The Philippine Online Chronicles

The Jews have a very profound and healthy concept of the seventh day, the day that even God rested and looked appreciatively at his work. In every sentence there is a period. In anything there is either a permanent or a periodic pause that is necessary to preserve the integrity of whatever has value and importance in life, and yes of course, life itself.

Humans are not machines. That is why their lives are colorful and varied, not subservient to the heartless churning of the industrial wheel. Before the industrial age, life followed the rhythmic dance of night and day. Everything reflected a deep relationship, a friendship, more a primordial kinship with nature. Life was much slower, simpler, gentler and less competitive. Our ancestors ate to live and not vice versa. Life was so much bigger and vaster than one’s daily and specifically, material needs.

This primordial and intimate connection with nature slowly weakened and in many places disappeared as the machine quickly took over and indeed, overtook the lives of many. Slowly, productivity and profit multiplied by leaps and bounds. Thanks to the machine. More and more, humans began to act more and more like their very inventions. They rested less and less in order to keep production and profits at an ever increasing and intensifying pace.

Sadly, this meant the transformation and exploitation of nature for energy and raw materials. More mountains need to be mined. More seas and deserts have to be drilled for oil. More land has to be moved and concreted to accommodate buildings, homes, roads, bridges, industrial estates, supermarkets or malls, etc. What we do not see is how we, by extracting the raw materials from nature for our basic and not so basic needs, are directly consuming nature and one another as well.

Our blindness to this rather obvious fact is disturbing. By our consuming greed we have altered even nature herself. Yes, the sun still rises and sets. It still rains in the east and snows in the west. But there is something startlingly different. When it rains, it does not only pour and leave puddles here and there. Floods have constantly inundated entire provinces, destroying countless properties and claiming lives. As I write now, waters have just begun to recede in Bulacan. Thank God, it stopped raining. But we are warned that another storm is expected soon.

The effects and consequences of Pedring and Quiel are quite clear but these are mere external and material. Many areas went under water. People were rescued and housed in evacuation centers. Electricity was cut off. Food and water had to be rationed. Agricultural crops were ruined. Billboards disappeared and at last EDSA was stripped of the blight of consumerist advertising.

For a few days, consumption fell. Many went back to basics: Food, Water, Shelter, Rest and Community. We were sisters and brothers again. Pedring literally and figuratively tore down the walls that we built to keep others out of our lives. Pedring forced us to be simple again. We began to fear and respect nature once again. We stopped everything, from shopping to watching television. Even if our computers did not go underwater, but because of the power outage, and problems with telephone lines there is no internet connection which prevents us from surfing, chatting and clicking onto our FB Wall.

The anger of nature forced us to observe the Sabbath, to rest even if not on the seventh day. This is nature’s message to us. It is already the Sabbath for humankind. We can no longer pretend to live as though it were an ordinary working week day. Just how much more do we need to produce and sell before nature finally caves in from the heartless abuse of modern industry and Business. Unlike the Jews who have made it a habit to observe the Sabbath every week, we no longer have the choice. It is already the Sabbath for all of us. It is either we see this or hasten our destruction and that of the rest.

Pedring hit us exactly two years after Ondoy. Many of us would have gone back to work, to our normal lives. Many of us will behave as though nothing really happened, until something happens again. Is this the right attitude? What must we do?

Today, October 4, 2011, on the feast of St. Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Ecology, we need to deepen our awareness of our profound connection and dependence on nature. We need to radically alter our consumerist and extractive lifestyles. We need to observe and live the Sabbath of a different kind: Green Saturdays.

Green Saturday can be every Saturday or even everyday. We however can begin by observing the last Saturday of every month as Green Saturday.

Green Saturday will not only be a special rest day, where we stay at home, meditate and pray. More than this it will be ZERO CONSUMPTION DAY.

On this day we shall do any or all of the following:

1. Zero Electricity: Turn off all our electrical appliances and use zero or only ten per cent of our usual electrical consumption for twenty four hours.

2. Zero Fuel Consumption: Walk, bike, run to wherever we need to go. If we can’t, we simply stay at home and give not only our cars but the air a break from our emissions.

3. Zero Spending: Without really knowing it, we are all addicted to spending or buying anything from real needs to capricious wants. Malls are the temples of shoppaholics as well as ordinary spenders, which is most of us. Could we imagine how much we can save if we consciously do not spend anything even once a month?

4. Greening and Healing Our World: Clean up our canals, water ways, recycle our garbage; declutter our homes; Honor a Tree; plant a tree; begin a nursery; ban billboards along highways, plant trees instead.

5. Lobby for Green Jobs: As an alternative to all the nature and life threatening activities like mining, logging, “kaingin,” all kinds of land conversion from subdivisions, golf courses, industrial estates, huge theme parks, etc.

6. Renew Local Agriculture: Strengthen the agricultural sector once again. Perhaps ordinary Filipinos can be encourage to be part of a new “Agricultural Revolution” towards greater food security without compromising the environment.

7. Urban Gardening and Agriculture: Instead of just being consumers, we can also learn to be food producers as well. What if we all learn to produce our vegetables; our fish, poultry, etc?

8. Water Conservation and Education: During the summer months, water becomes scarce. During the rainy months, the quantity of water is not only excessive but lethal as well. How can households, communities, indeed the entire nation respond by developing structures that harvest and conserve water and structures that protect properties and waters against water “for now.”

9. Climate Change Education: What is Climate Change? Global Warming? What is happening to the earth? What can we still do to save her and ourselves? Massive environmental education fora can be launched on the baranggay, community, parish levels asap.

10. Green Spirituality: We have lost our connection with the Creator God. We no no longer go out and pray in the great outdoors. Our prayer and spiritual life have become too institutionalized and indoors. Time to go back to the great outdoors and learn a Green Spirituality. We need to once more pray for, to and with nature.

We need to learn listening to nature sounds and allow God to speak through these.

Fr. Roberto P. Reyes

October 4, 2011

Feast of St. Francis of Assisi

Image taken from Mr. Ducke on Flickr. Some rights reserved.