I would not consider myself to be a spiritual person. That was my first thought when considering my own Green Spiritual journey. My second was how can one have ‘journeyed’ less than a month into being 21? What could I have experienced in comparison to the wisdom of those older than me? While neither of these thoughts are particularly useful or particularly true, both are an interesting indication of my spiritual journey so far.
So why would I not, at first, consider myself a spiritual person? As a child, like many others, my first encounter with spirituality was one synonymous with religion. An angel in the nativity, next a narrator, then finally Mary herself. The nativity is an example of my first considerations of spirituality as a child. How we as individuals connect to each other and, in turn, the Earth. What we can learn from those before us, and more pertinently, why we are being taught what we are. But to be honest, I mostly liked the songs. I remember asking my mother on the way to school if, as he could walk on water, the magician ‘Dynamo’ was Jesus. So I cannot claim to have a particularly theologically accurate grasp on my early religious teachings. My parents, although both holding their own spiritual beliefs, let me draw my own conclusions, and still do, which I commend. Although I remember my rather panicked mother trying to explain to me that Jesus was, in fact, not Dynamo just in time for school.
By the end of primary school, I knew that the religion I had been taught so far was not a doctrine I identified with. The lessons I had been taught, believed and lived did not seem to be the reality of the world around me. The world around me seemed unfair. The final blow was the death of my grandfather at 9. How could God exist and he not? The death of a man to me, the epitome of unconditional love, could not be reconciled with the existence of God. Who would read me stories? Make me eggs just the way I liked? It certainly wasn’t going to be the invisible man in the sky. How could God be omnibenevolent, omnipotent, omniscient, but my grandfather was dead? And so, rather quietly, my relationship with religion, at the time indistinguishable from spirituality, ended.
As I continued into adolescence, the lessons I learnt further affirmed my departure from religion. Injustices of the world were often seemingly justified by systems and scripture derivative of religious systems. However, a fire was lit within me. If things are unfair, change them. Do not sit there passively to the goings on around you. Be loud, do things scared. As my mother says, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’
Here is where my interest in ‘green’ started. Slowly, I learnt that spirituality and religion are not the same. At 12, I decided to be a vegetarian, at 16, vegan, a commitment I plan to continue for the rest of my life. A commitment borne of love, I cannot comprehend how we can justify hurting animals based on anthropocentrism. This made me question how the rest of my beliefs have been shaped. How limited it is to define the worth of Nature solely by its utility to humans. How failure to have compassion for ourselves and others is because we fail to have compassion for the Earth and all its inhabitants. Although it is easy to forget, we are all connected, if not to a higher power, certainly all to the Earth itself. This, to me, is green spirituality. The cycles of life and death. The seasons. The things we all feel with mind and body. An interconnectedness.
However, this is easy to say and harder to enact. I find it difficult to balance compassion and interconnectedness with those who hurt others and the Earth. Those who claim dominion. A part of me hopes to learn the skill with age; another does not, for fear I will stop noticing injustices and slip into indifference. I continue to look for the answer, to hold compassion and my own principles.
My interest in the environment has since grown, pushed in part by the fear of what we have to lose, but also what we stand to gain. At university, I chose to complete my degree in history and politics, to learn from the past and learn how to shape the future. The Earth is a beautiful and complex thing. The older I am, the more I realise how much everyone stands to learn from it. The value in standing in awe. In realising we are all interconnected. This is where my green spirituality now stems. Humans do not have dominion over the Earth or each other. I look forward to the future. To the lessons I can learn using the perspective of green spirituality.
To sit down, reflect and write down my thoughts has been an interesting and confronting experience. To which I can conclude that I am a spiritual person and that all life has value. My Green Spiritual journey has only just begun, but these two facts shall remain a true and influential factor all my life.