Tenth International Conference on Religion & Spirituality in Society

Abstract

In the beginning when God the Great Lover and Giver of all life created the heavens and the earth, Darkness covered the face of the deep. (Genesis 1) Over two millennia have passed offering persons of biblical faiths time to steep in praise of the great deep (tehom) of the primordial waters of creation. And yet: “Our oceans are dying.” So says, renowned oceanographer and marine botanist, Dr. Sylvia Earle. This death is a daily trauma for all sentient life on earth. Unbelievably, we are all witnesses to the daily traumas of earthen assaults upon this great deep that connect us to divine life and energy. As such, trauma has become an ecological reality, assaulting both anthropological and cosmological dimensions of our faith traditions. How might an ecology of trauma, open new vestiges within our faith responses? To respond, I offer trauma studies as a platform within our current ecological reality in conversation with Pope Francis’ work of Laudato Sí, in particular his presentation of an “integral ecology” and an “ecology of daily life.” Drawing from the powerful witness of two environmental martyrs, Sr. Dorothy Stang, defender of the Amazon rain-forests and Berta Isabel Cáceres, protector of the Gualcarque River in Honduras, I want to magnify a theological concept of “deep incarnation” introduced by Danish theologian, Neils Gregersen. He offers us a provocative way to envision God’s pervasive “reach into the very tissue of material and biological existence.” Both Stang and Cáceres’ entire embodied life demonstrate its redemptive power.