In this special episode, Nicole Diroff introduces a thoughtful exchange between Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd, an ecologist and theologian, and Rev. Andy Nagy-Benson, her pastor. During the COVID-19 pandemic, they explored deep connections between ecological science and Christian theology through heartfelt letters. These letters are now compiled in their book, Letters from the Ecotone: Ecology, Theology, and Climate Change.
Main Conversation:Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd and Rev. Andy Nagy-Benson engage in a thoughtful dialogue about the ecological and theological definitions of self-interest versus the common good. Key discussion points include:
- Ecological interconnectedness and the relational essence of all life.
- Complexities of defining "the common good" in environmental and theological contexts.
- Reflections on human behavior, ethical reasoning, and moral responsibilities in environmental conservation.
- Insights from theologians and ecologists on self-interest, self-love, and community solidarity.
- Personal stories illustrating the tension between self-centered actions and caring for the common good.
- Participate in the Listener Survey: Share your feedback about the podcast and suggest future topics. Take the survey here.
- Engage with Reflection Questions: Consider your understanding of self-interest and the common good. Leave a voicemail or text your reflections to +1 207-200-6986.
- Explore The BTS Center's Resources: Visit thebtscenter.org to learn more about spiritual leadership and ecological stewardship programs.
- Book: Letters from the Ecotone: Ecology, Theology, and Climate Change by Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd and Rev. Andy Nagy Benson
- Book: Journey to the Common Good by Walter Brueggemann
- Westminster Catechism: Reflection on purpose and interconnectedness
Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd is an ecologist and professor whose work bridges ecological science and Christian theology. She explores ecological interconnectedness and moral responsibility in the context of climate change.
Rev. Andy Nagy-Benson serves as a pastor deeply engaged in theological explorations of community solidarity, ethical responsibility, and ecological consciousness, reflecting thoughtfully on the intersection of personal spirituality and ecological ethics.
Next Month:
Join Jessica David, BTS Center intern and divinity school student, as she steps behind the mic for a special mini-season of Climate Changed. In this behind-the-scenes series, Jessica explores big questions about spirituality, hope, grief, and imagination—diving deep into how we navigate a complex world with curiosity and compassion.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
>> Nicole Diroff (00:00):
Hello listeners. Ben, Yoshua Davis and I
just wrapped up our third season.
We have a request for you to
share your feedback with us. Take our
listener survey to tell us what you like
about climate change and what you'd like to hear
in the future. You'll find a link to the survey
(00:21):
in our show Notes. This is the
perfect time for you to share feedback
because we're getting ready to do something
different. A uh, Mini Season of the Climate
Change Podcast Our intern,
Jessica David will take you behind the
scenes at the BTS Center. She
will help us dive into the things we are
(00:44):
most curious about spirituality,
hope, grief,
imagination and the common good.
We'll be launching that mini season next month.
Today I have something special for
you.
Welcome to the Climate Changed Podcast.
(01:04):
I'm Nicole Dieroff. It's hard
to believe the COVID 19 pandemic began
five years ago this month. That
was such a confusing time
and I remember deeply missing
connecting with people in
person.
Reverend Dr. Andi Lloyd, an
(01:26):
ecologist and professor, was a student
at UH Yale Divinity School. In March of
2020 she and her pastor,
Reverend Andy Nagy Benson,
began writing letters to each other.
Together, Andi and Andi connected
Christian theology and ecology. Their
letters are collected in a book, Letters from the
(01:48):
Ecotone Ecology, Theology
and Climate Changed. Their letters to each other
are beautiful and I enjoyed the
entire book. I love how they bring science
and religion together in such an open
hearted way. Truly their letters are a
gift and I am pleased to share that gift
with you, our uh, climate changed listeners.
(02:11):
In June of 2023, the the BTS
center hosted a conversation with Andi and
Andi where they talked about their
correspondence and shared excerpts.
In the following audio from that event, they
read their first letters to each other.
I hope their words inspire you, make you
curious and strengthen you.
>> Andi Lloyd (02:37):
So we're going to read the first two letters. I'm going to read a slightly
abridged version of my first letter.
July 27, 2020
Dear Andi, it was lovely
to see you last week and to walk and talk our way
along the fields and forests. I wonder
sometimes how long it will take in the post pandemic
(03:00):
future that is surely out there for the simple fact
of physical presence to stop feeling precious beyond
all words. I kind of hope it never does.
The not taking simple things for granted feels like an
unexpected gift. I've continued to
think about the question that you left me with at the end of that
walk. Does the idea of the common good have
(03:20):
meaning in the ecological realm? A few days
of mulling it over and the response I gave you in the moment,
yes, unambiguously, still rings
true. Yes, unambiguously.
