SPEAKER_02 0:00

From the McGrath Institute for Church Life and OSV Podcasts, this is Church Life Today. I'm Leonard DiLorenzo. If you have used any of the artificial intelligence tools that are obviously everywhere now, you know how good they are with words. You ask, they answer, and the answer sounds like someone talking to you. Except no one is. It is the appearance of communication without a person on the other end. And I'm not sure we have reckoned with what it does to us to get used to that. My guest today, by contrast, is convinced that creation itself communicates, and that learning its language is slow, personalizing, spiritual work. Creation does not grow without limit, the way our technologies are built to do. It has boundaries and seasons. A seed goes into the ground and dies before anything comes of it. To live within that for a while changes you. You begin to accept that you are a creature, limited, even wounded, and that this is not where life ends, but where it starts. You find that you can hope again when you cannot force the outcome. You start to say thank you. Pope Francis wrote in La Dauto C that the external deserts are growing because internal deserts have become so vast. My guest shows us interior renewal is linked to our exterior engagement with creation, because we are called at once into three interrelated relationships: relationship with God, with one another, and with the earth. My guest is Sister Damien Marie Savino, a Franciscan sister of the Eucharist, an environmental engineer, and a theologian. She is the Melkor visiting professor of civil and environmental engineering and earth sciences here at Notre Dame, with a concurrent appointment in the McGrath Institute for Church Life. She is the author of Learning the Language of Creation, which you will find linked in our show notes, along with a number of related episodes and resources. Sister Damian Marie, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

Thank you. Thank you very much for having me.

SPEAKER_02 2:30

It's so nice to have you here. Sister Damien Marie, when you speak of integral ecology, you draw us into a vision of environmental healing that's tied to human healing, and vice versa. For those who are not yet familiar with this kind of vision, this insight, I was wondering if you could provide us with some kind of introduction here so we can have a place to stand. We can begin to understand a little bit better this vision that you're putting before us.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Yeah, so, and my vision that I put forward is really based on Pope Francis's vision in La Tauto Si, where he introduces this notion of integral ecology as kind of like the Catholic response to the ecological, social ecological questions. I think in my case, I had been working at this, and I would say now I recognize it as integral ecology, but I was calling it restoration of people and place. And I had been doing that for some years since my dissertation work at the Catholic University of America. And even before, as an undergraduate at McGill University, I had always realized that people and place can't be separated. And oftentimes the most contaminated places are also where the poorest of the poor live. And vice versa. The one line that I really like is quoted in La Dato C, but it's from Benedict XVI. The external deserts in the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast. So I think in relation to this healing of natural and human ecologies, it's also this idea that we have to heal ourselves internally in order to heal the external wounds that are there in the world around us. Because as humans, what's inside us gets reflected on the world around us. And a lot of people don't think of ecology that way, but I think that's part of it. And then also with integral ecology, I do think it's a marriage of science and faith. So we need both languages to, and we need social sciences too, but we need both languages to come into a conversation with integral ecology. So it's it's very interdisciplinary, I would say. And then the one other thing I would say about integral ecology, I think in La Douto C66, Pope Francis says that we're we're responsible as humans for three fundamental relationships with God, with others, and with the earth. We've all heard love God, love your neighbor. I think this might even be called a theological development, although I haven't read this anywhere, that it's always been there in the Catholic tradition, but I think Pope Francis is really highlighting it. We have three. How do we love God? How do we love others, and how do we care for the earth? And integral ecology encompasses all of those, those three fundamental relationships.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

To go back for a moment to um what you brought forth for us, uh Francis bringing forward Benedict XVI and that that uh that's that striking line that the external deserts are growing because the internal deserts have grown so vast. When you think about the internal deserts that might be in mind there, especially in our present moment. I mean, when Benedict said that, it was very much our moment, but our moment has developed too. How would you describe what some of those internal deserts might be? What's the what's the nature or character of them?

