Also, I'm reading something really different--The Blue Sapphire of the Mind, Notes for a Contemplative Ecology by Doug Christie--and finding in it a wonderful mix of inspiration, helpfulness and challenge!
But I haven't felt competent to transpose Christie's insights into some kind of shared experience with mindfulness and contemplative prayer.
The gist of the book is that Our Time is calling us to deepen our attention and connection to the natural world.
Calling us to cultivate a contemplative awareness of all things natural so we can begin to undo this sense of being separate from the rest of Creation that we suffer from.
It is from this deeper connection that we will be sustained by nature's beauty and power AND become more empowered to do more to slow the destruction of God's beautiful earth.
Here's a sample:
---
…The shared sense that the ecological crisis (which
is also a cultural, social, and political crisis) we are facing in this moment
is at its deepest level spiritual in character… means our response to this crisis
will require of us nothing less than a spiritual transformation.
To speak of an ecological spirituality or spirituality
that is informed by intimate contact with and feeling for the natural world can
and will mean many different things in the present cultural moment. But a
common feature of spiritual practice is a deepening awareness of oneself as
existing within and responsible for the larger whole of the living world.
One attempt to express this broad and diffuse
understanding of spirituality defines it as: “the experience of conscious
involvement in the project of life-integration through self-transcendence
toward the ultimate value one perceives.” (Sandra Scheiders)
Something similar can be said about the notion of “lived
religion,” an idea that is coming to have increasing importance for helping us
understand the creative and eclectic strategies which human beings imply to
discover and express spiritual or religious meaning in their lives. In
practice, such strategies often reflect an open and flexible relationship to
religious traditions, a willingness to hold apparently conflicting or
paradoxical views in tension in the search for a meaningful way of being in the
world.
…Spiritual practices are often undertaken by
persons and communities in order to achieve freedom from harmful, compromising attachments
and to create the climate in which it becomes possible to adopt a more open,
loving disposition toward others and the world. Such practices often lead to a
serious engagement with and critique of fundamental social, cultural, and
economic values that are perceived as tearing at the very fabric of life and
community.
