Advices and Queries 42: We do not own the world, and its riches are not ours to dispose of at will. Show a loving consideration for all creatures, and seek to maintain the beauty and variety of the world. Work to ensure that our increasing power over nature is used responsibly, with reverence for life. Rejoice in the splendour of God’s continuing creation.
I love nature and all its plants and creatures – how I love the wild world! How I grieve for the loss of the richness and diversity! Some of us – many of us – have worked for decades, with reverence, to try to ensure that human development is sustainable – defined in the 1987 Brundtland Report as “Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
Things don’t look good at the end of 2023. Human beings have developed increasing power over nature, and that power has not been used responsibly. Does “sustainable development” even have any meaning anymore? Might we be heading for a great extinction of life, perhaps even the end of our own species? Perhaps the end of all life, planet Earth becoming nothing but a dead rock? “No,” people say, “Even human beings can’t do so much damage that all life on Earth will come to an end. At least there will be slime moulds.” Yes, surely there will be surviving life-forms that will evolve again, to the glory of God.
But a thought arose in me: perhaps not. There is no guarantee that life on Earth will continue. Every living thing is born, lives, and then dies: that is the way that life is. Everything could die, even the slime-moulds, even the smallest bacteria. The Earth could die. Perhaps that is God’s plan, but something too difficult for human beings to understand? “Things don’t look good at the end of 2023,” I wrote above. What if that thought is totally erroneous? What if the end of life on Earth is part of God’s plan? Could the death of the planet, of all life on the planet, be good? “Oh, no, no!” my heart cried, as I was overwhelmed by my own thoughts. “Not total death! Not the end of all these amazing life-forms! No, no!”
A few weeks later, in a Quaker meeting for worship, a strange vision came to me. Perhaps it was simply a reassuring answer to my own fears, welling up from my subconscious mind. I spoke it as Ministry, and now, here I am, writing it down.
The place was hard to fathom. I was moving along as if swimming underwater, but it was vast, limitless, many more than three dimensions. I saw a bubble coming up from some deep space, perhaps from some era from aeons ago, and up it rose – up and up until it was beside me. Then it started to open and unfurl, like a rose opening its petals, slowly, one by one, so beautiful. I moved closer and gazed through the bubble: it was made of nothingness, like a soap bubble, iridescent, swirling, changing. I saw inside a place of wonder: it was planet Earth, just a bare planet, a rock.
As I watched, it was growing green and blue, and I saw fish and tadpoles and dinosaurs; I saw more and more wonders and unbelievable beauty. Then robins and mice and elephants and people. The people were building cathedrals and I could hear their symphonies and feel their passionate love for each other. Art, poems, beauty, reflections from water, reverence from the deep minds and the souls of these beautiful people. They were surrounded by seas full of stunningly wonderful creatures; forests full of birds singing and strange insects and frogs; meadows full of orchids and butterflies.
Then, as I watched, shadows started to appear like darkness creeping over the petals of a rose. I could glimpse damage, conflict, the systems going wrong, too much taking, too little wisdom. A whiff of despair and heartbreak arose and then, suddenly, the bubble popped - and whoosh! - it was gone. It popped and was no more, with nothing left to show it had ever existed. I was overwhelmed with sadness and heartbreak.
But then I saw another bubble arising, over there, and I moved closer and gazed into the bubble, and I watched another world unfurling, like another rose on a different bush across the garden. The bubble opened with all its wonder – then it popped! And, looking over there, I saw another bubble; and I was aware of bubbles all around, in and throughout this strange multi-dimensional space. Millions of bubbles, arising and popping, throughout all eternity, throughout all infinity. Each world arising, living for a while, dying.
Perhaps God’s creation on this Earth won’t continue . . . but perhaps the Earth could be part of a much bigger picture.
Jackie Carpenter
Marazion Local Meeting, Cornwall Area Meeting