Via Positiva in Laudato Si'

Let us first look at the language and concepts utilized in the encyclical. I was very pleased to see the Pope appeal to beauty on twenty‐seven different occasions! Sadly, the idea of beauty as a name for God has been sorrowfully missing in discourse and theology during the modern era (Descartes has a whole philosophy with no philosophy of aesthetics). In premodern times, beauty was indeed a significant category for the divine. The religion of the Navajo is built around multiple prayers about beauty and spirit. Beauty plays a prominent role in creation spirituality theology (Fox []2000, 212–19).

Premodern theologians invoked beauty as an essential theological category. For example, Meister Eckhart equates beauty with salvation when he says: “This, then, is salvation, when we marvel at the beauty of created things and praise the beautiful providence of their Creator or when we purchase heavenly goods by our compassion for the works of creation” (Fox []2000, 423). Thomas Aquinas had this to say about beauty and divinity (and much more!):

God is beauty itself, beautifying all things…. The Creator of beauty has set up all the beauty of things…. Divinity is manifest through the names of Wise and Beautiful…. God, who is supersubstantial beauty, is called beauty because God bestows beauty on all created beings. … God is “always” beautiful. The generation and corruption of beauty are not in God, nor is there increase or diminution, as appears in corporeal things.… God is a fountain of total beauty. The beautiful is said to be from God as a cause. From this beautiful One beauty comes to be in all beings, for brightness comes from a consideration of beauty. But all beauty, through which a thing is able to be, is a kind of participation of the divine brightness.… The beautiful, which is God, is the end of all like the final cause of all things. For all things have been made in order that they imitate the divine beauty in whatever way possible. (Fox []2000, 162, 104, 105, 106)

Physicist Paul Carr, who has devoted an entire book to Beauty in Science and Spirit, would, I think, find an ally in Thomas Aquinas. In his book Carr offers the following provocative observations.

I was amazed to learn, through Gleick's (1987) Chaos: Making a New Science, that the beauty of nature has an underlying mathematical structure called fractal geometry.… Beauty in religious art and in sacred spaces can be seen from the pyramids to cathedrals. This led to the idea that science and spirit both have beauty in common. Both are beautiful to me. Beauty has many facets. How might they be defined? (Carr , 5)

He states that “the complementary beauty of science and spirituality offers a better alternative to atheistic materialism than intelligent design” (Carr , 41) and he cites Alfred North Whitehead: “The teleology [goal] of the universe is directed to the production of Beauty” (Carr , 42). Beauty includes “tragic beauty” as Whitehead puts it: “The Adventure of the Universe starts with a dream and reaps tragic beauty” (Carr 80).

Carr is intent on finding “ways of relating science and religion” (Carr , 81). I am proposing in this article that creation spirituality and its naming of the four paths as the archetype of a spiritual journey provides such a way. In addition, Carr invokes the work of cosmologist Brian Swimme and geologian Thomas Berry in their efforts to present the new creation story from science suggesting that their book The Universe Story “can become the basis of a more comprehensive ecological and social ethics that sees the human community as dependent upon and interactive with the Earth community. Only such a perspective can result in the flourishing of both humans and the Earth” (Carr , 230). In many ways Pope Francis in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si', invokes that same story (the principal author of that encyclical received his master's degree in creation spirituality from my program in the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality [ICCS] at Holy Names University where Brian Swimme was on our faculty and Thomas Berry was a regular lecturer).

Carr closes his book with a citation from Henri Poincaré: “If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing” and with a question: “How can theology conflict with science when they both emanate from nature's beauty?” (Carr , 148). A question Thomas Aquinas would be very eager to sign on to and discuss. It is also found as an essential issue, one might say, in Pope Francis’ encyclical on the Environment.

In the encyclical we read phrases like the following: “Nature is a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness” (section 12). After speaking of the disappearance of ecosystems and creatures, we are told to beware of substituting “an irreplaceable and irretrievable beauty with something which we have created ourselves” (section 34). God's plan is “for peace, beauty and fullness” (section 53). The entire universe holds a “mysterious beauty of what is unfolding” that we can come to know (section 79). Jesus himself invited “others to be attentive to the beauty that there is in the world because he himself was in constant touch with nature, lending it an attention full of fondness and wonder. As he made his way through out the land, he often stopped to contemplate the beauty sown by his Father, and invited his disciples to perceive a divine message in things: ‘Lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest’” (section 97). Humans bring about a “quantum leap” in beauty with our art including aircraft and skyscrapers and music and more (section 103). “A kind of salvation… occurs in beauty and to those who behold it” section 112; this very much parallels what Meister Eckhart taught in the passage we considered above). In the spirituality of the Christian East beauty “is one of the best loved names [for God] expressing the divine harmony and the model of humanity transfigured” (section 235). “At the end we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite Beauty of God” (section 243).

