~ by Heidi Schlumpf for EarthBeat, National Catholic Reporter
Elizabeth Johnson has spent her entire life – or at least her decades-long theological career – trying to get people to think differently about God. Her award-winning 1992 book She Who Is is credited for bringing attention to the need for feminine images of the Divine. Johnson is a Sister of St. Joseph and one of the most prominent theologians in the United States.
Now Johnson is again broadening her view of God, in the hopes that it will help Christians see their connection to nature and the need to save it. She has written a new book, Come, Have Breakfast: Meditations on God and the Earth which explores God as a lover of the Earth who is in relationship with creation.
Her new book’s title refers to Jesus’ words to the disciples during a post-Resurrection appearance near the end of John’s Gospel. It reminded Johnson that Jesus enjoyed material things and was often taking care of people’s material needs, like feeding them.
A God intimately involved in the material world has implications for how we treat it, Johnson said.
Taking care of creation is not just “one more issue” that can be seen as extrinsic to our own being, she said. Instead, it involves our understanding of God, of ourselves as made in the image and likeness of God, and of creation, which reflects the goodness of God.
Instead of a pyramid with humans near the top, Johnson sees a circle of kinship among the reality of creation. “We’re fundamentally interrelated with each other. So, when we care for the earth, we’re not ‘up here’ caring for creation ‘down there.’ We care for one another as members of the same community.”
She quotes Pope Francis in Laudato Si which affirms that “eternal life will be a shared experience of awe, in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place.” To read the full article, please click here