Bering Sea

Green Theology

 Introduction

For decades His All-Holiness, Bartholomeus, Ecumenical Patriarch, has been actively engaged in ecological issues. Certainly there are those who

rather cynically view his “green efforts” as publicity stunts, inspired by a desire to maintain center stage in European religious life, create awareness of the deplorable situation of the patriarchate in Turkey, and win sympathy and support for the declining Greek presence in Istanbul, which threatens the

viability if not the survival of the Patriarchate. I believe, however, that the Patriarch’s concerns should be central to our focus and mission in North America and this essay is a brief and incomplete attempt to articulate why I think this is so.

Sacrament as Worldview

The essentially sacramental nature of the Orthodox Tradition, requires that the Church concern itself with the created universe. If we believe that God communicates Himself to us through Bread and Wine, we need to consider from where those elements come.

An old Navajo story from the American Southwest, may better illustrate this concept. I’m not exactly sure where this occurred, or whether the incident is fact or fiction, but the story may allow a deeper understanding of the question.

In a small college some decades ago, when videography had been introduced into the curriculum, the students were required to produce a video of their choice as a final project. The Indian students decided to collaborate on a film they entitled “Navajo Rugs,” and their instructor awaited eagerly the premier of this production, having all his life been fascinated with the remarkable designs and incredibly high quality of Navajo weaving.

Now we should note that as anyone from a European cultural background might expect, he anticipated a certain predictable structure to this video. First there would be the shearing of the wool from the family’s flock of sheep, then the spinning of this wool into yarn, the dying of the yarn and the organization of the loom, the choosing of a design and the actual weaving of the rug. But none of this appeared in the final movie.

Much to their dismay, the class viewed “Navajo Rugs” with understanding

anything their Navajo classmates were trying to “say.” But there were no words in the film. The communication was totally visual. And what did they

see? First, a beautiful Arizona sunrise, Navajo teens awaking in their traditional sod house, their hogan, drinking some coffee, saddling their horses and riding out into the wilderness. They saw sheep, lots of sheep grazing, wildflowers blooming, acres of grassland, mesa and canyons, and

a thunderstorm on the distant peaks. They saw more sheep, more grass, more

flowers and a sunset as the weary shepherds returned home for summer and collapse into their beds. Then, suddenly, at the end the video, there was a Navajo rug, half-finished, on its loom. The End.

Indeed, what was the film trying to “say”? The instructor could not make sense of it, neither could any of the Anglo-American students. Upon further inquiry, the Deneh (the Navajo name for themselves, meaning “the Human Beings”) were equally perplexed that their professor didn’t understand their

presentation and had difficulty articulating what, to them, seemed obvious.

A culture is a ‘way of seeing the world,” and we have here a classic example of inter-cultural miscommunication. The Europeans expected a linear presentation, a chronological and sequential “how to weave a rug, step-by-step,” visual instruction on how rugs were made. This, of course, focused on

the product, the complete and valuable woven masterpiece. The Navajo

viewed the process more widely. What does one need to make a rug? European-Americans focused narrowly on the essentials: wool, spinning wheel, dye, loom, and perhaps a grandmother. The Indians view was much

wider.

To make a rug requires the sun to rise, the wind to blow, the rain to fall. The grass must grow, the flowers bloom, the sheep graze. And if all these are operating according to the appropriate, natural, cosmic order, you can make rugs! It takes the whole earth to produce one.

This is equally true of the prosphora. One could ask, “How is sacramental bread made?” and answer, “with flour, water, yeast, an oven and a volunteer

baker,” but this would be far too narrow. Apply the Navajo approach to the

production of bread and you realize, “the sun must rise, the farmer must plant, the wheat must sprout and ripen, the wind must blow the rain must fall, the harvesters must reap, Pillsbury must grind and package, the trucks

or planes must deliver, the stock boys must stock, the cashiers must collect, the turbines must generate, and the ovens must heat, and if all this is working normally, you can bake bread!

