Paul P. Borg

There was once a 12-year-old boy who went by the name of Mosè. He came from a poor peasant family, and to make ends meet, his father had to employ himself as a factory hand. The fields had come down to the family from previous generations and his father felt duty bound not to forsake the good traditions and his grandfathers' soil and the old trees of carobs and figs and peaches. The father still herded a goat, a single, solitary goat, and he drank its boiled milk, and his son Mosè loved its boiled milk too. But the authorities were now a veritable pain in his back, always wanting EU forms to be filled (in duplicate), and EU money to be forked out because of EU vets wanting EU regulations  and EU injections...

"God!" he told his wife, "I do not have a hundred heads to count, just a goat I have! Can't they see that it's simplicity, nature at hand, and nothing else?"

It was once a nice evening in April, when days start getting visibly longer and the fields are pregnant with the summer fruits. Father had the afternoon shift and could not stay in the fields in the evening.

"I have to leave, Mosè," he told his son. "You take the little hoe and go scrape the onions."

Mosè's heart leapt with joy. He could stay in the fields in silence, in a strange world that mysteriously filled him with joy, the setting sun, the dancing insects, he would be like the lonely snake that gazed in silence from the garigue, or the lonely lizard that peeped from behind the rubble wall, or like the silent bee that hovered over the wild thyme or caper bushes. He was not alone, he was another creature in the fields, he was only one of them, a snail, a hiding weasel, a cautious hedgehog, an inquisitive beetle, a busy ant.

In the adjacent field there was old Toni, the tall farmer, deep blue eyes in a haggard face, permanently bent at the waist from continually tilling the soil. Mosè loved Toni. Toni had always been old to him, very old, very thin, always soft spoken. He thought Toni belonged to the fields too, he was part of the fields like the rubble walls, the old fig trees, the well. Mosè chuckle inwardly, Toni too was the black snake itself, the leaping lizard, the busy ant, the creeping beetle...

Mosè did not waste time but started scraping, lightly hoeing the soil as his father had told him to do, but soon knelt to inspect the tiny weedy plants uprooted among the onions. What right did he have to do that? What made the white roots tick with life? How could the invisible underground mystery change soil particles into leaves and stalks and flowers? What was it that decided to turn into a yellow rocket or a white rocket or a red poppy? What was it that turned the particles into a lizard or its tail or its eyes or its liver? What made the soil soft, or moist but the stone hard and dry?

This was what always happened to him in his father's fields, he was overwhelmed by mysteries, beautiful mysteries of a beautiful Mother Nature that decided to turn invisible grains and infinitesimal specks into the onion's hot taste. Or into the sweetness of the watermelon. Or the blood in his hands. Or the little creatures that crept out of the cat's belly. Or the light mosquito, the distant moon, the distant stars, the howling wind, the rotting flesh of the dead rat and the wriggling worms... How could life tick from static yolk and static white into hard beaks and feathered wings in cloudless skies?  

God, he asked himself, God, please dear God, how do you do it?

Suddenly, as he moved a stone he noticed a tiny wood-louse locking itself into a defensive bead. He stared at the grey creature and was going to replace the stone back, but a soft voice behind startled him.

"Don't hurt the creature, Mosè..." It was Toni the old. "Be careful how to put the stone back now, you will crush the little bead if you are not careful, Mosè. It can cry 'ouch!' too, but you won't hear it... animals do cry ouch! Trees cry ouch! Leaves cry ouch! Even pruning vines makes them cry ouch! But we need to prune them, that is not without a good reason..."

Mosè stared at the old man with the deep-blue eyes and a bent back.

"But I'm hurting the weeds..." Mosè said. "I'm killing them...look, they are dead, I've uprooted them..."

Toni smiled gently.

