Caring for Creation

A 3 day meeting of different faith groups dedicated to environmental protection concluded in Assisi on Wednesday with representatives of a dozen cities and shrines around the world pledging to promote cleaner, greener pilgrimages. The initiative is spearheaded by ARC, the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, whose ambitious aim is to draw together the ancient spiritual traditions of the faiths and the latest scientific ideas on environmental protection.
Philippa Hitchen attended the event and reports on the conclusions of the conference, hosted by the Franciscan order and the town council of Assisi......
Listen:
Tread lightly, live simply, love deeply. In essence that's the message from this meeting to all pilgrims and all people of any faith who are journeying through life towards their final, spiritual destination.
Treading means travelling on foot, even barefoot, as pilgrims of old often did, for many days or weeks, dependent on their natural environment and upon the hospitality of people along the way. It means shedding all unnecessary baggage and background noise that blocks out the sounds of nature, but it also means rediscovering our vulnerability, learning to walk humbly and recognise our dependence on others. Jetting into tourist destinations for a quick visit to a church, mosque or temple is simply not the same as walking to a sacred site – in the Norwegian city of Trondheim, home to the 11^th century saint king Olav, the most important pilgrimage site of the Nordic countries throughout the Middle Ages – Evangelical Lutheran leaders there have learnt from the Spanish pilgrim route of Santiago de Compostela and now encourage pilgrims to make the last part of their journey on foot. While deepening the spiritual experience, it also helps to avoid environmental problems of traffic pollution around the busy city centre. Treading lightly also means thinking about the many other ways we can use less energy and water, buy local produce and cut down or recycle waste to support local economies – a great example here was the Armenian Orthodox Church, supporting a small business turning used plastic bags into smart new handbags and mobile phone cases. The hope is that if we do this during a pilgrimage to a sacred site, we just might develop a habit and continue to think more about our carbon footprint when we return to our homes, as the new Green Hajj guide for Muslims suggests.
Live simply – as the London based Catholic agency CAFOD proposed some years ago – is a movement that is gaining ground, especially in the current economic climate and is an integral part of the rich social teaching of the Church. It means asking critical questions of our hectic consumer culture and realising that our choices and life styles have an impact on people and places many thousands of miles away. It also means asking ourselves about that urge to possess the latest gadget, car or designer shoes. Need and greed for external power and possessions can stem from a lack of inner fulfilment, as St Francis found out the hard way during his younger years. And living simply means realising we just don-t have the natural resources to support a growing and developing population in the kind of wasteful, Western lifestyles where obesity and diet related diseases stand in stark contrast to the hunger and poverty in other parts of the world.
And love deeply, well that goes to the heart of all faith traditions, where justice and peace among peoples is based on the loving, respectful relationship between our Creator and all of creation. Yet learning to love and respect others often means moving outside our comfort zones, just as the pilgrimage often takes us to distant shores – the origin of the Latin word peregrinus means a foreigner, travelling far away from home, and therefore seeing people from a very new perspective When you return from a pilgrimage, a Nordic saying goes, you should have lost at least one prejudice and discovered at least one new gift. Authentic ecumenism and interfaith dialogue should help that process of recognising the stranger in ourselves and opening up to the gifts of faith that others can bring. Not ignoring the differences of our rich and varied spiritual traditions, but rather, as the organisers of this meeting hope, drawing on the wealth of that ancient wisdom to preserve and protect our earth for future generations