The same is obviously true for the production of wine. And long before there

will be any grapes, someone must plant the vineyard and tend it for decades. While wheat can be grown in one season, starting a winery is an act of faith.

We will get our first harvest in a hundred years.

What this means, for Orthodox Christians, is that concern for the earth is not a peripheral or political issue. Until the end of time, the Second Coming of Christ, we are dependent on the natural cycles and seasons of the planet to produce the elements we require to maintain contact, communion with God.

The Life of the Cosmos

And there is more: in the original Greek texts of the New Testament, the word cosmos, “the whole created universe” appears in places that most readers of the Gospel in English would probably miss. For example, when Jesus says “I am the life of the world,” the word “world” is, in Greek, cosmos. What is the Lord saying here? The life in everything is really He Who is. The mysterious and sacred presence that enlivens every living thing

is not a “natural” or “chemical” force, the result of the interaction between

certain elements, but the Word of God, the Divine Logos. The life in every

tree, every bird, every blade of grass, as well as in every turtle, zebra, elephant or armadillo, and in each of us, is all Christ. “I am the life of the Cosmos,” He proclaims. But do we see Him there? Do we understand what

He is telling us?

Probably not. So the Church, in Her wisdom has developed various rites of blessing. Some might consider this an action by which that which is otherwise profane takes on certain sacred functions. We bless water to make something that is essentially secular into something holy. But, while this may be true at a certain elementary level, it is not the full story. We often speak about the “fallen world” as if the earth sinned, but in fact, the world

“fell” only because Adam was supposed to serve as the connecting link between the Creator and the Creation, and he refused, thereby severing the intended and natural ties between God and Man, but also between God and the world He loves.

So the performance of the rite, for example of Blessing Water, is intended to help us see the inherent sanctity of nature, which, in the beginning God called “very good” and blessed it. We bless some water so that in our consciousness we might realize that all water is holy. And living things, plants and animals, are made of water.

In the rainforest of Southeast Alaska, rain falls almost daily. A sunny day is so rare that when the sky is clear, businesses sometimes close and schools dismiss early, so that the citizens and children can enjoy the light and warmth while it lasts. To live there means that people have to adjust to rain and begin to accept and even welcome it. Richard Nelson, in his wonderful

book, The Island Within, meditates on this, saying that rain is what makes this part of the world what it is. And he is reminded that he himself is mostly water, the human body being more than 80% water. Using the lessons he learned from Koyukon Indian friends in Alaska’s subarctic interior, he imagines himself, as he put it “transformed into the rainwater from which I came.” He speaks of his mind as sometimes a clear lake and sometimes and impenetrable fog bank, his eyes as glistening pools, his heart pumping, like a thunderstorm, the rain water that surges through his veins, and concludes “I’m a man made out of rain.” To bless water means to bless life itself, for we and all living things are “made out of rain.”

Icons and the Parousia

A culture is a world view, and the Orthodox Church conveys her “way of seeing” to her faithful in signs and symbols, in words and art, in preaching and in gesture, in logical, rational doctrine and mystical liturgical action. God cannot be defined. A God who could be understood, the Fathers say, would not be God. But we communicate our experience of God in beauty.

An icon is the visible sign, one could say the proclamation in color, line and form, of the same truths the words of Scripture announce. A saint is considered saintly to the degree that he or she approximated and incarnated Christ in their own lives. But we depict them in a particular style to reveal something more than their physical appearance.

Icons are painted to show their prototype in their future, resurrected bodies.

As Christ Bodily rose, so also, we confess our belief in “the resurrection of the dead” and “the life in the age to come.” What do we know about these future realities? And we answer, what Christ has shown us, revealed to us by His own Resurrection. He was crucified, dead and buried. When His followers first encountered him after His Resurrection they were afraid, believing they were seeing the ghost of Jesus. He explicitly says to them not to be afraid; “A spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.”

But the sealed tomb had to be opened, not to let Christ out, but to reveal that it was already empty. The locked doors did not prevent Him from appearing in the upper room. In Emmaus, when they recognized Him, He disappeared.

