“THE GREENING OF OUR LIVES”
A Sermon by the Rev. Bruce Clear
Sunday, March 1, 2009
All
By telling the following story, I am about to reveal how really, really, old I am.
One of the great rituals of my childhood was raking and burning leaves in the back yard! It feels like a confession today, of course, but in the days of my youth there were few activities in a suburban setting that made you feel closer and more connected with nature than raking and burning leaves.
Raking leaves, of course, was real work. But that hard work was rewarded by a natural playground unlike any other: a pile of leaves almost as tall as you were, and you could run and jump and land safe and securely on nature’s bed of leaves. If you did this with friends, you could throw leaves into each others’ faces, and laugh and run and get playful revenge. Eventually, you would be covered head to toe with the wholesome and thoroughly sanitary dirt of nature’s dried up beauty.
When you start getting worn out, you hear your parents calling from the back porch that it is getting late, and soon it will be dark, so you’d better clean up the mess of leaves and begin burning them. “O.K.!” you shout back, and prepare the pile of leaves for burning. It was one of the few times you were trusted with matches, and among the first times you felt a little adult responsibility. As you light a leaf here and a leaf there around the huge leaf pile, you watch the magic begin as the fire spreads to consume the entire pile. On one hand, the leaves are so dry and brittle that the fire spreads quickly. On the other hand, the fire is surprisingly manageable because it is easy to isolate the edges of the leaf pile.
But the greatest reward of the chore is the smell of burning leaves. There’s nothing quite like it. Of course you don’t stand in the middle of the path of smoke – that would make your eyes hurt and make you cough. But you find a more subtle spot to stand, where the aroma of burning leaves carries your senses on a journey all its own, knowing not just how nature looks and feels, but how nature smells. The smell of burning leaves has its own unique fragrance.
It is an experience from days gone by. Today, it seems as ancient as wagon trains. As an adult, there have been very rare occasions, two or three times over the last 25 years or so, when I encountered the smell of burning leaves. Each time, I knew immediately what the source of the aroma was. And each time the smell instantly transported me to my backyard, and I was 10 years old once again.
Telling this story today, of course, feels a little bit like confessing to a crime, and being grateful for statutes of limitation! The story can’t be told without some undercurrent of shame. What damage we must have done in our innocence! In those days, few people gave much thought to toxic air pollution, and no one had a clue about the fragility of the ozone. Even today, when each summer we hear reports of out-of-control forest fires threatening populated towns, if I think of how much I enjoyed the smell of burning leaves, and I feel just a tinge of guilt.
I do not mean to tell this story with nostalgia, though I’m sure some of that comes out. I do mean to tell the story with irony, for this story seems almost a metaphor for how the human race is learning to grow into a true and healthy understanding of nature. The story reminds me of the great line from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians: “when I was a child, I thought as a child, I acted as a child. Now that I’m grown up, I have put away childish things.”
Leaf burning wasn’t necessarily an act of childhood, but it was something we all did when the human species had a naively immature view of our relationship to nature. Very gradually, we are growing up, and that means that we see ourselves no longer as controllers of nature, or even as trustees of nature. Growing up means that we understand ourselves as being part of nature.
In the last generation or so, our culture has been adopting
what we have come to call an ecological consciousness, or concern for the
environment. When this movement began,
the motivation was mostly negative: If
we don’t stop polluting the air and water, we’ll not have healthy air to
breathe or water to drink. If we don’t
stop using up all the fossil fuels, then the next generation will not have
resources for energy. If we keep cutting
down trees, it will damage the ecosphere, our air supply, and rob us of natural
beauty. If we do not preserve more natural
habitat, we will eventually not have any recreational area left, and the
animals and birds will become extinct.
And so forth.
The motivational attitude about environmentalism has
shifted dramatically in the last dozen years or more. The realities of permanent damage to the
environment are still there, but today people seem much more strongly motivated
by positive appeals: The earth is a
precious treasure, it is our home. We
need to treat it respectfully and with care, for it is part of us. Love of the earth is an extension of loving
ourselves. And so forth.
The proper reason for being respectful of the earth
is not because it is a duty, but rather because it is a joy -- it is something
we can feel good about in ourselves. On
the surface, what does it matter to us in
The positive focus of environmental concern is
centered around one key insight that we have only recently begun to internalize
-- that we are a part of nature.
This is not a self-evident truth, since for many centuries our culture
has viewed nature and the world as something separate from, and outside of,
human nature. Human beings, it has been
felt for a long time, are independent entities, and something entirely
unrelated to mountains or whales or forests or ocean currents. Our only connection to nature is the way in
which we can use it, exploit it, manipulate it, for our own benefit. It is there for our sake, not we for its
sake.