Pope Francis offers a prayer at the conclusion of his encyclical “for all who believe” in a God who is a creator God. In it he moves beyond theism as he begins the prayer this way: “You are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures.” And he asks God to “pour out upon us the power of your love, that we may protect life and beauty.” He asks that “we may protect the world and not prey on it, that we may sow beauty, not pollution and destruction” (section 246).

A final prayer asks God to “Teach us to contemplate you in the beauty of the universe, for all things speak of you” (section 246). This too rings with Meister Eckhart who says every creature is a word of God and a book about God and that all creatures are “words of God” (Fox []2000, 58).

The Via Positiva plays a rich role in this encyclical. The word “goodness” (another word for this is “blessing” as in “original blessing”) is invoked on at least eleven occasions. Pope Francis unites beauty with goodness when he says: “Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness.” The result? “Rather than a problem to be solved the world is a joyful mystery to be contemplated with gladness and praise” (section 12).

Pope Francis cites Saint Basil who called God “goodness without measure” and we are encouraged to recognize creation as being more than a “system which can be studied, understood and controlled” but rather as “á gift from the outstretched hand of the Father of all” which came about “not from chaos or change” but from love (sections 77, 76).

Pope Francis invokes the mystical experience of being struck by the awe and wonders of nature: “The mystic experiences the intimate connection between God and all beings, and thus feels that ‘all things are God’ [a citation from St. John of the Cross]. Standing awestruck before a mountain, he or she cannot separate this experience from God, and perceives that the interior awe being lived has to be entrusted to the Lord” (section 234).

Indeed, the words “awe” and “wonder” are employed at least fourteen times in the encyclical. Echoing the teaching of Rabbi Heschel that without awe “the universe becomes a marketplace for us” (Heschel , 55), the Pope teaches that “if we approach nature and the environment without this openness to awe and wonder…our attitude will be that of masters, consumers, ruthless exploiters, unable to set limits on their immediate needs.” He invokes St. Francis who refused “to turn reality into an object simply to be used and controlled” (section 11). Surely, this object‐fetish gets at the heart of the modern world's abuse of nature. So long as we are in touch with “wonder and awe” we recognize a “continuing revelation of the divine” in the smallest and largest forms within nature. Thus we are called to “contemplation of nature” (section 85). Our wonder “takes us to a deeper understanding of life” (section 225).

Pope Francis calls for our expressing “gratitude for the gifts of creation” (section 227) and the first “community conversion” ought to entail “gratitude and gratuitousness” and “a loving awareness that we are not disconnected from the rest of creatures but joined in a splendid universal communion” (section 220). This awareness of our interconnectivity with the rest of creation is spoken of numerous times in this letter. We live in an “interdependent” world (section 164) wherein “God wills the interdependence of creatures” and since “no creature is self‐sufficient” creatures exist “in the service of each other” (section 86). Interdependence characterizes human society as well and the entire species (section 164).

A cosmic awareness and a sense of the Cosmic Christ (though not by name) are invoked frequently in this document as well. In the Eucharist “the whole cosmos gives thanks to God” and “the Eucharist is itself an act of cosmic love” (section 236). The term “universe” is invoked twenty‐three times and “universal” eighteen times. We are told that “the universe unfolds in God, who fills it completely. Hence, there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dewdrop, in a poor person's face. It is not enough to discover the action of God in the soul, but also to discover God in all things” (section 233). In his prayer that concludes the encyclical, the pope prays to God saying, “You are present in the whole universe and in the smallest of your creatures” (section 246). Notice the word “in”; not just “above and beyond.” God is in all things macro and micro (panentheism).

This too is Cosmic Christ or Buddha Nature or Image of God theology such as Rabbi David Seidenberg presents in his study on eco‐theology that concludes that all beings are an image of God. How like the Cosmic Christ or Buddha Nature is the Image of God archetype! (Seidenberg , 255). Pope Francis teaches that we humans all belong to a kind of “universal family” which is to say to the universe at large (section 89). Part III of the Encyclical is entitled “The Mystery of the Universe.”

