The Circles of Stewardship
by Vincent Rossi
In one form or other, all major religions recognize the centrality of the human state in the cosmos. "Man is the measure" (Greek); humanity created in the "image of God" (Judeo-Christianity); the doctrine of universal man [al-insan al-kamil] (Islam); "Human state hard to obtain" (Buddhism); the universe a series of "envelopes of the Self" (Hinduism); ancient kingship the guardian of cosmic order (paganism); the "anthropic principle" (modern science).
The idea that humanity and the universe mirror each other was universal: macrocosm::microcosm. This idea is not a primitive and naïve anthropocentrism, but a fundamental cosmological intuition: the objective intelligibility of the universe is inescapably grounded in the mystery of human subjectivity. The word world itself reveals this intuition; it comes from the Old English weorld, which stems from wer, "man" (as in "werewolf") and ald, "full-grown", "big", or "old". Hence, authentic self-awareness implies or leads to cosmic or ecological awareness, and vice-versa.
In accordance with this intuition, the world's spiritual traditions maintain that an essential aspect of the human state is the principle of stewardship of the created order. This is the universal belief that human beings are called by nature to nurture, protect, use, order, and adorn the earth and all living and nonliving creatures in harmony with and obedience to the fundamental laws written into the very nature of all things. However, the abundant evidence that the human presence on the earth currently denatures, plunders, misuses, disorders, and disfigures the natural world should awaken us to the reality that, for various reasons, our innate ecological conscience has lost its power to guide our behavior to conform to the universal human calling to world stewardship.
To reawaken our ecological conscience, to become conscious stewards once again, it is helpful to envision the arena of our stewardship of creation in terms of concentric circles. While our responsibility as world stewards extends in principle to the universe as a whole, in practice there are five basic arenas in which we will exercise our responsibility and authority of stewardship. The five circles of stewardship are: the body/soul/mind, the family, the community, the nation, the planet.
Although each of these circles is conventionally understood to involve only human concerns, in fact each is fully an ecological arena with a direct cause and effect impact on the local, regional, and planetary environments. Equally important is the realization that each of these circles of stewardship is linked to all the others in multifarious ways, in accordance with the basic law of ecology that everything is connected to everything else.
The most important link, however, both for the environment and oneself, is our own self-awareness. For it is one's unique selfhood which is the central point in all the concentric circles of stewardship. And it is in the center of that selfhood, at the point within where one experiences the I-am-I-feel-I-will-ness of being, that our ecological conscience dwells and the practice of conscious stewardship begins.
Beginning with one's physical body, each of these circles of stewardship is an environment, linked to all others by the same ecological laws. If the planet's environmental troubles seem too large to encompass, one may begin to practice stewardship upon the ecology of one's body, confident in the knowledge that what is healthy for our bodies is healthy for our families, and so on to the circle of the planet as a whole. Equally, what is harmful for our bodies is harmful in each of the other circles of stewardship.
Conscious world stewardship begins with our thoughts, feelings, habits, passions, and actions grounded in our brain, lungs, heart, muscles, and blood, and extends to our families, friends and neighbors of all species and our kinship to all life on earth. Above all, to attempt to practice conscious stewardship within any of these circles, even the closest to us, our physical bodies, is immediately to become aware that we cannot succeed in proper stewardship in one circle without succeeding in them all. To face that problem fearlessly and without discouragement or despair is the task of world stewardship today.
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