Recently, I was privileged to hear a talk with Terry LeBlanc, a Mi’kmaw Christian theologian and one of the lead founders of NAIITS (the North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies, though they prefer the acronym nowadays due to a well-expanded base of reflection and operation). The topics in this talk were wide-ranging, centred around the notion of asset-based, rather than deficit-based, theology. At one point, however, a particular example cropped up, and it hit me like a brick. Recalling frequent conversations with his students, Terry LeBlanc said:

When was the last time human beings gave more to the rest of Creation than it gives to us? Just stop and think about it. When was the last time that we gave more to the rest of Creation than it gives to us? And who’s caring for whom?

In other words: You say, “creation care.” But what do you mean? Have you stopped to ask about which way(s) the care runs? Do the other beings in Creation—because humans are not separate from Creation, so we need to emphasis the other beings in Creation or the rest of Creation—do the caring? Or is it just you? Who provides the most? Who looks after others the most? Who structures relationships and interactions in the most enduring, healthy, positive way? Well, you may do creation care. But it is Creation that is caring for you first. That’s the way God set it up. If you focus only on what we do wrong, that’s a deficit-based theology. And that’s not enough.

In short: Who is doing what here? And where is the major weight or direction or flow? And do you have real gratitude and humility before the overwhelming care of Creation?

Yikes. He’s not wrong.

As much as I’d never queried the term “creation care” for the matter of who is caring for whom—reflecting perhaps a certain and undue anthropocentrism in rendering it “care for creation” alone, rather than both that and “creation’s care for us”—the idea isn’t completely foreign to my thought, not to what the Church’s magisterial authorities have tried to express.

In the first place, I’m reminded of the theme of “who evangelizes whom.” This is one dear to Pope Francis:

This is why I want a Church which is poor and for the poor. They have much to teach us. Not only do they share in the sensus fidei, but in their difficulties they know the suffering Christ. We need to let ourselves be evangelized by them. The new evangelization is an invitation to acknowledge the saving power at work in their lives and to put them at the centre of the Church’s pilgrim way. We are called to find Christ in them, to lend our voice to their causes, but also to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them. (Evangelii Gaudium 198)

Indeed, quoting Pope Saint John Paul II, the Holy Father says, “God shows the poor ‘his first mercy’” (ibid.). And this segues into my next connection.

Pope Francis, of course, called us to develop a new eighth work of mercy, not in this case towards the materially poor, the unburied, the sinners, the doubters, or anyone like that—but towards Creation as a whole. Active and contemplative “creation care” are a compound corporal-spiritual work of mercy. Actions mean something. And contemplation, in the Pope’s sense here is about beauty and made in gratitude. So, we do come back to theme notion of extreme gratitude to the Creator and for what Creation is and does.

Terry LeBlanc’s trenchant questions seem relatively well represented in the recent magisterium. The point, however, is that we need to translate some of them into questions about Creation as a whole, too, not just relationships among human beings.

The question of “who evangelizes whom” is one that has meaning for the community of human persons. In a similar spirit, the question of “who cares for whom” is one that has meaning in the community of Creation as a whole.

Meanwhile, Popes John Paul II and Francis have expressed a notion of God showing his “first mercy” to the poor, the hurting, the discarded, the outsiders, and the vulnerable among human beings. There is a translation of this, too, into a wider register. We are challenged to truly adopt a work of mercy towards Creation—one which involves both contemplative acknowledgment in gratitude and humility for all that it is and for its travail, as well as active care for it. “Creation care” means both the abundant care that Creation renders to us and the care of ourselves for Creation. That’s a legitimate challenge found within Catholic teaching, though we might not have seen it quite that way before.

None of this, I think, is altogether new to my thought. Yet its form of expression is very much novel. The question is an extremely relevant one and it affects the entirety of our feelings, contemplative regard, reactions, and actions: Creation care—who’s caring for whom?