And it's complicated. Complicated
in a good way. In a way that leads me to think that the richest
answers to that question may lie at the borderlands between
ecology and theology, rather than wholly in
(03:42):
either. My yes is rooted in the
core insight that ecological science offers about the nature
of our world, that it's a, ah, deeply intrinsically
interconnected place. Your question
prompted me to look up Ernst Haeckel's original definition
of ecology, written in the 1800s. He
defined ecology at its birth as the science of the relations
(04:02):
of the organism to the environment. All
life is inherently relational,
connected. That's both the starting premise of
ecology and the product of more than 100 years of doing
ecology interconnectedness.
It's one of those insights that's simultaneously obvious
and easy to miss, astonishing and easy to take for
granted all at once. The reality to which
(04:25):
ecology points us is one in which our very lives
depend on other species. Our bodies are
built of atoms and molecules that have passed through
countless generations of other organisms. The
oxygen we breathe is the exhalations of millions
and millions of years of growing plants.
Ecology asks us to see that all of us, all
living things, are woven together by visible and
(04:48):
invisible flows of energy, matter,
nutrients, even the plant gametes that the
checkerspot butterflies outside my window are ferrying from
one coneflower to the next. In the moments
when I manage to pause and really notice that reality, I
feel thoroughly wonderstruck. Too often,
though, I don't notice it. Interconnectedness is
the fundamental nature of our existence, but it's easy not
(05:10):
to see it. I wonder sometimes if it's
the very boundedness of our bodies, the embodied
illusion that we're somehow discrete entities, that
makes it easy for us to believe instead in our own
autonomy, our separateness.
As I write this, I'm thinking about the field onto which we were looking
as we sat and talked last Wednesday.
That field is a pretty simple ecological community, but
(05:33):
even so, it contains dozens and dozens of species,
plants and animals, fungi and microbes living together,
interacting depending on one another. Even in
a relatively simple community like that one, the scope of
those interactions borders on bewildering.
The daily drama of that field involves eating and being
eaten, competition and cooperation, sex and
(05:54):
death, disease, symbiosis, decay,
and the cycling of atoms around and around and
around. I imagine that if we could see each
of those interactions as a thread tying pairs of
interdependent organisms together, the field
would Start to look like a fabric. And better still,
we'd discover, sitting there, that those threads draw us in
too. We're part of that interdependent web
(06:16):
of ecological connectedness, all bound up
in the midst of it, whether we recognize it or not.
But to return to your question, I think that the idea
of the common good as it exists in the ecological realm
flows from that reality of interconnectedness and the
interdependence that arises from it.
Try this on for size as an ecological definition
(06:38):
of the common good. No species can
exist apart from other species. So whether we like it or
not, we, the denizens of planet Earth, need one
another. We are ultimately all in it
together. Things get
trickier from there, ecologically speaking, but also really
interesting. When I think about the idea of the
common good, I think about it as the opposite of self centered
(07:00):
behavior. I can act in ways that center my own
interests, or I can act in ways that further the common
good. Am I going to go on as many airplane flights
as I want, irrespective of the impact on climate change, or
am I going to choose to forego my desire to travel for the
sake of mitigating climate change? That
contrast between self centered and other centered behavior
(07:20):
makes abundant sense in the realm of human decision
making. It's harder to
apply ecologically though. Is it
meaningful to say that a red tailed hawk soaring over that
field near where we were sitting is self
centered for seeking to snuff out the life of a
meadow goal? It's self interested. But
I don't think I'd be inclined to assign a value judgment to a
(07:42):
hawk in the same way that I would to a human who consistently
chooses self interest over the interests of others.
In other words, the good part of common good is not free of
ecological complexities. Different species
have different goods, at least in the short term and at the scale of
individuals. The red tailed hawk might well
define good as having lots of meadow voles to eat today, while the
(08:03):
meadow voles would surely define good as not getting
eaten by a hawk today.
Nature's full of conflicts of interest like that,
and it's full of self interest. And
to complicate it further, what's good for an individual might
differ from what's good for a group of individuals.
It's good for an individual hawk to eat as many meadow voles
as it can, but it's really not good for the population of hawks
(08:26):
to run out of meadow voles. The population
benefits from a restraint that is not in the individual's
interest to Exercise.
Ecological interdependence doesn't have to involve
altruism or self sacrifice, although it can and
does. Interdependence is a reality that
undergirds a system full of creatures eating other
creatures, full of death, full of disease, full
(08:48):
of competition and limited nutrients.
And yet we're all in it together.
Both things are true. And both things
can be true, I think, because there are checks and balances
within ecological communities that normally prevent
one species from consuming all the resources.
We don't need an individual red tailed hawk to decide to
(09:09):
forego lunch in order to avoid extinguishing the population of
meadow voles. Such conflicts of interest are resolved
for the most part by the very interconnectivity that I
started with.
If the red tailed hawks start to eat too many meadow voles,
prey gets scarce and either the hawks
reproductive success goes down, fewer hawks
eating voles, or they switch to some other prey
(09:30):
item, fewer voles getting eaten. The
hawk doesn't need to decide to further the common
good. Humans, however, have
a unique, as far as we know, ability to engage
in ethical reasoning and make choices that appear to
be against our own immediate short term desires.
