Fr. Jojo M. Fung, SJ:

Based the Ecumenical Steering Committee, the theme for this year’s Season of Creation is “Jubilee For the Earth: New Rhythms, New Hopes.” As a committed ‘carer’ of Our Common Home, I  find the 3 Cs extremely attractive for my changing lifestyle: celebration, conversion, and commitment. By asking a basic question: What is my kind of commitment that is borne of a personal conversion that I celebrate this year, I believe the 3 Cs are interrelated.

Let me explain. Recently I found myself yearning to enter into a sacred resting time with God and God’s creation after an intense period of nearly a year of postdoc research and writing in Campion Hall, Oxford, UK, with an added 14-day preparation for the LST online courses during the 14-day mandatory quarantine in Kuala Lumpur.

From August 12-16, 2020, I found myself resting in a sacred place known as Kinabalu Holiday camp as per the fraternal hospitality of my younger brother, Oliver Fung. Conscientiously, I  decided to just physically rest, without recourse  to my books and laptop. More so, spiritually, I allowed my wearied self to rest in God’s consoling and liberating presence, by entering daily into an intimate contemplative communion, each morning and dusk, with the sacred mountain that rises 4,094.2 meters above the sea level, towering from atop the Crocker Range in Sabah.

I relished and savored the felt-intimacy with this sacred mountain and Earth, mindful that I am the self-reflexivity of the sacred Cosmos, Mother Earth, Mount Kinabalu, the Crocker mountain range, the forest, the ferns, the flowers, the two dogs and a cat, the red house that I lived in and everything in this house. These twice daily contemplation  has further deepened the ecological conversion in me. I become readily mindful that all things which God has created around me are intimately connected to me and I to them. I embodied an experiential and relational sense that “everything in the world is connected” as Laudato Si’ 16 informed us.

I experienced more intimately what Al-Khawas, a Muslim Mystic-Poet averred “there is a subtle mystery in each of the movements and sounds of this world. The initiate will capture what is being said when the wind blows, the trees sway, water flows, flies buzz, doors creak, birds sing, or in the sound of strings or flutes, the sighs of the sick, the groans of the afflicted…”[1] to the extent that “there is a mystical meaning to be found in a leaf, in a mountain trail, in a dew drop, in a poor person’s face” (LS 223) because “the Spirit of life dwells in every living creature” (LS 80, 88).

That Spirit that Al-Khawas referred to is Rûah Elohim, God’s Creative Spirit who has become localized and focalized in everything God has created to become the plural spirits of God’s creation, indwelling in the animals, birds, forests and the trees,  the lakes and the rivers. The indigenous wo/men elders have mentored me to behold God’s creation as sacred because all of creation is filled with the spirits and creation and Mother Earth, are spirited.

Christ’s disciples are urged to behold and savor creation as spirited and therefore divine and sacred in God. St. John of the Cross, a discalced Carmelite mystic, reminded us that “that all the goodness present in the realities and experiences of this world “is present in God eminently and infinitely, or more properly, in each of these sublime realities is God… not because the finite things of this world are really divine, but because the mystic experiences the intimate connection between God and all beings, and thus feels that “all things are God” (LS 234).[2] God and Rûah Elohim fill the entire creation with God’s Creative Spirit. In this sense, all things in creation are divinized by God and all things are God.

This is the foundational spirituality that I celebrate with the entire creation in this year’s jubilee for the Earth. This recent deepening of the relational experience that “everything is connected” has enabled Rûah Elohim to effect a further orientation in me to live a new and more contemplative way of communion with creation. This contemplative communion restores an inalienable value to the Cosmos and Mother Earth. We begin to value creation as the sacred dwelling of Rûah Elohim. Through our collective agency as “lifegiving carers” for the fuller flourishing or our Common Home, we live in the hope of conscientizing a new generation of “lifegiving carers” for Mother Earth today and tomorrow to live in the hope that creation has to be revered by all as sacred and enspirited. This hope will offer us a vision that God’s sacred dwelling place is being sustained by God’s Creative Spirit for all life, today and tomorrow.

This foundational spirituality of relationality fosters in us a more critical yet integral vision of life: “We learn to look at causes, not just symptoms of life. We look at being, not just having. We look  at a just and sustainable wage, not just the minimum wage. We look at equity for all, not just dire poverty of the majority. We look at people, not just the profit. We look at culture, not just the economy. We look at selfless service, not just “what’s-in-it-for-me”. We look at sustainable livelihood for all, not just economic progress for the elites. We look at the culture of sustainability, not just the culture of economic growth. We look at the simplicity of living with less, not just material accumulation. We look at health and wellbeing, not just  the medico-pharmaceutical industry. We look at wholesome nourishment, not just the food industry. We look at agroecology, not just the agrochemical industry. We look at learning for wisdom, not just the education industry for degrees. We look at labor, not just capital. We look at our compassionate foundations, not our competitive rivalry. We look at peace with justice, and not wars for profits. We look at the indigenous peoples, not just the professional experts. We look at spiritualities, not just religions. We look out for all, not just our kind. We look at women for the lifegiving spirit of relationality in humans, not just the supremacist white male of robotic rationality. We look at flourishing for all, not just the technocratic dominion of the humans. We look at the Earth as our Common Home, not just mere resources to be financialized.”[3]

This is the foundational spirituality of relationality, I believe, will give the 2020 celebration of the jubilee for the Earth new rhythms and new hopes.

1. [1] Citation from a Al-Khawas, a ninth century Muslim mystical poet in Pope Francis, Encyclical Letter Laudato SI’, Footnote 159. See Eva de Vitray-Meyerovitch, ed., Anthologie du soufisme (Paris: Sinbad, 1978), 200.eva de vitray-meyerovitCh [ed.], Anthologie du soufisme, Paris 1978, 200).
2. [2] St. John of the Cross, Cántico Espiritual, XIV, 5.
3. [3] Manikam Nadarajah, http://aliran.com/thinking-allowed-online/the-common-good-and-new.malaysia/.nov2018. Revised & edited by Jojo Fung, accessed May 20, 2020.