Professor Moriarty wished that Aristotle, that great philosopher of the western tradition who said that humans are the rational beings, should instead have said, “the human being is a being who can be consciously open to the transcendent.” As a result of this error, Moriarty believes our society has slid into serious decline. We made a fundamental serious mistake more than 2,000 years ago and are still paying a big price for it.  

Moriarty finds an image of this decline in the image of seals in the far north who always need to keep a hole open in the ice, because they can only stay under water for a short period of time or they will suffocate under the ice. Humans are like that. Humans need to keep a hole open for the transcendent to enter Humans who need to breathe the transcendent. And the problem we have, says Moriarty is that

“We don’t breathe transcendentally any more. We need these holes through which we breath sanctifying grace. As walruses and seals need to breathe oxygen, we need to breathe transcendentally. The transcendent is not just outside. It is also located inside us. But those holes have closed over and that is why we can continue to do desperate damage to the earth.”

We must be open to transcendence but not chained to it. If we fail to do that we have the wrong attitude to nature.  Karen Armstrong, a former nun who has written a glorious book called Sacred Nature might say that by failing to respect the sacrality of nature we have instead come to destroy nature.  I will comment on her book in the future. All in good time, as we meander towards it.

Let me just say that in my view understanding the sacrality of nature is what a new attitude to nature is all about. That and being open to transcendence. However, I don’t want to discount the importance of being a rational creature. In my view, both are essential. Reason is not the enemy of transcendence nor the sacrality of nature.