SPEAKER_00 6:00

Yes, and here I think we could preface this by saying this is why I think integral ecology is a good antidote for our technocratic culture and some of the issues that Pope Leo is bringing up in Magnifica Humanitas, because I think he's building on Benedict XVI and Pope Francis in that encyclical. But some of those deserts, and I do deal with this in uh one of the chapters in the book, and I call it internal dissonances there. There's a sense, so there's a lot we could say here, but a few, a few that really stand out, the sense that there's no limits. We, even though in nature there are limits, right? All natural systems, they're interconnected, they're fruitful. If they're treated well, they can be fruitful for for eons, however, they operate within limited parameters. And when those limits are transgressed, we get pollution. And we're looking at that. Humans are limited also, but I think technology is built, and I'm not saying technology is bad, but when it's distorted in its use and application, it has a sense of continual growth, continual perfecting, that we we don't need to stop. We can just keep going, going, going. And it there's a sense of limitness and almost grandiosity in it. So, and I think we can, as humans, we can kind of assume that attitude when we're surrounded by it, that we we don't have to be limited. And then, of course, if we're living in more of a secular culture as it is now, we kick God out of the equation, and so we become the unlimited creature. God is really the only unlimited, and he's not a creature, he's the only unlimited being there is, right? But all of us are limited creatures. So that's one, and this associated with that kind of sense of boundarylessness. There's no need for boundaries, and that can that can relate to how we relate to the earth, but also how we relate to other people. And then I would say also this kind of throwaway mentality. So that has gotten into us and has caused a lot of our ecological problems. But again, what we do externally gets reflected in who we are. So we can throw away people just as easily. You know, when we when we adopt a throwaway mentality, it can quickly go into throwing away people also. So I think those are some also perhaps maybe um not sure how best to explain this, but a sense that uh there's no unifying language, or or the unifying language is code or algorithms rather than relationship, which can't be programmed or or even anticipated sometimes. It's something where you have to receive what the other person is giving you. So there's a lot of control and the kind of language that we're surrounded by, the algorithmic language that we're surrounded by. But human life is a relational language and it's a giving and a receiving, which I think, again, in the misuse of technology and the or the over-application of technology, we can kind of assume this almost code-like sense of language or a sense of control that we and that's why some people prefer to talk to their chat bot, because they don't want the unanticipated responses that might they might that might cause stress or anxiety. But to remember always that we are relational creatures. We're creatures and we're relational. And sometimes I think we we're forgetting that. That's part of that inner desert.

SPEAKER_02 9:58

When I hear you so hopefully uh talk about these internal dissonances, the in the um internal desert, thinking about what you just shared, and and it strikes me how much of that has to do with the reshaping and in many cases disorientation of desires, what we what we want or what we would seek after and the way in which we seek after it. So as you were just saying, for example, with language, um we human life is relational and to share language and to utilize language with one another is a relational event. But when we are satisfied with using language to be collected, aggregated into a machine that processes it for us and gives us something back, we have a result that might, on the one hand, look very similar, we get a response, but we've lost the relational aspect, or we've been put into an environment where the relational aspect is lost, and that probably shifts and adapts what we desire. We desire just the outcome instead of the relationship that is worked out in the midst. Um how do you think about, I wonder if you do think about or how do you think about this issue of desire, what we're looking for, what we would want, and the way in which where and how we live our lives uh at a distance and alienated from creation or in a living relationship with creation with others actually shapes us in desire.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

Yeah. Beautiful. That's um well, let me start with a story.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

Please. Last week I was in some meetings here at Notre Dame about Thank you for your service for making it through meetings. Yes. Yes, I know.

SPEAKER_00 11:55

And this had to do with technology and magnifica humanitas. And it was like faculty staff and some students. And one of the students who's a a freshman in engineering, he volunteered that, you know, a lot of my classmates are using AI to do problem sets at night. But he's he volunteered that I decided not to do it. So I asked him, why did you decide that? And he said, Well, I just felt like I wasn't struggling enough. And I thought that was such a beautiful response. And then he said, you know, my grades maybe aren't quite as good, but I feel very much at peace because I know what I know and I know what I don't know, and I just feel like I made the right choice. Like he felt like his desires were in the proper place. And I really was impressed by that, especially coming from a freshman, but that this idea that um how do we orient our desires? And I was very struck in reading Magnifica Humanitas the number of times that Pope Leo refers to the fact that we need to embrace our weakness, our woundedness. That's an essential part. And it's not that we desire to be wounded, but I do think it shapes our woundedness, it shapes how we desire. And then our faith shapes, I guess, how we how we govern those desires and how we express those desires. So we have to start, I think, with this fundamental realization of our limited nature and of our woundedness, and then allow that to shape our desires, not to run our lives in a negative way, but if we have a faith context, then we we can kind of form our desires and we can do like that, that young man, and realize, okay, struggle is good, you know. And I I desire to embrace this, and it really affected how he's going to go about his time here. But how many of us, you know, even those of us with much more life experience, how many of us would come to that to to embrace, I guess, the woundedness and allow that then to kind of form us and guide our desires from there. So I don't know, that's a start. It's a big question you're asking.

