Beltane                                                                            Emergence Moon

A word about religious language. Though rooted in a metaphysics with which I no longer agree, much of the language developed by Christian theologians has earthly application.

Here are some examples. Atonement describes the process of reconciliation between one estranged and the one from whom they are estranged. Atonement is just what we need for a species estranged from its home, no longer aware of the rich and intimate love only footsteps away from most doors.

(Antonio Palomino. Saint Michael Vanquishing the Devil, 1700-14)

It is, I suppose you could say, the story of the prodigal son, the wastrel who fled parental care and set out wandering far from home. Only atonement, the return of the prodigal to his home, can overcome the estrangement.

But, before atonement comes repentance. That is, the estranged must come awake to the hamartia* that creates their current condition. Most of us know only vaguely (we see through a glass darkly) of our implication in the reduction in Arctic sea ice, the acidification of the oceans, the gradual warming of the temperate latitudes. We are even mostly ignorant of the web of decisions we make daily to draw more oil from the sands of Arabia or the fracking fields of North Dakotas, decisions that also push the coal trains out of the Powder River Coal Fields in Wyoming, snaking like a plague along our nations railroads.

(Peasant family returns home paint by the Belgian artist Eugène Laermans (1864-1940) – Boekarest:National Museum of Art of Romania (Romania)

Hamartia, in its classical understanding, results in tragedy. It is often related to hubris, that overweening pride that causes blindness. There is little doubt that our estrangement from mother earth is reinforced by our hubris and that the result of that hubris is humanity’s fatal flaw. The end will be not a triumphant Christ hurling sinners into hell but the sinners themselves creating hell above ground as temperatures and sea levels and extreme weather events rise.

The Great Work for our generation, as Thomas Berry describes it, is to create a sustainable path for humans on this planet. In religious language this means we must guide each other back home, to a home where we will be received by a loving mother and father (the earth and the sun). We prodigals must prostrate ourselves before our parents and end our estrangement. And, of course, the curious, paradoxical truth is that in doing so we will save ourselves, not the planet.

*Hamartia is a concept used by Aristotle to describe tragedy. Hamartia leads to the fall of a noble man caused by some excess or mistake in behavior, not because of a willful violation of the gods’ laws. Hamartia is related to hubris, which was also more an action than attitude.