We can choose the common good, even if it conflicts
(09:51):
with our perception of our own self interest.
But here's the thing. I'd
argue that ecologically speaking, the common good, the
flourishing of all life on earth, is
absolutely, categorically, unambiguously
in our self interest. If we are all in this together,
then we don't thrive if other species don't
thrive. So maybe what ecology
(10:13):
offers to this conversation is the somewhat paradoxical
insight that the route to self interest lies in
caring for species other than ourselves.
In other words, the dichotomy between self centered and other
centered, between acting for myself or for the common
good, doesn't make sense ecologically.
If we can't live without other species acting in
(10:33):
ways that allow them to thrive, is the very definition
of our self interest. Maybe the
ecological truth is that our self interest, at least
over the long term, and the common good are the same
thing. The issue is not that they are in
conflict, but rather that we fail to see our own
self interest clearly because we fail to see
our interconnectedness. We see instead our
(10:56):
short term desires and we mistakenly believe that they are
the same thing as our self interest. We fail to see
that living as if we were the only species that matters is a
dead end, ecologically speaking.
But now that I've written that, I wonder if that's really a
uniquely ecological insight. How do
you understand the distinction between self interest
(11:17):
and the common good. Theologically,
I'm obviously drifting here toward, if not entirely
past, the limits of ecology. Maybe the
ecological reality of an interconnected and
interdependent world shares a border with the theological and
ethical concept of the common. And maybe that
borderland, I'm so tempted to call it an
ecotone, is a place where we can put our understanding
(11:39):
of the world as it is alongside what we know and can dream
of the world is about to be. Maybe that
borderland is the place where we come to understand what it means for
life to flourish. A long walk through
such a place sounds like just the thing right about now.
Peace Andi.
>> Reverend Andy Nagy Benson (12:28):
August M21, 2020
M Dear
Andi,
Grace and Peace, the letter you
wrote reads like the well spun web of connections
it describes. My goodness.
(12:48):
Thank you for your tour of ecological kinship.
How a question like mine can yield a letter like yours
is beyond me, but it's clear I need to ask more
questions. Near the end of your letter, I felt a
rush of pride at the recognizable sound of
ecotone. Wait, ecotone. I know that
word. A few years back on Easter
evening, I tucked that word inside a short
(13:11):
poem about Christ appearing and disappearing
like a firefly. Where field and
forest meet. Where field and
forest meet. Ecotone. Where two
biological communities exchange gifts.
Anyway, I like the word. I also like the
idea of paddling on the brackish water of Common
(13:31):
Good Pond, where ecology and theology can
swap stories. So on Monday
I went to Kingsland Bay with Ella, Mary and
Rachel. Dad, days in the summer are the
best. On the way up Route 7, we
stop at the junction store. I go in for
provisions. There are a dozen or so people in
(13:51):
there. Then a 30 something white
male walks in past the masks required
sign. He's not wearing a mask.
As I see it, uh, everything about his body language is saying,
nope, not wearing a mask. The rest
of us keep looking at him without trying to be obvious.
Meanwhile, he's walking up and down the many aisles looking
(14:11):
like he wants someone to get in his face about
responsibility so he can get in theirs
about freedom. Doesn't happen.
He pays and walks outside to his idling truck.
As ah, I replay that scene, your question back to me seems
particularly relevant.
How do you understand the distinction between self interest and the
(14:31):
common good? Theologically
up front, I want to say this question of yours has made me
freshly aware of my need to check in with self interest.
What does that word mean theologically?
Does it mean that based on all things I could be interested
in, I am most interested in myself.
Does it mean selfishness? Self
preservation? Survival? Is
(14:54):
it an expression of self worth?
Self love? Is it why our
planetary house is on fire? Is it
why we want to put the fire out?
Is it possible that self interest is roomy enough to
hold all these moods and meanings?
From what I understand about the spread of COVID 19,
(15:15):
it would have been in my self interest to ask the guy at
the store to put on a mask. Then again,
given how pissed off he appeared to be, it may have been in
my self interest to keep quiet. And
while I don't presume to know what the maskless man was thinking,
I do wonder. Was it in his self
interest to be unencumbered by a mask? Did
(15:35):
he not care about the other people in the store?
Does he think it's a hoax still?
Or did he forget his mask in haste on his way
to drop in on his girlfriend's mother, who's been feeling lonelier
than usual these days? Self interest
is complicated, as complicated as we all
can be, which is why I had to look up
(15:56):
the word when we got home from Lake Champlain.
The main definition tilts towards selfishness,
one's personal interest or advantage,
especially when pursued without regard for
others. However
incomplete this definition may be, the phrase without
regard for others chafes my understanding of the common
(16:17):
good. The common good has to do with
conditions necessary for everyone and everything
to flourish, and self interest by
definition undermines these
conditions. Maybe that's why
the word self interest makes me uneasy.
I think that this feeling springs from my
(16:37):
core belief that love your neighbor as
yourself is the common good, and it's
how we get there. And self interest can
get in the way of this self interest brings
to mind something in me that wants to grab first,
give second, without regard for others.
