At the start of a new decade,
Eco Congregation Ireland
chairperson,
chairperson, Catherine Brennan SSL, poses the question – Are we ready to cross a new threshold into the future with a consciousness that we are one sacred community with the whole of Creation?
This is Sr Catherine’s message to churches in Ireland at the start of a new decade –
“We have just crossed the threshold into the second decade of the third millennium. A new awareness of planet Earth as one community of life is growing among peoples everywhere. The more we discern how precious all life on Earth is, the more we realise how human actions are ravaging and exhausting it.
What the Christian churches can bring to this reality is an awareness that this small blue planet Earth, existing in a vast milky way, is a sacrament vivified by the living Spirit of God. The way we are destroying it is tantamount to sacrilege.
‘Earth’s crammed with heaven
And every common bush afire with God’
(Elizabeth Browning)
“Ignoring this view keeps our churches and their members locked into fatal irrelevance. Our right relationship with the Earth is a vitally important spiritual/ethical/ intellectual issue, one that encompasses all others including relationship with God and peaceful justice among humankind.
“Are we in the Christian Churches ready for the call to a new Exodus adventure, the crossing of a new threshold into the future with a consciousness that we are one sacred community with the whole of Creation?”