'The question is, as it always has been, how should we live in a world that we do not control?' Photo: by Ahmet Sali on Unsplash
Identity crises: Paul Hodgkin rewrites Advice 42
‘How should we live in a world that we do not control?’
One of the strengths of Quakerism is its ability to renew itself. We refashion actions and beliefs in the Light that breaks into our own times. And if our times are about anything, they are about the crises of climate breakdown and biodiversity loss.
The Light that flows from these crises spreads in many directions – personal action, witness, lamentation, hope – and the urgency we feel tends to turn us towards amending our own lifestyles. But the Light also illuminates a need for deeper change.
One way to see this is to re-imagine some of our favourite texts. For example, how could we re-write the Advice that speaks most clearly to these crises (‘We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will’)? Advice 42 asks us to use our increasing power over nature responsibly. But the crises demonstrate our inability to do that. Instead we need something that points to a new relationship between ourselves and creation: ‘The world maintains us and is the source of all the riches we have extracted from it. Understand that creation shows a loving consideration of us and seeks to maintain us as part of the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that nature’s increasing power over us is received with reverence. Let us hope that the splendour of God’s creation continues to rejoice in us.’
Putting our humility and helplessness centre stage gives us a jolt. Yes, of course, we do not oversee the drought or the flood – rather the climate will exert increasing power over us. The question is, as it always has been, how should we live in a world that we do not control?
Giving up the sense that we are in control is hard. It frightens us to think that no one knows what to do. The idea that we are stewards of creation goes back to Genesis, where we are told that we have dominion over everything on Earth. How might we wish to re-write that story to speak to our growing sense of interdependency?
‘God created humankind to reflect the glory of all creation, for that creation is the image and being of God. And humanity was created female and male, so each may hold part of the other, and in this way reflect the nature of God. God blessed humanity and said: “Be fruitful like the rest of creation. The Earth is full of beauty and will not be subdued. Know that it is the Earth that sustains you and wonder at the fish in the sea, and the birds of the sky, and at all the living creatures that move on the ground. Know that you do not rule over them and that you and your children’s children depend utterly on this web of life.’’’
To begin to live in the Light of the Earth crises, we need to imbue all our knowledge with wonder and humility. We need to answer that of God in every living thing while emptying ourselves of the delusion that we are in charge. Nothing is a resource to be exploited, nothing is separate, everything is always in an endless process of ‘becoming together’. Within this new story Prometheus may be dying but Gaia still lives, and we too can still be blessed.
