Happy New Year, extinction

Happy New Year! I hope that your celebrations were joyful. On New Year’s Eve my family and I changed all the clocks in the house so we could count down to “midnight” on some vaguely Nova Scotian time, and bade good riddance to 2018 early. We are hopeful for 2019, we have found out that our mother’s cancer is responding to chemo the way it should, and we were all happy to have that time together.

A piece of news which may not have made major headlines, but was a sad and poignant way to start the year, was the death of the last surviving Hawaiian land snail of its species. Hawaii is “the extinction capital of the world” in ecological terms, and while scientists do their best to identify and preserve rare species, the fact is that our world still sees many species going extinct.
It’s a heavy load to bear spiritually: the knowledge that life as we know it is being irreversibly changed, and that not all species will survive. One source of strength that is particularly helpful to me in shouldering this spiritual weight is the work of some eco-feminist theologians, notably Elizabeth Johnson, who write on the plight of the back-up pelican chick. For thirty million years, the White Pelican species has survived by employing the cruelest of evolutionary tricks. Each breeding season a pair will lay two eggs, a few days apart. Ordinarily the chick who hatches first gets most of the parent’s attention and nearly all of the food, and as soon as it is strong enough, pushes its younger sibling out of the nest to die of neglect. This is a winning evolutionary strategy because the parents will always have “an heir and a spare:” if the older chick fails to thrive, they will shift attention to the younger. In extraordinary circumstances both chicks may survive, but the important thing is that the pelican couple is rarely left childless. That puts a grim light on “mother nature,” doesn’t it?

Johnson reminds us in several ways that Christ’s death and resurrection is not only good news for humans, for Christ incarnated as “flesh” – this mortal bodily material shared by all creatures, from snails to birds and humans too. When Christ died on the cross, the pelican chick did not die alone. All the species suffering extinction will not be forgotten, for their death is shared by Christ himself, and all are united in the mystery of his resurrection. The Gospel has therefore been preached “to every creature under heaven” (Col. 1:23) in terms a creature can understand: the groan of suffering, the silence of death, and a loving and accompanying Presence within and beyond these experiences.
It is a challenge for me to make my faith stretch this far, to grow deep and wide enough to encompass without despair even the tide of death threatening the species of our world. Presbyterians don’t often stare at the body of Christ on the cross (we prefer him alive), which is why Johnson’s theology of Christ’s suffering with us, rooted in her Catholic faith, can be so powerful for us to borrow and share. Through my mother’s cancer experience she has found great solace in the solidarity of others praying with and for her. In all that we experience – from personal suffering to climate collapse – we must “hold on to what is good.” May we do so with and for one another, humans and creatures alike, keeping faith in this New Year.

PS For a version of Elizabeth Johnson’s theology that is readable and not very long, check out https://www.trinitywallstreet.org/sites/default/files/JohnsonGoodNewsTranscript.pdf and for George the snail, read  https://www.npr.org/2019/01/07/682908544/george-reclusive-hawaiian-snail-and-last-of-his-kind-dies-at-14