So this is really Him with “flesh and bones.” He invites Thomas to touch the print of the nails and thrust his hand into the Lord’s side. He eats in front of them. But His Resurrected Body has new, one could say “miraculous” qualities. It cannot be restricted, imprisoned, locked in or locked out. And this is the vision of, precisely, the “world to come.”

What is “heaven”? Some might imagine that paradise is another reality, a distant, spiritual world, unrelated to our fallen and sinful one, which will be, in the end, annihilated and destroyed. Some even believe the destruction of this planet must necessarily occur before the world to come can be born. But the Biblical evidence is quite different. Christ comes to “save the world,” and again the Greek word is cosmos. There is an alternative word,

Oikoumene, from which we get our modern English word, “ecumenical” which means “the inhabited earth,” or, in other words, “all the human beings.” The evangelists could have chosen “oikoumene” in these passages

But they consistently say “cosmos” the whole creation.

Christ comes to bless, sanctify restore and transfigure the cosmos. He is the Life of the cosmos, and “God so loved the Cosmos that He sent His Son.”

So much is lost in translation! Ecological concerns are not political but spiritual for those who “see” the world as Christ has demanded we should.

Christ as Food

The Yup’ik Eskimo people in Alaska have a concept, a word, which does not translate directly into English: Yua. It refers precisely to that mystical and sacred reality that animates, that makes alive, any living thing, plant or animal. In their ancient, pre-Christian culture, it could even refer to life-giving elements, like water or air. They had the concept of the Yua of the world, Ellam Yua, a kind of energy that enlivens everything, not unlike the

“Force” in the Star Wars films. But Ellam Yua was therefore an impersonal reality.

When St. Jacob Netsvetov embraced these people and their culture, he realized that he could not, as a Christian missionary, employ this concept,

Ellam Yua, to God. It would make God an impersonal energy that flows in and through living things, and perpetuate a pan-theistic experience and concept of God who, in Orthodox Christianity is “invisible, inexpressible, incomprehensible, ever-existing and eternally the same.” He wrestled with this problem, no doubt, for years.

Finally he decided to use the word “Agayun” to indicate God. The word has a complicated origin and shows St. Jacob’s theological genius. In the ceremonial life of the Yupiit, masked dances were annually performed in a public and one might say “liturgical” express of gratitude to the animals which had been harvested during the previous year. The men performing these ritual dances were not, it was believed, “animating” the spirit represented by the masks they wore, but rather, the Yupiit believed, it was the spirit of those animals performing the dance. For this reason the human dancer covered his entire body, wearing gloves over his hands so that not even that part of his human identity would be visible. The word “agayun” meant original that animating reality behind the mask, and therefore a personal spiritual being. In Greek, the mask would be the “prosopon,” and

the “agayun” the “hypostasis,” the personal reality behind the mask. Brilliant!

In Yup’ik Eskimo culture, people believed that it was appropriate and necessary to show gratitude and thanks for the animals who had offered themselves to the Human Beings (Yup’ik actually means The Real People) as food and clothing.

There is, to regress for a moment, an old Yup’ik myth of the arrival of the First People, who, it is said in one version, washed ashore in a large “clam shell.” This may, in fact, have been a space capsule that splashed down in the Bering Sea millennia ago, possibly from another planet. In any case, the first humans crawled out of their vessel and were met by “Raven” the traditional name for the Creator in many Alaska Native cultures. (This did not mean that they worshipped large black birds, but rather than when the Creator of the world needed, for whatever reason, to visit earth, he assumed the shape of a Raven). Raven was not all powerful nor omniscient. He was surprised and perplexed by the arrival of these strange new creatures.

“What kind of thing are you?” Raven exclaimed. “No feathers and hardly any fur! Stubby little legs, no claws or fangs!” Raven concluded that such poorly equipped creatures would never survive one Arctic winter. He exclaimed, “You’re ridiculous! You’re pitiful! You’re pathetic! You’re doomed!”

But Raven felt sorry for these silly new immigrants and summoned all the local animals. They met the First People and came immediately to the same negative conclusions. There’s no way such beings could make it through the six months of frost and snow. They were going to die.