"That's different, son," he said barely moving his lips. "You need to do it if you want onions. It's not a frivolous activity Mosè, you have a good reason. Your father slaughters the rabbit because you eat its flesh. Not everyone likes to do it, though, because rabbits have a right to live too. Pigs have a right to live. But then, cats kill mice and rats kill chicken and we eat chicken! They can all suffer as we suffer. But man thinks and because he is aware that he can think, he assumes he is superior... And that is how man survives... it's different from hanging a defenceless puppy or drowning tiny kittens for fun ... or shooting tiny birds... or chopping wild thyme for the crib or burning carob trees to build a factory when you can build it elsewhere my son..."

 "These people must be put in prison!" shouted Mosè angrily. "They must get lock them up! Or kill them as they have killed the helpless creatures they have murdered! Or I would - "

"I would agree!" interrupted Toni. "Of course I would agree. No! I would say let us even stake them! But you cannot do it if you are a thinking human being, Mosè! Others think they own nature, that the whole universe is theirs only, even the Sun is theirs. They destroy the country side and build where they should not build. But you cannot stake all these human beings Mosè! I know you would like to, I would like to as well, but that is as bad! Very bad! These people can be very well educated, but it's the way their heart is constituted. They cannot help being cruel to Mother Nature. You cannot expect a lame man to walk properly do you? You cannot expect a mute man to speak do you? They are not normal, but they too have place in creation..."

Toni rested his back against a rubble wall as he talked. Mosè looked at the tiny rivulets of sweat that had gathered on the old man's face, running along deep lines on his unshaven neck. Then Toni chuckled.

"You love this place, Mosè," he said. He smiled at him. Toni pointed at his chest. "We have a heart here, Mosè. And I know that you can think also with your heart... you can feel perhaps more than many other people."

Toni looked at the boy's expression, a happy but thoughtful adolescent who loved the fields and loved whatever Mother Nature nurtured on them. He knew Mosè loved the solitude of contemplation. He had to suppress anger at other people's hatred and wilful indifference of a defenceless Earth.   

"There is one thing you have to understand, Mosè," continued Toni. "And it will be clearer as you grow older."

Mosè fixed his eyes expectantly on the old man. He was absorbed in what was going on. The slight cold breeze that blew from the sea below the cliffs, seemed to conspire with the distant fireball and the fiery clouds to set the appropriate receptive disposition of his emotions.

"The beauty of the little wood-louse is in your heart Mosè," said Toni. "Even the beauty of the carob tree and the figs and the vines... you carry this inside you Mosè, the real beautiful fig tree is in your heart and you carry it wherever you go, because you have identified yourself with it..."

The beauty of Mother is inside me, thought Mosè. I can see my own Sun because that is the real Sun inside me, the beauty of the dry-stone wall is within me, I can identify myself with it.

 "Sometimes I think I am the snake, or the lizard, or the ..." he started saying as he looked at the setting sun. "But I do not understand this..."

"I know you do not," smiled Toni. "Because it will not make sense for the mind, that is why I said that the heart must understand or feel this and you already do because you have a rare quality that few people unfortunately have, Mosè!"

Then there was silence. The faint breeze could be heard moving the corn sheaves in the other fields with a velvety shuffle.  Mosè glued his eyes on the captivating face of Toni.

"You can love, Mosè," said Toni. "You love Creation. You will not wilfully destroy Mother Nature... that is the secret... That is the priceless value you have in your heart. You can love..."

Mosè was suddenly more thoughtful.

"But why did not God put this in everybody's heart?"

"I do not know, my son, I do not know"

"Did God not create all Creation?"

"Why do you ask me this question, Mosè?"

"And was it not God who gave us the Ten Commandments?"

"Yes he did! Don't you know the story of that other Mosè?" Toni smiled.

Mosè did not speak then. He was suddenly restless, a puzzled look on his face. He rose up from the ground. He moved in every direction, wanting to speak, afraid to speak. Suddenly something was amiss. Seriously amiss.

"Why did he order us not the lie, not to kill, not to blaspheme, not to steal... but then did not order us not to destroy the environment? Why did he not include explicitly another commandment clearly ordering Mankind not to destroy Mother Nature? Thou shallst not destroy Creation! You will be staked and grilled alive eternally in hell if you damage Creation - burning in hell without the possibility of dying to avoid eternal pain! That is what God should have done, Toni! That is what God should have done but clearly he forgot to!"

