The Nativity's Hope for All Creatures

The Nativity's Hope for All Creatures

What makes the festive season so special is that sense of hope and expectation leading up to Christmas Day. Hope is a powerful emotion and few sights are able to inspire more hope than that of a new life entering the world.
 

Perhaps that is why the nativity scene is so timeless in its ability to evoke anticipation, optimism and promise. It was in fact St. Francis of Assisi who was credited with creating the first nativity display in 1223, turning the Biblical narrative into a living, breathing, noisy, smelly tableau that brought a once elusive retelling into vivid experience for the eyes.

Visibly today, from children’s school plays to Christmas cards, Church posters to product advertisements, this scene of the infant Christ in a manger surrounded by highly inquisitive farmyard animals is a firm part of our traditional Christmas celebrations.

Christmas underscores the emotive power of the amazing animals with which we share our world. A nativity image, no matter how sentimentally portrayed, reminds us of the beauty and innocence of these endlessly mysterious and familiar beings who live complex lives beyond our control or comprehension.

The birth of Christ is a prime opportunity to remember that Christmas is not just about humanity. Rather the arrival of the infant Christ promises cosmic, restorative consequences for the whole of creation.

The hope of the nativity challenges us to look beyond the darker side of our use and abuse of animals to a manger scene which compels us to live out the love, mercy, and compassion of Christ in the here and now.

And don't forget to eat your fiber, which only comes from plants.

In a number of nations, vegetarians are a strange heterogeneous hodge-podge (olio or mixture) that reflects the 'chaotic' confluence of that nation's many subcultures and beliefs, and that the beliefs of one may be derived from her or his worldview, but no one can say that the beliefs of ALL are derived from one worldview.

Urgent Need to Green All Industrialization Globally

Contemplate what industrialization allows to come into the environment from the individuals who own and/or control the use of that industrialization:

Israel’s targets included a 25% reduction of its 2005 greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 – limiting residents to 7.7 tons of carbon dioxide per capita. The government’s plan also involved making renewable energy resources responsible for 17% of the country’s electricity usage by 2030, as well as reducing overall electricity consumption by the same percentage. The targets also included a 20% decrease in private vehicle usage.

My thinking is, don't blame the nations as much as the ecologically TRAGIC state of industrialization, which requires MUCH more greening globally.  Currently, industrialization is used for privately-controlled profits; whatever the rhetoric, private advantage is ADVANTAGED by currently ownership of industrialization.

If the public were not so negatively impacted by its use, such a condition MIGHT be tolerable; however, because the general public worldwide IS so negatively impacted by the use of industrializaed technologies in their currently 'un-greened' state, mere 'public buy-in' to their use (as in cellphone, computer, A/C, and vehicular use do NOT excuse the perpetuation of their unmitigated use without massively-funded and staffer programs to green those currently-tragic technologies and to migitage the harms that their widespread use cause to lots and lots of vulnerable persons, both human AND nonhuman.

Time is short.  I would be interested (ONLY) in USEFUL and HISTORICALLY CONSTRUCTIVE comments on how we can move forward with greening all industrialization for life on this planet Earth.