Oh Lord, I've been there lots of times. I've been
(16:57):
caught and carried by the current of self preoccupation.
I've rejected, wittingly and unwittingly, the
truth that I am part of an interconnected,
interdependent reality beyond the half acre of
my own little life. I know way
more than I'd like to admit about the habits of self
absorption. I've been really far from home,
deep in prodigal territory, and despite
(17:20):
two dozen years of standing in pulpits and connecting the dots
between the common good and the kingdom of God.
What have I really done to be of use to my
neighbors whose needs are deep?
These markings of self interest are mine,
but not mine alone. The
human tendency to bend towards Selfishness and
away from the common good has been a thing for a
(17:43):
long time. Maybe that's why
Israel's prophets went ballistic over corrupt
systems that used poor and powerless
people, and why the prophets were constantly
telling the high and mighty to get over themselves.
And Maybe that's why St. Paul wrote to the church in
Philippi, do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in
(18:04):
humility. Regard others as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others. Let the
same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
When I read Scripture, I often recognize
the needful reminder to aim my interest beyond
the end of my nose. The same goes
(18:27):
for reading theology. In fact, I just finished Walter
Brueggeman's book, Journey to the Common Good.
The book begins, the great
crisis among us is the crisis of the common good.
The sense of community solidarity that
binds all in a common destiny
haves and have nots the rich and the poor.
We face a crisis about the common good
(18:49):
because there are powerful forces at work among
us to resist the common good, to
violate community solidarity, and to
deny a common destiny.
Powerful forces at work among us, indeed,
within us too, as far as I can tell.
So sages of our tradition, Aquinas and
(19:10):
Ignatius, Rauschenbusch and Brueggemann, to name a
few, keep turning our attention to needs
beyond our own. And the Westminster
Catechism keeps asking, what is the chief end of
man? And it keeps answering,
man's chief end is to glorify God and to
enjoy him forever.
Now, when it comes to arresting climate change or living in harmony with
(19:32):
the great web of life, I would agree that the idea
of self interest can include us
acting in ways that allow the species we are
dependent on to thrive. But things
get tricky when self interest makes our
personal good the end goal and finish
line. Theologically, this doesn't work
(19:52):
so well. As I see it, a, uh, Christian's
pursuit to serve her neighbor and care for
creation leads to God our
chief end. Does this mean self
interest is anathema to one's spiritual life? No,
I don't think so. There's a hue of self interest
that matches self love. And of course, self
(20:12):
love. Is God stamped, love your neighbor
as yourself. Self interest is
assumed in the Great Commandment. I sometimes forget
that a few years ago, a
sweet man approached me after worship and asked me why I left out
as yourself from my benediction. I had
said at services, end something like, love God, love your
neighbor, go in peace. This man shared
(20:35):
with me with equal parts earnestness and
gentleness. How much he needed to hear permission
to love himself again. Oh
yes, right. Thank
you. Had I assumed that self interest
simply is, and that the common good ought to be?
Maybe so. But that kind soul
helped me see that we cannot avert the crisis of
(20:57):
the common good if we fail to include
ourselves as objects worthy of holy
love. After all, we
are parts of an interconnected, interdependent
reality, and for us to be protectors
and conveyors of that beautiful truth, we
need to include ourselves in the work of the
(21:17):
common good. Just not at the
expense of everyone else at the Junction
Store I wish you well, my
friend Andy.
>> Nicole Diroff (21:39):
That was Reverend Dr. Andi Lloyd and
Reverend Andy Nagy Benson reading
from their book Letters from the
Ecolotone Theology and Climate
Changed. I put a link to the book in our show
notes climate
changepodcast.org
it's amazing to listen to these letters
(22:00):
five years later. I
feel like I have a new lens for seeing
actions in service to the common good.
I have new language to talk
about the pervasive and
dangerous self centered
approaches that I'm witnessing in
so many of our political leaders these days.
(22:24):
What are you thinking? What are you
feeling? I'm curious about what you
have to share. Please leave me a voicemail
at uh,
207-200-6986.
That's
207-200-6986
plus one. If you're calling for outside the
(22:44):
USA, you can also text that number
207-200-6986.
Visit climatechangedpodcast.org
for show notes, a transcript and
more. That website again is
climatechangedpodcast.org
also a reminder that this is your chance to take
(23:06):
our listener survey at the link in the show notes
and we would be so grateful.
Many thanks to Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd and
Rev. Andi Nagy Benson who
shared their letters with us. Also thanks to
our producer Peterson Toscano for
producing this episode and to Jessica David
(23:27):
for working with him on it.
The Climate Change Podcast is a project of the
BTS center in beautiful Portland, Maine.
Learn more about the many programs and resources we
offer for spiritual leaders and spiritual seekers
in a climate changed world at our website,
thebtscenter.org
that's
(23:47):
thebtscenter.org thank you
for joining me Nicole Diroff for this special uh,
edition of the Climate Change Podcast. And don't
forget to come back next month. You will hear Climate
Changed behind the Scenes Edition hosted by our
Internet Jessica David Bye for now
friends.
