I'm not going to insult full-blown "tree-huggers," by suggesting that I am an environmentalist, but recently I find myself with a growing appreciation for Creation. I'm a part of an environmentally conscious group called F.O.R.K. (Friends of the River Kelvin), that participates in monthly clean-up parties in the west end of Glasgow; recycling has become almost a compulsive hobby of mine; we don't own a car so we walk or take public transportation EVERYWHERE; I walk through our flat turning off lights, and conserve energy by trying to wash clothes and dishes during off-peak hours. All in all, our carbon footprint is pretty darn low.I must make a distinction though. While I love Creation, I'm not such a big fan of the great outdoors. By that, I mean that I thoroughly enjoy being in nature, but more often than not, when I participate in outdoor activities, I end up losing whatever battle I'm in. I get little joy or feelings of accomplishment when I hike a big hill; I'm usually pretty miserable on long bike rides.; and don't even get me started on kayaking. About the only things I find relaxing/rewarding in nature are surfing and snowboarding - two activities I rarely ever do anymore.
The important thing, however, is that I've come to realize that being environmentally conscious is no longer a lifestyle or a statement. You don't have to be hygienically challenged, or listen to The Grateful Dead and Phish to be an environmentalist anymore. You just need to look around and realize that, regardless of the statistics that we're fed, the Earth is changing. And more importantly, we've changed.
The generations alive today - who cannot recognize an edible mushroom in the forest or start a fire without matches - are the first to have had their lives shaped almost entirely by the electronic mass media environment. If you observe some of the stages that we as a people are going through - denial, anger, depression, bargaining - you'll recognize that they closely mimic the stages of grief. It's as if we're adjusting to a loss. And in a way we are. The loss of our natural selves.
We find ourselves adrift at a historically significant time. The last couple of centuries have marked a radical transition in human lifestyle. We've gone from living in a natural world to living in a manufactured one. For thousands of years our personalities and cultures were shaped by creation. But now, most of us find ourselves completely detached from the natural world. We can scarcely remember the last time we drank from a stream or saw the stars from a dark remove, away from the city. We can't remember the last time we spent an evening telling stories, instead of having Oprah or Jerry tell stories to us. We can't identify three kinds of trees, but we know all about Britney's custody battles and Paris' fender-benders.
This detachment from nature might not seem like much of a problem, but it is. In fact, it's tragic. In her 1995 book Bird by Bird, Christian writer Anne Lamott reflects on a California vineyard in early fall. It is "about as voluptuous a place as you can find on earth: the sense of lushness and abundance; the fullness of the clumps of grapes that hang, mammarian, and give off an ancient autumnal smell, semiprotected from the sun by their leaves. The grapes are so incredibly beautiful that you can't help but be thrilled. If you aren't - if you only see someone's profit or that in another month there will be rotten fruit all over the ground - someone has gotten inside your brain and really f***ed you up."
See, I believe that we were created to engage the natural world - to enjoy it, to be active in it, and to marvel at its wonder. Rediscovering the natural world ought not be difficult. It ought to be an instinctive act. If the Earth felt less like something out there, and more like an extension of who we are, we'd care for it like kin. We'd pull in the direction of global survival not because we felt duty-bound to do so, but because it felt right and good.
Our rampant, oblivious consumption; our spending with careless abandon, assuming an eternal supply at the expense of the planet is nothing more than a sickness - like mental disorders or addiction - it's just too new of a phenomenon for psychologists to have given it much consideration. Maybe I've come to this conclusion after living in an urban context for the past four years, but I think we're in a state of separation anxiety from nature. We're bombarded these days with analyses of failed relationships/marriages, of the psychological havoc that breakups wreak. The psychological fallout from our breakup with Creation is like that. When you cut off arterial blood to an organ, the organ dies. When you cut the flow of nature into people's lives, their spirit dies. It's that simple.
Occasionally, you'll bump into an outsider bearing tales of that other environment, the one you may have known. When an Inuit elder is asked to draw a picture of the local coastline, he will close his eyes and listen to the sound of the waves on the shore. Such stories seem vaguely ludicrous. Who could be that attuned to the land? More to the point, who'd want to be? Where's the value in denying yourselves civilized amenities when you don't have to?
Once you start asking questions like this, you are, of course, in real trouble. The moment you fail to understand why the natural world may have any relevance in the day-to-day lives of human beings, you become, what a golfer might call, "a lost ball in the high rough."
Abandon nature and you lose track of who you are. But more than that, you abandon your sense of the Divine.
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