But the animals liked the People. “They’re sort of cute,” they said. “Let’s keep them!” Raven answered that he was not opposed to this, but did not see how it would be possible. So the animals huddled and returned with a proposal.

“What if we give them our fur, our skins for covering, for clothing?” they asked. “And what if we offer them our bodies, our flesh as meat, for food? Couldn’t they survive then?

Raven considered this and replied. “That might work. But why would you animals do that? What would ask in return?

And the animals answered “We will give them our skins, our fur and feathers for clothing, and we give them our flesh as meat, for food, in exchange for gratitude and respect.”

And this was agreement the First People made with their animal neighbors. They view the animals as smart, talented, intelligent. They see what humans can’t see, smell what humans can’t smell, hear what humans can’t hear. And they cooperate, so that if the moose with his big ears doesn’t hear a human approaching or smell them with his big nose, the sparrows or eagles alert him. Humans cannot ever outsmart, outmaneuver or overpower an animal. They must give themselves. Hunting is, of course, a skill, and boys must be trained to hunt effectively, but their success is never due to their own strategy or equipment. The prey must voluntarily offer itself to the hunter. Every successful hunt is a blessing, the animal a gift.

This is the eternal pattern Yup’ik Eskimo people had discerned in the natural world, a covenant they had established with the animals in their ecosystem. And it remains essential to their culture, their way of seeing and understanding the world, to this day. One can readily perceive how the Yupiit understood the Gospel when it was first proclaimed. The message obviously parallels and completes their ancient understanding of the way the world is constructed. God Himself comes to offer Himself, to die voluntarily, “to give Himself as food to the Faithful.” The paradigm they already had discerned in the natural world has its origins in Eternity. The pattern exists in God, and we all participate in it by adapting that way of seeing, that way of behaving, applying it to our own lives.

A human being becomes fully human when he/she realize that our appropriate identity is in Christ, to offer ourselves voluntarily to God and to each other, to be of service, a source of love, joy, peace, kindness, gentleness, to all those with whom we have contact. We offer our time, our talents, our energy to others, sacrificing our lives, sanctifying ourselves

in voluntary service to God and neighbor. That is what it means to be a Real Person.

Process vs. Product

Another aspect of this way of seeing should be emphasized here. The time and effort necessary to accomplish a particular task, the talents and skills a hunter, for example, must focus on the preparation and fulfillment of his expedition into the wilderness, are essential to his success. He must create

Beautiful weapons, as a sign of gratitude and respect for the animals he hopes will voluntarily offer themselves to him and through him to his community. He must handle these weapons appropriately, according to the protocols that have been revealed. He must kill and butcher the prey in the respectful way his elders taught him. The food must be eaten, completely consumed, wasting none of it, for the animal died to feed the People, and it would be the height of disrespect to throw any useful part away carelessly, wastefully. The skin must be tanned and used appropriately for clothing. And the tiny remaining and unused parts, the organs and bones that cannot be otherwised utilized, must be returned respectfully to the wilderness from which they came. The meat as food, the hide as clothing are the final products, but the process by which they are obtained is perhaps even more fundamental.

This is true in the church as well. Often young church school students will ask about the length of services. Can’t they be abbreviated? Why must the Liturgy take so long? Why is it necessary to stand or kneel or make prostrations, to sing so many hymns, to read so many texts, to make so much physical and mental effort in the context of Orthodox worship? Another perhaps apocryphal modern story may help to explain this emphasis on process.

An elderly woman from a tribal community was hired by the local community college to teach basketry for six weeks. About two dozen, mostly housewives, registered for the class, eager to learn how to weave grass into the beautiful shapes this ancient culture had developed over the last several thousand years.

On the first day of the class, the instructor arrived with a bundle of dried grass, some needles and beads, all the necessary material for creating baskets according to her tradition. She smiled at the students and welcomed them, and began singing. Then she invited them to join her in reproducing the difficult rhythm and tonal system of this tune, mimicking, as best they could the yet more difficult sounds of her tribal language. They barely mastered “Song Number One” by the end of their hour-long session.