The recent positive focus of environmental concern
turns this notion on its head and recognizes our interdependence with all that
exists in the world.
The mechanism for this kind of thinking comes from
scientific understanding. The earth, we
are told, is one huge organism, made up of smaller sub-systems and sub-organisms. Just as our bodies are made up of different
biological living cells, which depend upon the health of the whole body for
survival, so also the earth is made of sub-systems which are like living cells. We are such a sub-system, and like any living
sub-system, we depend upon the health of the whole for our survival.
Looking at the earth as a single, huge living
organism, which it is, brings many metaphors to mind that may be more than just
metaphor. If the earth is a single
organism, then does it breathe? Does it
feel? Does it suffer pain? Does it think?
Does it think?
Is it conscious? Is it aware of
what is going on, at least in the sense that a plant is aware of the climate
that affects it? The question of whether
earth has something like a mind is actually not a new question. What is new is the ecological model that
gives us a more naturalistic basis for these questions. As far back as Plato, philosophers have
wondered whether a single human mind is simply a reflection of a larger, cosmic,
universal mind. Emerson wrote
specifically about the universal mind of nature, of which we are a part. If we
are, and we are, a sub-system of a larger world organism, then can we, do we,
reflect the health of the larger whole.
Can we, do we, reflect the feeling and even the thinking of the larger
whole?
Much work has been done in recent years about the
power of the human mind to heal physical problems. Some medical people would say that the mind
is the strongest medicine we have, even if it is not always fully effective
medicine. In any case, I think no one
would argue with this statement: the
mind and the body affect the health of each other. Mental health promotes physical health and
vice versa. The mental health of the
human organism is affected by the health of its subsystems, and vice versa.
Now we can take that observation and apply it to the
organism of the earth. The health of the
whole earth affects the health of its parts, such as us. And if the earth organism, like all organisms,
can feel, react, respond, and maybe even think, then aren’t we a part of that
response and that thinking by the whole organism?
All of this, I think, is the basis for the positive
focus of environmental concern. We wish
to protect the earth not because our future is threatened, but rather because
we respect it, honor it, and identify with it.
We are part of it. When we talk
about protecting the environment, we are talking about protecting ourselves as
well. When we say we don’t want to
damage the ecosystem, we are recognizing that we are part of the system worth
protecting.
We no longer burn leaves in our backyards. Not precisely because of what it does to the air, and not exactly because of what it does to the ozone. We don’t burn leaves because of what it does to us – for the air and ozone are part of us.
In this generation, the metaphor for having a healthy relationship with nature has come to be called being “green.” There is no question in my mind that this is our future, if we are to have a future. Human destiny is inextricably tied to our way relationship with nature.
Last month was a time to celebrate the discoveries of Charles Darwin, and the understanding of evolution as the creative process of nature. A very primitive and sloppy reading of evolution suggests to some that nature is cold and brutish, and the story of life is the story of survival of the fittest.
On the contrary, in our reading earlier, biologist Lewis Thomas reminds us that the lesson of evolution is not biological competition but rather cooperation. “My argument,” he writes, “stated generally and briefly,”
“is that the driving force in nature, on this kind of planet with this sort of biosphere, is cooperation. In the competition for survival and success in evolution, natural selection tends, in the long run, to pick as real winners the individuals, and then the species, whose genes provide the most inventive and effective ways of getting along.”
The central quality of living “green,” of living in harmony with nature, then, is finding ways in which life cooperates. Nature is in charge. Nature is powering the engine of life. We need to discover how to ride that engine, not resist it.
All Souls has the opportunity today for being in the front lines of civilization’s need for living green. We are fortunate to have a committed group of members who are willing to do the work that is needed for us to become what has come to be known as a “Green Sanctuary.”
Since the 1960s, the UUA General Assembly has adopted resolutions of witness in support of environmental responsibility. Throughout these years, lots of ideas had been tossed around about how to help congregations be intentional about addressing these issues. In 1999, a proposal for a “Green Sanctuary” was made, and it laid out a process whereby churches, as a community, could intentionally work toward environmental responsibility. Since that time, over 80 congregations have been accredited as a “Green Sanctuary.”
The Green
Sanctuary program has five specific goals.
They include
To achieve these
goals, the Green Sanctuary Program sets forth a comprehensive series of actions
that integrate an Earth-oriented spirituality into congregational worship and
communal gatherings. Congregation members are encouraged to learn how their
personal lifestyle choices affect the environment and to explore what
alternative what choices are available. Everyone in the congregation is
encouraged to participate in activities that will make a difference locally and
globally. The whole life of the congregation increasingly considers the
environment much more intentionally.
