Hiraeth for our Planetary Home

 

To you, O Lord, I cry.

For fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness,

and flames have burned

all the trees of the field.

 Even the wild animals cry to you

because the watercourses are dried up,

and fire has devoured

the pastures of the wilderness.

Joel 1: 19-20 NRSVue

Not long ago I wrote a blog entry which included the recently coined term "noctalgia." This refers to our human sense of loss over the wonders of the night sky due to light pollution. Billions of us no longer have even an occasional glimpse of the Milky Way or constellations, or meteor showers. Scientists suggest that this has an effect on the sleep patterns of all creatures and diminishes our sense of wonder. 

There is another newer term, "solastalgia", which refers to our sense of loss brought about by climate change. This can take many different forms, including our perception of the changing seasons. I have strong positive memories of the crunch of snow underfoot from my childhood, an auditory experience which has all but vanished because we don't experience the cold which creates those conditions very often in our warming winters. Solastalgia can be a form of longing, or grief, or anxiety.  

These are newer terms but there is an old Welsh word, "hiraeth" which describes something similar. As you'll see below it is "a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness" which is related specifically to Wales but could apply more broadly to our longing and lament for a vanishing planet in terms of patterns and rhythms.

There are lots of passages in scripture which are laments, including a number of psalms. They invite us to recognize what has been lost and at times admit that human frailty and sin are the cause of a deep disconnect with God. 

Do we need to develop a deeper spiritual vocabulary for our sense of loss regarding Creation and our alienation from the Creator?  We are coming closer to the end of what may well be the hottest year in recording history, an "annus horribilis" when it comes to destructive weather events. Hardly a day goes by when we don't hear about yet another disaster which we can no longer describe as natural. 

 Could acknowledging our longing and mourning for our planetary home lead us to decisions which will heal the Earth? 

This lengthier description of "hiraeth" has been excerpted from Wikipedia 

Hiraeth (Welsh pronunciation: [hɪraɨ̯θ, hiːrai̯θ]^[1]) is a Welsh word that has no direct English translation. The University of Wales, Lampeter, likens it to a homesickness tinged with grief and sadness over the lost or departed, especially in the context of Wales and Welsh culture.^[2] It is a mixture of longing, yearning, nostalgia, wistfulness or an earnest desire for the Wales of the past.^[3]

The Cornish and Breton equivalents are hireth^[4] and hiraezh. It is associated with the Amharic-Ethiopian concept of Tizita, the German concept of Sehnsucht, the Galician-Portuguese saudade or the Romanian dor.^[5] A similar Scottish Gaelic term, cianalas, also refers to a type of longing or homesickness, often used in relation to the Outer Hebrides...

Etymology

Derived from hir 'long' and -aeth (a nominal suffix creating an abstract noun from an adjective), the word is literally equivalent to English 'longing'. A less likely, but possible, etymology is hir 'long' + aeth 'pain, grief, sorrow, longing'. In the earliest citations in early Welsh poetry it implies 'grief or longing after the loss or death of someone'...