The pope criticizes the “unhealthy dualisms” that “left a mark on certain Christian thinkers in the course of history and disfigured the Gospel.” In contrast, Jesus himself “is far removed from philosophies which despised the body, matter and the things of this world.” For he lived “in full harmony with creation” and “his appearance was not that of an ascetic set apart from the world, or of an enemy to the pleasant things of life” (section 98). He invokes the Scriptural passages that are famous as texts of the Cosmic Christ when he cites Colossians 1: “All things have been created through him and for him” and the prologue to the Gospel of John (1:1–18) that “reveals Christ's creative work as the Divine Word (Logos).” In this way “the mystery of Christ is at work in a hidden manner in the natural world as a whole, without hereby impinging on its autonomy” (section 99). Divinity is present in all beings, “the very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired are now imbued with his radiant presence” (section 100). Pope Francis invokes his Jesuit brother, Teilhard de Chardin, when he speaks of how “the ultimate destiny of the universe is in the fullness of God, which has already been attained by the risen Christ” (section 83 and note).

Via Negativa in Laudato Si'

We have seen that the Via Positiva is dealt with in considerable depth and breadth in this encyclical. What about the Via Negativa? That is clearly in evidence also as the Pope reports the demise of the planet as we know it. His list is familiar to all who have been watching the planet suffering for decades. He speaks to the “pollution produced by residue, including dangerous waste, much of it non‐biodegradable, highly toxic and radioactive.” He decries a “throwaway culture” where “the Earth, our home is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth” (sections 21, 22). He invokes “a very solid scientific consensus” around the issue of climate warming and a “constant rise in the sea level, an increase of extreme weather events,” a concentration of greenhouse gases and more (section 23). Deforestation, the extinction of the planet's biodiversity, shortage of drinking water, the loss of tropical forests and more (sections 23, 24). Animals, plants, and humans are migrating as a result and there has been “a tragic rise in the number of migrants seeking to flee from the growing poverty caused by environmental degradation” (section 25). The extinction of mammals and birds, fungi, algae, worms, insects, and reptiles contributes to the destruction of entire ecosystems (section 34). He might have invoked the archetype I offered twenty‐eight years ago, that the Christ is being crucified all over again as we despoil the Earth and her good creatures (Fox , 144–48).

We undergo debasement as we feel the debasement of the Earth and “God has joined us so closely to the world around us that we can feel the desertification of the soil almost as a physical ailment, and the extinction of a species as a painful disfigurement” (section 89). Yes, the Cosmic Christ is being crucified on the cross all over again.

Via Creativa in Laudato Si'

But the Pope's message is not exclusively of doom and gloom—though it does urge us to throw off denial and to pay attention to the pain of Mother Earth. This is evident from his many invocations of the Via Positiva that we listed above. But he turns to the Via Creativa as well—our vast potential as a species to make a difference and to create new ways of living on the Earth. He invokes the word “creativity” at least sixteen times in this encyclical in passages such as the following. The Holy Spirit possesses an “infinite creativity,” he assures us, and we share in that creativity (section 80). “Human creativity cannot be suppressed” but it needs to be put to the use “of the service of others” because “it is “a form of power involved in considerable risks” (section 131). It is this “admirable creativity” that inspires people to make a difference in combatting the forces of industrialization and more that are destroying the planet and to build cities that are respectful of humans and environment alike (sections 148, 152). He calls on institutions to “stimulate creativity” (I hope he has the church in mind as well when he says this) (section 177) and criticizes those who would “stifle creativity” (section 191). To live more mindfully of the needs of the Earth and commit to lifestyles of greater simplicity will result in a “generous and worthy creativity which brings out the best in human beings” (section 211). Indeed, the very crisis of our times requires an “ecological conversion [that] can inspire us to greater creativity and enthusiasm in resolving” the world's problems(section 220).

Via Transformativa in Laudato Si'

The Via Transformativa is everywhere in this encyclical since it is a call to action and not just to analysis. The basics of the encyclical are pretty well known now and essentially they are as follows. The ecological crisis of our times, the despoiling of Mother Earth, parallels the despoiling of the poor on the planet. It derives from both a perverted view of the world and economic and political structures that carry on this perversion which is evident in the unsustainable income extremes of the super‐rich and the poor as well as indifference to the greed, waste, and materialism that a consumer society generates. We live in an interconnected world and it is high time we started acting like it, seeking a common good and not just a private hoarding.