The
Green Sanctuary Program is a collective effort, not just a personal project for
a few of the most committed environmentalists in a congregation. It is about
all of us, according to our talents and capacities, coming together to create
the Earth Community we have envisioned.
The
Green Sanctuary Program encourages individual actions to reduce our impact on
this planet, but primarily it is a program of congregational action. It is
about working together to strengthen our ability to create environmental
change.
In
order to lay out a path toward a greener life for the congregation, we first
need to know from where we start. That
is why you will be asked to take surveys concerning environmental
responses. The surveys will look at
personal practices, but they will also look quite closely at practices within
the congregation. The hope is to have a
picture of where we start from, so we’ll know where we want to be when we
finish.
To
achieve these goals, the Project focuses on four primary avenues within the
church.
1. Worship and spiritual practice: making environmental awareness a routine part of our life together as a religious community.
2. Religious Education
3. Environmental Justice
4. Sustainable Living – examine what we can do as a community to live more in harmony with nature.
So this is what the Green Sanctuary program is about. There is no question that the human future will become increasingly green in focus, or there will be little future at all. This is our chance to affirm our place in that future.
It is a very practical approach to the future. But it should not be lost that it is also a very spiritual approach. After all, understanding ourselves as part nature affirms our role in the universe like nothing else can. An article in the recent UU World magazine quotes cosmologist Carl Sagan affirming this spiritual role. Sagan wrote,
“A religion that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by conventional faiths.”
The Green Sanctuary program is an opportunity to be intentional and to celebrate the future we face. And it helps us tap in to the awesome mystery and wonder of nature that enfolds us and nourishes our spirit.
READING
from “The Fragile Species”
by
It would be only fair for me to acknowledge that I
(hold) a particular point of view... so idiosyncratic as to qualify as personal
bias. My argument, stated generally and
briefly, is that the driving force in nature, on this kind of planet with this
sort of biosphere, is cooperation. In
the competition for survival and success in evolution, natural selection tends,
in the long run, to pick as real winners the individuals, and then the species,
whose genes provide the most inventive and effective ways of getting
along. The most inventive and novel of
all schemes in nature, and perhaps the most significant in determining the
great landmark events in evolution, is symbiosis, which is simply cooperative
behavior carried to its extreme.
The longest stretch of evolutionary time, fully
three-fourths of the planet’s life, seems to have been preoccupied by single
cells trying to organize themselves into a workable system. Perched as we are, or think we are, at the
very pinnacle of biological progress, we must face the fact that our origin was
humble indeed. Our interest in genealogy
tends to run back only for the number of generations needed to prove that we
came from lines of kings. A few of us,
specialized for the inquiry, can take us back through more remote ancestors,
beetle-browed, small-brained, hairy, even tailed, swinging through the
trees. But the fact of the genealogical
matter, like it or not, is that the original ancestor of humanity was a single
cell, almost undoubtedly with a form and functions resembling those of one or
another of today’s common bacteria.
The one thing we do know for sure about our bacterial
ancestors is that they learned, very early on, to live in communities.... Most living microorganisms... cannot be
isolated from each other. Because of
this, very little is known about their metabolic functions or nutritional
requirements, beyond the conspicuous fact that they live together and cannot
live apart.
But symbiosis is far and away the smartest trick of
nature. The habit of inter-living hangs
on in the bacteria of the earth, and life would be meager without them. I take the view that the successful and
persistence existence of symbiosis suggests the underlying existence of a
general tendency toward cooperative behavior in nature. It is simply not true that “nice guys finish
last”; rather, nice guys last the longest....
Complex natural communities do not follow what ought to be the
mathematical rule implicit in the term “survival of the fittest.” If that term ever meant “winner take all,”
some one species should always predominate.
Out in the field, this doesn’t happen.
Human beings would do well to look very closely at
this situation....
We
are Nature, long have we been absent, but now we return,
We
become plants, trunks, foliage, roots, bark,
We
are bedded in the ground, we are rocks,
We
are oaks, we grow in the openings side by side,
We
browse, we are two among the wild herds, spontaneous as any,
We
are two fishes swimming in the sea together,
We
are what locust blossoms are, we drop scent around lanes
mornings and evenings,
We
are also the course smut of beasts, vegetables, minerals,
We
are two predatory hawks, we soar above and look down,
We
are two resplendent suns, we it is who balance ourselves
orbic and stellar, we are as two comets,
We
prowl fang'd and four footed in the woods, we spring on prey,
We
are two cloud forenoons and afternoons driving overhead,
We
are what the atmosphere is, transparent, receptive, pervious,
impervious,
We
are snow, rain, cold, darkness, we are each product and
influence of the globe,
We
have circled and circled till we have arrived home again,
we too,
We have voided all but freedom and all but our own joy.