Chapter 5 – Consider the Liles of the Field:
How Should Christians Love Nature?
1. The theme of Sallie McFague’s essay is no mystery…it’s embedded in her title. The answer to her question? “…by obeying a simple but very difficult axiom: pay attention to it.” She elaborates by saying, “The message is that we pay attention to difference, that we really learn to see what if different from ourselves.” When are you most likely to pay attention? What are your motives for doing so? When are you least likely to pay attention? What contributes to such detachment?
2. McFague suggests that art is a valuable means of helping us learn to recognize and accept real differences. Can you recall some form of art that has produced such attention from you in the past or present?
Simone Weil concludes, “absolute attention is prayer. By paying attention to something she says, we are, in fact praying.” This leads to revelation. I like that insight! “So to really love nature, we must pay attention to it…to the world that lies around us but is not us…because we cannot love what we do not know.” Are there parts of nature that have felt “prayer-like” for you? Under what circumstances or frame of mind do you need to enter into such a relationship with nature?
3. McFague invites us into “two ways of seeing the world,” directing us to consider nature writing. She demonstrates its value through Annie Dillard’s description of a gold fish named Ellery, as well as the famous whole-earth picture of our planet from NASA. Using these as metaphors, who or what are the current “goldfish” and “whole-earth” relationships in your life? In other words, where (nature) and with whom (community) are you drawn closer or farther apart?
4. McFague notes, “The arrogant eye simplifies in order to control, denying complexity and mystery, since it cannot control what it cannot understand…(and that) we Westerners all perceive with the arrogant eye.” “The loving eye, on the other hand, acknowledges complexity, mystery, and difference…(promoting) acknowledgement of and respect for the other as subject.” As Christians individually and as the Church collectively, where have you (and we) experienced our greatest weaknesses and strengths with each of these “eyes?”
5. Under the heading, “The Subject-Subjects Model,” McFague notes that the best analogy for loving nature is friendship. What attributes of friendship connect and bind us to nature in a life-giving way? How might our entire planet and its inhabitants benefit from such a respectful and honorary attitude?
6. Care or rights? This debate will linger until the end of time… as well it should. Applied to the natural world, it becomes even murkier…especially in our highly charged political/economic environments. Much is at stake, on both sides of the discussion. McFague raises the delicate question, “But is all of this Christian? Is it commensurate with the radical, destabilizing, inclusive love of Jesus?” What do you think?
7. Perhaps the author of Ecclesiastes might have benefitted from this metaphor, “A time to map…and a time to hike.” This last section stirred my imagination. “What if we saw nature as ‘a world of difference?’ Then we might realize that we have to take a hike (without a map), become world-travelers, become apprentices to nature.” Where have such “hikes” transformed your life in the past? Are you on any kind of hike at this moment?
McFague concludes, “No one, I believe, loves the whole earth except as she or he loves a particular bit of it.” Tell us something about your small piece of earth and why you love it. What do you receive in return? Where is God active in your love of nature?
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