Addressing God with Names of Earth Lisa E. Dahill Associate Professor of Religion California Lutheran University The Great Work of our species for our time is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation he Earth is abused through human of the Earth to a period when humans would be present 1 evil; humanity has lost sight of to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner. T the relationships that give and sustain Within a sexist system the true identity of both women and the [E]arth are skewed. Both are commonly excluded life. …Faith practices matter in the from the sphere of the sacred; both are routinely taken ecological crisis. for granted and ignored, used and discarded, even bat- tered and “raped,” while nevertheless they do not cease to give birth and sustain life. … The [fundamental] “Earth.” Readers’ reactions to these prayers are important data in relationships—human beings to the [E]arth, among each generating responses to the article as a whole. other, and to God—are profoundly interconnected. … In the history of western thought … all three have been Abstraction and effacement conceived primarily according to the values of patriarchy.2 Elsewhere, I have explored the connection between Bonhoef- fer’s category of “abstraction” and the present-day effacement of 3 In his Ethics, Bonhoeffer uch profound challenges are at the heart of this article. The the reality and life of the natural world. Earth is abused through human evil; humanity has lost speaks of the “abstraction” that results when the union between sight of the relationships that give and sustain life. This God and the world in Jesus Christ is broken apart—when God is Scontribution is part of a larger project exploring the theology and posited in separation from the world (or the world in separation practice of an ecological Lutheran spirituality, for I believe that from God). One of the key places where God and the world came faith practices matter in the ecological crisis. To wit, ecological together in Jesus Christ for Bonhoeffer was in those threatened conversion requires new metaphors and language for God that ones to whom most of the church was heedless: the Jews. Expres- reorient worshipers to the divine presence permeating all that is. sions of “God” that ignored or failed to take real political account Here is how I proceed. First, I note connections between of the actual situation of the Jews under Hitler were, for him, Bonhoeffer’s category of “abstraction” and contemporary efface- abstractions, no matter how orthodox. ment of human awareness of the natural world in its distress. Next, One of the places we are still too often heedless as a society— feminist environmental philosopher Val Plumwood and feminist with danger as acute as that facing the Jews in Nazi Germany—is eco-theologian Cynthia Moe-Lobeda help to place this effacement in relation to the life and well-being of the natural world, the in parallel with that of human female bodies and with voices and entire biosphere upon which our species depends. Signs of the people who are poor within global capitalism. Then I propose “ecological conversion” that Pope Francis calls for are visible today, the theologically risky move of what I am calling second-naiveté crystallizing in the remarkable accords reached among world lead- pantheism. That is, I assert that addressing God using the meta- ers in Paris.4 Scientists and leaders from all nations increasingly phor or name “Earth” provides a way of re-orienting Christians’ agree that ecological distress or catastrophe is the overarching attention to this place where divine life is profoundly at risk: in crisis of our time, unfolding already in the lives and bodies of the the ongoing survival and abundance of the creation’s life. To close poorest human beings on earth. Although we are waking up to I test the viability of this proposal using prayers to God named as these needs, Christians generally fail to take ongoing account of 1. Thomas Berry, The Great Work: Our Way into the Future(New 3. Lisa E. Dahill, “Bio-Theoacoustics: Prayer Outdoors and the York: Bell Tower, 1999), 3. Reality of the Natural World,” in Dialog 52 (Winter 2013): 297–306. 2. Elizabeth A. Johnson, Women, Earth, and Creator Spirit, 4. Pope Francis, Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home Madaleva Lectures in Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1993), 2–3. (Rome: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015). Currents in Theology and Mission 43:3 (July 2016) 27 Dahill: Addressing God with Names of Earth notes how pervasive this effacement of creation is today, via the his willful ignorance of the “ecological denial” that rejects awareness of human embeddedness within the natural world.7 Plumwood’s work traces the parallels Tliving reality and needs of the between diverse forms of privileged gaze, each refusing to see the world beyond ourselves is pushing us reality of some oppressed other. Her systemic analysis of “centrism” illuminates the problem: into