New Wine

By: Pablo González
A personal chronicle about the environmentalist mobilizations in Madrid around the COP25

In late October, protests in Chile led president Sebastián Piñera to renounce the hosting of the UN’s Conference of Parties to combat climate change (COP25), with Spain offering to take the responsibility. Piñera, however, was to keep the presidency of the event.

Regarding the COP25’s organization, the work of a whole year had to be carried out in a month.This was true not only for institutions, but for the so-called civil society, too. The latter was to put together the social summit, lasting from the 7th of December to the 13th. A meeting to get it started was set up. 

As representation of a local environmentalist group, a friend and I headed down to Madrid for the first meeting to start work for the demonstration and social summit. We live forty kilometres away from the city, in the mountains of the Spanish capital city. Our group’s name is Sámara, which refers to samaras in English, a name for several types of winged fruits. We, like samaras, might be light and weak in appearance, but we’re strong since we carry the capacity to develop a whole tree. Our task is to grow, and, no matter what, we will. 

Over two hundred people attended the meeting. A friend who lives in the nicknamed ‘Iberian Lapland’, the second least-densely populated region in Europe, asked how we had managed to make such a large meeting work. They can be disastrous, I said, if people don’t respect turns and speak when they have nothing to contribute. This is especially the case for white men who are taught to believe everything revolves around them: that they’re always right and everyone else should listen. 

In places where people listen to (and not just hear) each other, the seeds of the samaras may germinate. The next weekend, my group organised a day-long event which included talks, debates, and dancing. The talks were no longer than twenty minutes to make them easy to retain. Our topics ranged from economics to climate refugees to health systems. Our aim was to hint to what we hoped would flourish in the debate: that the struggle to defend the environment is intersectional.

We started the debate by passing the microphone around so that everyone had a chance to speak about their current state of emotions: how we had been this past week and how we felt before and after the morning talks. A handful of people later came to us expressing gratitude for creating this safe space, even among complete strangers. “If it wasn’t for that gesture,” one said, “I wouldn’t have intervened in the debate later.” The climate crisis seems to be laying bare the Western, white, and patriarchal lack of care. We must care for oneselves, for others, and for all living beings! This message of care is at the core of Jesus’ teachings, as well as of many other religions and spiritualities. 

That got me thinking that we sometimes forget to highlight Jesus’ human side. We remember his agony while praying in Gethsemane, fully aware of his imminent imprisonment, torture, and eventual execution. “Being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44). Yet when the high priests, elders, and temple guards came to arrest him, he prevented his disciples from taking violent action. 

The Gospels show how Jesus fulfilled his duties all throughout his life, but, most importantly, how he did so during the darkest hours. Inspired by him and facing the increasing pain, devastation, and chaos brought by the climate crisis, we must be more prepared than ever to act. 

It makes me joyous to type that we’re not alone in this. I have you, we have our loved ones, and by extension we have the whole world (Matthew 5). It’s beyond doubt that Jesus’ teachings are communal; we ought to help each other. We know that the Kingdom belongs to the pure in heart, those hungry for righteousness, those persecuted because of righteousness. We, the salt of the earth, know that we are by God’s side. This should be enough to fuel our motivation to be in the activist struggle. The Sermon of the Mount concisely lays out our ethics so that we are clear about our self-discipline. 

The weeks prior to the 6th of December demonstration and the social summit were, given the time crunch, chaotic perhaps, but they also revealed our will to keep the revolution ball rolling. I attended the only explicit religion-related event in the social summit: ‘We’re Amazon: inter-religious celebration for the Amazon’. This was a dynamic and engaging service developed by members from different religions, including different denominations within them. Despite a group of reduced size (around two dozen people) I was amazed at how diverse it was. The bilingual celebration underscored that, metaphorically speaking, we all speak one language though with different accents.

Regarding helping each other, I often think of the bodhisattva vow in Buddhism. Bodhisattvas are beings advanced enough to attain enlightenment (nirvana), but who promise to stay in this world, therefore accepting the suffering that comes with it. This is so they can much more directly help liberate all beings from pain. Only when everyone is enlightened, they vow, will they reach nirvana. 
These past weeks, especially while browsing the social summit program, I have been realizing how significant the issue of ‘eco-anxiety’ is for many: an anxiety which plagues those who are environmentally-conscious and aware that failing to radically change course is causing impending doom. I truly believe that philosophical and religious-minded activists need to take a step forward and be permanently offering tools to dispel feelings of despair, isolation, and hopelessness. 

The eco-anxiety epidemic reveals the elephant in the room: that the climate crisis is way deeper than what mainstream environmentalism claims it to be. ‘The Collapse Party’ we called Sámara’s event. The old system, based on violence, individualism, and carelessness, is collapsing. It’s trying to bring down everything with it: human and non-human animals, all living beings, and our sheer planet. The new system — and this can’t be stressed enough — must rise. For this to happen, new ways need to be generated, collectively, for Creation’s well-being — that is, we need new wine in new wineskins, not old ones, or else they’ll burst (Mark 2:22). This is the golden opportunity to realise justice, freedom, and equality: the Kingdom of God. 

We have everything we need; we only need to do it. Does this not hold the purpose to serve as an anesthesia to eco-anxiety? 
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“We’re not afraid of ruins because we carry a new world in our hearts. And that world is growing at this minute,” said Buenaventura Durruti, a prominent Spanish anarchist, and his words may even be more relevant now than they were in his days. One of the last lines we collectively proclaimed in the inter-religious service was the following:
   
‘From today, we commit to be transformed. To acknowledge our place and purpose in life.’
So be it. Resist, spread, grow!

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Pablo González

Pablo was born and raised in the mountains of Madrid. He has always been drawn to the struggles for justice, equality, and freedom, acknowledging from a young age that they are a collective effort in which no single truth exists. He enjoys Tolstoy, studied Religions in the UK, and has been living and working in Chinese Buddhist monasteries for the past three summers.