Via ecológica: la sacralidad de la tierra y el cultivo de la sobriedad

Via ecológica: la sacralidad de la tierra y el cultivo de la sobriedad (Ecological way: the sacredness of the land and the cultivation of sobriety) is chapter XI of the book Hacia un tiempo de síntesis (Towards a time of synthesis), where the theologian and anthropologist Xavier Melloni reflects on the urgent need to recover the sacred relationship with nature. This path must pass, according to him, to overcome the dichotomous consciousness – egocentric and anthropocentric – that has led us to the exile of Gaia, and the return to cosmic union with it. The recovery of balance within a whole that includes and transcends us requires a second innocence that allows us to serve the otherness that constitutes the earth with grateful reverence, from a forgotten frugality and austerity.

Towards a time of synthesis reflects on the resurgence of the spiritual dimension in our days, which can only be by confluence of the nuclei of the plurality of cultural and religious traditions that we have received as a legacy, and which must occur in a field of great depth where each of them is summoned beyond itself.