We hope your first full week of Lent was everything you needed it to be. We are in week two of our Lenten reflection based on the Wheaton Franciscan Laudato Si’ Action Platform Commitment Statement. This week our focus is on our place as human creatures in the web of life.
We commit to open our minds to learn from Creation’s diversity and move beyond sustainable stewardship to transformative kinship and fostering a culture of care for our common home.
How different would our world look had we interpreted Genesis 1:28 as “kinship” rather than “dominion” over? How different would our world look if we learned from Jesus’ teaching that we are all children of a generous God? How different would our world look if we practiced the Haudenosaunee value of the Seventh Generation—taking into consideration “those who are not yet born but who will inherit the world”?
In A Grounded Faith: Reconnecting with Creator and Creation in the Season of Lent the authors write,
“Only when we release our pretensions to superiority … will we find our way to the other side of this climate crucifixion. But this is no counsel of despair. For what needs defeating is not the human spirit, not hope for our children’s future, but a worldview that sees people as separate from creation, that assumes human ingenuity is more powerful than Earth’s limits.
This idolatrous faith in human power over creation is what must be nailed to the cross for life as we know it to continue. Only when we accept our place in creation’s web as humble caretakers, not masters, can Earth’s healing begin.”
On this Lenten journey, may we let go of the need for “dominion over” and recognize our “kinship with” the web of life for the sake of a flourishing future.
A Grounded Faith Reconnecting with Creator and Creation in the Season of Lent ©2022 by EcoFaith Recovery – Kindle Edition
Haudenosaunee Confederacy Values
Wheaton Franciscan Laudato Si’ Action Platform