SPEAKER_02 14:25

Well, when I think about this, young man, like it almost takes an exercise of heroic virtue at this point. Yeah. Right for him.

SPEAKER_03 14:31

Beyond desire.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Right. To for him to choose the harder part because it's coming at a cost. And um, that also seems like part of our responsibility, not just as educators, but uh for those of us who have various types of responsibility for forming communities, which is to make it easier for people to choose that virtuous path. Like it seems that right now, and we can think about this in in ecological terms too. Like it seems that right now for him to do that requires him to take a loss relative to his uh classmates who are going to get the the marks on their problem sets at least that are above his because they're being automated for them. The thing that they won't be able to do, of course, is if you have to sit in a in a room for an exam and actually work through it with pen and paper, um, the struggle that he's gone through will have created in him the ability, you know, to be able to do that. Right. So I just think about that and I and I and that occurs to me. I had a actually a very similar conversation with a student just this week. I'm surprised, I'm amazed you brought this up because it relates so well. Um, but to think about like shaping when we shape environments, um shaping environments so that we're being intentional about making the good, the good way easier for people and not requiring always individual heroic virtue that stands over and above. Of course, we need to exercise that too. But in terms of limits, I love how you bring our attention there. Um and to learn, I think as you're helping us to think about, to broaden our vision, to think about the internal connected to the external, and to recognize, perhaps relearn from creation the limit, the limitedness that is there, and to uh rediscover that in ourselves, it seems to me that's also a way for us, and maybe most decisively a way for us to embrace what it means to be a creature, to have been created and dependent. Um and I think as you were uh you're pointing to, uh sometimes the illusory use or promise of our technologies is to take away the notion of limit so that we begin to think about ourselves or try to operate as if we were the type of beings who did not have limits, which is to take us out of the truth of who we are.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 16:55

Yeah, yeah. Um so maybe we can talk a little bit here now about language then. Um I know you've just recently given a language, uh, a lecture on the language of creation and the age of AI. And so much of AI has to do, as we know, with language models and the processing of language and repackaging of language. But in your book, you return us to or re-propose to us the language of creation. And in particular, I love the chapter that brings us through seven words of creation. So for those who haven't read, I'm just gonna read these words. And then I'm gonna ask you, Sister Damien Marie, if you can maybe take us through one or two of these and help us to recognize how this is a re-education in language if we attend to it correctly. So for those who haven't read, uh who haven't read the book yet, but you will, um, the seven words of creation that uh Sister Damian Marie brings to our attention include cycles, limits, redundancy, networks, modularity, diversity, and niche. Could you pick up on one or a couple of those and help us to think about how we how we recognize these or can recognize these in creation as speaking, communicating, and how do we think about that?

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah. Well, uh, maybe I could start with redundancy, because this was one of you can start and end with redundancy.

SPEAKER_02 18:18

How about that?

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Yes, exactly. Great. Um when I first started this process, I had about 25 words, and I told myself, okay, you have to reduce them. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 18:28

Now reduction is the hidden eighth word. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

Exactly. Um but redundancy is one that maybe would seem a little bit unusual to people, so that's why maybe I'll start with it. But there's some really interesting ecological research out there. And in when I was doing more in the sciences, I was very interested in resilience theory, ecological resilience, which works with how our ecosystem is set up to be able to be resilient to disturbances and so to fires, floods, hurricanes, because actually we now know, and this is more recent science, but that that kind of resiliency is built into the ecosystems, right? So, and the way it's built in is with a kind of redundancy, which is not, no, I have an engineering degree. We're not trained to engineer with redundancies, right? We're trained to engineer with strictness. You want efficiency, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:22

Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:23

So one of there's an ecologist who went through, I think it was 40 different ecosystems across the world, so, and across different gradients too, you know, deserts, water, mountains, prairies, fields. And he um used the energy dynamics in the ecosystems to measure their efficiency, right? And he was shocked to find out that ecosystems are 40% efficient, an average of 40%, and there wasn't a lot of variation around that number over those 40 different ecosystems he looked at. Why only 40%? That just seems, and yet they function so beautifully. But then what hit the, I think the groundbreaking part of his work was that he realized the balance in nature for efficiency is resilience and redundancy, right? So those features that aren't hardwired hardwired efficiency are going to come into play in the face of disturbances, which are inevitable. You know, there's always a fire, a flood, pest outbreak in nature. There's always disturbances. And actually, that's what renews the system. Some people call it creative destruction in the field. So it's destructive, but it's for a creative purpose. And so I just found that so fascinating. Now, I'm not saying that as engineers, we only designed for 40% efficiency, but I am saying we should be building in more redundancies. And if we used more natural processes in the way that we designed, say, systems to handle wastewater and use maybe wetlands to do that, and there are people who are doing this, but it needs to be more widespread, we would then, without a lot of cost, be able to take advantage of that redundancy that nature just has in it, you know, that that soils have, that plants have in the way they can process things. So I think that redundancy, and then, but then it has made me think, well, how, you know, how do we build that into our relationships with others? I and I need to speak to myself on this too. I'm always I'm always running around. But if when necessary, do I just sit and have a cup of coffee with someone? Or stop if we meet, stop and talk with them on the quad and don't make it feel like I have to rush off to a meeting. But I think too, and even Pope Leo says in in Magnifica Humanitas, we need to take time, waste time with people. And that's how. We might bridge some of these divides that we have. So I think there's ways as humans that we could also choose redundancy. So that's one. And then the other one would be niche. I feel that's really important. And that that relates, every creature in ecology has an ecological niche. And that's been known for decades in the ecological fields. What I wanted to emphasize in the book is that that also applies to humans as creatures. We have a niche. Now, in the dialogues about ecological questions, that niche I think has been quite confused. And it's to me it's a very high priority that we get that straight, or we're going to keep getting deeper into this mess. We're not meant to be the master dominators. And that's, of course, we hear about that all the time. At the same time, we're not the disease of creation either. We have a niche. And so I think we need to have more conversation about what is that niche. And again, it was so beautiful to see magnifica humanitas, magnificent humanity. The Pope is trying to get us to recognize the nobility of our humanity. And I would say from an ecological standpoint, let's talk about what that niche is, that noble niche. And one way that I envision it, it doesn't, this wouldn't encompass every possibility, but I do think if we thought of ourselves as gardeners, it could be a beautiful way of understanding our humanity. When you garden, you know, you want your soil to be healthy. If it's not, you're quite concerned and you do something to change it. You want the conditions to be proper for your plants. You want to bring forth new life. And if your garden doesn't, then you get out there and do something, you know, to try to figure it out. So I think, you know, and then we're gardeners in our families, we're gardener of relationship. Um so at least I think we just need to get some more positive images out there, but also ones that show us as a limited creature with a particular niche. That's not the disease and that's not the master dominator, but that's somewhere a kind of mediating figure, um, someone who actually can, we do have the capacity to cooperate with God in the bringing forth of the fertility of creation and of relationships when we're in our proper niche. And of course, we we all fall out of it, yeah, but because we have free will. But I do think that term niche could help us a little bit, maybe to envision who we are.

SPEAKER_02 24:44

Yeah, I'd love to pick up on all this. Let's see if I can do it. We're not gonna do it all at once. Um but I'm thinking about the the shifts in grammar that you're inviting us to here. And when we move from a concern and overconcern with efficiency, that can make its way into our language, but it really has to do, you know, it's in our language because it's in our thought worlds, probably. We think so much about efficiency, about getting the job done and doing it as quickly as possible to move on to the other thing. And I again, I'm speaking to myself here, just like you were just speaking to yourself. Um, but that shift towards resiliency, so this was under the the heading of redundancy, but the shift towards resiliency, if we entered into a thought world and we shared with one another a way of being where we thought about how do we build together that which will last, which is in a lasting way nourishing, not something that's just done and moved on from, which clearly gives over to a throw a throwaway sort of mentality too, or could very easily. But the resiliency, um, it does change the way in which we speak and act and measure. Sometimes things have to be measured, right? You measure a job performance, right? I I would love to have a performance review where 40% efficiency was seen as like really great. In fact, I'm gonna put that in there. Um so I'm thinking about that resiliency, and I love uh the way in which you bring this to the notion of gardening, uh, too. And I'm I don't know, have you ever read uh Charles Peggy's um Portal, The Mystery of Hope?

