« The Inherent Spirituality of a One-Earth Story and Economy »

The following is from the “Preface” of an upcoming book on an economy focused in the wellbeing of our planet and all her inhabiting species.

Each religious tradition, through various spokespersons, speaks of living faithfully within Earth’s majestic, evolving story. Similarly, each religious tradition has voices critiquing economic behaviors and systems that exceed what Creation’s orders can handle. The story of Earth and the cosmos of Creation impact us in all those ways that we cluster in such words as “spiritual,” “sacred,” and “holy.” That impact evokes in us awe, wonder, reverence, worship, caring, love, and great inquisitiveness. Our curiosity is expressed in both everyday observations and in refined scientific inquiry.

This inherent spirituality in the story of the Earth and cosmos is expressed also in the economy of creation. That economy is neither capitalism nor socialism. It is an economy for the common good. Primitive peoples copied this economy. The traditional practices of Indigenous peoples worldwide continue to co-create with nature those economic practices that express a one-Earth abundance. The Hebrew Scriptures, evolving Indigenous practices of their early peoples, express this economy in their practices of Sabbath day, Sabbath year, and Jubilee year. Christians invoked the same kind of caring economy, seeking the koinonia or solidarity that distinguished their practices as followers of The Way from the practices of Rome’s empire economics. (See our pamphlet, Sabbath Economics In Brief.) Economics, until recently in the human story, was spiritual practice. It was not so much a matter of behaving ethically in economic transactions as it was of actually practicing the way of the Spirit.

Throughout these chapters, a similar kind of holistic economics integrates Spirit with economic structures, systems, and practices. Because of my familiarity with the Hebrew and Christian traditions, I refer most to them, but never with exclusive intent. Nicolas of Cusa, a Christian theologian of the 15th century, expressed such non-exclusive holism or universal connection with this simple sentence: “Divinity is the enfolding and unfolding of everything that is.” No one tradition can corner the market on divinity. It is everywhere; inherent in the Earth, the cosmos, and a one-Earth based economy. The current ecological-economic moment is too big for any one theology or spirituality to assume superiority. All are needed. We may have our preferences, even confessional convictions, but all are needed to function at their most converted levels of consciousness. In addition to all the religious traditions are the many who define their spirituality outside of those traditions, or define themselves without any spirituality at all. I hope that much in these pages is worthy of contributing to the conversation that is underway and which needs to increase among us all.