Newsletter

Spring 2000: Commentary

Action, Absurdity and Faith
By Alan AtKisson

Upon leaving the environmental conference, committee meeting or church service-hearts full, action agendas in hand-we get into our planes and our cars and make our daily contribution to global warming, air pollution, the poisoning of water, the extinction of wildlife, the impoverishment of our own children. Even those who go by bicycle or by foot, who eat organic vegetables, who recycle everything will inevitably find themselves under an electric light bulb powered by fossil fuels or splitting atoms.

If we are aware of the irony, we often respond in one of two ways: with irony itself, with its detached and sardonic smile; or with an uncomfortable sense of hypocrisy that nearly undermines our recently-made commitments. In the first case, we are disempowered by cynicism. In the second, by shame.

It is nothing but faith, of course, that gives our actions and our commitments meaning in the face of life's inevitable craziness. Faith that every action we take, no matter how small, matters. Faith that the genius of Creation is not daunted by what appears to us as a future of labyrinthine complexity and danger.

But this faith is much more than mere belief that all will be well, that meaning will win out in the end. The dictionary tells us the word faith has its root in the Latin "fidere"-to trust, then offers a note, "More at bide." Bide, as in "to bide one's time," originally meant "to await confidently and defiantly." A synonym is "withstand."

This is what faith means. As we act to heal our hurting world, -there is much absurdity that we must withstand, with confidence and defiance in the face of very long odds.

We must, for example, abide the absurdity of knowing that the same human-created systems that support us, ennoble us and give us pleasure are also destroying things that are precious to us. We must abide the absurdity of watching the destruction continue, carried by momentum, even after we begin to make transformative changes in those systems and in our lives.

We must also abide the feeling of guilt and shame at our inevitable complicity in destruction and resist the temptation to disconnect from the modern world, even when that means continuing to participate in activities, like the inevitable act of driving, that we know to cause harm. Only if we stay engaged with the world as it is can we lend our weight to the transformative movements that will create a world that is sustainable.

Perhaps our greatest challenge is to withstand the burden of awareness. Dying species, threats to forest and ocean and atmosphere, an intimacy with this suffering and the grief that accompanies it can and must be abided as part of our faith.

And we must continue to act. The true test of faith is continuing to do something, even when that something seems fruitless. As Vaclav Havel said about hope, faith's eternal twin, "Hope is...not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the conviction that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out."

We must keep a bright vision in front of our eyes and dream of an Earth whose people are at peace with each other and the whole of life we call "nature." But let us not turn away from the truer, harsher tests that our vision must also withstand. Let us cultivate the strength of spirit always to act in faithfulness-and to abide.

Alan AtKisson is a writer, consultant, founder of Sustainable Seattle and a member of the Earth Ministry Board. This article originally was given at the first Gathering of Earth Ministry. It was reprinted in Earth & Spirit: The Spiritual Dimension of the Environmental Crisis (Continuum, 1993).

< back to Newsletter Spring 2000