Mosè was crying, visibly very shaken.

Toni hugged him, and together they scraped the soil, lightly, carefully, in silence.

When the sun had set, they walked home. Absorbed in their thoughts. But the coming night was dark. And moonless.

Pope Francis and Mother Earth

Before going off to the US where he is due to address the United Nations, Pope Francis published his encyclical warning about global warming and Man's lack of love and respect of Mother Nature. As I write the document has not been published yet, but a draft was leaked and published by the L'Espresso. This encyclical seems to be an inevitable step by the Pope who looks with admiration at Saint Francis of Assisi, the Saint who talked to his brethren, the Sun, the Moon, birds and flowers. In it the pope resounds his predecessor Benedict's 2009 proposal of an international effort to appease environmental worries.

"Humanity is called to take note of the need for changes in lifestyle and changes in methods of production and consumption to combat this warming, or at least the human causes that produce and accentuate it," the draft says, as Francis addresses all humanity irrespective of creed. "Many scientific studies indicate that the greater part of the global warming in recent decades is due to the great concentration of greenhouse gases ... given off above all because of human activity..."

Francis does not appear to mince his words. He starts with a heavy comment many will refuse to accept. "Mother Earth," he writes, "is protesting for the wrong that we are doing to her, because of the irresponsible use and abuse of the goods that God has placed on her. We have grown up thinking that we were owners of Mother Earth and her dominators, authorised to loot her..." 

Reference is here clearly being made to a dual characteristic of humanity predominant in this era, that is technocentricity and ecocentricity.

The technocentric person is one who believes that the environment is there to suit solely his wishes and for him to use as he pleases without much serious thought about how it would hit other creatures.  He may feel that the Sun revolves about his person and about his wishes. He holds that the Man is the most important creation with rights on the whole universe. An extremely technocentric society destroys forests, garrigues, fertile valleys, fields, uses heavy machinery to destroy natural surroundings. Nature means money.

On the other hand, an ecocentric person is one who strongly holds that the environment is not there for him to modify. Other creatures have also a right to benefit the same natural surroundings. He is not the absolute centre of the universe. An extremely ecocentric person believes that the natural environment must under no circumstances ever be modified. Such a person even believes that animals have also the same right as the human animal to the benefits of nature.

In my opinion this is a very welcome and long needed letter of guidance by the Church. The issues of climate change and care of the natural environment are absolutely not solely scientific terrain. Rather, they complement Man's actions towards the same remedial hopes; indeed it appears that mostly through applied science, technology, nature appears to be visibly heading towards undesirable directions.

I dare say that Pope Francis has supplied the missing "Thou shallst not destroy Creation". It should be a clear, loud, explicit and unambiguous guiding principle as direct as "thou shallst not steal" or "thou shallst not lie".  This should be Commandment Number Eleven and should have been imparted to Moses even in those distant biblical days when Man respected Mother Nature more since he was more dependent on her, and considered himself closer to her than his considerations, distractions and needs make him think now. It is worth recalling American Indian Commandments which state at the word go, treat the Earth and all that dwelt thereon with respect. 

It is here worth remembering that because of Man's insatiable greed for land and for discoveries, several centuries ago Europeans went all over the globe. They spread European civilisation that signified killing 'savage' customs like respecting Mother Earth, besides doing away with such 'savage' ideas that considered Man as simply another part of Creation. The following are the Ten Commandments of the ancient American Indians:

• Treat the Earth and all that dwelt thereon with respect;
• Remain close to the Great Spirit;
• Show great respect for your fellow beings;
• Work together for the benefit of Mankind;
• Give assistance and kindness wherever needed;
• Do what you know to be right;
• Look after the well-being of mind and body;
• Dedicate a share of your efforts to the greater good;
• Be truthful at all times;
• Take full responsibility for your actions.

(This article is taken from a novel by the author)