**4. Climate Theology**

"I usually inquire into the students' projects as crisis may also grow out from them. To most students who write about sustainability, it is seen as a societal task. They can do something for the environment. But some are confused about how slowly science is moving forward—the stress is related to this, even though it is difficult for them to put it directly into words. Ambitions and career, the character of working stress, contributes to channel that anxiety they feel about what is going to happen in the future. Thus, they do something, going out to look at the trees and birds, prefer to bike instead of driving a car, protest against nuclear power. Much merges exactly there. It is a kind of a monk's understanding of the world, go out and do good. They live by it. Become vegans. Charity. The matter of the climate is such a charity. Sincerely magnanimous motives."

> Student Chaplain X

It clearly emerges from Student Chaplain X's quote that, in the "repertoire" of everyday experiences, the awareness of climate change is embodied and material. "Events are necessarily local. Somewhere. Situated" (Mol 2002, p. 180). For that reason, pastoral care practice needs a broad image of God or *imago dei*—a metaphor that is able to hold life's multiplicity, that is, diversity, difference, connectedness, and the entanglement of humanity and nature—addressed by Latour as the new climatic regime. Such pastoral practice requires theological images and models which are able to express the claims of Christianity in contemporary and vigorous language, which contains embodiment, commonality, imagination, and vision.

In connecting Latour's thoughts on climate change to God-talk, associations arise to a range of climate theologies that have advanced through decades, not least those related to thinking of Gaia (Ruether 1992; Primavesi 2009). However, in search of a model of God that can develop an empirically-driven grasp for pastoral care communication, I turn to the American theologian Sallie McFague. McFague (2008) was experimenting with alternative, new languages of God and ourselves, later insisting on the need to find a language that addresses the planetary agenda—"with the hope that different action may follow" (p. 3). According to McFague, we become ourselves by acknowledging our radical dependence on God and on our planet. What McFague presents is exactly a theology, which brings the church—in the words of both Latour (cit. above) and McFague—"back down to Earth" (ibid., p. 32). She proposes a God-talk where God is not supernatural, distant from humans, but in which God and humans are entangled and connected. "Because God is always incarnational, always embodied, we can see God's transcendence *immanently*" (ibid., p. 76). "In the world as God's body, God is the source, the centre, the spring, the spirit of all that lives and loves" (ibid., p. 76). This way God is permanently and "bodily" present to us, in all places and times of our world (McFague 1987, p. 60). Humans are not to "rule" but to be responsible for the world (cf. Gen 1:27). McFague writes:

"The significance of the truth that the transcendent God is with us cannot be overestimated as we struggle to care for the Earth. It means that we are not alone as we face the despair that creeps over us when at last, we acknowledge our responsibility for climate change. We do not face this overwhelming problem on our own: God is with us as the source and power of all our efforts to live differently". (McFague 2008, p. 77)

Thus, according to McFague (1987, p. xii), theology must try out images which can lead the reality of God's love into the imagination of today's people. Working with ideas of "the body of God", McFague (1987) proposes a metaphor for the Trinity in her book *Models of God*. For the purpose of a pastoral care model, the Christian dogma of the Trinitarian God—traditionally interpreted as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—offers a symbol or image of God that is fluid, multiple, and relational (Cooper-White 2007). The relations in the Trinity show a true network, a web, an image of God, who is not simple, but rather a multiple One (Keller 2008, p. 64). The image of God as Trinity operates in web structures in the sense that the single parts cannot be separated but hang together as they weave into and out of each other. This web of relations opens for lived and bodily experiences. Through such images, God is experienced physically (Moltmann and Moltmann-Wendel 2003): God *is* body, not released from the body (Moltmann-Wendel 1995). In this sense, faith in God is organic.

As a corrective to a traditional imperialistic image of God, which typically runs through the patriarchal expositions, McFague proposes an image of the Trinity of God as "Mother", "Lover", and "Friend". She understands the metaphors of God as a parent, lover, and friend of the Earth, which is precisely expressive of God's very self (McFague 1987, p. 62). As corrective, she argues, these more concisely call attention to heterogeneity, diversity, and difference, and thereby open us for change. As *imago dei,* humans are called to be Mother, Lover, and Friend to the world, other humans, and non-humans; these specific metaphors originate from the deepest levels of life (ibid., pp. 86–87). To practice the presence of God means to embrace what God embraces: life and love (McFague 2008, p. 172). God is what keeps us from giving up (ibid., p. 173).

In what follows, I make an attempt to organize the chaplains' numerous practices, experiences, considerations, and intentions about pastoral care with students by letting these reflections cross with McFague's metaphoric expression of God's love and rescuing presence. At the same time, I let the interviews and McFague's model be escorted by a "psychological repertoire" on stress-regulating communication by use of the concepts "mentalizing" and "epistemic trust", which are to serve the social understanding. Herein, trust is viewed as crucial in order to be able to open up to and interact with the world.

## **5. "Mentalizing" and "Epistemic Trust"**

"As a chaplain, you let burdens be burdens. The climate problem cannot be fixed. But God makes the whole difference in how the pastoral care conversation turns out, and in exactly that belief lies the relief: The experience of truly speaking about our condition of life here and now. To have trust in life itself, in God, that things are moving, by taking one step at a time."
