Years ago -17?, 18? - I travelled to New Mexico in November for my first visit to Ghost Ranch, a sprawling education and retreat centre in the wilds of high plateau country, which was at that time run by the Presbyterians. I was attending a several-day seminar presented by John Philip Newell, one of the leading writers on Celtic spirituality and its importance for the time in which we live. Newell is a Church of Scotland minister but he grew up in Southern Ontario, as I did. During a break we chatted and discovered that we attended neighbouring high schools at the same time.
Not only was my time at Ghost Ranch related to the Celtic "thin place" time of All Saints and All Souls, there was plenty of evidence for the Day of the Dead, or Día de los Muertos in Spanish, the influence of the Latinx population of the region. The altars in various places were fascinating reminders of our mortality and honouring those who have gone before us.
We're hearing a lot about the upcoming United Nations conference on the environment called COP27 which will take place in Egypt beginning this coming Sunday. Year after year these summits take place and it seems that delegates from the many participating nations walk away each time with little more than "aspirational" goals as our planet careens toward chaos.How do we take seriously a conference sponsored in part by Coca Cola, a conglomerate which is choking the planet with plastic?
What if we decided to respect the Earth and the species which have been driven to the brink of extinction in the way we honour our human forebears? Celtic spirituality is certainly Earth-honouring, so people of faith and goodwill could choose to understand our planetary upheaval as a deeply spiritual crisis as well. Surely there could be an interfaith version of these commemorations which recognizes the "communion of saints" as including all creatures and the Earth itself.
Okay, this does seem like a bit of a stretch, yet we need a wake-up call, don't you figure?
No comments:
Post a Comment