We come to worship on holy land, and we honor the native people on whose traditional land we gather today.
We recognize the Multnomah, Clackamas, Clowwewalla and Cascades bands of Chinookan peoples, and the Tualatin Band of Kalapuya.
These indigenous peoples signed the Willamette Valley Treaty of 1855 and later were forced to relocate to the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation. Their descendants, and the descendants of many other indigenous nations of the Columbia River, live on today.
We acknowledge the people of this place and recognize that we are here because of the sacrifices forced on them. We honor their legacy, their lives, and their descendants who carry on Tribal traditions for present and future generations.
We gather to worship on holy, living land, earth which supports and sustains us, and which people have lived in relationship and connection to for eons. In this place, on this land, we gather to remember our connection to one another and the divine.
Come now, and let us worship together.
Part 1:
“I used to know an old man who could walk by any cornfield and hear the corn singing. ‘Teach me,’ I’d say, when we walked on by (I never said a word while he was listening).”
These are the opening lines of my favorite book to read with young people outdoors. It’s called The Other Way to Listen, and in it Byrd Baylor tells the story of an old man teaching a child to use more than just her physical senses.
She can’t understand what the old man means when he says that he can hear that a rock and a lizard like each other. He explains to her, “Sometimes EVERYTHING BEING RIGHT makes a kind of sound. Like just now. It wasn’t much more than a good feeling that I heard from that old rock.”
He also tells the child of a friend of his who once “heard a whole sky full of stars when she was seven, and later on when she was eighty-three, she heard a cactus blooming in the dark.”
The child tries and tries to listen to the world around her and understand the old man’s meaning, becoming frustrated when she only hears “wind and quail and coyote and doves – just things that anyone could hear.”
Finally, as she walks through the hills one morning near her home, she decides to sing to the hills since they wouldn’t sing to her. “Hello hills, hello hills, hello hills, hello.” Then she says, “All I know is, suddenly I wasn’t the only one singing. The hills were singing too. I stopped. I didn’t move for maybe an hour. I never listened so hard in my life… Of course, their kind of singing isn’t loud… It isn’t made with words… All I can say is, it came straight up from those dark shiny lava rocks humming. It moved around like wind. It seemed to be the oldest sound in the world.”
Last summer, on a hot dry day, I read The Other Way to Listen to a group of rambunctious elementary-schoolers at a Unitarian Universalist summer camp. Then we all spent some time just sitting quietly by ourselves in the woods and listening. Afterwards, an eight-year-old said that when she listened with her heart, she felt like the wind and the sun and the ponderosa pines were all “giving her a back-rub” and that she was “melting into the ground.” This child was, in that moment, connected to the world through her heart, in a way that gave her the physical sensation of safety and closeness. You might say that she was spiritually alive. She was visibly calm, and carrying herself with a sense of curiosity, love, and wonder.
I told her and the other campers that this is a feeling that is always available to them, whether in nature or the city, at home or school or in a park — that the holy is always close at hand. That whenever we are frustrated or angry or sad, we can draw on this feeling of connection to the world, and be calmed, held, and open-hearted.
Have you been that child? Have you ever felt held by the world like that? Have you listened for the spirit of life and heard it answer?
Part 2:
I asked before if you had ever felt that connection, that spiritual awakening and being held by nature. I have.
When I was in high school, I had never really felt connected with the language of God, because I couldn’t imagine some all-powerful bearded guy sitting up in the sky controlling my life. But then I went on a monthlong backpacking trip in Yosemite that included four days completely by myself, and there I felt held by something larger than me, something that felt like God.
As I looked around, it seemed that every leaf and rock and even each fallen pine tree was where it should be. I felt, like our anthem today named, “Free as a bird, free as the wind, clear like water that flows from the mountain.”
Like the transcendentalists early in the American Unitarian movement—Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, and others—I discovered connection with the divine in the direct relationship between my own heart and the rhythm of the natural world around me.
When I feel spiritually alive in this way, this gift from the earth makes me want connect and give back. Especially as we approach a new year, I find myself curious about what the best way to do that is.
