The Planet Is Calling
“The Planet is Calling” As the title suggests, I intended to
deliver to you today, yet another heavy-handed sermon about environmental
responsibility. The planet is calling us to care, to live out our principles,
to respond to the devastation. As usual I came up with this title well over a
month ago, with a concept that our planet is calling us to respond. I do deeply
believe that our planet is calling out to each one of us.
But, as I started writing about that call, something very
new came to my sights. Yes, indeed the planet is calling, to each one of us.
But that call is surprisingly multidimensional. Sometimes we hear a call of joy
and the beauty and splendor of nature. We see the persistence of life and know
that we are a part of that magic. Other times when we read the news, or
sometimes just looking around our world, we hear the earth call out in pain. Together
we have inflicted tremendous destruction to our home. We are just now beginning
to make a psychological and spiritual shift away from exploitation to
gratitude. We know that the earth is suffering and we hear that call.
For some the call of the planet is about a message of
interconnectedness. For others, they find in the Earth calls us to a new sense
of order. She can teach us the right ways if we are willing to open ourselves
to her reason. The point I’m getting at is there is no one way the Earth calls,
no one single message to be received. The messages in fact are many.
I’m reminded of a movie I saw recently. I appreciated it
exploring a Jewish theology’s complex understanding of God. The primary
character in the film was having a crisis of faith. As she went into a
fertility clinic to try artificial insemination she refused to pray. God had
not followed through with her prayers so far, and she didn’t want to bring him
in on this deeply held hope. But her agnostic friend, knowing how important
prayer was to her, insisted that she pray. And she said, maybe God is
complicated. Maybe sometimes he’s stubborn and we don’t understand. Maybe
sometimes God is busy or just not paying attention. It could be.”
And the woman’s response was magical. She said, “Maybe
you’re right. Maybe God is complicated and unpredictable, like me.”
My point is that maybe the messages that the Earth has to
offer us are also complicated. Maybe there are a great many different things
for us to listen for. Sometimes it’s hope, sometimes it’s warning, sometimes
it’s nurturing, sometimes it’s destruction. The earth is in fact calling to us.
And we have the great opportunity of learning and hearing from a teacher who is
complicated, just like we are.
The earth is calling us in many
different ways. I want to talk about some of those calls in particular. The way
that always comes to my mind is the way that our planet invites us to
celebrate. Just this past weekend many of us were up in the San Bernadino
Mountains at Camp DeBenneville Pines. We were there at the perfect time. Crisp
cool mornings gave way to sun-filled afternoons. Many of us got to canoe on a
pond and watch a bald eagle perch high above. There were aspen trees ablaze and
the sweet vanilla scent of Jeffrey pine trees filled the air. It was an
exhilarating time, impossible not to feel the celebration of Earth.
This celebration is part of our Unitarian Universalist
faith. It doesn’t take long to hear this kind of call, if you open yourself to
it. You can see it in simple things like grass breaking through the pavement,
or in the magic of the epic of evolution. Earth’s call to celebrate the beauty
of life is all around us in a flood of senses. It is pleasure for our eyes,
ears, tongue and skin. It’s a tremendous variety, a richness of color, a depth
and lightness that human hands will never create.
It is true, that these magnificent pieces of creation were
not made for human pleasure. Geology is random; biology serves a purpose rooted
in natural selection. This tremendous variety was not created for human
consumption.
Yet still its is there before us. To close our eyes and ears
to that beautiful call would is an affront to the Earth itself and to all
things sacred. And more than that, closing ourselves to the beauty of nature is
an affront to ourselves, our own very human need for a rich experience of life,
an affront to our own well-being.
The Earth calls us to celebrate the beauty of life. And in
what sometimes comes as a jarring and fickle turn, she reminds us of the
tremendous pain and suffering we have inflicted.
Earth’s
call of pain comes in a few different forms. Sometimes we see it in littered
areas. Sometimes we smell the smog-infested air. More and more we know that
weather patterns are changing as the Earth struggles to keep up. But I think
mostly it’s the scientific community that tries to explain the sort of hardship
that our planet endures. Still, it is hard for us to grasp, because the impact
of our actions is so delayed. But the momentum is building. That’s probably the
most frightening piece of the picture, that the pain that we inflict on the
Earth is in fact rapidly increasing.
The momentum of climate change
is like a freight train, make that ten thousand freight trains, running faster,
and faster and faster with an accumulated impact that is really unknowable. Recent
emissions of carbon dioxide already commit the planet to at least another
half-century of rapid warming. Let me say that again, what is already in the
air, commits us to another half-century of rapid global warming.
I don’t want to spend too much time talking about the
planets painful call. This is after all what we hear when we open the paper or
turn on the news. It’s the one we are reminded of day after day.
Coupled with that call of pain,
is a call to more deeply understand our interconnections. Some of us take that
call of doom and devastation and we are reminded of the generations that will
come after us. We are reminded that in our rapidly shrinking global ecology.