>> Jessica David (24:19):
I'm Jessica David, a divinity school student and
intern at the BTS Center. Lately, I've been
thinking a lot about spirituality. How
it shows, um, up everywhere and shapes how we move through the
world. Maybe it's just me, but it feels
awfully complicated to be alive.
(24:41):
So for the next few months, I'm stepping behind the mic at,
uh, Climate Changed. I'll
ask the BTS Center's team some big,
messy, and important questions,
like how do we hold grief and hope at the same
time? What keeps us open
when the world feels overwhelming?
(25:03):
Can small steps become radical leaps?
What is a good life?
What practices ground us, push
us, and help us claim our place in this
moment? And don't worry, it won't all be
heavy. I promise we'll have some fun along the way.
Join me for Climate Change behind the
(25:25):
Scenes edition. Let's explore
this complicated stuff together.
Hello listeners. Ben, Yoshua Davis and I
just wrapped up our third season.
We have a request for you to
share your feedback with us. Take our
listener survey to tell us what you like
about climate change and what you'd like to hear
in the future. You'll find a link to the survey
(00:21):
in our show Notes. This is the
perfect time for you to share feedback
because we're getting ready to do something
different. A uh, Mini Season of the Climate
Change Podcast Our intern,
Jessica David will take you behind the
scenes at the BTS Center. She
will help us dive into the things we are
(00:44):
most curious about spirituality,
hope, grief,
imagination and the common good.
We'll be launching that mini season next month.
Today I have something special for
you.
Welcome to the Climate Changed Podcast.
(01:04):
I'm Nicole Dieroff. It's hard
to believe the COVID 19 pandemic began
five years ago this month. That
was such a confusing time
and I remember deeply missing
connecting with people in
person.
Reverend Dr. Andi Lloyd, an
(01:26):
ecologist and professor, was a student
at UH Yale Divinity School. In March of
2020 she and her pastor,
Reverend Andy Nagy Benson,
began writing letters to each other.
Together, Andi and Andi connected
Christian theology and ecology. Their
letters are collected in a book, Letters from the
(01:48):
Ecotone Ecology, Theology
and Climate Changed. Their letters to each other
are beautiful and I enjoyed the
entire book. I love how they bring science
and religion together in such an open
hearted way. Truly their letters are a
gift and I am pleased to share that gift
with you, our uh, climate changed listeners.
(02:11):
In June of 2023, the the BTS
center hosted a conversation with Andi and
Andi where they talked about their
correspondence and shared excerpts.
In the following audio from that event, they
read their first letters to each other.
I hope their words inspire you, make you
curious and strengthen you.
>> Andi Lloyd (02:37):
So we're going to read the first two letters. I'm going to read a slightly
abridged version of my first letter.
July 27, 2020
Dear Andi, it was lovely
to see you last week and to walk and talk our way
along the fields and forests. I wonder
sometimes how long it will take in the post pandemic
(03:00):
future that is surely out there for the simple fact
of physical presence to stop feeling precious beyond
all words. I kind of hope it never does.
The not taking simple things for granted feels like an
unexpected gift. I've continued to
think about the question that you left me with at the end of that
walk. Does the idea of the common good have
(03:20):
meaning in the ecological realm? A few days
of mulling it over and the response I gave you in the moment,
yes, unambiguously, still rings
true. Yes, unambiguously.
And it's complicated. Complicated
in a good way. In a way that leads me to think that the richest
answers to that question may lie at the borderlands between
ecology and theology, rather than wholly in
(03:42):
either. My yes is rooted in the
core insight that ecological science offers about the nature
of our world, that it's a, ah, deeply intrinsically
interconnected place. Your question
prompted me to look up Ernst Haeckel's original definition
of ecology, written in the 1800s. He
defined ecology at its birth as the science of the relations
(04:02):
of the organism to the environment. All
life is inherently relational,
connected. That's both the starting premise of
ecology and the product of more than 100 years of doing
ecology interconnectedness.
It's one of those insights that's simultaneously obvious
and easy to miss, astonishing and easy to take for
granted all at once. The reality to which
(04:25):
ecology points us is one in which our very lives
depend on other species. Our bodies are
built of atoms and molecules that have passed through
countless generations of other organisms. The
oxygen we breathe is the exhalations of millions
and millions of years of growing plants.
Ecology asks us to see that all of us, all
living things, are woven together by visible and
(04:48):
invisible flows of energy, matter,
nutrients, even the plant gametes that the
checkerspot butterflies outside my window are ferrying from
one coneflower to the next. In the moments
when I manage to pause and really notice that reality, I
feel thoroughly wonderstruck. Too often,
though, I don't notice it. Interconnectedness is
the fundamental nature of our existence, but it's easy not
(05:10):
to see it. I wonder sometimes if it's
the very boundedness of our bodies, the embodied
illusion that we're somehow discrete entities, that
makes it easy for us to believe instead in our own
autonomy, our separateness.
