Broken Heart/Open Heart – Earth Day Sermon

Rev. Susan Moran

It is tough being Mother Earth these days.  The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) (the world’s largest non-government general science membership organization and the publisher of the Science family of journals) created a website, What We Know, which offers this chilling status report:

  1. Based on well-established evidence, about 97% of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening.  This agreement is documented not just by a single study, but by a converging stream of evidence over the past two decades from surveys of scientists, content analyses of peer-reviewed studies, and public statements issued by virtually every membership organization of experts in this field.The website, 350.org reports: “So far, [in the last century], we’ve experienced about 1 degree (Celsius) of warming, and the impacts are frightening.  Glaciers everywhere are melting and disappearing fast, threatening the primary source of clean water for millions of people.  Mosquitoes, who like a warmer world, are spreading into lots of new places, and bringing malaria and dengue fever with them.  Drought is becoming much more common, making food harder to grow in many places.  Sea levels have begun to rise, and scientists warn that they could go up as much as several meters this century.  If that happens, many of the world’s cities, island nations, and farmland will be underwater.  Meanwhile, the oceans are growing more acidic because of the CO2 they are absorbing, which makes it harder for animals like corals and clams to build their shells and exoskeletons.  All around the globe, we’re stacking the deck for extreme weather – like hurricanes, typhoons, blizzards, and droughts – which exacerbates conflicts and security issues in regions that are already strapped for resources.”
  2. The AAAS website continues: We are at risk of pushing our climate system toward abrupt, unpredictable, and potentially irreversible changes with highly damaging impacts.  Earth’s climate is on a path to warm beyond the range of what has been experienced over the past millions of years.  [As a quick example of an irreversible change is the fact that in the Arctic, “perennial sea ice covers just half the area it did thirty years ago.” Kolbert, Sixth Extinction, p. 150].
  3. The sooner we act, the lower the risk and cost.  And there is much we can do.  Waiting to take action will inevitably increase costs, escalate risk, and foreclose options to address the risk.  The CO2 we produce accumulates in Earth’s atmosphere for decades, centuries, and longer.  It is not like pollution from smog or wastes in our lakes and rivers, where levels respond quickly to the effects of targeted policies.  The effects of CO2 emissions cannot be reversed from one generation to the next until there is a large- scale, cost-effective way to scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  Moreover, as emissions continue and warming increases, the risk increases.”

If you have been following the issue of Climate change, you know that more and more events are being written about in newspapers and online journals.  Books like Elizabeth Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction, give grim reports about the state of our flora and fauna–above and below sea level.  It is enough to break your heart.  And not only for the dying seals and polar bears, the wolves and fox and frogs who are dying.  But my heart breaks when I think about what we, as humans, are doing to our Earth.  What does our blatant disregard for other creatures and the health of the natural world say about Us.  What does it mean to be a human and to know that we are participating in such destruction?  The Earth may survive another mass extinction event, or even a lesser one, but will we?

I recently participated in a UU clergy retreat, which was led by Rev Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, and much I have to say this morning was inspired by or suggested by her.

One of the practices on the retreat was to think of a place we loved and to write our thoughts on how it has changed.  I wrote about my summer community, on the coast of Maine.  I first encountered this little patch of heaven in the late 1960’s.  Having driven 9 hours from Long Island, I remember being shocked by the cold and the dark.  It was so cold at night and the water, even on the hottest days, was freezing.  The bay is warmer now.  You can put your body in it without strange sounds coming out of your mouth.  It is so warm that the children swim from the dock to the moored boats and back.  They stay in the water for 30 minutes!  At night, we don’t bring sleeping bags in the boat anymore.  No one wears a down jacket or hat and mittens for a trip across the bay.  Some nights, I wish I had a ceiling fan.  We still see the stars.  But not as many.  Over the last five decades, Light pollution from Ellsworth has taken away a third of the night sky.  We haven’t seen the Northern Lights since sometime in the 1970’s.  We used to see them every summer.  My children have never seen them.  We used to see moose right near the road.  Now the roads have names and signs and some call this progress.  But I wonder what have we done?

What has happened to the places you hold dear?  What can be done about it?  And what do we do with our broken hearts?  We can start with lamentation.  Let’s recite A litany of Sorrow together: Your part is to say “We have forgotten who we are, and we repent.” (adapted from Earth Prayers by Anne Rowthorn)

Let us remember who we are.

Let us remember who we are.