SPEAKER_00 26:20

I have not. I I'm aware of it. Okay, but maybe I shouldn't. That's the first step, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:26

No, but the reason I bring this up is he has, you know, for those who have read, it's this marvelous poem, and he goes over and over things again and again. In some ways, it's utterly redundant. But also one of the images that he lands on is of French gardens and the French gardeners, and how this is a perpetual exercise in hope. He's so marvel the poet is so marvels so much at this. Like, look at the exercise of hope that's involved here. Um, what do they get? They get muddy waters and bad days, and they work at it, and then they're astounded over and over again at how things blossom, you know? Um, and so that work in the garden of the in in this, I mean, he's a French poet, like he's he's uh you know, singing of the praises of his people, but um to see there the work and the diligence for the thing that lasts, and the thing that lasts, I think he's seeing, will will perennially surprise you with some kind of hidden beauty that that comes out that comes out.

SPEAKER_03 27:26

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 27:26

So, anyways, I I these things um come into my mind uh as resonances when I hear you um speak in this way to help us maybe shift our grammar more towards redundancy, which leads to resiliency, you know, a niche that might have more to do with gardening.

SPEAKER_00 27:43

Um yeah, and I think to shift toward uh, well, you brought it up, but to shift toward hope and gratitude too, I think is is is very important. So with hope, and I must confess that every year when we plant the garden, I am uh OE of little faith because I'm putting these little seeds in, and I and inside I just can't stop it instinctually. It's like these things aren't gonna sprout, you know. You know, and I've done this for years.

SPEAKER_03 28:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

But you know, you're just putting these tiny things in, and and yet think of by the end of the year, this you're harvesting all this stuff. Carrots are amazing. Those seeds are so tiny, you you can barely, they they just float around and you can't even plant them individually. They have to be, you kind of have to spread them and then you have to thin them later. But so I think the mystery of the seed alone, think of the excessiveness there. You know, the tiniest thing. But I guess here's, and and this comes out of resilience theory too. Although the scientists don't speak of it with spiritual analogies, but they're definitely there. Resilience comes through death, usually, or destruction. So they call it creative destruction, as I said. And it's the same with the seed. The seed is going to disappear. It's not going to be a seed. The seed coat is, you know, taken by the soil and and the the energy that's in there is used by the seed, and there's no seed left. But it's giving birth to this plant that's going to have then have give food too, if it's a garden plant. So I think this resiliency also comes out of destruction or out of death. Now, when we apply this to humans, to me, it emphasizes when we educate, we do have to, it's more like a formation process, I think, for our young people to help them form their internal landscapes so they have the resiliency that can come from the inside out to respond to the many stressors that they have, which are perhaps more intense than what certainly what I had growing up. I mean, we had stressors, but it's very immediate now. And you need, you need like a a good form inner formation. I think that young man, I I'm I must give his parents credit because they must have formed him to come to that decision about deciding to struggle. But so there does need to be that decision, I think, sometimes to sacrifice or to struggle. Um in nature, it doesn't nature doesn't have free will, so things just die. I mean, the seed doesn't choose to die, it just dies. And in evolution, everything's being eaten by everything else, and they're not necessarily choosing. Um so, but with humans, we can choose. And I think that that does add to our resiliency. But so, okay, so then hope that in this process, when there is that creative destruction, that there's going to be creative life that comes out of it. But then the other thing I think is really important is gratitude. And I I have this practice of gratitude where which I was encouraged by a bishop a few years ago to say thank you for five things every night before I go to bed.

SPEAKER_03 31:13

Really?

SPEAKER_00 31:13

And five things that day, right? And so some days when it's been a tough day, you're sitting there going, Oh my gosh, I've got two, but I got to get three more, and I can't do it. But I don't go let myself go to sleep until I got five.

SPEAKER_03 31:26

Really?