Strange to say, the environmental devastation is forcing all of us to take
seriously the concept of Universalism. In fact our salvation, our fate is tied
with the fate of everyone else. No one escapes the world that we create. No one
gets a free pass.
Universalism teaches us that our salvation is wrapped up
together. That may come in theological terms, it may come in terms of personal
fulfillment and meaning, it may come in terms of creating peace an justice, but
it most certainly is true for the environmental reality of our fate. The earth
is calling, reminding us that what befalls one of us, will befall the rest. We
are all in this together.
But the Earth’s call isn’t all about doom and gloom. It’s
also about a deep rootedness, a profound truth that I feel, and I know many of
you have felt in nature. Feeling that
connection in with nature is the most common experience of spirituality that I
have heard shared among Unitarian Universalists. It’s not about facts and
figures, it’s not a textbook on ecology, it’s just a feeling that is available
to us. I guess the earth is calling to our natural animal intuition. Many of us
hear a call from the earth that is about interconnection. That interconnection
is one of the deepest and strongest threads of Unitarian and Universalist
theology.
I’ve preached so many sermons about Emerson and Thoreau’s
appreciation for nature, and the sense of connection that grows out of it. I
often think of them as sages, walking in the woods and writing great essays. But
they did more than feel the connection. They answered the Earth’s call to connection
by sharing the news with other people
Sensing a fundamental connection with all of humanity,
Thoreau spoke out against the exploitation of Irish immigrants who had fled
their own country to escape starvation.
He was indignant about the American Indians, who had been driven even
farther west into territory that nobody wanted. And perhaps Thoreau’s most
eloquent writings were in he rejection of slavery. Time and time again Throeau
stood on the right side of the debate. He stood on the side that recognized all
people of the Earth as his brothers and sisters.
The Earth led Throeau and subsequently many other great
leaders to understand that there is a higher law. It’s a law that may not be
reflected in science, and certainly not in economics. There is a higher law
that we cannot escape, no matter how much we try to delude ourselves.
The earth has a way of calling us into order. I guess it is
tough love, but nature is telling us that what we have assumed to be right for
so long, the logic of amassing more goods is not a recipe for mutual success.
The call of our planet has, with great skill, begun to strip
back a misguided theory of what human thriving looks like. She is telling us
not just about the environment, but about ourselves. The earth is calling out
to help us better understand our relationship with each other.
Thanks to her call, we are coming to realize that We have
created a materialistic system we can’t control. It imposes itself on us, and
we become its salves and victims. For most of us who want to have a house, a
car, a refrigerator, a television, and so on, we must sacrifice our time and
our lives in exchange. We are constantly under the pressure of time. So that
rather than enjoying a cup of tea with another person, we must turn our mind,
and our heart to acquiring another object.
The earth is calling us to live up to a different future,
not just for the sake of the planet, but for the sake of our sanity. The earth
is calling to let us know that the way we have organized ourselves, logical
though we though it might have seemed, simply isn’t working. The earth is
calling us to find another way.
Before we finish our time
together, I want to talk a little bit about our responsibility to respond to
Earth’s call. Rather than giving a laundry list of things you shouldn’t do and
things you should let go of, I want to offer you in invitation to build a
deeper relationship with the Earth.
I deeply believe that the Earth calls us to
recognize and celebrate what is good, what is beautiful, what is life
affirming, what keeps us connected to our home. I have three suggestions to
think about. Live with the seasons. Stay close to the ground. Honor the earth. (From
“Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril”)
After the weather this week, it’s a great time to remember
to live with the seasons. There is a time for every purpose under heaven. A
time for strawberries and melons, a time for acorn squash. A time for basking
in the sun, a time for cuddling up in a blanket. A time for rain and a time for
drought. Live with these seasons, plant for the, celebrate them, and anticipate
what each will bring. Yes, they are harder to recognize here in Southern
California, but they do exist in a powerful way. Let each season be what it
will, and celebrate with the variety of experience that each season brings.
And the second suggestion, stay close to the ground. Walk
where you are going, and go where you can walk. Refuse to fly. Move close to
your family. Sit on the steps or the curb, or a fallen log. Dig potatoes. Pick
up trash when you see it. Get to know your neighbors and plant food where you
can. Lie on you back and watch the stars or the clouds. Connection with the
earth, both metaphorical and actual gives us life and grounds our joys. Stay
close to the ground.
And finally, honor the earth. If you have forgotten how, then
think of how you honor your grandmother, a wizened woman in the nursing home.
You honor her by visiting her, spending time
holding her hand, singing her songs of the season, telling her stories of how
she cared for you, bringing small gifts, stroking her arm, listening to her,
making sure her hair is clean and people are kind to her. The Earth is equally
beloved and holy.
Live with the seasons. Stay close to the ground. Honor the
earth. The planet is calling with a voice that can change our lives, if we are
willing to let it. The planet is calling, let us answer that call with our
lives.
-Amen-
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