There is no “room for the globalization of indifference” becasue the current state of affairs has “caused sister Earth, along with all the abandoned of our world, to cry out, pleading that we take another course” (sections 52, 53). The problems lie in the structures themselves and “we still lack the culture needed to confront this crisis.” Pope Francis points out that the “techno‐economic paradigm” is capable of overwhelming “not only our politics but also freedom and justice” (section 53).

He is explicit about the ineffective and indeed destructive economic system that dominates our planet. “Economic powers continue to justify the current global system where priority tends to be given to speculation and the pursuit of financial gain, which fail to take the context into account, let alone the effects on human dignity and the natural environment” (section 56). The avalanche of denial arises because “distractions constantly dull our consciousness of just how limited and finite our world really is.” The market is in fact an idol, a “deified market,” which we are taught to worship and not question as if it were the only economic option humanity has (section 56).

He identifies “sin” with the rupture we have from creation (as well as the Creator and one another) (section 66). He repeats a summons to solidarity “and a preferential option for the poorest of our brothers and sisters” while recognizing in them “an appreciation of their immense dignity” (section 158). And he wisely speaks to the topic of “justice between the generations” and how future generations are depending on us and are in every way related to us, calling for an “intergenerational solidarity” which is “not optional, but rather a basic question of justice, since the world we have received also belongs to those who will follow us.” The environment is ours “on loan to each generation, which must then hand it on to the next,” he says, citing a statement from the bishops of Portugal(section 159).

The Via Creativa is meant to inform the Via Transformativa and the Pope sees this. Pope Francis believes that our generation is very much involved in “the pains of childbirth” as we try to learn anew how to cooperate with the Creator, that “God can bring good out of the evil we have done” since the Holy Spirit is so powerfully creative (section 80). We, having been made in the “image and likeness” of the Creator, are therefore co‐creators with Divinity. Divinity depends on us to bring compassion to the Earth and all our relationships therein. The Holy Spirit wants to work through us, wants to inspire and awaken our intuitions and inform our hands and minds to get to the work of eco‐justice as well as social justice. As I put it in my book on creativity, it is there, in the act of our being creative, that the divine and the human meet (Fox ). There lie Pope Francis's hope and ours, that we can change our ways, that we are endowed with immense intelligence and creativity, that if we pull out of denial and away from destructive economic systems and relationships and beyond a dulled consciousness, anything is possible. Or, I might add, citing eco‐philosopher David Orr, “Hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up” (2009). We can go to work, and we must.

It is clear from this walk‐through of Pope Francis's encyclical that creation spirituality is alive and well in today's Vatican. How would it be otherwise with St. Francis of Assisi the patron saint of the hour? The four paths are clearly expressed in much depth and clarity in this encyclical. So too are the concepts of Original Blessing and the Cosmic Christ and interdependence which are pillars to creation spirituality, along with a deep sense of ecumenism or interfaith.

Regarding the latter, there are explicit references to respecting the culture and wisdom of indigenous peoples (sections 145, 146, 158). Unfortunately, and in opposition to the Pope's own words, the Vatican went ahead and canonized the great colonizer‐in‐chief and racist par excellence Friar Junipero Serra, who set up the mission system in California that enslaved thousands of Native Americans in the nineteenth century (Fogel ; Castillo ). It is a pity that the Pope failed to walk his talk and listen more deeply to his own preaching when it comes to Native Americans—and to listen to them. But the lesson is clear: Popes too can be very, very fallible. Like the rest of us.

The fact that creation spirituality has moved from being labeled “dangerous and deviant” by two papal administrations who reigned for thirty‐four dark years to being front and center in this important encyclical on eco‐theology and the survival of the planet within one generation is surely a sign of hope as well.

The Via Positiva in Science

The roles of beauty, awe, wonder, gratitude, and reverence are aroused by the Via Positiva. We have seen above how physicist Paul Carr has sought to recover beauty as an essential category in scientific thought and in its dialogue with religion.