SPEAKER_00 31:27

Um, and then some days you have 15, you know, you just keep going. But what I have found, and I don't know how I wish I would have journaled on this, but it was probably about a year, nine months maybe. I could tell something was changing in my interior landscape.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Really.

SPEAKER_00 31:44

From this attitude of gratitude. And sometimes I would find myself saying thank you, even for a very difficult interchange, because it really brought something forth that needed to be either discussed or dealt with, or or that I needed to look at in myself, or or or that I needed to help someone else move into. So I I really try to encourage my students to try to practice that where they can, because everything is gift, right? This whole created world is gift to us. Our relationships are gift, but we're in a world, and this is, I think, one of those things that technology does to us. We just keep wanting grabbing more and more and more. Instead of just receiving and accepting it and chewing on it. It's kind of and and then recognizing this is I'm grateful for this. This was a gift. And so I think that hope and gratitude kind of are two sides of have a coin. I love it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

No, absolutely. You know, as you were talking about to go back to the hope part and and planting those seeds, and this is never um I was thinking about myself as a parent. Um my my um my inclination is like many parents to manage, right? I can manage towards this end that I think you should be at. But I've been surprised by my own kids um at times, especially like now my teenagers are actually one who's not a teenager anymore, past teenage years. Um and things that so to speak were planted. I might have planted earlier, mom might have planted earlier, an exchange, some word that was spoken, some practice that was there. And I've seen this, like, say in my kids' college application essays. You're like, oh my gosh, there it is. I didn't expect to see it. But I've also, you know, in teaching first year students this year, um, in uh in a seminar we run, the Moreau seminar, which you may know about, right? Where they have an opportunity to really explore what does it mean to live a good life over 11 weeks together. I've been attentive to how often these students have spoken to some regular practice that their parents had, the Sunday dinner.

SPEAKER_03 33:50

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:50

That they didn't understand it. Why do we do this? Um, but now they long for it and they see the value in it. Or one of my students I was just meeting with yesterday, um, her parents have started the practice of going through her personal finances with her monthly. But she really loves it because it's giving her, she's come to see over the course of uh several months of doing this, she has a sense of awareness of her own activity. Um and I can't, I I don't know if she's saying that to her parents, you know, but she they might hear it later and oh, this thing that we decided to do. So I just think in terms of you know, the practice of parenting, the practice of teaching, the practice of mentoring, um, to trust and to take those bold steps to plant those little things, the right things that you can't manage.

SPEAKER_00 34:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 34:40

How about that?

SPEAKER_00 34:41

Yeah, and technology kind of wants us to manage everything. And and that, I think that control thing is really hard. It's and I can imagine as parents, it's really hard. Um, so I can only applaud you for kind of allowing, you know, allowing your children to sprout. No, and then you kind of see what happens. But I guess I I'm appreciating this conversation because, you know, some might say, well, what does that have to do with ecology? But in my book, if we were attentive to the way things grow and the way we care for creation, we it would make us more attentive as parents. It would make us more attentive as teachers.

SPEAKER_02 35:23

And that's why these things are coming up in this conversation is because we're starting this conversation from the work that you brought before us, right? Like I'm responding to what I read um and to listening to you here. Yeah. So I think that that proves the point.

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Yeah, and it's it's really that to me is very exciting. I mean, and of course, and the theology of this, too, that you know, the book of creation is a book, and the creator wrote it for us to read it. And Augustine is very strong on this. Read it, note it, you know. And um, and St. Bonaventure, my dear Franciscan saint, yes, very strong on this, that every creature is a word of God. So can we, I think if we would practice and work on that with our young people too and our students, how attentive can they be to kind of read what messages God is trying to send us in this that are kind of like footprints of Him all around us? If we would take the time to do that, I think it would make us better people. So when we go to try to find someone that we want to marry, we'd have a better sense of is this person, you know, a good, a good match for me? Or do I understand what love means? You know, do I understand what relationship means? Am I willing to stick with it? And do I have that inner fortitude that's needed to carry this through? All of that could come if we started with this entrance point of, you know, engaging with the world around us. And with this kind of sensitivity and attentiveness, that's really important, I think.

