Thirsty for Water—Thirsty for Life
Gender and Poverty in Rural Rajasthan
Keywords:
Rajasthan, nature, drought, poverty, gender, GandhiAbstract
In the last twenty years Ecotheology has developed steadily: in all areas of theology it has related the human and non-human, insisting that our well-being and flourishing belong together. All key concepts of theology, for example, redemption and grace, have been re-imaged to include earth and all her creatures (McDaniel 1995). My approach here takes a more grass-roots method. For fifteen years I have been involved with the villages of Rajasthan and this experience has transformed my theological method and raised new questions. I now ask, in the interwoven suffering of poor communities, trees, plants and animals and their mutual struggle for survival, in the struggle to attain the most basic realities of life, do we glimpse the presence of the sacred? Is God revealed in a new revaluing of these very realities?
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