A Green Gaze for a Broken Body: Contemplating the Incarnation with Ignatius Loyola And Warsan Shire

Aiming at developing Pope Francis’s call to attend to the gaze of Jesus (Laudato Si’ 96-100) this paper offers a reflection on St. Ignatius Loyola’s “Contemplation on the Incarnation” from the Spiritual Exercises alongside poet Warsan Shire’s “What They Did Yesterday Afternoon” to explore the possibility of acquiring a “green gaze” for the earth as the broken body of God. Such an approach acquires the (possible) gaze of Jesus, but shifts attention away from Francis’s emphasis on praise and wonder at creation, and towards the need to respond to brokenness and suffering. Taking a cue from Shire, this paper argues that Francis’s ecological vision can be strengthened by stronger attention to theologies of liberation which in their own way echo Shire’s poetic question “Where does it hurt?,” and likewise facilitate an experience of the world’s response: “Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.”