This month of March, we celebrate International Women's Day and as the JPIC Learning Hub focuses on "Caring for Our Common Home", we share this article written by Mary Frohlich RSCJ (United States-Canada).

Ministries For Conversion to The Earth

These days, many of us experience a wall of distraction between ourselves and awareness of our total interdependence with the health of the air, water, soil, and wild creatures.  In reality, our interdependence with the Earth and its creatures is spiritual and emotional as well as physical. We are members of the created world, made from its soil, and our Creator’s intention is for us to live lovingly, humbly, and responsibly in community with all the other creatures.  When human beings lack awareness of this truth, we become empty, alienated, and full of anxiety.

Meanwhile, our lifestyles harm the Earth. This has reached a terrible crisis point, with climate change and pollution already causing profound suffering and death for billions of human beings and other creatures. This is why we are so desperately in need of ministries fostering what several Popes have called “conversion to the Earth.”

When I turned seventy in 2020, I chose to shift my main ministry focus from teaching in academic settings to a ministry of helping people to reconnect with the Earth and its creatures. During the pandemic, I joined an online course to be trained as a Forest Therapy guide. The motto of Forest Therapy is “The forest is the therapist; the guide opens the doors.”  The guide leads people in an outdoor walk where they tune in to their senses, slow down, and discover the beauty and delight that are always there in every detail of the natural world. Participants almost always are deeply refreshed and find new friends among the wild creatures.  Forest Therapy doesn’t actually have to be done in a forest; it can take place anywhere where there is nature – which means, literally everywhere!  I have even adapted it to an indoor experience for some of our elderly sisters, by offering each one a houseplant to befriend.

For the last fifteen years or so, I have also helped to lead a week-long Hiking Retreat.  With one or two other RSCJ, we rent a house in an area with lots of hiking trails and invite six to eight others to join us.  Each morning we have a short prayer and introductory talk introducing ecospirituality themes and outdoor contemplative practices. Then we hike for several hours, with time included for quiet reflection in some beautiful spot along the way.  Usually there is free time in the afternoon, followed by a communally prepared evening meal. In the evening we have prayer as well as sharing of the experiences of the day. A similar format can also be adapted to shorter events such as a one-day contemplative hike or a weekend experience.

Practices like these form people in a different way of being “Earth creatures.” Ecofeminists find a direct connection between the disrespectful domination of the Earth and similar behaviors toward women. Fundamentally, the problem is a dualistic mentality that insists on regarding power as being able to dominate and control an “inferior” being, whether that be woman or the material world.  Through simple contemplative presence with the land and creatures, people can discover the refreshing, enlivening power of being with others in an attitude of mutuality. In our ministries, offering such experiences has value simply for the relaxation and delight that people enjoy.  At the same time, it can also offer an opportunity to guide reflection on how a similar shift in our mentality and in our way of being present can open up new possibilities in family relations, economics, politics, and more.
 

Mary Frohlich RSCJ