SPEAKER_02 37:00

So that's so right. You know, one I don't I don't think I it's probably not right to ask you this because I've asked you to say something about how you think about your work. And sometimes, you know, the artists are the you you don't describe, you don't interpret your own work. But I do wonder and maybe this is just a rhetorical, you don't have to answer this, but I do wonder if you think of this work or would think about your work um as a spiritual work. Um because uh my reading of it, I don't I don't think maybe most people wouldn't pick it up and say, I'm gonna have a I'm gonna read a spiritual work by what it's uh pro it's showing itself to be. But it does present a kind of set of spiritual practices. It comes from a spiritual vision, it's the reintegration of the spiritual with the material and the creaturely, and seeing that the truly creaturely thing is itself spiritual, if we learn to see it right.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

Gosh, I mean, thank you for saying that. Because that I don't know if I was that conscious of it when I started. I don't think you were.

SPEAKER_02 38:05

Yeah, I I know I I I doubt you would have been. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:08

But I so appreciate it because, and again, I mentioned I love St. Bonaventure. And um, I always when I do lectures, tell people that I hope, you know, when you get to heaven, hopefully I'll get to heaven. But, you know, you can talk to different people there.

SPEAKER_03 38:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:25

And I'm really hoping I could have a conversation with St. Bonaventure. I I don't even want to talk to him. I could just sit at his feet and he can just talk. But and he might say to me, you know, you kind of oversimplified my spiritual journey. And if he does, I'll hopefully have the grace to receive that.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

You'll just say it was transposition. I think it's right. The larger language and put it in smaller language. Exactly. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 38:50

But I think there's something about this out in up journey that he presents as the spiritual journey. And he was trying to put into words what St. Francis lived. So it's a very Franciscan spirituality that, you know, I can't present it any other way in the book because that's what I am. But that I think in in that era, so that was the medieval conception, you could not separate it from God. I mean, it was just one whole, right? And I think during through the Industrial Revolution and the Enlightenment, such, we we've separated those. And now I hear from John Paul II on and Paul VI too. I mean, we're trying to bring that back together again. That's what I hear coming from the magisterium of the church. Um, that desire to bring that holistic vision. And I think it's Pope Francis tried it in his own charism to bring that in in La Dato C. But so I guess that's my desire. I mean, I had worked in the scientific field. I really wanted to help with the cleanup of contaminated sites and, you know, with enhancing ecological resilience on landscapes and that sort of thing. But I realized, you know what, this is a bigger question. It has everything to do with the formation of the human person and spirituality. And we can't get at this without a fuller vision. So that's why I wanted to write the book. And I find it very um, it's making me feel very uh joyful that you picked up on that, you know.

SPEAKER_03 40:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:25

Um, that it seems, I don't think we can really do this without the spiritual vision. Now, I'm not saying that those who aren't religion, religious can't come into this. And they can enter through the out, this out phase, you know, and through some of the in, but eventually we need the grace. As humans, we can't see everything. Bonaventure says we kind of have scales on our eyes, and we need the grace of the sacraments, of the spiritual life, of the loving relationships we have to kind of help us clean off those scales so we can actually read the book of creation. Otherwise, we can't read it. So we have a lot of scale removing to do with, you know, but um, but it's all part of this vision. And I really would argue we cannot take God out of the picture. But we also need to preserve the unique human niche in there too, and then also treasure the giftedness and say thank you for the beautiful giftedness of every creature, you know.

SPEAKER_02 41:27

Yeah, it's like the return of real and true human agency. And I think that's one of the things that I take away. Um, and I'll read this again. But having read through your work and thought about um thought about this with you here and and previously, um when you read about the echo the ecological crises, or if we can extend that, and it's related to the great concerns over um artificial intelligence and just running amok, uh potentially running amok and the potential ruin, there's a sense of disempowerment, um overwhelming disempowerment. Like there's nothing to be done. Yeah. Um one of the things I take away here, it's not here are the three action points. It's not that it's not that clear. No, it's um it's a call to uh a challenging but a restorative path of putting it all on the table. The interior renewal, which comes from certain practices, from taking um intentional commitments done repeatedly and well in communities of practice and communities of sacrifice and communities of uh intentional care that does restore us, restore to us a sense of agency that will bear fruit that we can't manage.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Exactly. Which we actually would want to pray for. I mean, where AI is leading us might be beyond what we can envision right now. And we certainly need to pray for the generations coming next that they are able to respond to it. And we might not be able to manage how they're going to respond. And like this young man kind of was beyond what I would have anticipated.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

But I'm taking the grade at his age, honestly. Like I probably am, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:14

Yeah, and that's what a lot of the other professors in the meeting said. They they were just so it's kind of beautiful your analogy that you talked about with your children, just being kind of amazed at what what they come up with.

