FANA-FI-GAIA
Beltane-May Day 2022 - 3rd Quarterly from the
Ziraat Council
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Dear Friends,
Today is Beltane in the Celtic calendar, the cross-quarter time to celebrate and affirm the creativity and fertility of the land, the animals and ourselves: the rites of spring! As we honor our earth, let us bring together ecology (earth wisdom) and religion (binding with the roots of our origin).
According to the Holy Qur’an, environmental conservation is a religious duty, a social obligation, and not an optional matter. Khalifa refers to the role of guardianship and sharing one’s goodness. According to Islamic law, the basic elements of nature – land, water, fire, forest, and light – belong to all living things, not just human beings.
Specifically Mohammad addressed Land Reclamation, Wildlife Protection, Water Rights, Water Pollution, Water Waste, and Water Conservation (Do not waste a drop, even if you are by a stream - Mohammed), Environment Protection, Sustainable Forestry (even at times of war, Muslim leaders, such as Abu Baker, advised their troops not to chop down trees and destroy agriculture or kill an animal, even if they were on land considered “enemy territory”), and Public Conservation of Natural Resources.
Native Americans call for The Honorable Harvest where the gleaner finds a way to support the flourishing of what is being harvested (or hunted or fished), and gives back more than one takes. Whatever is taken is done in a selective way so that the source will continue to flourish and multiply.
Benedictines take vows of stability (a strong sense of place), locality, and frugality. Taoists surrender to “The Way”, and Buddhists dedicate themselves to understanding Interdependence.
To learn the lesson of how to live is more important than any psychic or occult learning. What is needed today is an education that will teach humanity to feel the essence of its religion in everyday life. In this way, he can make his everyday life a prayer.
Hazrat Inayat Khan
We -- you and I -- are the ones with the real power. We need to understand that the marketplace is a democracy; every time we buy something, we cast a vote.
John Perkins
Politics is the application of Sufism to earth life...To refuse to act politically is to starve your children, destroy civilization.
Shamcher Bryn Beorse
Bringing together my hands, I bow to the unity of our spiritual aspirations and our daily actions. Namaste!
Darvesha, on behalf of the Ziraat Council
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By Karuna Teresa Foudriat
Since the 1980s Muslim environmentalists have thoughtfully re-examined the Islamic tradition, uncovering the foundation for a sustainable view of the Creator, the cosmos and the human role in nature. In essay collections like Islam and Ecology, in blogs, and at conferences, Muslim theologians, legal scholars, activists, urban planners and even folklorists, gardeners and poets have challenged many of the environmentally destructive practices of modern western society. They have drawn deeply, either knowingly or unknowingly, from the Qur’an, Islam’s original revelation and most revered text.
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Excerpts from Ziraat Reader |
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Nayaz, an Interpretation
by Shamcher Bryn Beorse
Beloved one,
Who plays in the rays of the Sun
and through the waves of the air,
I see you
and I feel you
in Nature, in other, and in myself.
Photo by Hamid
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Check out what beautiful work our wonderful family member, Tatiana Havill, is up to on behalf of pollinators and healing humanity:
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The legendary primatologist and environment activist says it’s time ‘to rethink our relationship with the natural world.'
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My Octopus Teacher is a 2020 Netflix film which documents a year spent by filmmaker Craig Foster forging a relationship with a wild common octopus in a South African Kelp forest. It is touching beyond belief!
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Mindful Eating
“Our individual awareness of the sacred within creation reconnects the split between spirit and matter. Rather than mortifying the flesh and trying to detach from it, we see that we must nourish and heal our bodies. The sacred arts of farming and cooking are priestly practices…and eating is the daily Eucharistic ritual and the sensate experience of eating is the sacramental communion that affirms the body as an extension of the sacred ‘earth body’, the creation thru which God manifests.” Miriam MacGillis
Photo by Lakshmi
“To eat slowly means to eat deliberately with freedom from compulsion. Many food cultures, particularly those at less of a remove from the land than ours, have rituals to encourage that sort of eating, such as offering a blessing or grace. The point is to make sure that we don’t eat thoughtlessly or hurriedly, and that knowledge and gratitude will infuse our pleasure at the table.” Michael Pollan
“Eating with the fullest pleasure – pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance – is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend.” Wendell Berry
How about that! A practice encouraging us to do what we love to do with as much love and enjoyment as we can. In Theravada Buddhism this practice is called Mindful Eating. The only ‘hitch’ is, as they say in Las Vegas, “You must be present to win.” Being fully present takes concentration and it takes place in time. Therefore, it demands 2 things: full attention, and time -- taking time. If you are thinking/talking about something else or rushing after the next bite or hurrying to get onto some other activity, you will miss the whole show. It will be a life not lived: a meal not tasted.
“Even bad food tastes good if you chew it well.” Dr Kyojō Niide (Red Beard), in Akira Kirusawha’s Red Beard.
In changing the way we eat, we change the way we live.
By focusing attention while eating we learn to focus attention in any situation. By savoring our food, we become more sensitive to nourishment in all its forms. By eating with dignity, we learn to live with dignity. In understanding our food as sacrament….the Eucharist….we sanctify the process by which we live, our daily lives, that which we eat, and all the beings that have made it possible.
Buen provecho,
Darvesha
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Photo of Bear Mountain by Darvesha |
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