POINTSOFVIEW | AT HOME ON EARTH
By Kyle Kramer
Brokenness and Beauty
Kyle Kramer
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n recent years, I’ve had a couple of significant knee and back injuries. With help from wise people in my life, I’ve been trying to reflect on what invitations, learnings, and graces God may be offering in them. As I’m sitting with all this—at the moment, with my leg propped up, healing from a torn meniscus—I’m beginning to see parallels between my personal experience of injury and the large-scale, societal-level questions about how we human creatures relate to our wonderful but wounded earth. One thing that’s becoming clear to me is that I tend to push myself to the limit. I hear it from almost everyone who knows me well. Whether it’s the demands of my challengingbut-rewarding job, the innumerable side projects I take on, or the aggressive way I throw myself into sport and exercise, I often operate on the outer margins of my time, energy, and mental and physical capacity. It’s becoming undeniable that we’ve all been pushing Mother Earth well beyond her limits too. The groaning of creation is sending all of us a similar message: We are exceeding the earth’s capacity to regenerate and heal, causing grievous, lasting injuries to our planet. But why? Why do we push our personal and planetary limits? I know there’s part of me that struggles to accept myself as I am or my circumstances as they are, so I’m always
16 • October 2021 | StAnthonyMessenger.org
pushing for change and improvement. We do that as societies too: Consider the Western myths around “progress” and “growth,” most of which are rooted in an inability to be satisfied with the abundances and limitations our world offers us. Some of us might even call that original sin. NOT ALL BAD
Pushing limits, however, isn’t just some aberration of human nature; it’s also one of our best gifts. Our species is inherently curious: Ever since we ventured out from our original home in Africa, we’ve been pioneers and explorers. And as we spread out across the globe, we didn’t just destroy everything we found. We learned new ways to live sustainably in new locations, working within ecological and social limits. Plenty of indigenous peoples have managed to live quite contentedly in the same place for thousands of years. I think it’s possible to cultivate a sense of abundance and gratitude in which physical limits—of an individual body or of an ecosystem—become invitations to tremendous creativity and to different kinds of growth: spiritual, moral, intellectual, and relational. I also think we can push limits in ways that honor our innate drive to explore, learn, innovate, and grow, but to do so with care and humility and without causing damage and destruction.
T TOP: WEERAPATKIATDUMRONG/ISTOCK; BOTTOM: IMGORTHAND/ISTOCK
EarthandSpiritCenter.org
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TOP LEFT: COURTESY OF KYLE KRAMER; TOP: HELOVI/ISTOCK
Kyle is the executive director of the Passionist Earth & Spirit Center, which offers interfaith educational programming in meditation, ecology, and social compassion. He serves as a Catholic climate ambassador for the US Conference of Catholic Bishopssponsored Catholic Climate Covenant and is the author of Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living (Franciscan Media, 2021). He speaks across the country on issues of ecology and spirituality. He and his family spent 15 years as organic farmers and homesteaders in Spencer County, Indiana.
