Replenishing the Earth by Wangari Maathai

Author:Wangari Maathai [Maathai, Wangari]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-59115-9
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2010-09-14T04:00:00+00:00

These are only some of the practical applications of gratitude. However, in that they ask us to recognize a higher purpose beyond ourselves, the world’s spiritual traditions are well placed to help us not only appreciate the possibility of limits, but foster a feeling of gratitude and respect for the earth’s resources. For instance, mottainai for me calls upon the same impulses of good stewardship that God demands of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Although the human being is given permission to use the resources he finds there, he must be respectful of and grateful for them, recognizing that some are off-limits, and that he should not waste either them or the opportunity to be a good steward.

Some religions have a tradition of monasticism, whereby groups of people live within communities and discipline their bodily wants—for sex, alcohol, drugs, or other kinds of stimulation—through practices that they feel bring them closer to the Source. In the Christian Benedictine tradition, for instance, monastics take vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity. Saint Benedict (480–547) founded his order in response to what he perceived to be the excesses of his society and the laxness of the contemporary monastic orders. He offered what became known as “the Rule,” a practical and spiritual guidebook for individuals in community to deepen their daily lives so they’d invest all aspects of their time on the earth with godliness.

Many monastics have found that renunciation of material possessions has not limited their enjoyment of life; to the contrary, it has freed them from worrying that someone might steal what they have or from spending so much time on technological diversion that one fails to appropriately value relationships, the natural world, or the Source. Some monastics have made a commitment to walk with the poor, not merely to help them meet their daily needs or to bear witness to their suffering, but to show to those of us not living at subsistence level that it is possible to retain one’s full human dignity even without excess provisions.

Of course, like all institutions, the religious orders have not always retained either their modesty or their commitment to poverty. Some have acquired great wealth and influence through the ownership of land and have lost their moral authority because of corruption and the human failings of their members.

Apart from, perhaps, the earliest Buddhist orders, which consisted of a community or sangha of forest dwellers, who went into towns to beg for food in exchange for prayers being said on behalf of the giver, most monastic orders have maintained basic comforts (such as ready access to food and shelter) so they may concentrate on their work of faith. In their commitment to the poor and the sick, these orders have recognized that grinding poverty is not a righteous condition, and that willful asceticism may be as much a barrier to spiritual growth as is excessive consumption. As a result, they have attempted to formulate what Buddhists might call “a middle way,” a balance between having too much and not enough.

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