BBC Radio 4 2015-12-09

BBC Radio 4 2015-12-09

Good morning. The photo shows a man and his wife standing at a window looking forlornly out at the water high up the side of their house. It may be now receding but they and others in Cumbria well know that the cleaning up and other consequences will be with them a long time yet. Such floods alert us again to the the volatility of our present weather patterns and the crucial importance of getting significant agreement on climate change in Paris this week. Surely what we want from Paris are targets that can both make a real difference and which the countries involved can ensure are met. This is not, however, just a matter of technical fixes and political agreements. At heart it is for many a spiritual issue, of the right relationship of us human beings to the natural world of which we are an integral part. This is the message of the Pope’s powerful plea published earlier this year “Laudato si’,the first words of St Francis of Assisi’s beautiful song “Praise be to you, my Lord, subtitled “Care for our common home.”

This encyclical is not anti-technology. Far from it, but it stresses that first of all we must see ourselves as creatures, and as such bound up with all that is created. Everything is connected and interdependent. Moreover, it argues that this interconnection goes deep, for God is in every aspect of the creation, moment by moment holding the tiniest leaf and pebble in existence as much as the complex cells in our body.
I particularly like the way the encyclical holds together what we are always in danger of pulling apart. It argues for the importance of what we do in our personal lives in the way of recycling and avoiding waste, as much as what is agreed in Paris about carbon reduction. There used to be a slogan that I think the Pope would approve “Act locally, think globally.” Then there is the way he sees concerns about the environment and the plight of the poor as inseparable. For it is well known that when sea levels start rising it is the poor who are forced to live on low lying land who will above all suffer. He offers a holistic, integrated approach so that as the document puts it, both “the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor are heard.”

Christians, and many others, believe that if we approach each day with a sense of the giveness of things, with a sense of awe and wonder at the beauty of the natural world of which we are a part, with a spirit of contemplation at the heart of our activity, then our attitude will no longer be that of masters, consumers and ruthless exploiters.
Yesterday the original Holy Door in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome was opened for the first times since the start of the century, to symbolise the beginning of the Catholic Church’s year of mercy. That mercy includes having a right relationship with our common home, the earth.