As I write this, I'm thinking about the field onto which we were looking
as we sat and talked last Wednesday.
That field is a pretty simple ecological community, but
(05:33):
even so, it contains dozens and dozens of species,
plants and animals, fungi and microbes living together,
interacting depending on one another. Even in
a relatively simple community like that one, the scope of
those interactions borders on bewildering.
The daily drama of that field involves eating and being
eaten, competition and cooperation, sex and
(05:54):
death, disease, symbiosis, decay,
and the cycling of atoms around and around and
around. I imagine that if we could see each
of those interactions as a thread tying pairs of
interdependent organisms together, the field
would Start to look like a fabric. And better still,
we'd discover, sitting there, that those threads draw us in
too. We're part of that interdependent web
(06:16):
of ecological connectedness, all bound up
in the midst of it, whether we recognize it or not.
But to return to your question, I think that the idea
of the common good as it exists in the ecological realm
flows from that reality of interconnectedness and the
interdependence that arises from it.
Try this on for size as an ecological definition
(06:38):
of the common good. No species can
exist apart from other species. So whether we like it or
not, we, the denizens of planet Earth, need one
another. We are ultimately all in it
together. Things get
trickier from there, ecologically speaking, but also really
interesting. When I think about the idea of the
common good, I think about it as the opposite of self centered
(07:00):
behavior. I can act in ways that center my own
interests, or I can act in ways that further the common
good. Am I going to go on as many airplane flights
as I want, irrespective of the impact on climate change, or
am I going to choose to forego my desire to travel for the
sake of mitigating climate change? That
contrast between self centered and other centered behavior
(07:20):
makes abundant sense in the realm of human decision
making. It's harder to
apply ecologically though. Is it
meaningful to say that a red tailed hawk soaring over that
field near where we were sitting is self
centered for seeking to snuff out the life of a
meadow goal? It's self interested. But
I don't think I'd be inclined to assign a value judgment to a
(07:42):
hawk in the same way that I would to a human who consistently
chooses self interest over the interests of others.
In other words, the good part of common good is not free of
ecological complexities. Different species
have different goods, at least in the short term and at the scale of
individuals. The red tailed hawk might well
define good as having lots of meadow voles to eat today, while the
(08:03):
meadow voles would surely define good as not getting
eaten by a hawk today.
Nature's full of conflicts of interest like that,
and it's full of self interest. And
to complicate it further, what's good for an individual might
differ from what's good for a group of individuals.
It's good for an individual hawk to eat as many meadow voles
as it can, but it's really not good for the population of hawks
(08:26):
to run out of meadow voles. The population
benefits from a restraint that is not in the individual's
interest to Exercise.
Ecological interdependence doesn't have to involve
altruism or self sacrifice, although it can and
does. Interdependence is a reality that
undergirds a system full of creatures eating other
creatures, full of death, full of disease, full
(08:48):
of competition and limited nutrients.
And yet we're all in it together.
Both things are true. And both things
can be true, I think, because there are checks and balances
within ecological communities that normally prevent
one species from consuming all the resources.
We don't need an individual red tailed hawk to decide to
(09:09):
forego lunch in order to avoid extinguishing the population of
meadow voles. Such conflicts of interest are resolved
for the most part by the very interconnectivity that I
started with.
If the red tailed hawks start to eat too many meadow voles,
prey gets scarce and either the hawks
reproductive success goes down, fewer hawks
eating voles, or they switch to some other prey
(09:30):
item, fewer voles getting eaten. The
hawk doesn't need to decide to further the common
good. Humans, however, have
a unique, as far as we know, ability to engage
in ethical reasoning and make choices that appear to
be against our own immediate short term desires.
We can choose the common good, even if it conflicts
(09:51):
with our perception of our own self interest.
But here's the thing. I'd
argue that ecologically speaking, the common good, the
flourishing of all life on earth, is
absolutely, categorically, unambiguously
in our self interest. If we are all in this together,
then we don't thrive if other species don't
thrive. So maybe what ecology
(10:13):
offers to this conversation is the somewhat paradoxical
insight that the route to self interest lies in
caring for species other than ourselves.
In other words, the dichotomy between self centered and other
centered, between acting for myself or for the common
good, doesn't make sense ecologically.
If we can't live without other species acting in
(10:33):
ways that allow them to thrive, is the very definition
of our self interest. Maybe the
ecological truth is that our self interest, at least
over the long term, and the common good are the same
thing. The issue is not that they are in
conflict, but rather that we fail to see our own
self interest clearly because we fail to see
our interconnectedness. We see instead our
(10:56):
short term desires and we mistakenly believe that they are
the same thing as our self interest. We fail to see
that living as if we were the only species that matters is a
dead end, ecologically speaking.