One way we might think to be kind to the earth would be to “protect it” in some way, since after centuries of pollution, clear-cutting, and damming of rivers, and decades of mountain-top removal mining, fracking, and pesticide use, we have inherited a suffering earth.
I’ve heard that a way to remember the goals of the mainstream environmental movement is global C-P-R, which stands for Conservation of existing wild spaces, Preservation of vulnerable ones, and Restoration to wildness of lands that have been damaged by human use.
The idea goes like this: the more land we can clear of invasive species and human occupation, the better. The more land we can re-populate with native grasses and birds, the better. And, the more land we designate as wilderness, far away from cities and towns, the less guilty we need to feel for paving and polluting the land we live on every day.
The problem I see is that all of these ideas assume that nature and people must essentially be different and separate, and that some pieces of land are too impacted by humans to be holy, or to be worth our love and care.
And yet, as Unitarian Universalists, I believe we are called to cultivate a more nuanced understanding of humans’ relationship with the earth. If we want lasting change, the stopgap emergency measures of CPR, of just protecting certain pieces of land, are important but are not enough—we need healing and connection at a deep personal and spiritual level.
At the very foundation of this mainstream form conservation is the myth that before Europeans arrived, the landscape of the Americas was idyllic, “natural”, and untouched by human influence. In other words, that what Columbus had stumbled into was like the Garden of Eden, where the land was perpetually abundant, and the only thing in the way of perfection was the other people who were already here.
The myth of an untouched America before Europeans is simply untrue, since many historical native peoples managed their landscapes, and this myth has been downright dangerous for Native Americans. There is a long, violent, and heart-wrenching history of white Americans forcefully removing indigenous people from their own homelands, methodically erasing their cultures, and killing anyone who resisted.
So, this myth, this untrue story of a pure, natural, was used as justification to clear the way for white settlers and for the mythological “pristine” wilderness areas… including Yosemite, the homeland of the Ahwahneechee Miwok people, where I had that high school backpacking experience. The irony is not lost on me.
In many ways, this myth actually gets in the way of the possibility of a meaningful relationship with the land today. If our very presence ruins nature, but the goal is to “return” to a kind of wilderness that never actually existed, what hope do we have to achieve that goal?
With this myth in mind, I see no option other than to cordon off the most desolate places as “wilderness” and have everyone except the select privileged few, with park passes and cars outdoor gear, stay as far away as possible. That is, to perform C-P-R and keep Earth on life support.
But as you may know, life support isn’t really the same as living fully. To actually heal our relationship with land, I believe we need to begin by changing ourselves and our practice of listening and connection. Rather than relying on the white-led environmental status quo, and romanticized stereotypes of native peoples, we must center and listen to the voices of the modern indigenous movement and other frontline communities as we work together to re-form our relationship with these lands.
This means recognizing that the spark of divinity inside each of us is also within each being and each part of nature, and that we are all more alike than we realize — that the river that flows in each of our souls is part of a greater force of life and love, and that we owe our lives to those before us and around us.
Part 3:
“We should not be asking ourselves what kind of earth we want to leave for our children, but rather what kind of children we want to raise to take care of the earth.” These are the words of Clayton Thomas-Müller, an activist, writer, and speaker of the Mathias Columb Cree Nation in Northern Manitoba. For him, the central question is not about the land itself and whether or not it is protected, but about the people and our identity and relationship with the land.
Naomi Klein, a writer and activist, has said that in terms of our lifestyles and environmentalism, we “want change without having to change at all.”
Can we be radically inclusive enough to welcome the earth into our own families and our sense of self, knowing that doing so may change us and our priorities?
Jeanette Armstrong, a member of the Canadian First Peoples Okanagan tribe and a cultural educator, describes how integral the Okanagan relationship to land is to their identity. She says, “When we say the Okanagan word for ourselves [Sy-ilx], we are actually saying ‘the ones who are dream and land together.’ That is our original identity. Before anything else, we are the living, dreaming Earth pieces…”
“The living, dreaming Earth pieces.” I am so struck by this understanding of human identity. Rather than having dominion over the earth, being separate from or even being connected to it, the Okanagan understand themselves to literally BE the earth, the physical manifestation of Earth’s consciousness.
