Ukrainian Orthodoxy		Orthodoxie ukrainienne

A Great, Fast Approach to Environmental Protection

Dr. Alexander Roman alex.roman@unicorne.org

Environmentalism is all the rage these days and with good reason. We have come to realize just how intimately we really are connected to nature and how dependent we are on the air we breathe, the quality of the food we eat and our relationship to the plant and animal worlds. The Great Fast is a time when all this is brought home to us in a special way.

As a long-time member of an environmental protection group, I have had the opportunity to attend many seminars on all sorts of related subjects. There are even "environmental spirituality" perspectives that are brought to bear on these issues.

It is true that in answer to the question of how we go about changing people's attitudes toward the environment, we really need to see it as a spiritual problem.

The abuse of nature and of people throughout the world points to a fundamental sin - the sin of pride.

Pride is our refusal to acknowledge our radical dependence on God and what He has created for our existence and happiness.

We begin to exercise the sin of pride through limiting our contact with God, with others and the environment around us. We may totally cut ourselves off from that contact through other sins that are all rooted in pride.

There are those who talk of God's punishment for our sins. That punishment is exhibited through sickness etc. And they are absolutely right. To cut ourselves off from God and His laws He designed for our good is to invite trouble, sickness and death, spiritually as well as physically.

Having sinned against God's creation and creatures in our natural environment, we have now become the victims of what we are victimizing.

The spiritual message of the Great and Holy Fast is precisely that we are dependent on God and His Creation for our inner and outer well-being. We sin whenever we act in defiance of that dependency.

But we are individuals, some may say, we are independent. We are and we are not. Social science has long known that our sense of personal identity is a direct reflection of how we see society perceiving us. Without that process, we would have no personal identity.

Our individuality is based on our lives lived in God and in close relation to others, including animals and the entire Cosmos created by God.

In Orthodox Christianity, our salvation is not only a "personal" one. The Resurrection of Christ is an event that redeems the entire Cosmos.

This is why iconographers have always included animals and plants in their work that we see on the walls of historic churches and cathedrals (e.g. St Sophia in Kyiv).

Fasting is an experience in which, I believe, we radically feel our dependence and need. It is intended to bring home the fact of our reliance on God and the Church. That reliance is also extended to all that God has created for our benefit and lives.

This is why the holiness of Saints is confirmed by their constant prayer and communion with God. That communion often spilled over into their relations with people whom they could cure with their prayer, and into their relations with animals who did not fear to approach them, even though they were wild (e.g. St Seraphim of Sarov).

There is a special Christian mission not too far away from me that takes pets and animals off the streets, looks after them and adopts them out. I think that is a most valuable contribution as it is most Christian.

My pet companion, a cream coloured Pomeranian named "Poncie," recently died. I had no idea of the lives he touched until I saw the number of people who "came out of the wood-work" so to speak to express their sorrow over his passing. One person even brought us a picture of St Francis of Assisi with a prayer for animals. Now that really got to us!

This twelve-pound fluff ball came to really dominate our family life for the last eight years.

What really hit home, and in our hearts, was the overwhelming and painful silence he left in his wake.

His schedule began with an early rising at 5:00 am for his walk, his vitamin pills, his feeding times, followed by a number of other daily activities. He was always at your feet, following you around.

He was totally, and I mean totally, dependent on you for everything, including his playtime. I will always keep the little red ball with which I played fetch with him close to me.

Poncie taught me something about our dependence on God. He was his own personality and had his own character. But he was happiest and strongest when he was close to us.

Even at the end, he demonstrated his dependency on us. Holding him in my arms as he was breathing his last, he licked my hand one more time and then leaned his head over the left side of my chest where he expired in that moment.

Grief for a pet companion can be very traumatic indeed. We realized how much WE depended on him for the joys that he daily brought us. A raw and painful emptiness enveloped us almost immediately.

Charity to human beings and to animals is also an exercise that brings home our own dependence on God and others.

The Body of Christ that is the Church exists as an organic Whole where we are united to the Head that is Christ. We need to be constantly open to the love for humankind that Christ pours on us and into our hearts.

Communion with the Holy Trinity, the Church, the Saints and the animals in our natural environment is an experience of the restored balance of holiness and mutual dependence in love that Christ came to restore by His Death and Resurrection.

Some of this was taught to me in a special way by Poncie. I feel his little white head against my chest still. I think I always will.

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