{"id":4057,"date":"2007-08-30T18:19:18","date_gmt":"2007-08-30T22:19:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=4057"},"modified":"2007-09-03T11:57:46","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T15:57:46","slug":"guilting-the-lily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2007\/08\/guilting-the-lily\/","title":{"rendered":"Guilting the Lily"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the Preface to New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community<\/em>, the editors cite an unidentified 1991 report that places each of the thirty largest Christian denominations in one of five categories based on their environmental stances. The categories were: 1) Programs Underway\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddenominations engaged actively in national environmental programs; 2) Beginning a Response\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddenominations beginning to engage in national environmental programs; 3) At the Brink\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddenominations preparing to take the plunge into action on the national environmental level; 4) No Action\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddenominations not taking any action as yet; and 5) Policies of Inaction\u00e2\u20ac\u201ddenominations that, as the editors put it, are \u00e2\u20ac\u0153formally committed to inaction.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p>\n

Bet you can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t guess where this unidentified report set The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints: yep, firmly in the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153formally committed to inaction\u00e2\u20ac\u009d category.<\/p>\n

Shortly after, the N. G. Preface cites a Los Angeles Times <\/em>quotation from a 1997 declaration by His All Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, the spiritual leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide:<\/p>\n

To commit a crime against the natural world is a sin. . . . For humans to cause species to become extinct and to destroy the biological diversity of God\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s creation, for humans to degrade the integrity of the Earth by causing changes in its climate, stripping the Earth of its natural forests, or destroying its wetlands. . . . For humans to contaminate the Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s waters, its land, its air, and its life with poisonous substances\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthese are sins.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

New Genesis <\/em>also opens with a quote (or two?) from LDS President Gordon B. Hinkley:<\/p>\n

Here is declared the Creator of all that is good and beautiful. I have looked at majestic mountains rising against a blue sky and thought of Jesus, the creator of heaven and earth. I have stood on a spit of sand in the Pacific and watched the dawn rise like thunder\u00e2\u20ac\u201da ball of gold surrounded by clouds of pink and
\nwhite and purple\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand thought of Jesus, the Word by whom all things were made. . . .What then shall you do with Jesus that is called Christ?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This earth is his creation. When we make it ugly, we offend him.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking past this bonbons assortment of accusation and blame, we see that these quotes call for us to improve our behavior toward the plants, animals, and simple or complex elements and their arrangements upon this planet, and thus toward their Creator. (I think our responsibility extends to the sky, as well\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto light and dark, to time and space, and to countless undiscovered conditions and relations we live oblivious to.) What I wonder is why, when religious or cultural discourse invites change, it often relies on blame and guilt to motivate: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153When you do these bad things you commit sins and offend God.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d New Genesis <\/em>is not alone in trying to guilt Mormons (or anybody) into becoming better \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stewards of the earth\u00e2\u20ac\u009d through finger-wagging rhetoric–the practice is widespread in environmentalism generally. <\/p>\n

Lighting fires of guilt to prompt people to change their behavior toward the environment risks provoking them to light backfires of defensiveness and apathy: Many will assume fall back positions and dig in their heels; some will lose sight of the most shining of goals in the fogs of shame they feel already, rightfully or not, over other matters; some will tune out guilt-fretted language completely along with any worthwhile issue it promotes. Sure, people are responsible for their wrongful behavior. But admonishing them to change only by telling them what they’re doing wrong or by telling them what not<\/em> to do can run even the most earnest soul aground. <\/p>\n

To be fair, one reason people depend upon “Shalt not” language in rising tides of cultural or spiritual awareness might be that often, when folks start to awake to the the awefulness of their situation, they see something of what they’re doing wrong but are much less clear on what to do instead. So they compose a “Not-To-Do” list as a starting point, an Old Testament<\/em>-style map of the new moral world. The New Testament <\/em>lays matters out differently. Christ takes the big “Shalt Not” list and turns it into two compelling “Shalls.” The emphasis shifts from unproductive, selfish behaviors like envy, murder, adultry, stealing etc. to the much more the creative, community-and-divinely-oriented conduct of loving God and one’s fellow beings.<\/p>\n

Well, I just think there’s a lovely and more advanced precedent there for writing about experience. And really, there’s a new kind of nature writing emerging that allows for the drift of love in its language. In his essay, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Field Notes on My Daughter,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d David Gessner, an award-winning nature writer and the editor of Ecotone<\/em>, asks how it could be possible for him and his wife to write \u00e2\u20ac\u0153objectively\u00e2\u20ac\u009d about their young daughter, whom they love so much. He answers: <\/p>\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153It is not, I suppose . . . We are pre-wired to love our offspring in outsized, outrageous ways. So does that render my observations of my daughter useless? I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t think so. As long as I take some caution about not writing in a \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcIsn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t that adorable\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 vein, then why should it matter if love infuses\u00e2\u20ac\u201dnot to say contaminates\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmy sentences? My best writing about ospreys \u00e2\u20ac\u00a6 was filled with not just admiration but love for the birds. It sounds hokey, but isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t it obvious that our best writing must be suffused with love?\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, isn’t it obvious? Could Mormons get behind movements to improve their behavior toward the Earth\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand toward their fellow human beings\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthat engaged in language \u00e2\u20ac\u0153suffused with love\u00e2\u20ac\u009d rather than pickled in guilt? Or not?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the Preface to New Genesis: A Mormon Reader on Land and Community, the editors cite an unidentified 1991 report that places each of the thirty largest Christian denominations in one of five categories based on their environmental stances.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":100,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4057","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature-and-environment"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/100"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4057"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4057\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4057"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4057"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4057"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}