SPEAKER_02 43:28

I'm amazed in other ways too, that are not at all positive.

SPEAKER_00 43:34

Yeah. Well, again, we are fallen creatures. And uh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:40

And not always fully rational.

SPEAKER_00 43:44

Yeah. And so all of that, you know, needs a little bit of brushing off over the years.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

Yes, I agree.

SPEAKER_00 43:51

Um, but again, that's how we love each other too, though. I I think just in realizing that love also we Don't love perfect people as much as we would want them to be perfect, and we can get annoyed when they're not, but it's really, and this is I think the message of Christ, which maybe just taking it in the day-to-day is you love somebody where they are, and it doesn't when you can feel that in yourself that well, I don't I don't even know if I like this person right now, but I do can say I love them and I want their good, you know. And how do we get to that point? It starts small with these small sacrifices, with this small attentiveness, but then also with being willing just to be open to the other person in their woundedness. And I don't know why, I just keep feeling like I need to keep talking about that. That we have to acknowledge part of our humanity is that woundedness. And there's um also uh he's not a Catholic Holmes Ralston, he's a Protestant theologian, but he wrote a beautiful piece about the kinosis of nature.

SPEAKER_03 45:05

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 45:05

And there's something in that concept, and I recently had a student here on campus ask me about it because I taught it in one of my classes a few years ago, and she wanted to get the reference. But this idea, and I I just love this. I think there's something that's true in the language of creation. You could view it as a keynotic creation. Now, in evolution, one way we've quotes interpreted is that you know, only the fittest survive. It's like survival survival of the fittest.

SPEAKER_03 45:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

And that that mentality does sometimes go into the technoc technocratic paradigm. Yeah, yeah. Like bigger and better and more. But what he does is he said, Is it really that? Or can we change the sign of this equation? Is it really one thing laying down its life so another can live?

SPEAKER_03 45:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 45:55

And when I hear that, I think, now I can buy that because there's nothing in nature that doesn't die. So some I mean So something else lives. Yeah. I mean, that's how that's what we study in ecology.

SPEAKER_02 46:07

It's all about it. Oh, it's not the intentional conscious choice as it might be for a human being. Not just necessarily. It's actually this is the pattern of creation.

SPEAKER_00 46:19

This is the pattern. So if you want to think of a spiritual way of looking at the world around us, that you know, that the vestiges of the creator are written everywhere in the world around us like footprints, then to me, I see that's a footprint of a cruciform creation. I mean, that death is part of life. I mean, death, and death actually opens the way for the flourishing of others.

SPEAKER_03 46:45

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 46:46

Now, as humans, since we have a free will, can we have the inner landscape, the inner ecology to choose that for others? And when we can, then we're really able to love someone else.

SPEAKER_02 46:59

That's the completion of our own creation. Yeah. To step in, to fulfill the image into the likeness of God.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

Exactly. Yeah, that's exactly what Bonaventure would say.

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:08

That we then actually look like Christ. Yes. You know? And now St. Francis did that, and his internal confirmation to the cross of Christ was so intense that it actually manifested itself externally. We aren't all going to get the stigmata, but we all have it. We're all stigmatized. And the idea is then how does that become a giving of your life over for the other person? If you're a husband, it's for your wife, your children, your work, um, you know, priests for their people, a sister for her, her people and her sisters. Um so there is, I think, something written in the language of creation that that really has a very deep spiritual significance for us who can perceive that.

SPEAKER_02 47:58

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 47:58

But it's kind of an amazing image, but more than amazing.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

I feel like um it brings us to what could be the beginning of a whole new conversation we have here. And maybe we'll have to have that conversation to follow. But this is a great place to bring this one to a close. What a what a fascinating and wonderful conversation this has been. Thank you so much, Sister D.

SPEAKER_00 48:22

Thank you. I've thoroughly enjoyed speaking with you.

SPEAKER_02 48:24

And thanks as always to all of you for joining us on Church Life today.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

This has been a production of OSV Podcasts. To learn more, visit osvpodcasts.com.