What would our approach be to healing planet earth if all of us understood it to be part of our own bodies? And how might we view ourselves differently if we truly understood how we are entwined with the world around us?
Ultimately, we can’t make real change in how we “help” the earth until we recognize that the earth is us and we are the earth. Our attempts at “saving” the earth when we think of it as something separate and for us to control will never fully work, since we have written ourselves out of what a balanced ecosystem looks like.
And, when we think of the earth as an object, an “other”, we can’t as easily draw on the spiritual strength it gives us to continue the work of healing. This is why I believe so strongly in environmental education and in outdoor camp experiences — they provide an opportunity for us to listen deeply to the earth and experience that transcendent mystery, connection, and wonder that speaks to us of oneness.
In our reading today, Gloria Bird, an indigenous writer and poet based in the Seattle area, described the connections of land and people, of ancestors mingling with the beings that sustained them, and the river that connected them all. Similarly, our hymn described that we are not our own, we are not isolated — we are connected to our histories, our neighbors, and the earth.
Though only about 2% of the current US population is Native American, all of us have ancestors who were indigenous somewhere, maybe many places, in the world — people who were tied more closely to the earth, with cultural, material, and spiritual practices that affirmed this connection.
The people we call indigenous now are those who desptie all odds, have maintained these practices, and who we can look to as leaders in finding our way forward to this connection once again — not to adopt the specific traditions or practices of others, but to learn the ethic and discern the ways for us to listen to the earth and the world around us to form our own genuine connection. Even as we face climate change and environmental harm everywhere, there is always a possibility of healing through connection rather than separating ourselves from nature.
The Unitarian Universalist seventh principle invites us into “respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part.” The unity of a single web of existence reminds us that practicing awe and listening for connection are an essential part of our spiritual journey.
To do this, we have to put ourselves in the state of mind of being present to help us connect with the world around us. I know we all have so many things on our minds all the time, but even just pausing to notice the way that raindrops create ripples in a puddle on the sidewalk, or trying to imagine all of the people and places and beings that someone you’re having a conversation with has known, can be ways to connect with this interdependent web.
For me, this practice of noticing, and of presence, has led me to be more and more aware of the impact that my consumption and habits have on the earth, and to strive to truly only take what I need — taking only the materials I need through mending and repairing old items rather than buying them new, and taking only the lives I need to by making sure not to waste food, and not to kill spiders and bugs out of habit.
For you, it may lead you to planting a garden, reading and listening to indigenous leaders, vowing to find something that reflects the divine in every city block you walk, or just becoming more aware of your own connection to the earth and seeing where that leads you to.
So my invitation today is, rather than saving the world, listen to the land. Listen to yourself — the part of you that IS the earth. Listen with humility, knowing that you are just one small part of something so much bigger, and let the earth change you. In this new year, practice the other way to listen, listen with your heart and your spirit.
But don’t take my word for it. As the old man in our story from the beginning suggested: “Do this: go get to know one thing as well as you can. It should be something small. Don’t start with a mountain. Don’t start with the whole Pacific Ocean. Start with one seed pod or one dry weed or one horned toad or one handful of dirt… You have to learn it from the hills and ants and lizards and weeds and things like that. They do the teaching around here.”
Please join me in a spirit of listening and prayer.
Spirit of life and love, of earth and sun and stars, of wind and rain and joy and grief, whisper into our hearts your song of being love. As we listen to our own hearts beat, may we hear the pulse of the eternal.
As we listen to the quiet breathing of those around us, may we hear the ebbing and flowing of this vast river in which we all swim.
As we listen to the sounds of the world around us, be they raindrops, or babies cries, or tires on the pavement, may we hear the beautiful desire of life to live, of existence to be, of love to love.
In our listening, may we feel presence and gratitude for all that is around us and all that we are. May we know that though things may be hard and uncertain and unfair, that there is always more love somewhere closeby, and that within and around each of us is a holy strength and a divine love more powerful than any challenge or change we encounter.
May we know love, and spread love, and be love. Amen.
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Topics: Listening