Affirming nature, its beauty and goodness, is the long term pattern, or climate, of the Gospel. Jesus’ words and actions create an atmosphere of communion with nature. He shows gratitude for the gifts of nature. The Gospel climate of affirming nature is especially true in Jesus’ parable of The Sower this Sunday. The parable tells of a sower whose seeds fall into different environments. Some environments are not well cared for and are destructive, “scorched” and “choked.” Other environments are cared for and have “rich soil and produce good fruit.”
It is becoming increasingly difficult, the world over, to find “rich soil” and to “produce good fruit.” That is because nature is not always affirmed, our environment is not always cared for. We are living within a long term pattern, or climate, of nature’s destruction – by the military. It is known from WWI’s trench warfare and poisonous gases across Europe; from WWII’s global destruction capped by explosions of the atom bomb and its radiation poisoning across Japan, as well as the Pacific and the U.S. desert from continued testing; from Vietnam having 20 million gallons of poisons, like Agent Orange, dropped on human beings and on foliage; from the 1st Gulf War scorching the earth with oil fires and oil spills, and the use of toxic missiles contaminating nature in the 2nd Gulf war’s still ongoing destruction. On and on the list goes. Each war exists in the larger context of all wars by all militaries and their cumulative destructive effects. Medea Benjamin is a peace activist who focuses on the military, war, and their environmental destruction. She identifies the military, specifically the U.S. military, as the greatest danger to environmental health. She begins her analysis by recognizing the U.S. military, in addition to killing people, ravages the ecosystems and natural resources of every area against which it wages war; land, water, air, plants, and animals. It therefore causes mass migrations of people. Across scarred landscapes foretelling the extinction the military spawns are decimated infrastructures, unexploded bombs, toxins, and diseases sabotaging healthy human life and earthly vitality. The military’s destructive climate includes its gorging on billions and billions of dollars year after year of taxpayer money for its wars and the weapons it uses to fight them. The billions are stolen from people and life and spent destructively on wars and their planned reconstructions. The U.S. military’s environmental destruction includes it being the single largest consumer of oil in the world and thus the world’s worst polluter. It makes sense the U.S. military is also the world’s most highly weaponized security detail for all the world’s worst extractive energy corporations. The U.S. military operates via corporate/government agreements,. They are regularly deployed against individual people and whole communities who are seeking environmental health and are thus stopping extractors from plundering them for fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas through drilling or fracking. This is especially true in Native American communities. U.S. soldiers / police are also regularly deployed to news programs, talk shows, and documentaries to appear with celebrities errantly lauding the military as a partner in climate chaos awareness. But that awareness is based on climate chaos’ negative impact on the U.S. military and corporations who cause the pollution. It is not based on the military’s destructive impact on the climate of the entire world, which is inherent to the military’s existence. It is the military that is the primary cause of climate chaos and the military that exists as the existential threat to the planet.
“I love you as one loves most vulnerable things, urgently, between the habitat and its loss. I love you as the seed that doesn’t sprout but carries the heritage of our roots… I love you without knowing how, or when, the world will end—I love you naturally… I love you like this because we won’t survive any other way, except in this form in which humans and nature are kin.” (Sonnet XVII – Craig Santos Perez)
Prayer: Spirit of Life, thank you for the beauty and goodness of nature.
Question: How can I help keep nature from being destroyed?
July 12, 2020 Gospel Matthew 13:1-23 Fifteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time