It may well be that the scientist's primary task is to awaken a sense of awe and wonder. It is constantly doing so—from the world of the microcosm to the vast world of the macrocosm (learning last summer that the universe is two trillion galaxies large) and everything in between, awe abounds. Indeed, in my book Sins of the Spirit, Blessings of the Flesh (Fox []2016), I begin by laying out in three chapters a veritable litany of awe of first the cosmic flesh, second the eco flesh, and third the human flesh that contemporary science has presented to us. Years ago, I had a dream that was what Native Americans would call a “big dream,” that is to say it was intended for the greater community and not just for me. In it there was this sentence: “There is nothing wrong with the human race today except one thing: You have forgotten the sense of the sacred.” This is important information, and it is amazing to be told that we can cure humanity's illness by just one medicine: recovering a sense of the sacred.

How do we do that? Science has a great role to play in the process. Consider how geologist Thomas Berry insists that a new cosmology contributes greatly to recovering of a sense of the sacred. Says he: “We will recover our sense of wonder and our sense of the sacred only if we appreciate the universe beyond ourselves as a revelatory experience of that numinous presence whence all things come into being. Indeed, the universe is the primary sacred reality. We become sacred by our participating in this more sublime dimension of the world about us” (Berry , 49). Berry is drawing a powerful conclusion from the new creation story from science. It is a reunion of psyche and cosmos that will save us. He is also implicitly praising the vocation of the scientist. But what is also being said is this: the modern era in which religion was cut off from the cosmos brought about a demise of the sense of the sacred. Our postmodern era needs to heal this rupture.

By paralleling our “sense of wonder” with “our sense of the sacred” Berry is also underscoring the need to recover mysticism because mysticism, as we have seen, begins with the Via Positiva, that is with the experience of awe, wonder, and what Rabbi Heschel called “radical amazement.” Indeed, Berry ascribes the Via Positiva to the very heart of creation itself when he writes the following:

The human venture depends absolutely on this quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all that lives and grows upon the Earth.… In the end the universe can only be explained in terms of celebration. It is all an exuberant expression of existence itself.… We must feel that we are supported by that same power that brought the Earth into being, that power that spun the galaxies into space, that tilt the sun and brought the moon into its orbit. (Berry , 166, 174)

Clearly, today's cosmology provides a healing to the divorce between religion and science and between psyche and cosmos that has so dominated Western culture since the fateful year of 1600. In naming “celebration” as the primary explanation for the universe, Berry, who often invoked his namesake Thomas Aquinas in his talks, is carrying on Aquinas's teaching who said: “Sheer joy is God's and this demands companionship” (Fox []2003, v). The reason for the universe in Aquinas's understanding was joy. And with it community and companionship because joy seeks to be shared.

Another way to recover a sense of the sacred was taught me by Lakota teacher Buck Ghosthorse who said to me one day: “Do you want to know how sacred water is? Go without it for three days and three nights.” Fasting is another way to recover a lost sense of the sacred. Today, as more and more peoples are facing drought (my own state of California just went through a seven‐year drought), a sort of enforced fasting, perhaps our respect and indeed reverence for water might return. Such reverence for the sacredness of water applies of course to sacredness for air, healthy soil, forests, animals, fishes, rivers, oceans, and more that have been so often taken for granted during the modern era of “extractive capitalism” (Klein ).

The fact that so many meditation practices, in both East and West, focus on the breath—the holy breath not to be taken for granted, the holy breath that in Biblical languages and many other languages of the world is identical to the word for spirit—this too is a practice to return the sense of the sacred. A mystic is one who does not take for granted. An ecological crisis happens when we have been taking for granted too long. Such a crisis is a wake‐up call. Water is a grace; air is a grace; animals are a grace; land is a grace; the seasons are a grace; the oceans and rivers are a grace; and so on. Eckhart's teaching that “nature is grace” comes home to roost.

The Via Negativa in Science

The telling of the truth of how Earth and her creatures are suffering in our time due to climate change is, by itself, a journey into the Via Negativa, the dark night of the soul that today has become a dark night of the planet. Of course it is science's task to unveil the facts of global warming, of glaciers melting, of seas rising, of weather patterns changing that will affect us all. Without these painful facts, we cannot address solutions.

