An exercise for Lent

On this Ash Wednesday, Ecopenitent, from the USA, requests that EarthAbbey members join together in developing a statement of penitence and prayer regarding our behaviour on the earth. She has drafted something for us to start us off…

We are members of our particular culture and we are not innocent of the assumptions and actions of our culture.  Have we turned a blind eye, a deaf ear?  Have we spoken when we could, have we grieved for the consequences of actions we as humans have committed, have we been open and accepting of their impact?  It is not so much what we have failed to do but who we have failed to be.
 
We are not separate from the natural world, from the Earth.  We are not separate from any other human or from any other being. 
 
We as humans have been so greedy and full of pride as to think we are superior to other forms of life, rather than seeing we may have greater responsibility and accountability, but we are not superior. 
 
We have acted in such as way as to take away the right to live and to flourish from the rest of the natural world. 
 
We as humans have destroyed the habitat of billions of our own species, and of even greater numbers of other species, for no other reason than our greed and pride. 
 
We have been diminishing the very forms of life that God has created and that
God still speaks through.
 
For this we are sorry.
 
We recognize that we have been living beyond the means of the planet to sustain us and one impact is climate disruption. 
 
For our impact on climate disruption, the lives that have already been lost, the lives that will be lost, for the homelessness, starvation and dehydration that will affect billions as a result, we are sorry.
 
For our addiction to oil, leading to record levels of social inequity, obesity, indebtedness, and alienation; for our lack of gratitude for abundance of the cheap energy we have received during this time; for our lack of using this gift well; and for our lack of responsible planning for the inevitable energy descent when cheap energy is no longer so available, we are sorry.
 
As members of the developed world, we are sorry for the way we have offloaded the ecological costs, risks, and burdens of economic growth on the third world and future generations.
 
As citizens of the United States, we are sorry for the way we have used our money and strength to try to maintain access to oil and to perpetuate consumerism at the expense of other nations and recognize it has led to resentment abroad, raising the likelihood of future attacks on the US and us, it’s citizens. 
 
Also as citizens of the United States, we are sorry that we have let our apathy and suspicions against government lead us to allowing gross negligence in the resultant political demobilization of the citizenry and a political coming of age of corporate power. 
 
We are sorry for the resultant collapse of our financial system and the need to reform an economy built on excess, debt and dishonest bookkeeping.

In our conflation of free markets and economic growth improperly measured, we have given away our own common sense and power to corporations concerned only with profit.  We are sorry for the resultant degradation of healthful environments and corruption of our food and health care systems, with vast consequences to the vitality and resilience of life on the planet. 
 
We are sorry for the way we have let cheap energy and the dictates of consumerism alienate us from nature, our local community, and our neighbor.
 
We recognize that we must sincerely grieve our lacks.  Help us deepen our vision and our heart so that we have the capacity to embrace all of your Creation in love. 
 
Give us the wisdom to continue to recognize where our actions must surely grieve you, as well as the strength and courage to act to make amends. 
 
Help us come together in true community quickly enough to make the difference the Earth and all beings on it require in this time of urgent crises.

Suggested Task: Develop this as a community statement

I have placed a copy of this in the wiki as Lent Exercise. There you can edit it freely and we can develop it together.
Alternatively if you would like to just leave a comment you can do so below.

Your comments.

Thank you for your concern, thoughtfulness and the time and effort that you put into this Lenten exercise.

Some other issues that I have been pondering on are as follows: (I have not formulated them into your Lenten Exercise)

Companies that exist for the sole purpose of obtaining and providing shareholders with the biggest, quickest and best returns on our investments.

Our desire to shop around for the best and cheapest deal.

Wanting the biggest and quickest returns on our investments.

For our apparent inability to live simply; to know when “enough is enough”. We want “More, more!” when we should be saying “Less, less!”

Relying on (our) credit (cards).

We have been created in the image of God to be an expression of His mercy, compassion, love, mercy, justice, goodness and peace. As Christians we have lived out of our fallen human nature rather than out of the renewed nature given to us by and through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ , our Saviour and Redeemer.

“We are not human beings trying to become spiritual. That task has already been done for us by our initial creation as ‘images of God’ (Genesis 1:26). We are already spiritual beings. That is God’s gift. Our desperate and needed task, the one we have not succeeded at very well after all these centuries, is how to become human! – Richard Rohr

Ross Flint
Rosevears
Tasmania