the position of becoming “un- The weakening of the sense of ecological reality … is just one of the damaging effects of human-centeredness (or creators,” reversing God’s original anthropocentrism) … [which] promotes [and underlies] work of creation and returning the various forms of epistemic remoteness. Centrism is often represented as if its distortions affected only the weaker living biosphere to a place of chaos, party to the relationship, “the victim,” but this idea is degradation, and death. widely rejected by oppression theorists as illusory and as an example of “studying down.” Both dominating and subordinated parties are deformed by centric construc- tions. … [our] self-enclosed outlook has helped us to the actual lives of species outside our own. We are as cut off from lose touch with ourselves as creatures who are not only creation’s existence as a “Thou” crying out for our attention and cultural beings but also natural beings, just as dependent courageous action as most Christians were cut off from the voices on a healthy biosphere as other forms of life. 8 of the Jews in Bonhoeffer’s time.5 Post-colonial eco-feminists of different classes, cultures, and Feminist ecology contexts worldwide have been making similar connections for As Cynthia Moe-Lobeda notes, this willful ignorance of the over forty years now, at least since Reuther’s New Woman, New living reality and needs of the world beyond ourselves is pushing Earth in 1975.9 us into the position of becoming “un-creators,” reversing God’s Yet little seems to have changed: if anything, we are even original work of creation and returning the living biosphere to a more distant today from the life of the natural world, distracted place of chaos, degradation, and death. She writes: by screens and buffered by buildings, automobiles, and economic We [have been given] a world of beauty beyond com- privilege from the forces of creation. What will help us stop liv- prehension, a glorious bit of earth and water resplendent ing in abstraction, stop “losing track of nature,” and learn to pay with sight, sound, smell, and touch, a shimmering sphere attention again to the actual biological reality of the world upon created and destined to provide abundant life for all. … Yet which every human life on Earth, including the incarnate Jesus today, humanity faces a moral crisis never before known: Christ, depends? There are surely many layers to any adequate We are, in the words of John Cobb and Herman Daly, response to this question, involving powerfully entrenched forces “living toward a dead end,” destroying Earth’s life-systems of privilege and injustice. However, I want to focus on just one. and building a soul-shattering gap between the rich and the impoverished. … Our numbers and our excessive Reorientation to divine life consumption threaten Earth’s capacity to [continue] Since the center of Christian life is worship, liturgical language regenerat[ing] life. … We have become the “uncreators.”6 powerfully shapes worshipers’ spiritual and theological imagination, our vision of the world and of God. Thus I am coming to believe Australian eco-feminist philosopher Val Plumwood also that the ecological conversion Pope Francis is calling for requires, among other things, new metaphors and language—indeed, forms 5. For a prescient acknowledgement of environmental of address, or names—for God that reorient worshipers to the effacement, see “A Social Statement on Caring for Creation: Vision, Hope, and Justice” (Chicago: Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, 1993), 1. “This statement … acknowledges humanity’s 7. Val Plumwood, Environmental Culture: The Ecological Crisis of separation from God and from the rest of creation as the central cause Reason (New York: Routledge, 2002), 97. of the environmental crisis.” 8. Ibid., 98–99. She cites Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild 6. Cynthia Moe-Lobeda, “The Theology of the Cross for the (New York: North Point Press, 1990), 40. ‘Uncreators,’” in Cross Examinations: Readings on the Meaning of the 9. Cf. Rosemary Radford Ruether, Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Cross Today, Marit Trelstad, ed. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, Theology of Earth Healing(New York: HarperCollins, 1992); Aruna 2006), 182–183. Italics in the original. Citing John B. Cobb and Gnanadason, Listen to the Women! Listen to the Earth! (Geneva: WCC Hermann E. Daly, For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Publications, 2005); Ivonne Gebara, Longing for Running Water: Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future (Boston: Ecofeminism and Liberation, David Molineaux, trans. (Minneapolis: Beacon, 1994). For a fuller treatment of this insight, see Cynthia Moe- Fortress Press, 1999); and Heather Eaton and Lois Ann Lorentzen, Lobeda, Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation eds., Ecofeminism and Globalization: Exploring Culture, Context, and (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013).