I will cite a few examples from the IRAS Conference of 2017. In his presentation, Paul Carr emphasized that a darker Arctic is boosting global warming. Since 1979, less reflecting ice and more absorbing water have made the North Pole warm twice as fast as the rest of the Earth. Carbon dioxide (CO₂), methane, nitrous oxide, and viruses are released as the frozen tundra melts. Massive phytoplankton blooms have been observed which increase the absorption of sunlight and amplify arctic warming. Major fisheries are being displaced. Sea levels are rising as mountain glaciers melt in Greenland and Antarctica. Oceans are becoming more acidic from CO₂ absorption, threatening the bottom of the food chain. Weather extremes are increasing with wet areas becoming wetter and floods increasing while dry areas become drier with subsequent droughts and wildfires on the rise. Thus “climate refugees” are on the rise—and Syria is a concrete example of what happens when farmers migrate from land that has become unfarmable to the cities. Tick‐borne Lyme Disease and other diseases increase as winters warm (Carr , 4ff).

Part of the Via Negativa is letting go. Letting go is endorsed by urging more and more people to prefer plant‐based food to animal‐based food as well as choosing to limit the size of families since the human population is exploding beyond the finite capacity of Earth to sustain us.

Part of the Via Negativa is the letting go of images and sensory input that happens in meditation. This is also the calming of the reptilian brain since reptiles are more adept at solitude than they are at bonding, for example. Science is more and more exploring the real physiological results that happen in meditation practices, practices that people have undergone for centuries in both the East and the West. This new branch of science, often called “contemplative science,” finds that “mindful awareness promotes neural integration” (Tsomo , 142–51).

The Via Creativa in Science

Peter Kelley, whose expertise is wind power, spoke at IRAS of how we could place floating islands of wind farms ten miles off the Eastern United States where they would not be in anyone's back yard or even be visible from the mainland and that from the energy powered by the turbines we could provide electricity for all of North America thus eliminating all coal, gas, and oil fossil fuels so doing.

Another speaker related that by quadrupling the capacity of our batteries (and we have already doubled the capacity so we are half way there) we could provide electricity especially for southern continents, and thus these cultures could essentially leapfrog over the industrial revolution and truly enter the solar age.

Carr points out that a sodium‐glass battery can store three times more capacity than the current lithium‐ion battery and that research is continuing on that important project. He also advocates for thorium molten‐salt nuclear reactors (MSR), which consume nearly 100 percent of their fuel, compared with 3 percent for older reactors with solid uranium fuel. They eliminate the need for storage by consuming nuclear waste and are of no weapons value. Thorium fuel is more abundant and cheaper than uranium and requires no expensive containment since the reactors operate close to atmospheric pressure. They have a zero chance of a meltdown. China is investing $350 million over five years to develop molten‐salt thorium reactors. He sees thorium as the green energy source for the future (Carr , 13).

The Via Transformativa in Science

To find a balance again, a homeostasis, with Mother Earth is in fact the work of justice and eco‐justice, and all technology and all inventions and all science should be pointing us in those directions. Only a just world can be sustainable. Caring, compassion, and justice matter, and they are possible provided we do not wallow in despair. Hope is about the possible and despair is about the impossible, as Thomas Aquinas teaches. Science and scientists need to continue to press the possible and pursue it with the warrior energy of hunter gatherers of old. In this sense science can actually lead the way in bringing back the healthy masculine which is so needed today. The archetype of the hunter‐gatherer working on behalf of the whole community is one of the central archetypes of the sacred masculine (Fox , 43–76). This is part and parcel of the nobility of the scientist's vocation.

These are just a few examples of how applying the four paths to the vocation of the scientist helps to underscore the intimate work of the scientist's vocation in the very survival of our species along with the many others we love and cherish and share the Earth with today.

Denial

Today in the United States many are in denial—especially those making big bucks on the current crisis and politicians who are kept by them. About kept politicians, let me tell a brief story. In January, 2016, I was invited to be part of a conference on climate change and seas rising with religious leaders who gathered in Florida. The opening talk was a presentation by a scientist who had slides of Florida today; slides of Florida ten years from now; twenty years from now; and so on. Those images showed big chunks of Florida going under water and disappearing with each decade. Needless to say, it was a sobering opening for a conference and I was the next speaker. When I rose to face the audience I saw people slumped in their chairs like dishrags, utterly overwhelmed by the facts. I took up the topic of denial and what a powerful spiritual option denial is. Meister Eckhart says “God is the denial of denial” (Fox []2000, 193). To me this tells us that to wallow in denial is to expel divinity; divinity cannot flow if denial reigns; truth cannot flow if denial reigns. And in Florida at that time, among the political class, denial did indeed reign.