A week later, the teacher made the same entrance, put the bundle of grass on her table and asked everyone to sing again the song they had almost mastered in the previous class. With difficulty they managed to repeat last week’s song, and, satisfied, the instructor began, without another word, singing “Song Number Two.” There was not enough time left in the class hour to master this second melody or lyrics, so the class adjourned without fully learning it. So the third gathering began with a review of both Song One and Song Two and ended at that point.

Before the fourth class convened, a group of students huddled. Their concern was that they had now completed have the course and had yet to learn anything about basketry. And they had not signed up for a singing class. They agreed that if their teacher arrived with yet another song, they would protest and refuse to continue, demanding that they get down to work on the task of learning to weave grass into baskets.

Sure enough, the elder arrived with the same bundle of grass and container of beads, and reviewed Songs One, Two and without pausing began introducing Song Three. The spokesperson arose and interrupted.

“We decided, ma’am, with all respect, that we, as a group, would not consent to learn any more songs. We cannot understand the words, the tunes are difficult for us, the class is half over, and we have not learned anything about basket weaving. We paid our tuition to learn to make baskets, not to sing in your language, songs that mean nothing to us.”

The instructor was amazed. “We are learning to weave baskets!” she insisted.

“No, we’re not,” replied the confused protestor. “We’re singing songs!”

Still puzzled, the elder exclaimed, “Well, in that case you don’t know what a basket is!”

Until now, the ladies had all assumed they did. “A basket is a container woven from grass, obviously.”

“No!” the elder retorted emphatically. “Let me explain, please.” And she began:

“Before you pick the grass, you sing to it. While you pick the grass, you sing to it. As you split and dry the grass, you sing to it. As you soak and weave the grass, you sing to it. You really don’t know what a basket is! A basket is a song made visible!”

If we apply this way of seeing to our celebration of the Divine Liturgy, our understanding is properly deepened. The final product may be the Holy Mysteries, but if we focus too exclusively on that, we diminish the process which we need to undergo to “produce” them. We are, so to speak, surrounding the Holy Gifts with songs and stories, “putting the hymns and divine words into ourselves and into the Bread and the Chalice. I am certain that somewhere in America, perhaps somewhere in California, there are already “drive through churches.” A motorist can drive up to a window and submit a donation, and receive in return, a blessing, recorded message, and who knows, perhaps even a communion wafer. Offer your monetary contribution, stick out your tongue, receive the Host and drive off to your Sunday afternoon picnic or football game! We are so product-oriented, we can eliminate all but the basic essentials, “save time” eliminate the entire process and get back to our normal lives. The Product, please, sir, just the Product!

But the process by which we prepare ourselves and the Holy Gifts, is, for us as Orthodox Christians, as important as the reception of the Eucharist. We must, so to speak, put the sacred hymns and texts, the songs and stories, into ourselves and “into the Chalice” as well, so that we can invoke the Holy Spirit upon “ourselves and These Gifts.” In the Liturgy, if we understanding it properly, we are offering not just the Bread and Cup, but ourselves to God, and this takes time, effort, talent and commitment, not just during the Liturgy by throughout our lives. This is how we become “Real People.”

True God/ True Man

And Jesus Christ is the incarnation and embodiment of the only ultimately

True Man. Copy Him and you will become “real” as well. This is what the saints have done in their lives and we are invited to imitate, to follow their example and do the same. The veneration of the saints, the naming of children with their holy names, is more than a pious custom. It is basic to the Orthodox understanding of life. And each icon, depicting that saint in his/her resurrected body, proclaims Christ’s victory of sin, darkness, hades and death, for the icon is not a reminder of the past holy life of the prototype but a vision into the future, resurrected life of that saint in the age to come, where we hope to join them in the eternal love, joy and peace which are the Kingdom of God.

