Kateri would perk up, hearing this Sunday’s readings, evoking a world she knew well: meadows, snow, hills, rain, seed, earth, grain. Kateri and her native people understood how human life is physically and spiritually interwoven with the water, sun and soil that sustain us. They appreciated how the splendor of land, sky and sea inspires our sense of the divine.
Despite sparse biographical details, we know that Kateri, patron saint of the environment was remarkably cheerful, despite smallpox that marred her face and drastically affected her vision. Her joy was so contagious that children were drawn to her for storytelling. She showed a key hallmark of holiness: people wanted to be around her.
Beyond the brief biography, Kateri stands as a larger symbol for the reverence and repair our environment desperately needs. Thomas Berry in The Dream of the Earth underscores the significance of Native Americans to a country that seems aggressively bent on destroying the earth, greedily exploiting its natural resources. The environmental damage goes back to the first European settlers who saw themselves as “lordly rulers of the continent,” (p. 189) who could dominate it at will. Instead of meeting the indigenous cultures with curiosity and delight, wondering what they could teach, these pioneers called them “savages” needing redemption. Berry terms this “our compulsive savior instincts. We take up the burden of saving others even when in fact we destroy them.” (p. 182)
In the five centuries since the European invasion of the continent, the indigenous tribes suffered physically but won “a moral victory of unique dimensions.” (p. 183) Their spiritual tradition, which might be called a nature mysticism, reverenced God’s hand in creation. That attitude might indeed save the threatened planet, teaching “the art of communion with the earth.”
Kateri might’ve liked Debie Thomas’ read of Sunday’s parable of the sower (Mt. 13:1-23). Instead of focusing on the four types of soil, Thomas suggests in Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories, we should look more at the sower. Blissfully flinging seed, he doesn’t much care where it lands. He’s extravagantly generous and open-handed. Like God, who in July is bounteous with sunlight, warmth, daisies, corn, tomatoes and wildly reaching vines. Can we marvel at that abundance, and treat with care the waters and soils which are their sources?
Kathy Coffey 