Sweeping up: Holy Matter & Divine Energies
The matter of everyday life is holy. With the floor sweepings, the dust from which and to which we return, the waste pieces of wood God has come to dwell.
Bear that in mind, and have a good time sweeping today!
Mystics and other praying people have encountered this truth cooking, caring for others, tending plants and animals, walking in the wilderness. The 20th century geologist and priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin experienced this too. He helped to articulate a deep vision of Christ at work in the cosmos, drawing all the world to himself in evolutionary and fine-grained natural scientific terms. In his prayer ‘Hymn to Holy Matter’ he writes,
I bless you, matter, and you I acclaim: not as pontiffs of science and the moralizing preachers depict you, debased, disfigured-a mass of brute forces and base appetites-but as you reveal yourself to me today in your totality and your true nature…
I acclaim you as the divine milieu, charged with creative power, as the ocean stirred by the Spirit, as clay molded and infused with life by the incarnate Word…
This mystical vision of life that moves toward union with God does not leave us in the clouds.
It’s true, tested in fields, factories, and workshops, in kitchens, nurseries and places of care.
Technological development implicates us further in creature life, not its evasion or escape. And creature life is the milieu in which we can emerge in union with the living God. Technics may just be component rungs in the love inducing ascents and grounding descents of the theotic path touched by divine energies.
And certainly this goes for our ongoing efforts to source and use energy as a human civilization. As the saying goes, ‘there are no free lunches.’ The electricity for your electric vehicle comes from somewhere, as does the energy to produce, shape and transport the steel, aluminum, plastic and other materials that go into it along with millions others. (Not to mention the rare-earth metals in the batteries.)
Which is not to say that the move to electric vehicles is worthless, its just a suggestion that no one get to feeling too too virtuous for going electric, even while our civilization remains built around the automobile, and infrastructure necessary for this mode of conveyance, and the inordinate internal habits of convenience and self determination it fosters. (Not to mention that this consumer choice is out the price range of many working people, and is unrealistic in some places for the immediate needs of tomorrow. Electric vehicles also put us at a further remove from the skills and knowledge of maintenance that were possible with liquid fuel burners.)
My point really being that there are not perfect options, but there are better ones that can move in a better direction for collective life in this world of holy matter and divine energies
Solar energy seems a better option overall. This would seem especially so if buildings, parking lots, roadways and brownfield sites all includes solar installations. Unfortunately early experiments, human mental habits, and the balance sheet profitability of ‘shovel ready’ land conspire to locate solar installations on wild-ground and good agricultural land.
One might ask whether a buffalo commons, or rotational grazing wouldn’t be a better way to collect solar energy, while also reducing the energy intensity of tilled agriculture, than to plunk solar panels onto the swaths of currently tilled land, or supposed empty plains.
And along those lines, I heard on The Allegheny Front about research looks at ways that ecologically friendly agriculture and solar installations can be integrated. This would include such things a as creating habitat for pollinators and other beneficial insects (you can’t underestimate their importance to yearly harvests, though hard to account) as well as sustainable grazing practices. This to me models the idea that these two goals can be pursued together, if the need for ecological perfection is released, as well as the habits that obstruct us from choosing better options.
This all goes toward the ways that when faced with the holiness of matter, and of energy, our imaginations and minds and institutions might be renewed, even transformed (Rom 12:2). We can let go of habits that choose for energy inefficiency, or generating or using energy in ways that cancel out its benefits. And it can help us let go of the habit of mind that seeks perfection as flawlessness, and desire instead to try humbly for the better way. And then do so again, not losing heart (2 Cor. 4:16)