Tikkum Olam
Tikkum Olam Ted is a little boy who goes to great lengths to act in small ways on behalf of Planet Earth. He diligently recycles, gardens, watches his water use, and plants trees. Indeed, he is a true environmentalist! I first became familiar with Tikkum Olam Ted through a book my oldest son brought home from his doctor’s office. I thought it to be a relatively helpful but quaint children’s story about stewardship. To learn that the book’s title character actually is the embodiment of a concept within Jewish mysticism to “repair the world” makes this board book all the more meaningful and compelling.
How do we even begin the enormous work of repairing the world? The task is not only daunting, but our human societies and cultures are built on systems of consumption and models of scarcity. The hopelessness of making an impact towards repair is real, and generally leaves one feeling impotent towards effecting change. However, Brunner, Butler and Swoboda’s article, “Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology” encourages the reader to discover thehope that will enable us to engage in the repair of this world.
Brunner’s article gave me increased hope with his assertion that I (we) were born with the capacity to find the hidden light in the world which is what brings healing and wholeness. We have been given a task to be agents in repairing the world. I believe as we do the work in our own story, and with the stories of others, we will have a natural outpouring of increased desire to love and care for creation because we will forego apathy and replace it with desire to care for that which we have been given. There are deep themes of kenosis in this way of being in the world. To know our own story requires a kind of self love that ultimately makes room for the other. It becomes an inverted truth of sorts that through a personal investment in our own personal healing, we are able to make room for the other by “emptying” the effects of trauma in our lives. This kenosis like-making room allows for us to have a renewed perspective of the stories of others, in particular the trauma that is being inflicted on the earth.
By seeing the reality of the suffering that is all around us, we move away from anthropocentric perspectives, and are able to make room for the mutuality that we are bound to with the natural world. There is a collective suffering of which we all are a part. “Compassion fatigue” is a clinically diagnosed psychological hopelessness and depression resulting from prolonged exposure to grief whether it be trauma, disease, famine, war or ecological deterioration. The more sick we have become personally, culturally and nationally is correlated to the sickness of our planet. We are bound to one another and deeply interconnected. Our personal and planetary wholeness rests on the premise of mutuality.
When we can be present with both our personal and collective grief, name it, a shift takes place where light or hope is illuminated. When we have a return of hope, we take up our rightful agency in the restoration of things. Brunner calls this hope as a result of naming pain and not living in denial of it. North America in particular finds remaining in the place of lament an almost impossible task, however we cannot heal until lament has had run proper its course.
Once we have lamented, and indeed we must!, we are able to begin to re-imagine how to live in such a way that allows for sustainable and flourishing life for all. This re-imagination is framed as “as-if” by the authors. This imperative to live “as if” — to not live in a state of denial or hopelessness, but to act beginning right where we are, is appreciating with gratitude what there IS instead of what is NOT. This state of mind engages the imagination and encourages us to live forward into a hopeful vision of the future. It demands we not stay in a state of despondency and despair, but rather requires us to take stock of the suffering of the earth and honoring our collective pain. Choosing to see the earth as part of our collective suffering is an integral part to how we view the healing of suffering (can we stop splitting off the different parts of brokenness and choose to see all suffering — not just our own, not just our country, not just humans, but all the earth?). In C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce he speaks of “Heaven as reality itself” (p. 70) and equates it with joy. That eternal reality is something that by definition cannot be known as we see it through the lens of time. There is something provocatively profound in the ideas of Lewis alongside those of Brunner in the reality of what is and what may come. Brunner speaks that we must practice — there is an activist call to practice ‘as if’ — to plant and plan for the future eternal reality.
To live forward from an “as-if” perspective, we must be free to imagine and create. This requires a self-care that almost seems requisite to be denied when we think about living on behalf of the planet. However, we cannot care for the suffering of another until we learn to care for our own. Healing in this sense is so very holistic. The section on living “as if” makes me think about how in the healing of another we also engage in the healing of ourselves. Herein again lies the mysterious truth of kenosis: we cannot begin the work of emptying ourselves on behalf of the other until we have integrated our interior lives to make space, to make room, for the suffering of others. This allows for us to live out of a place of abundance and not scarcity, and provides the framework for for tikkum olam to operate. We can become the healers, repairers, and re-imaginers of this world. We can live “as-if” healing and wholeness is available for us and all of creation!
Reference
Brunner, D.L, Butler, J.L & Swoboda A. J. “Introducing Evangelical Ecotheology: Foundations in Scripture, Theology, History, and Praxis.” Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic (2014).
