Earth as the “body of divinity”
In the early years of the 21st century, with looming environmental disasters and concerns about climate crisis, I began paying attention to planet Earth and other earthly concerns. Earth Day began to register in my mental radar. I learned more about it in the context of climate change controversies and developed a deeper appreciation for the genius of the individuals who initiated the process of paying special attention to our home planet and its welfare.
A significant influence in that regard was Thomas Merton, an American spiritual giant whose writings were the basis of my doctoral dissertation. He had a great love for nature which I failed to recognize when I wrote the dissertation in 1985.
In the silence of the Kentucky hills, Merton felt connected to God in every leaf, every creature, every sunrise.
Theologian Kathleen Deignan, describes Merton’s relationship to the natural world “as the ecstatic ground of his own experience of God.” Merton found ecstasy in walking on the ground.
I wondered if it was possible for me to replicate my mentor’s feelings, and since then, every intentional step I take on this planet became an act of adoration. Merton’s description of creation “as the body of divinity — at once veiling and unveiling the God he so longed to behold and be held by,” sent spiritual chills down my sanguine spine.
For the first time in my pastoral role, I preached a sermon about the importance of caring for the Earth during the week of Earth Day in 2010. That day, a nice lady chided me for talking about Earth in church instead of Jesus. How an earthly topic could belong in a heavenly place, she thought.
I began experiencing a shift in my spiritual consciousness from being heaven-centered to earth-centered, a shift from God-in-Heaven to God-on-Earth. The spiritual transformation was significant enough for me to elevate Earth Day to the level of a holy day such as Christmas and Easter.
Instead of urging people to lift up their minds toward heaven, I began inviting them to feel the Earth beneath their feet and see the nature around them as “divine milieu,” a phrase used by French theologian and paleontologist Teilhard de Chardin to describe the world as the Domain of the Divine.
I rarely think about going to heaven after death, but always think of ways to make life on Earth a heavenly one. I would rather experience and enjoy what is available right now, rather than wait to enjoy it later in an imaginary place. The prospect of spending eternity with an all knowing and almighty God who knows and controls everything you think, feel, and do…that would make heaven, in the words of Christopher Hitchens, a celestial North Korea from which you would never be able to escape!
I began thinking of heaven as a dimension within myself rather than a location outside.
I began believing that I can create heaven on Earth by using the tools that God has given me rather than waiting for it to be given to me at the end as a reward for a holy life.
The prospect of not going to heaven but being in heaven was a huge shift in my understanding of the cosmology of St. Augustine which I had learned in the seminary and had preached about during the initial years of my priestly ministry.
(from Cosmic Kindergarten: Earthly Lessons for a Heavenly Life)