But now that I've written that, I wonder if that's really a
uniquely ecological insight. How do
you understand the distinction between self interest
(11:17):
and the common good. Theologically,
I'm obviously drifting here toward, if not entirely
past, the limits of ecology. Maybe the
ecological reality of an interconnected and
interdependent world shares a border with the theological and
ethical concept of the common. And maybe that
borderland, I'm so tempted to call it an
ecotone, is a place where we can put our understanding
(11:39):
of the world as it is alongside what we know and can dream
of the world is about to be. Maybe that
borderland is the place where we come to understand what it means for
life to flourish. A long walk through
such a place sounds like just the thing right about now.
Peace Andi.
>> Reverend Andy Nagy Benson (12:28):
August M21, 2020
M Dear
Andi,
Grace and Peace, the letter you
wrote reads like the well spun web of connections
it describes. My goodness.
(12:48):
Thank you for your tour of ecological kinship.
How a question like mine can yield a letter like yours
is beyond me, but it's clear I need to ask more
questions. Near the end of your letter, I felt a
rush of pride at the recognizable sound of
ecotone. Wait, ecotone. I know that
word. A few years back on Easter
evening, I tucked that word inside a short
(13:11):
poem about Christ appearing and disappearing
like a firefly. Where field and
forest meet. Where field and
forest meet. Ecotone. Where two
biological communities exchange gifts.
Anyway, I like the word. I also like the
idea of paddling on the brackish water of Common
(13:31):
Good Pond, where ecology and theology can
swap stories. So on Monday
I went to Kingsland Bay with Ella, Mary and
Rachel. Dad, days in the summer are the
best. On the way up Route 7, we
stop at the junction store. I go in for
provisions. There are a dozen or so people in
(13:51):
there. Then a 30 something white
male walks in past the masks required
sign. He's not wearing a mask.
As I see it, uh, everything about his body language is saying,
nope, not wearing a mask. The rest
of us keep looking at him without trying to be obvious.
Meanwhile, he's walking up and down the many aisles looking
(14:11):
like he wants someone to get in his face about
responsibility so he can get in theirs
about freedom. Doesn't happen.
He pays and walks outside to his idling truck.
As ah, I replay that scene, your question back to me seems
particularly relevant.
How do you understand the distinction between self interest and the
(14:31):
common good? Theologically
up front, I want to say this question of yours has made me
freshly aware of my need to check in with self interest.
What does that word mean theologically?
Does it mean that based on all things I could be interested
in, I am most interested in myself.
Does it mean selfishness? Self
preservation? Survival? Is
(14:54):
it an expression of self worth?
Self love? Is it why our
planetary house is on fire? Is it
why we want to put the fire out?
Is it possible that self interest is roomy enough to
hold all these moods and meanings?
From what I understand about the spread of COVID 19,
(15:15):
it would have been in my self interest to ask the guy at
the store to put on a mask. Then again,
given how pissed off he appeared to be, it may have been in
my self interest to keep quiet. And
while I don't presume to know what the maskless man was thinking,
I do wonder. Was it in his self
interest to be unencumbered by a mask? Did
(15:35):
he not care about the other people in the store?
Does he think it's a hoax still?
Or did he forget his mask in haste on his way
to drop in on his girlfriend's mother, who's been feeling lonelier
than usual these days? Self interest
is complicated, as complicated as we all
can be, which is why I had to look up
(15:56):
the word when we got home from Lake Champlain.
The main definition tilts towards selfishness,
one's personal interest or advantage,
especially when pursued without regard for
others. However
incomplete this definition may be, the phrase without
regard for others chafes my understanding of the common
(16:17):
good. The common good has to do with
conditions necessary for everyone and everything
to flourish, and self interest by
definition undermines these
conditions. Maybe that's why
the word self interest makes me uneasy.
I think that this feeling springs from my
(16:37):
core belief that love your neighbor as
yourself is the common good, and it's
how we get there. And self interest can
get in the way of this self interest brings
to mind something in me that wants to grab first,
give second, without regard for others.
Oh Lord, I've been there lots of times. I've been
(16:57):
caught and carried by the current of self preoccupation.
I've rejected, wittingly and unwittingly, the
truth that I am part of an interconnected,
interdependent reality beyond the half acre of
my own little life. I know way
more than I'd like to admit about the habits of self
absorption. I've been really far from home,
deep in prodigal territory, and despite
(17:20):
two dozen years of standing in pulpits and connecting the dots
between the common good and the kingdom of God.
What have I really done to be of use to my
neighbors whose needs are deep?
These markings of self interest are mine,
but not mine alone. The
human tendency to bend towards Selfishness and
away from the common good has been a thing for a
(17:43):
long time. Maybe that's why
Israel's prophets went ballistic over corrupt
systems that used poor and powerless
people, and why the prophets were constantly
telling the high and mighty to get over themselves.
And Maybe that's why St. Paul wrote to the church in
Philippi, do nothing from selfish
ambition or conceit, but in
(18:04):
humility. Regard others as better than yourselves.
Let each of you look not to your own interests,
but to the interests of others. Let the
same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.
