at its first international gathering in Paris, adopted its Mission Statement known as the Paris Basis, committing itself to follow Jesus Christ as the Lord and Saviour and to work for the ‘extension of the Kingdom of God.’ The YMCA was a pioneer in the Ecumenical Movement as other Ecumenical bodies adopted a similar Statement of Mission in later years. In contemporary times we interpret this Mission as working towards a community characterised by justice, love and peace.
At the height of the United Nations’ focus on human development, in 1973 the YMCA articulated the Kampala Principles aiming “to work for equal opportunity and justice for all.” At the 14th World Council of YMCAs meeting in 1998 the World Alliance of YMCAs adopted “Challenge 21” which among several priorities (like working towards empowerment of young people and women, dialogue and partnerships with people of different faiths, and working in solidarity with the poor, dispossessed and uprooted people) committed to “Defending God’s creation against all that would destroy it and preserving and protecting the earth’s resources for coming generations” (6). What a meaningful Statement of Mission this is of the entire YMCA family! It reflects so clearly the vision of the YMCA towards a holistic approach in dealing with the issues of Environment and Climate Change.
In 1995, under Secretary General John W. Casey, we at the World Alliance organised a Global Workshop on Environment and Development in Seoul, Korea. We had invited some of the globally renowned economists, sociologists, environmental experts together with a group of YMCA staff and volunteers from around the world. It may be surprising to you that already at that time we had discussed topics such as: Conservation and Sustainability, Poverty and Alternative Economic Models, Saving the Earth and Working for the Integrity of Creation. The words of a song that I had written and composed at that time goes like this (7):
This World is Full of Wonders
This world is full of wonders
This world is full of joy
We are its only caretakers
Shall we let it be destroyed?
We are not to dominate
We’re to let it grow
We are made to liberate
Never to stop it’s flow…
Based on the recommendations of that Global Workshop, many YMCAs around the world engaged in creative ways on the issue of ecology and human development. Many of those programs have grown tremendously and serve as a great inspiration for all people.
Thoughts on Strategies for the Future
But considering the state of the ecology and human condition today, obviously more action is required by more people in a systematic way. Climate scientists see three options in dealing with climate change – mitigation, adaptation and geoengineering (8).
Addressing the issue of ecology and climate change is not so easy or simple. It calls for an integrated approach as succinctly stated in Laudato Si, “Strategies for a solution demand an integrated approach to combating poverty, restoring dignity to the excluded and at the same time protecting nature” (9). It calls for evolving an ecological culture, a “distinctive way of looking at things, a way of thinking, policies, an educational program, a life-style, a spirituality…” (10).
And herein, I think, the YMCA has the potential to create even greater global impact on the issue! Because, the YMCA working with all people in local communities irrespective of their faith or culture, focuses on building character of individuals and also in building communities. Its education and training programs are popular for awareness raising on crucial issues and meaningful contextual response. So many programs are being implemented in community organising, camping, language learning, music, arts, sciences, etc., which could be oriented towards ‘integral ecology’. The YMCA ‘Base Groups’ concept could be revived and new Base Groups formed with an ecological thrust towards acquiring meaningful life-styles.
We have hope because more people, more Governments, more religious and scientific bodies, more non-governmental organisations are recognising the gravity of the situation and joining together for common action. The continuing deliberations of the United Nations on this issue are encouraging. The recent policies and action plans of Churches and other Ecumenical bodies are so inspiring. As an Ecumenical Movement, when we work together with these organisations and others with similar aims, we will definitely create a huge impact!
So, let us keep hope alive. Let us feel for the Creation and be more alert, more compassionate and caring, and more just in our relationships with nature and with other fellow human beings, because we are all connected, we are all inter-related. Thank you!
Notes and References
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See Neil de Grasse Tyson, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry, W.W. Norton & Company, New York, 2017, especially Chapter 1, ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’. See also Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Bantam Books, New York, 2017. However, my poem ‘A Verse for the Universe’ is based on Jeremiah 1:5, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you …”
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Laudato Si, ‘Praise Be To You’, Encyclical Letter of the Holy Father Francis, Vatican Press, Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops (CCCB) Publications, Ottawa, 2015, p. 54.
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Ibid. pp. 55-56.
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See Edward O. Wilson, Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life, Liveright Publishing Corporation, New York, 2016 and Erle C. Ellis, Anthropocene: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, UK, 2018.
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That is why, as we celebrated the 175th anniversary of the YMCA’s founding in London on 6 June this year (2019), a thought lingered within me which I tried to put in a poem, titled: “The Y at 175” as a tribute to Sir George Williams:
The Y at 175
(A Verse for Sir George Williams)
You left a legacy
that grows and blossoms
knowing no bounds…
You left an idea
that soars and sails
knowing no barriers…
You left a Movement
that opens minds
pouring new meaning to life…
You left us the YMCA
that even today
gathers new hearts
in building Community.
So, thank you George!
6. Workbook for the 17th World Council of YMCAs, World Alliance of YMCAs, Geneva, p. 62.
7. For the complete lyric of the song ‘This World is Full of Wonders,’ including staff notation, see Worship Book for the 17th World Council of YMCAs, World Alliance of YMCAs, Geneva, 2010, p. 14. A Report of the YMCA Global Workshop on Environment and Development held in Seoul, Korea on 1-7 May 1995 was published by the World Alliance of YMCAs under the title: Creating Just and Ecologically Sustainable Communities. I was serving then as the Executive Secretary for Global Programs of the World Alliance. In 2015, inspired by ‘Laudato Si’ I wrote a Bengali version of the song with new verses pertaining to ‘Integral Ecology’ (See Pratibeshi, Dhaka, Issue no. 37, 27 Sept – 3 Oct., 2015, pp. 11-12).
8. For a more thorough discussion on this topic see Kerry Emanuel, What We Know about Climate Change, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Revised Third Edition, 2018.
9. Laudato Si, op. cit., p. 94.
10. Ibid. p. 76.