A new heaven and a new earth

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realised the new wonder; but even they hardly realised that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but the dawn.

— G.K. Chesterton, Everlasting Man

The resurrection of Jesus is not just a happy ending to the Gospel; it is the dawn of a new creation.

— Brian Zahnd, A Farewell to Mars: An Evangelical Pastor’s Journey Toward the Biblical Gospel of Peace

Quarantine is perhaps the best time to read Ishmael, a 1992 novel by Daniel Quinn. The novel begins with a newspaper ad: “Teacher seeks pupil, must have earnest desire to save the world. Apply in person.” When the narrator responds to the ad, he finds that it is a gorilla named Ishmael that has placed it.

The book uses Q&A between the gorilla and the man to deconstruct the myths about human supremacy in creation. Ishmael classifies humans into two: Leavers and Takers. According to the Taker point of view, man is born to rule over other creatures. “They will never give up the tyranny over the world, no matter how bad things get.... They’ve always believed that, like the gods, they know what is right to do.... They’ve demonstrated it by forcing everyone in the world to do what they do, to live the way they live.”

Leavers were the hunter-gatherers, herders and indigenous societies who lived in tune with nature well before the advent of agriculture. They formed the cultures that existed thousands and thousands of years before the agricultural revolution.

As Jared Diamond, the celebrated author of Guns, Germs, and Steel, says: “For most of our history we supported ourselves by hunting and gathering: we hunted wild animals and foraged for wild plants. It’s a life that philosophers have traditionally regarded as nasty, brutish, and short. Since no food is grown and little is stored, there is (in this view) no respite from the struggle that starts anew each day to find wild foods and avoid starving. Our escape from this misery was facilitated only 10,000 years ago, when in different parts of the world people began to domesticate plants and animals. The agricultural revolution spread until today it’s nearly universal and few tribes of hunter-gatherers survive.”

Quinn goes on to say that the biblical narrative of creation in Genesis is essentially the story of the beginning of agriculture, which led to food surpluses and man’s flight to cities. The agriculturalist (Cain) kills his herder-brother (Abel) and leaves to build a city. “The tillers of the soil were watering their fields with the blood of Semitic herders.”

All craftsmen and artisans descended from Cain, according to the biblical story. But however Cain and his descendants try to save the world, they end up making a mess out of it.

How it all began.
Maps from Ishmael.

Together, Ishmael the teacher and the pupil learn to discover the laws of life (for example, how the deer and the lion exist as neighbours peacefully until the lion wants its food. Millions of years ago, till the advent of agriculture or before man was considered he was ‘born to rule to world’, a godly justice prevailed on this earth. It is in the order of nature to kill and eat, and it is only survival strategy among animals). In short, summarises Quinn, you may compete but you may not wage war.
“The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you’re to survive. ... then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet,” Ishamel tells the human.

Why the name Ishamel? In Quinn’s own words: “According to our cultural mythology, God lost interest in all other creatures on this planet when humans came along. According to Genesis, this is exactly what happened to Ishmael when Isaac came along: his father Abraham lost interest in him. In other words, what Genesis says happened to Ishmael is exactly what our mythology says happened to the non-human community on this planet. This makes ‘Ishmael’ an appropriate name for someone who speaks for this community.”
The book has inspired many discussions and there are Ishmael forums. Check out https://www.ishmael.org

Elder Brother is watching you

In an isolated pyramid mountain in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, Colombia, lives the Kogi, an ethnic group that maintains the remnants of an ancient civilisation. The Kogi is the last surviving civilisation from the world of the Inca and Aztec. The Kogi believe that they live in order to care for the world and keep its natural order functioning. They live reclusively in their own world, but a few years ago they recognised that mining and deforestation were destroying the natural order of things. And that it was time now for the Elder Brother, as they call themselves, to tell the Younger a thing or two about the interconnectedness of all things in nature.

In 1990 they agreed to work with the historian and documentary film-maker Alan Ereira to tell the rest of the world the need for people to change their course of action. This resulted in a 90-minute film for BBC1 titled From The Heart Of The World: Elder Brother’s Warning.

It is the story of how the Elder Brother helps us understand the ways in which hidden networks link all of nature in a delicate living system. They show how damage spreads and what we can do to prevent it.

In 2012, the Kogi summoned Alan Ereira back to say that the world had not actually listened to what they had said. Aluna: A Journey to Save the World is the “perilous journey into the mysteries of their sacred places to change our understanding of reality”.

Aluna is the Great Mother, whom the Kogi believe is the creator force. Says a Kogi in the documentary: “The Great Mother created the world in water. She makes the future in it. ...We look after nature. ...And we mámas [enlightened ones] see that you are killing it by what you do. We can no longer repair the world. You must. You are uprooting the earth. And we are divining to discover how to teach you to stop.”

Thus, in the face of impending doom, a group of Kogi mamas travel to London to bring a gold thread that is about 400 kilometres to illustrate the interconnectedness of everything on earth. (“We had gold spindles before—before the Younger Brother took them. The spindle is the oldest machine.”)

Surprise of surprise is when they visit an observatory at the University of London. The Kogi’s knowledge of the solar system and the dark energy amazes the viewers as well as Richard Ellis, the Steeler Professor of Astronomy.

On their return, the lay the gold thread from the one river estuary to another to show how the destruction of the estuaries down ends up destroying the source of the river up in the mountains. Drawing an analogy of a human dwelling which stands solid on the foundation (and not on the roof), they say the source of the river too gets affected with weak estuaries. “The theme of what they were doing was showing that the earth itself is a living body in which everything is interconnected and damage to some of it is damage to all of it,” says Alan Ereira.

Polly Higgins, a lawyer behind the growing call for law to support not only humanity but also nature and future generations, says Aluna is a rallying call to stop ecocide.

The first documentary was screened at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992. Aluna was showed at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development at Rio de Janeiro in June 2012.

Survivors of the COVID-19 pandemic will have many pertinent questions to ask themselves, particularly with regard to human existence. What kind of a world are human beings in? What kind of world would human beings want? Is life all about wealth or well-being? Is 24x7 production the only means for economic progress or sustainable actions?

What is resurrection but a new beginning?