An Ecological Autobiography

Oikos and my life – Finding myself in Nature

1.Introduction. My identity is constructed with nature and fellow beings. My engagements with this nature and fellow beings designs the existence of myself and future generation. It is very important to understand the Nature to find myself and others. Experience and engagement with nature helps us to read ourselves and find out the way we have to go. This small autobiographical sketch describes my relationship with nature and how this earth and its natural resources related with my faith, understanding of God and my theological and ministerial engagements.
2.Myself and Beautiful Nature-Early years. My relationship with this nature starts with my birth in a small village called Chungathara, northern part of the Kerala State, a place surrounded by natural forests, rivers and streams. My parents called me Sajeev Thomas. My engagement with the nature starts from my parents’ relationship with the nature. I have seen that for any thing and every thing they were depending the nature. My grand parents told me that when they lack food to eat they will go to forest to collect bamboo seeds. Fertility of the land made our life a better one. Land has given good harvests which we never expects. I have the experience that if we touch the land with respect it will produce whatever we need. But at the same time I have the experience that earth could turn its face away from us when we starts to exploit the generosity of it. My relationship with the nature cannot be explained in a few words. But I realize that this nature is all to me. I could experience the healing, consolation, anger, warning, from this earth. This nature is my mother, teacher, friend, healer and my kin and kith so on.
2.1.Nature – My Mother- It is not an exaggeration to say that this nature is my mother in a wider sense. Because it provided everything for my growth. This mother used to feed me with variety of foods. This mother used to sing beautiful songs so that I may get sound sleep. Shades of the trees and the breeze made my rest so nice. She made me cool with rain when I feel too hot. She has given many friends to me like birds, butterflies, and other small innocent and loving friends. I used to share my joy and sorrows with my mother. She consoled, encouraged, strengthened and corrected me silently.
2.2.Nature - My Teacher. She taught me about the very nature of my being. In my childhood I always had a doubt that why this much fruits, vegetables, grains and so on? And also I realized that the plants and trees produces all these things not for themselves but for others. The meaning of life will be found only in sharing not in accumulation. In my early days I used to draw water from well. But I realized that if I will take one bucket of water it will be filled soon. Same thing about the oxygen , the basic thing for our existence. But later I realized that earth will not do that when we exploit the nature. I learned that natural resources should be used for our need not for our greed. One day my teacher Miss. Nature told me that “look this air, light, water and realize the nature of my creator. Nobody can monopolise , accumulate or could not able to say this is only for us”. It taught me about the inclusive nature of the creator God. One day teacher took me to a valley and shown me a rainbow and said, “ see the beauty of the diversity”, I wondered and glorified the creator of the earth. Once in a casual conversation Nature asked me to look into my body and asked “ what you see?” I replied, “ parts of my body”. Nature asked, “ have you ever noticed the positions of your body parts?”. “No”, I replied. But she said each part has its own positions and purposes like wise my body is this earth and my body parts are the things you see around you. Each part has its own role to play. Don’t destroy or exploit anything for your vested interests. There I learned the lesson of bio-diversity. And she added that you should understand the very nature of God by looking the beauty of mine. She said to me that listen the different voices of mine you could be able to hear the voice of God. That was an eye opening lesson to me and I could be able to experience the presence and fragrance of God through my relationship with nature.
2.3.Nature- My Friend. From my childhood onwards my best friend is this nature and it still continues. We used to play together in streams, rivers, valleys, forests and so on. While play we may destroy something my friend tells that if you destroy any thing that destroy my body and she asked me to nurture the relationship by caring. When I swim in the rivers she watch me with an innocent smile. She conveyed many things through that, her love, concern and her intimacy. My friend never left me alone. When I go to school she comes with me and make my study very easy with her light and cooling. Once we were going to the church and on the way she asked me “why your church people not loves me?”. “Why you are asking this question”, I asked. “Look church people are cutting down the trees around the church and constructing big concrete commercial buildings,” She said to me. But that challenged me and once I bought a tree sapling which I got from my school to plant in the church. But everybody teased me and I am about to cry. But my great friend consoled me with her sweet kiss and said don’t be silly be courageous and strong enough. I still remember that incident because she has given me a sweet mango to console me.
2.4.Nature- My Healer. This is wonderful experience I have with nature. Whenever I got hurt my parents or elders may put juice of some leaves and it helps in curing the wound of mine. And I taught that the water of the rivers have medicinal value because it starts from the streams of the forests where there are lot of medicinal plants. My Grand Parents always use natural medicinal plants for most of the diseases because medicinal plants were at hand. If you study the plants and fruits of the nature everything have the medicinal value it has to be used properly.
