The integrity of creation
Fr Peter Healey sm
As I write, late autumn rain rattles on my roof. I am grateful to be warm and dry. Rain is what a watershed collects and disperses to the sea.
The Waitohu-Ōtaki watershed I inhabit is an outstanding one. It has a stream and river system many hundreds of kilometres long that drain thousands of hectares of hinterland slopes. I have recently tramped the mountainous rim of our watershed – a solid eight-day journey along the Tararua tops behind Levin down to Akatarawa.
This journey has awakened in me a new sense of where I live. It encourages me to ponder what American theologian Ched Myers calls ‘watershed discipleship’. This form of discipleship is about knowing where you live.
It is also having a sense of the biology that is your surrounds: the landforms, the waterways and sea, the air and winds, and all the lifeforms.
Slowly scientists, planners, ecologists, healthcare workers and Christian disciples are waking up to watersheds.
A watershed is the integral functioning of our system – weather, geology, land use, water quality, employment, human settlement, sustainablity and food security.
Many layers of stories make up the history and geography of a watershed. Holding these layers in our mind’s eye is what a watershed disciple endeavours to do.
The integrity of creation is writ in the form of local watersheds but our education system, theology and liturgy have not traditionally included them.
I was never taught about whole systems, how to intuit their presence, grandeur and importance.
Often a watershed is reduced to a set of resources. When this happens it loses its integrity, and a license to use and abuse comes into play.
We have entered what social ecologists are calling ‘the Anthropocene’ – when human dominance over natural systems is at an all-time high and has had a significant impact on the Earth’s ecosystems. We have a moral obligation to protect the integrity of a planet in peril.
As watershed disciples we honour God our Creator, we consider future generations, we know the struggle of all life forms on the planet and we do what our moral integrity asks of us.
The place to begin the work of being honourable and caring disciples is in the watershed that nourishes and sustains us.
Fr Peter Healy sm is an artist, and is a member of the SM Ōtaki Community, Waitohu-Ōtaki Watershed, and the Ōtaki-Levin Parish.