But let us not dwell in the place of the Broken heart.  The psalmist reminds us (in 131) “I do not occupy myself with things that are too great for me.” There is only so much we can do, and it is best done with an open heart, even a radiant heart.  Rev Bullitt-Jonas suggests that a person with an open or an awakened heart see people and places through eyes of love.  We remember that we are cherished and beloved, rather than a cancer on the Earth.  We do need to change the way we do business, and not just in our homes, but the systems need to be transformed out of a deep love for ourselves and each other.

Here are some practices that we can use to keep our hearts open and awakened.

  1. Be quiet and pay attention.  Do one thing at a time.  Perhaps reading the entire newspaper isn’t the best thing for your spirit.  Perhaps reading deeply only one article is enough.  In the Book of Exodus, we are told that Moses noticed the Burning Bush.  He is told to take off his sandals as he is on holy ground.  This sounds like a mystical experience.  And it only happened because he was paying attention.  But as we know from the story of Exodus, Moses ends up an activist.  Whether it was his intention or even his initial desire, he ends up leading hi people to the wilderness, and towards freedom.  I mention this story so that we understand that paying attention is no small thing.
  2. Be grateful.  Joanna Macy calls gratitude the wellspring of all religion.  Christian Mystic Meister Eckhart reminds us that if Thank You is our only prayer, it will be enough.
  3. Honor your body.  This is counter-cultural.  Society tells us to do more all of the time.  But our bodies need good food, rest, and exercise.  If you care about the climate, you will care deeply about what you eat.  The website of the World Future Council, headquartered in Hamburg, Germany states that “agriculture, food production and distribution are major contributors of greenhouse gases: Agriculture is directly responsible for 14 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions.”  To put that in perspective, here’s another statistic:  “Deforestation currently accounts for an additional 18 per cent of emissions.”
  4. Do what you can to live a natural life.  Simply put, Go outside.  A recent study said that Americans spend 4% of the day outdoors and that included driving in the car!  Walk the beach, plant a garden, rake, weed, walk in the woods.  In her fabulous book, Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert wrote that Massachusetts contains 55 species of trees (Eliz Kolbert, p. 152).  I am embarrassed to say that I when I thought about how many I knew, I came up with 10.  Just a quick aside: Elizabeth Kolbert learned that the further south you go, the more diversity there is.  Hence, North Carolina has more than 200 species of trees.  Belize, which is about the size of New Jersey, has 700 native tree species.  Once we arrive in Peru, a professor from Wake Forest has counted 1035.  More on trees another Sunday.

If we have any hope of saving our land, it is important to love it and know it.  Someone said, Live so that a piece of land will mourn when you die.  Get outside.  Pay attention.  Be Grateful.  Be good to yourselves.  And then get involved in something to offset Climate change.  As a start, sign up for 350.0rg, an association and website created by Bill McKibben and friends to do grass roots organizing.  350 comes from the scientists’ beliefs that carbon dioxide should not be more than 350ppm.  “PPM” stands for “parts per million,” which is simply a way of measuring the ratio of carbon dioxide molecules to all of the other molecules in the atmosphere.  Currently, the earth has a carbon dioxide ratio of 400.  Allow the website to explain itself: 350.org works in almost every country in the world on campaigns like fighting coal power plants in India, stopping the Keystone XL pipeline in the U.S, and divesting public institutions everywhere from fossil fuels.  All of our work leverages people power to dismantle the influence and infrastructure of the fossil fuel industry, and to develop people-centric solutions to the climate crisis.”  What kind of action could we take?  We could organize a picnic at the state park with our sister UU churches and hire a speaker to talk about climate change.  In the vestry, I have left papers that list a host of organizations that deal with this crisis and some that offer solutions.  Perhaps we could meet with the town government and ask how they are planning to have cleaner sources of energy.

Our Jewish heritage tells us to repair the world; our Christian heritage tells us to reconcile the world.  Our 7th principle suggests that we live knowing we are part of an interdependent web–with all living creatures on this planet.  Our commitment to the planet will determine our actions.  What will we eat?  What kind of car will we drive?  How much driving will we do?  If we have any extra money, where should we invest it?  Should we put solar panels on our roof?  Whatever your actions, let them come from an awakened, open heart.  Let our actions come from our sense of freedom rather than compulsion.  Let our actions be a form of spiritual practice.  We can pray while we turn down the heat.  We can meditate as we turn off the lights, or buy LED light bulbs.  Not everyone will be drawn to civil disobedience, but some may.  My feeling is that no matter what we do, how insignificant it may seem to us, it matters a great deal.  It is our way of telling the world: this is what I care about, this is what I believe in, this is what I love.

Let us not be afraid to enter the political arena.  Religion and politics do mix.  They always have and they always will.  God bless the Earth and may love bless all of you.

Amen.