When I read Scripture, I often recognize
the needful reminder to aim my interest beyond
the end of my nose. The same goes
(18:27):
for reading theology. In fact, I just finished Walter
Brueggeman's book, Journey to the Common Good.
The book begins, the great
crisis among us is the crisis of the common good.
The sense of community solidarity that
binds all in a common destiny
haves and have nots the rich and the poor.
We face a crisis about the common good
(18:49):
because there are powerful forces at work among
us to resist the common good, to
violate community solidarity, and to
deny a common destiny.
Powerful forces at work among us, indeed,
within us too, as far as I can tell.
So sages of our tradition, Aquinas and
(19:10):
Ignatius, Rauschenbusch and Brueggemann, to name a
few, keep turning our attention to needs
beyond our own. And the Westminster
Catechism keeps asking, what is the chief end of
man? And it keeps answering,
man's chief end is to glorify God and to
enjoy him forever.
Now, when it comes to arresting climate change or living in harmony with
(19:32):
the great web of life, I would agree that the idea
of self interest can include us
acting in ways that allow the species we are
dependent on to thrive. But things
get tricky when self interest makes our
personal good the end goal and finish
line. Theologically, this doesn't work
(19:52):
so well. As I see it, a, uh, Christian's
pursuit to serve her neighbor and care for
creation leads to God our
chief end. Does this mean self
interest is anathema to one's spiritual life? No,
I don't think so. There's a hue of self interest
that matches self love. And of course, self
(20:12):
love. Is God stamped, love your neighbor
as yourself. Self interest is
assumed in the Great Commandment. I sometimes forget
that a few years ago, a
sweet man approached me after worship and asked me why I left out
as yourself from my benediction. I had
said at services, end something like, love God, love your
neighbor, go in peace. This man shared
(20:35):
with me with equal parts earnestness and
gentleness. How much he needed to hear permission
to love himself again. Oh
yes, right. Thank
you. Had I assumed that self interest
simply is, and that the common good ought to be?
Maybe so. But that kind soul
helped me see that we cannot avert the crisis of
(20:57):
the common good if we fail to include
ourselves as objects worthy of holy
love. After all, we
are parts of an interconnected, interdependent
reality, and for us to be protectors
and conveyors of that beautiful truth, we
need to include ourselves in the work of the
(21:17):
common good. Just not at the
expense of everyone else at the Junction
Store I wish you well, my
friend Andy.
>> Nicole Diroff (21:39):
That was Reverend Dr. Andi Lloyd and
Reverend Andy Nagy Benson reading
from their book Letters from the
Ecolotone Theology and Climate
Changed. I put a link to the book in our show
notes climate
changepodcast.org
it's amazing to listen to these letters
(22:00):
five years later. I
feel like I have a new lens for seeing
actions in service to the common good.
I have new language to talk
about the pervasive and
dangerous self centered
approaches that I'm witnessing in
so many of our political leaders these days.
(22:24):
What are you thinking? What are you
feeling? I'm curious about what you
have to share. Please leave me a voicemail
at uh,
207-200-6986.
That's
207-200-6986
plus one. If you're calling for outside the
(22:44):
USA, you can also text that number
207-200-6986.
Visit climatechangedpodcast.org
for show notes, a transcript and
more. That website again is
climatechangedpodcast.org
also a reminder that this is your chance to take
(23:06):
our listener survey at the link in the show notes
and we would be so grateful.
Many thanks to Rev. Dr. Andi Lloyd and
Rev. Andi Nagy Benson who
shared their letters with us. Also thanks to
our producer Peterson Toscano for
producing this episode and to Jessica David
(23:27):
for working with him on it.
The Climate Change Podcast is a project of the
BTS center in beautiful Portland, Maine.
Learn more about the many programs and resources we
offer for spiritual leaders and spiritual seekers
in a climate changed world at our website,
thebtscenter.org
that's
(23:47):
thebtscenter.org thank you
for joining me Nicole Diroff for this special uh,
edition of the Climate Change Podcast. And don't
forget to come back next month. You will hear Climate
Changed behind the Scenes Edition hosted by our
Internet Jessica David Bye for now
friends.
>> Jessica David (24:19):
I'm Jessica David, a divinity school student and
intern at the BTS Center. Lately, I've been
thinking a lot about spirituality. How
it shows, um, up everywhere and shapes how we move through the
world. Maybe it's just me, but it feels
awfully complicated to be alive.
(24:41):
So for the next few months, I'm stepping behind the mic at,
uh, Climate Changed. I'll
ask the BTS Center's team some big,
messy, and important questions,
like how do we hold grief and hope at the same
time? What keeps us open
when the world feels overwhelming?
(25:03):
Can small steps become radical leaps?
What is a good life?
What practices ground us, push
us, and help us claim our place in this
moment? And don't worry, it won't all be
heavy. I promise we'll have some fun along the way.
Join me for Climate Change behind the
(25:25):
Scenes edition. Let's explore
this complicated stuff together.
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