humanity – Houghton STAR

I grew up in trees. I loved to climb to the highest branches during a storm to be part of their dance with the wind, or to wrap my legs around the lowest branch and swing down to see the world from a new perspective. My love for trees was so faithful that the day the Old Maple in my yard was cut down, I did not talk to my parents for the rest of the day. But, I also grew up pulling the legs off of spiders with my older siblings and making a pile of their bodies. These juxtaposing images of my childhood pastimes illustrate the conflict between my appreciation and relationship with the earth, and a learned posture of entitlement over the created world.

My posture of entitlement assumed a hierarchy of value: myself and all of humanity at the top, and Nature at the bottom. I only knew, despite my life-long love for trees, nature’s purpose to be a resource for human use and exploitation. I did not know the intrinsic value of the earth.

Nature is not part of a hierarchy with humanity, it is meant to be in relationship with us — a relationship we have the responsibility to reconcile. Dorothy Sayers, a nineteenth century Oxford intellect and writer, postulates, in her book ‘The Mind of the Maker’, that we are made in the image of God, Imago Dei, and God is the Creator of all, so we therefore are “mini-creators”. Sayers goes further to state that we, as “mini-creators”, have the ability to create “good” and “evil”, and the responsibility to create “good”. We can find clear examples of this truth all around us: in our relationships, our school work, our treatment of our bodies, etc. But more evasive are the examples of “creating” that do not appear directly linked to the relational or physical formation of “making” something. For example, when we buy a product we do not think of it as creating, but the action of purchasing a product helps create a demand for that product. Whether extrinsically or intrinsically, we are always creating.

If we believe we create with every thought, word, and action, what then should our relationship be toward the created world around us? Traditionally, our posture toward the earth in the Western hemisphere has been one of ownership and dominance. We have interacted with nature on the prideful basis of control over its resources and have exploited them according to our “needs”. Instead of varying crops or resting fields to replenish the soil, we plant acres upon acres of corn, ignoring the depletion of nutrients, to feed the demand for cheap, conservable goods. We have damaged our relationship with the earth, as Hopkins illustrates in his poem ‘God’s Grandeur’: “Generations have trod, have trod have trod;/And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;/And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil/Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.” We have put on our shoes and deceived ourselves into believing that what we create (demand, waste, carbon dioxide, etc.) has no lasting degenerative impact.

Where does that leave us? Beyond holding the ideal to create “good”, what are we to do? What we do will look different according to each person, community, environment, etc. Instead, we should ask: how can we be in a reconciled relationship with Nature? Just as we hold the responsibility to be in right relationship with each other and live in community together, so we hold the responsibility to be in a reconciled relationship, and live in community, with the earth. If we know how to be in right relationship, then our actions will, albeit imperfectly, reflect Whose image we are made in. To learn how to do that, well, I recommend listening to the geese: “….the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,/are heading home again./Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,/the world offers itself to your imagination,/calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting/over and over announcing your place/in the family of things.” (Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese’)

Approaching a text without some sort of cultural, intellectual, or interested bias is most likely an impossibility. However, I mean for this article’s presuppositions to be, for the most part, minimal. Being a Christian, and writing for a Christian audience, I will be making assumptions about Jesus Christ, namely that he is in fact the son of God, and that he does in fact embody the fullness of divinity. But beyond the hypothesis that the Gospels are true, my hope is to read the stories and make commonsensical determinations based upon what they say. Perhaps another way of putting the point is that I intend for this article to be primarily “Biblical.

Courtesy of www.sacred-destinations.com

Following this simple text-centered methodology, I wish to explore an often overlooked character in the Gospel stories. Or if not overlooked, a character who does not receive the attention that I believe she so rightly deserves. The character I am referring to is Mary, the mother of God herself. When I set aside what I would consider my “philosophical truths,” and read the gospels as a true account of God’s most intimate contact with the creation, I am struck with the feeling that Protestantism’s lack of attentiveness to the importance of Mary is something of a theological tragedy. The remainder of this article will be comprised of a few considerations that I find plausible, followed by what I take to be a couple of the necessitated conclusions of said considerations.

First, a few words about what we as Christians believe about the cosmic importance of Jesus Christ. Christianity’s distinctiveness is built upon the belief that Christ is the son of God. Jesus, though being fully human, is also fully divine. The extent to which God is the eternally transcendent creator, our “ground of being,” is contained with Jesus Christ completely and absolutely. Jesus is God.

But as we also believe, Christ, though fully divine, is inextricably bound to his humanity. And as the Gospels tell us, Jesus, or God, has one biological parent- Mary. Although I am a 22 year old male, about as far from being a mother as one can be, I would like to raise some reflections about what it means to be a mother. First, if Mary is the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is God, that means that God Himself (Him insofar as He manifested as a male) grew within the womb of Mary, was fed at the breast of Mary, and was coddled and cared for in all of the ways that a loving mother relates to her child. God was dependent upon Mary. Another fact is that if you ask most any mother, and I am sure some biologists and psychologists, they will tell you that the intimacy found within the relationship of mother and child is most likely the most intense intimacy found in human relations. If Mary is the mother of God, as is claimed in the Gospel narratives, than we are ascribed to the belief that Mary shared an intimate contact with the divine beyond that of any other. She is as spiritually connected to God as a mother is to the child of her womb.

Now let’s move to the Crucifixion, the event in which Jesus atoned for the sins of mankind. Jesus, through suffering on the Cross, carried out the single most historically significant event. Now let’s once again turn our attention to Mary. If you ask any truly loving parent they would tell you that they themselves would rather undergo a crucifixion than see their beloved child be crucified. I am not claiming that Mary suffered more than Jesus, because Jesus is God things are irregular, but one cannot ignore the immense suffering of Mary as Jesus was crucified. And because of her intimacy with the divine, being the divine’s mother, I simply cannot believe that her sufferings find no place within the eternal significance of the event of the crucifixion, as if they were some accidental by product. Mary was bound to Christ through his birth, and remained bound to his sufferings as he hung on the cross.

So taking into consideration what I have stated above, which as I have said, I find to be quite basic truths of the Gospel story, what does this mean about Mary? Well, I believe that first and foremost that we cannot treat Mary as if she relates to God and eternity as just another human being, such as Paul or Peter. Mary is the mother of God; she is intimately connected to Christ in a categorically different way, I mean just go ask a mom about it. After thinking about God having a loving mother, and what that really would mean for Mary, I cannot comprehend why consideration for Mary would rarely arise. I simply cannot believe that Mary is not in some way closer to God than any other human who has existed, she is God’s Mother! The fact that many theologians would deem Mariology as “unbiblical” is, to me, commonsensically wrong. Think about what it means to be a Mother, what it would mean to be God’s mother, and what that would mean for Mary’s place in the big picture.