Chalice Art by Selma Blackburn

WALKING LIGHTLY ON THE EARTH

September 18, 2005

 I have been preaching about ecological concerns as long as I can remember. In fact my first sermon in a church, while I was still in high school, was about stewardship of the earth. When Jane and I met at Matthew Fox’s Institute for Culture and Creation Spirituality, we both were there to get more in touch with earth-centered spirituality, to get even more grounded in healthful living for the future of our planet. Jane was going to join me in sharing this sermon, but she had an opportunity to go to New York for a surprise 50^th Birthday party for her brother’s wife. If she were here, somewhere along the way, she would have reminded me how many ways I could do better at living simply! While she has been gone, I have been driving her Toyota Prius Hybrid! I do confess that I could do much better at walking lightly on the earth, but my mini-suv does get about 30 miles per gallon on the road! Most of us could do more to protect the health of our planet, but most of us already do a lot of Earth friendly things like recycling, reusing, and conserving!

 While Hurricane patterns are cyclical, there is some pretty good evidence that global warming helps to intensify hurricanes. There is also a lot of evidence to show that the loss of wetlands along the Gulf Coast is a significant factor in the way that Hurricane Katrina impacted the coast. Wetlands could have absorbed some of the storm surge and would have provided a certain amount of protection along the coast. The absence of wetlands allowed the Hurricane to hit shore areas full strength as a category 4 storm. One of the saddest things is that engineers and planners knew that such a disaster could happen, that it was inevitable, but politicians continued to reduce critical funding that could have restored wetlands, strengthened levees and provided adequate emergency relief. Where have our tax dollars been going? Was it human arrogance, greed, Sin?

Are human beings above the forces of nature? The arguments for human dominion seem a little shakier this week. Jane and I were studying in Oakland, California when the Loma Prieta Earthquake hit in October 1989. I have seen the impact of Tornadoes and severe storms, and have lived thru a few blizzards, including the storms of 1967 and 1979 in Chicago. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that nature is more powerful than most human efforts. There is a growing amount of evidence to suggest that human behavior is making storms worse and increasing the risk to life as cities are built on earthquake fault lines. The effects of pollution and increasing toxicity in the environment may draw less attention, but pose even greater long term risks.

 Theologian Matthew Fox, in his seminal work, Original Blessing, says this:

 The Universe teaches universality. Without cosmic consciousness all universality is torn asunder and only parochialisms, ego trips, and with them institutionalized violence reign. Approaching the cosmos with reverence and eagerness assures the approaching of others—especially those different from ourselves—with equal reverence. “Native thought has always held that all of the elements of the Creation are available for everyone. That everything was placed here for the benefit of everyone.”

          When we recover the cosmos in our spirituality and let go of too much introspection, we recover the awesome nature of sin and cease trivializing sin as so often has happened in Western theology. We learn all over again that the fate of the earth is literally in our hands and not just the fate of an individualized and atomized and quite puny (because it has ignored the cosmos) soul. Injustice represents the ultimate cosmic rupture, the ultimate human tragedy, the ultimate in dualism. Wisdom literature was keen on this lesson, no less than were the prophets of Israel. Wisdom scholar Roland Murphy summarizes the “central concept” behind the greatest influence on Israeli wisdom literature, that of Egypt, in this way.

          The central concept is ma’at, translated as “justice,” “order,” etc. This is the divinely established harmony between nature and society, an order that must be preserved or restored, and hence the goal of human activity.

          What is the alternative to a wisdom that includes the cosmos and therefore justice? Chaos, Disorder. Extinction. Gestalt therapist Fritz Perls puts it this way:

          Cultures come—and go. And when a society is in clash with the universe, once a society transgresses the laws of nature, it loses its survival value. So, as soon as we leave the basis of nature—the universe and its laws…we lose the possibility of existence. (Matthew Fox, Original Blessing, Theme 4 Cosmic, Universalist, pp. 78-79)

 As Fox indicates, a concern for the balance between human society and the natural world is far older than the Hebrew Bible and clearly was a part of the religious tradition of the Jewish people as well as within indigenous native communities around the world. Only in so called “modern times,” has Western society practiced a depleting attitude of total dominion over the natural world.

 Some might argue that even native cultures have exploited resources, yet the indigenous people of North America never eliminated the herds of buffalo, elk, or deer. They did not hunt for sport, nor did they throw away the meat, the hide, or even the tendons or bones of the animals they did kill. They did not kill off the lakes with pollution, nor did they clear cut forests, or fill the air or cover the ground with toxic chemicals. They lived largely in harmony with the earth.

 Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, in The Universe Story, also address concerns about the treatment of the natural world but go on to talk about the coming of the Ecozoic Era, a time establishing a new harmony with the earth:

 The terminal phase of the Cenozoic was caused by a distorted aspect of the myth of progress. Though this myth has a positive aspect in the new understanding that we now have of an evolutionary universe, it has been used in a devastating manner in plundering Earth’s resources and disrupting the basic functioning of the life systems of the planet. During this past century humans have taken extensive control over the Earth process with little sensitivity to the more integral dynamics of planetary affairs.

          The inner spontaneities guiding the destinies of the natural world have been considered irrelevant. An overlay of mechanistic patterns has been imposed on the biological functioning of the living world. The natural world has become a “resource” for human utilization. Progress has been measured, not by the integral functioning and florescence of the Earth community, but by the extent of human control over the nonhuman world and the apparent benefits that emerged for humans.