Two famous Floridians were running for president at that time—Jeb Bush and Senator Marco Rubio—and both were in denial about climate change and seas rising. In addition, the governor, Mr. Scott, had recently put out a memo to all state workers (one that has since been repeated by the Trump administration) that they were not allowed to use the word “climate change” in any emails regarding Floridian official business. At the same time that these three politicians were in public denial (along with their entire party) about climate change, sidewalks in south Miami had four inches of water on them from the rising seas.

Ah! The power of denial! A profound spiritual evil in our times. Thomas Aquinas said in the thirteenth century that to choose to be ignorant of something one ought to know about is a mortal sin, that is to say a deadly virus that will spread through one's own soul and society as a whole.

Pope Francis is not in denial. Nor is he beholden to the financial forces that are selling denial (consider that Exxon‐Mobil, of which Donald Trump's first secretary of state was chief executive officer for twenty years, has been peddling bad science that climate change is a hoax while knowing full well behind the scenes that it is not). And Francis's encyclical, strong and science‐based, is very much trying to urge others out of complacency and certainly out of denial. We know the Pope is being heard because a Fox News commentator declared, on hearing of this encyclical, “Pope Francis is the most dangerous man on the planet.” Congratulations, Pope Francis! Fox News has spoken with its usual wisdom…and fear. What a compliment!

It is like creation spirituality being denounced some years ago by the Inquisitor General under Pope John Paul II (Cardinal Ratzinger) as “dangerous and deviant.” A feather in our cap! A badge of honor we have tried to wear lightly and humbly all these years. When those who set out to destroy liberation theology, silence 106 theologians, dumb the church down deliberately, ignore and cover up pedophile priests, elevating one (Father Maciel) to special trips in the Vatican plane and special ordinations in St. Peter's Square, call Protestants not‐Christian churches, forbid Catholics to practice yoga because it gets you “too much in touch with your body,” and so on—when a person of this kind calls your work “dangerous and deviant” you take the compliment with grace. These and other facts, including the role of the US Central Intelligence Agency and Pope John Paul II's Vatican linking up to attack liberation theology and its communities in Latin America, the pushing of the fascist organization Opus Dei by two popes overs a thirty‐four‐year period, and the silencing of 106 theologians (of which I was only one) are well documented in my book The Pope's War (Fox ).

So it is with Pope Francis's new encyclical. When Rush Limbaugh calls the Pope “Marxist”—even though Francis has predicted this would happen and has pointed out on several occasions that he is speaking from the values of the gospel and not of Karl Marx as such (though let us never forget Marx comes from the tradition of the Jewish prophets as did Jesus)—then the Pope finds himself in good company with so many others that ignorant and loudmouthed Rush Limbaugh has diced.

Hypocrisy

Hypocrisy is alive and well in our time among politicians and so‐called religious leaders who turn their back on science and on the reality of climate change while wearing their so‐called Christianity on their sleeves for all to see. I have written a public letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan about exactly that reality, given that he claims to be a practicing Catholic but seems to completely ignore Laudato Si', its message and moral imperatives, as well as Pope Francis's call to heed a “preferential option for the poor” (Fox ). According to his encyclical, the poor today include the Earth and her creatures, so often without a voice in human and corporate decision making.

Apathy

Some twenty‐three years ago, I was invited to speak at the Schumacher Lectures in Bristol, England. My talk followed one by Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute who said that we had twenty years left to change direction as a species or we would not survive. He ended his talk by saying that the number one obstacle to an environmental revolution was apathy. Then it was my turn to speak. The premodern term for apathy is the capital sin of acedia which we have mistranslated during the industrial era as “sloth” but in fact includes apathy, despair, boredom, tedium, and depression. Aquinas defines it as “the lack of energy to begin new things” (Fox []2003, 184). It is so prevalent today that we have a new word for it: couchpotatoitis. What is the cure to this sin? Aquinas says zeal (which is the opposite of acedia or apathy) comes from an “intense experience of the beauty of things” (Fox []2003, 114–15). Yes, we are back to the Via Positiva, back to beauty, back to falling in love and de‐anthropocentrizing that term so that it embraces falling in love with rocks and rivers, animals and birds, oceans and rivers, soil and air.