The Church, with the iconostas, the icons and frescoes on the walls, is not a collection of ancient portraits of those who have lived and died in ages past, but a remembrance of the future. And that eternal future is not in some other world, but this world, this cosmos which God so loved, which God called very good and blessed. Heaven is this world restored, this world reclaimed, this world sanctified, this world “made new.” When Christ makes “all things new” He does not destroy or annihilate them but purifies and blesses them, renders them immortal and holy.

In blessing an icon, the Church takes animal (egg yolk) vegetable (wood) and mineral (earth pigments) products and, [as the iconographer has reorganized them into the image of Christ, His Virgin mother, or any of the thousands of martyrs, confessors, preachers, teachers or ascetics whom the Church has added to her official canon (list) of saints] transforms the icon

into, one might say, another redeemed part of the universe, a few more reclaimed and restored physical elements that are now, already, before the Parousia, part of the Kingdom to Come.

But what else is the Eucharistic Bread but that sunshine, that earthly fertility, that wind and rain, those human efforts of planting, irrigating and harvesting, all offered to God and then transformed into the “heavenly Bread and the Cup of Life,” the banquet, the “marriage feast of the Bridegroom” already accessible, already present, in this world and in this age, of the Kingdom to Come. The Church is not only the remembrance but the Presence of the Kingdom to Come already manifest, accessible, a reality we can “see with our eye, hear with our ears, touch with our hands.” For heaven is This World made New.

Once we grasp this essential experience which the Church attempts to convey to us in her liturgy, the public worship in which we are invited to participate, we also realize that ecology is not a peripheral issue. Adam was given responsibility for tending the garden. Everything in it was blessed, except the one tree, the ungiven and unblessed tree, from which he chose to eat instead. So what really is “the fall” of Adam and Eve? It is not so much that God gave them a rule (“Don’t eat the fruit!”) and they disobeyed. The problem is not about violating a commandment and being punished (by exile from paradise and death—a pretty steep sentence for poaching an apple!) but of failing to accept the world as sacred. Everything in the garden was blessed, meaning it was a sign of God’s Presence, God’s power, God’s Love. Only the one tree had no connection to Him. It represents life without God, life with no Life in it. And this is what Adam and all people since have chosen: to live as if there were no God, to choose to live without reference to God, to reject God’s Plan, God’s Will, God’s purposes and to live without Him. But to live without Life is death, not as a judicial sentence, but as the logical result of cutting ourselves off from Him, the Source of Life, Life itself.

In this sense, Christ comes to restore us to Life, to “give Himself as food.” And He emphatically states, “Unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you have no Life in you.” And we do this with Bread, and Bread can be made only as long as the sun shines, the rain falls, the wheat sprouts, the grain matures. He is the Life in that grain of wheat which falls into the earth and produces a rich harvest. He is the life in the vine that produces the grapes. It is His Presence that inspires the geese to migrate, the salmon to spawn, the flowers to bloom.“All things were made for Him and through Him and in Him all things subsist.” It is all Him.

“The Christian is one,” Father Alexander Schmemann wrote decades ago, who, “wherever he looks, sees Christ and rejoices in Him.” He is the life of that tree, which when harvested, became the board on which the icon was later written, the paper on which that Gospel was printed. He is the life in that stalk of wheat which became the Bread, the life in that vine that became that wine, the “Offerer and the Offered, the Receiver and the Received,” as the priest’s prayer before the Great Entrance affirms.

Conclusion

Taking all this into account, how can “ecological problems” be for us Orthodox a “political” or “public relations” issue? How can concern for the environment be, for us, anything less than a deeply spiritual matter? We should not doubt the sincerity of the commitment of His All-Holiness to the purity and sanctification of the natural world, for at its core, our Orthodox Tradition affirms that we are custodians of a sacred and precious reality, the earth and all that it contains.

In Christ we have been restored to our priestly responsibility to receive the world with joy and gratitude and in thanksgiving and love to offer it back to the Creator, holding the cosmos together, fulfilling our original role as the priests of creation, who serve to unite earth to heaven, creation to creator, as we perform the Divine Liturgy “on behalf of everyone and for everything.”