          That human well-being could be achieved by diminishing the well-being of the Earth, that a rising Gross Domestic Product could ignore the declining Gross Earth Product; this was the basic flaw in this Wonderland myth.

          …Presently we seek to remedy the devastation of the planet by entry into a new period of creativity participated in by the entire Earth community. This new period we identify as the Ecozoic era..

 That the Universe is a communion of subjects rather than a collection of objects is the central commitment of the Ecozoic. Existence itself is derived from and sustained by this intimacy of each being with every other being of the universe. We might even suggest that the Earth functions as an organism…Indeed the Earth is so integral in the unity of its functioning that every aspect of the Earth is affected by what happens to any component member of the community. (Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry, The Universe Story, pp. 241-243)

 Swimme and Berry advocate an entirely new understanding of the cosmos as a necessity for the future of human existence on Earth. Not that the effort to live in harmony with nature is really new, but we are overdue for a reformation in our understanding of our relationship with this planet. Throughout the history of humanity, and long before the first humanoid being walked the planet, there was the earth and the natural world. Only the anthropocentric views of modern times could envision a planet without the rich flowering of the natural world. Even in the modern era, a few modern voices of the western world reminded us of our place within the natural world.

 The writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, John Muir, and Walt Whitman have reconnected millions of American students with the beauty of nature and the seasons and flows of the natural world. The words attributed to Chief Seattle reminding us our connection with the earth are favorites of many of us. How did we get so far away from being in harmony with the earth? Perhaps it was the development of modern warfare, the pattern of not only beating the enemy into total submission but obliterating the enemy as a people. As a new nuclear arms race begins, with the recent unveiling of the new US policy of Preventative Nuclear first strikes, I suppose we can take some comfort in the assurance that the cockroaches will survive.

 I do think it started with the military industrial complex, but corporate America clearly believes that winning is the only goal. Where is the loyalty to employees that once existed even in companies now dumping pension and health plans? What happened to long-term plans for corporate development? When did companies become so tied to their current stock prices that they cannot see a week ahead, let alone the next quarter, years, or decades? Corporate executives justify pollution, health hazards, and various kinds of bad behavior in order to insure profitability. Is this really what we want in America and around the world? I understand the desire to have more than we now have, but when did anyone find happiness in wealth obtained on the backs of so many poor and desperate people?

 Today it will take more than buying and driving hybrid cars, using fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent, turning off lights when we leave a room, recycling our bottles and cans, and conserving water. It will not be enough for just the persons of good will to use less, today it will take an all out revolution, an entirely new way of thinking and behaving. The disaster in New Orleans and the brief spell of $3 per gallon gas are merely a hint of the future unless there are some massive changes in the way we live, particularly in the United States! Most of the rest of the world has been walking, riding bicycles, using mass transit, or at most driving Minis while we have been driving SUVs. Most of the rest of the world agreed to the Kyoto Protocols for limiting greenhouse gasses while our President protected our energy businesses and other polluters, the same businesses who think nothing of sending Mercury into the air and jacking up the price of gas, diesel fuel, heating oil, and natural gas at the first hint of a shortage.

 It will take $200 billion to rebuild New Orleans. I wonder how much education, health and human service budgets will be cut to pay that bill along with the war costs, since tax increases will not be going on the table? We know all the negative sides of these concerns, what are the positive things that we can do?

 I think the first thing that we need to do is start making more noise. These are clearly matters of concern for religious and spiritual people. We can do some good things by helping individuals and families, but we also need to engage our own internal warriors. Those who might make a biblical case for dominion of the earth and all its animals, forests, and waters, are forgetting or ignoring a much longer and stronger commitment of the Judeo-Christian religions to stewardship of the lands, waters, and animal herds. Our consumer society may be fueling the world economy, but our wasteful use of resources is weighing heavily against the future while our garbage is polluting the planet. It is time for Unitarian Universalists to engage our strongest skills as advocates voicing the need for a new way of seeing, believing, and behaving, and we need to model the best practices for a healthy stewardship of resources.

 When the church parking task force recommended that we put a priority on car-pooling, I was not particularly enthused because I know how much we Americans like to take our own cars. I know how much I like to have my own car! There are things we can do both large and small that will make a difference. We can speak out for earth and call for the development of mass transit, funding for windmills and solar panels, we can make our homes and church buildings energy efficient. We can car-pool and look into buying a church van or two!  We can use our voices in advocacy with legislators and local officials, we can write, and phone, and e-mail decision makers.

This nation generally, along with other parts of the world, and many of us are out of balance with the earth. For our sake, and the sake of our children and their children; for the sake of the animals, the forests, the waters, and the air, we need to work to bring harmony. We need to continue recycling, reusing, and conserving, but we also need to speak out for policies that will end pollution, restore wetlands and forests, protect endangered species (which may include every species), and stop the wastefulness of consumerism and cleanse the air of greenhouse gasses. This is a matter of mind and spirit, and it is by far the greatest challenge this overly populated world faces in this century! For the sake of our children and the future of this planet, may we take up the quest to stop the insanity and join together with the people and religions of the world to find solutions to this need even as we back away from the warmongering, energy wasting policies of the current US administration.  May we walk lightly on the earth in our personal practices, but may our voices speak out loudly for a better future!

 Shalom, Salam, Blessed Be, and Amen!