Greed

I know of no spiritual tradition that countenances greed or avarice. All caution against its power to overwhelm us. Thomas Aquinas put it this way: “The greed for gain knows no limit and tends to infinity.” Greed by nature accepts no limits. He goes on: “Unnatural desire is altogether infinite. Hence one who desires riches may desire to be rich, not up to a certain limit, but to be simply as rich as possible” (Fox []2003, 488). This seems to me to name quite bluntly prevailing mythologies we hear and often accept uncritically in these late capitalist times. Mythologies such as “prosperity rules for everyone, all you have to do is ask”; or the notion that it is a good thing that a new version of automobile, refrigerator, style of clothes, and so on appears every year; or that the true test of an economic system is a constantly growing gross national product; or that the less developed countries ought to imitate the overly developed countries regarding material goods (it would take four Earths to hold all our stuff if that were to happen); or that there is unlimited space on the land or in the sea to dump all our junk (including nuclear waste and other toxic materials that will be around for hundreds of thousands of years), and so on. Pope Francis, among others, has attacked this quest for the infinite—which must always take place at the expense of others—in starkly blunt terms. How can a very finite Earth sustain a reckless quest for the infinite—be that quest coming from individuals, stockholders, orcorporations?

Despair

I felt at the IRAS conference—as I do in society at large today—a considerable amount of angst and creeping despair. The news after all in a time of Trump and in a time of cancelling America's commitment to the Paris agreements is not at all encouraging. But something deeper may be afoot. The late and authentic Benedictine monk Father Bede Griffith, who oversaw an ashram in India for over fifty years, once said to me that “despair is sometimes a yoga. Many people do not open up to God or to Spirit until they go through the pit of despair.” This is another way of talking about the power of the “dark night of the soul” for transformation.

We are in between times, straddling the modern and postmodern eras. It may be the true end of the modern era, the patriarchal and pessimistic era, the era of a “fatalistic self‐hatred” (Rich) and “original sin,” an era of narcissism and anthropocentrism, and an era that banished mysticism and miracles (which Einstein understood as the marvels of existence). In its place we are invited to return to a world of wonders. Are we ready? To realize this is the true essence of religion (Aquinas), to give thanks. To be grateful. Full of thanks and overflowing and ready to roll up our sleeves and go to work (Orr ).

An example of the power of hope versus despair can be found in the moving story that writer Scott Russell Sanders relates regarding his teenage son. It seems that he and his seventeen‐year‐old son were going on a camping trip together and Sanders was thrilled about it—envisioning this as a primary bonding experience between them. But the opposite happened. His son blew up at him, telling his father (who had written extensively about the demise of the Earth), "You're so worried about the fate of the Earth you can't enjoy anything. We come to these mountains and you bring the shadows with you. You've got me seeing nothing but darkness.” Sanders writes, “Stunned by the force of his words, I could not speak. If my gloom cast a shadow over Creation for my son, then I had failed him” (Sanders , 194). So Sanders took a two‐year sabbatical and went hunting/gathering for hope.

In the book that resulted, called Hunting for Hope: A Father's Journeys, Sanders relays some of his findings and how reconnecting to the cosmos (or creation or universe) and thereby recovering the Via Positiva and the sense of the sacredness of creation was key. He writes:

I still hanker for the original world, the one that makes us rather than the one we make. I hunger for contact with the shaping power that curves the comet's path and fills the owl's throat with song and fashions every flake of snow and carpets the hills with green. It is a prodigal, awful, magnificent power, forever casting new forms into existence, then tearing them apart and starting over. (Sanders , 13)

He tells of a mystical experience he underwent one night when the night sky beckoned him. “I climbed out of the car with a greeting on my lips, but the sky hushed me. From the black bowl of space countless fiery lights shone down, each one a sun or a swirl of suns the whole brilliant host of them enough to strike me dumb.” We need to open ourselves to the “world we have not made” and do so by direct experience. “Only direct experience of Creation will do.” We need faith, but faith in what? “In our capacity for decent and loving work, in the healing energy of wildness, in the holiness of Creation.… That the universe exists at all, that it obeys laws, that those laws have brought forth galaxies and stars and planets and—on one planet at least—life, and out of life, consciousness, and out of consciousness these words, this breath, is a chain of wonders. I dangle from that chain and hold on tight” (Sanders , 14). A chain of wonders indeed!

That is where science and spirituality come together again. The Via Positiva, Via Negativa, Via Creativa, and Via Transformativa come together again. Psychology and cosmos come together again. The divine feminine and the sacred masculine come together again. Awe and the gratitude it awakens leads to justice making and eco‐action born from a deep and reverent place.