3.My Later Years with Nature. My relationship with the nature broken in my teenage and nobody asked me to be serious with nature. But when I was a college student I got the opportunity to be a member of SCM. Ecological issues like ozone layer depletion, extinction of different species and loosing of the bio - diversity were heard in my early 20’s and I used to share these things in my church and at home. But unfortunately my church members and my parents declared all these things are not spiritual and branded me as an anti-church person. And even one Priest of my church denied the pulpit to me and denied the opportunity to go to the theological studies and that even cost me to wait one more year to go to the theological studies. During my Degree studies I got a great opportunity to be a part of Chilika Bachao Andolan (Save the Chilika Movement) with my SCM friends from Kerala. This was a movement in Orissa by the people, mostly fishermen, who posed a successful resistance in the early 90's to the Integrated Shrimp Farm Project (ISFP)- a joint venture agreed upon by the Tata Iron and Steel Company and Government of Orissa for intensive prawn cultivation and export. The project was a direct threat to the livelihood of fishing communities living around the lake. The fishermen were supported in their struggle by the non-fishermen (mostly farmers but some of them also engaged in fishing), students, intellectuals, and human rights activists.
I also got the opportunity to get involved in the various ecological and social movements in relation with the Kerala SCM involvements. But my formal theological search developed in Leonard Theological College, Jabalpur. B.D studies helped me to concretize my theological search in relation with nature. During my Jabalpur life I could be able to visit Medha Patkar, leader of Narmada Bachao Andolan. This is a movement which I have a strong passion and supporting it indirectly now and then. This was a time which I pruned by theological pursuit and could be able to have a clarity in my vision regarding God the creator and human beings as stewards of this nature. My theological engagements challenged my traditional understanding regarding the ministry of the church which was merely anthropocentric. I got the vision of a mission which is cosmic in dimension means Kingdom of God is for all including the nature.
4.Nature and My Theological and Ministerial Formation. My relation with Nature helped me to widen my perspectives and understandings about God, My Responsibility towards creation, Salvation and so on. My engagements with nature opened my eyes to see God as an inclusive God who created everything and sustains everything and nurtures everything. My entity is related with God, Nature and fellow beings. God has given this nature to till it and keep it. All the resources have given for our need not for our need and we need to share the resources to all so that everybody irrespective of class, caste, colour, gender, ethnicity and so on. Nobody have the authority over the nature other than God. Human beings are the stewards of this creation. Now I strongly believe that salvation which I am seeking is not individualistic but it is cosmic and so that by forgetting and destroying the nature and its resources I couldn’t experience the salvation in its fullness. I believe that taking care God’s creation is my mission towards the extension of the Kingdom of God. And at the same time wounds created by human beings to the nature proclaims that still Jesus Christ is persecuted by the agents of Satanic forces. Exploiting the natural resources for profit motives and luxurious life is a violence and it destroys the very image of God. By negating the right to live of the millions we are against the will of God.
5.Church and Ecological Crisis-Challenges and Responsibilities. Why we are discussing the ecological issues and wasting the time ? There may be many such questions raised by the “spiritual people” and may ask what you are doing other than talking. This is a kind of over simplifying the realities of today. While we discuss the things we are edifying and equipping ourselves and others and pointing towards a movement which includes all sections of the people. We need a group effort to face the ecological crisis of today. Here the church’s role comes. We need to break the traditional nature of the ministry of the church. Let me highlight some of the issues which comes before the church in my context.
1.Problems of the Farmers. Since majority of my Parish members Farmers they are facing the failure in their cultivation? Is climate change a reason? Why lands become barren even though farmers use high yielding seeds and ferilisers? Why the crops failures due to the various diseases even then we apply strong pesticides?
2.In Kerala every rainy reason brings widespread diseases which are difficult to control, Why? Water pollution and mishandling the wastes could be the reasons. Do church has a role to play in waste management? What are the responsibilities church has to control the water and air pollution?
3.Why diseases like cancer is increasing? Any ecological reasons?
4. Scarcity of water. Do we able to encourage the parish to use rain water harvesting at church and surrounding? How this scarcity of water affects the farmers and the agriculture field in a large context?
5.Energy Problem. Do we encourage people to use public transport system as much they can? Do we encourage people to share our vehicles? At what extent we use the solar energy?
6.Exploiting the sand bed of the river that causes different kinds of ecological problems.
6.Conclusion. My journey with nature will continue till my last breath. This journey till today taught me that I don’t have peaceful existence in this earth until and unless I will lead a just and reconciled life with this nature. My faith has to be expressed in relation to this earth. Some time I feel strong pain when this mother earth is raped by the greedy people. This mother allowed us to drink milk but we are sucking life blood of the mother even though we had enough milk. Majority of the people are not realizing that Mother earth is dying or we pretend that we are unaware about it. When we can afford many things like pure water majority of the people could not afford the same. In this journey I decided to protect this earth through my deeds and words because my faith in Christ compels me to do so. June 5th was the international environmental day and in NDTV 24x7 news channel reported about an ‘uneducated’ old village woman who started planting trees for the last 50 years and still continuing in her village especially at the sides of the roads when ‘educated’ people destroys the nature. There are people who loves and cares this nature with great stewardship so I will join with them because a creative minority still believes that There Are alternatives and Another World Is Possible.