Homily: Prayers for the Earth and Her People
“To be a human being is an honor” Chief Jake Swamp spoke the traditional Haudenosaunee morning prayer. “We offer thanks for all the gifts of life.”
That prayer begins and ends with gratitude.
To be a human being is an honor…not an entitlement.
An honor and a privilege…that comes with a responsibility to recognize all that we have been given…all that we receive…all that we rely on …because we are bound together in an inescapable garment of destiny.
To recognize all that we have been given and find a way to live that honors…and respects…and preserves this creation of which we are a part, but only a part.
To begin each day with thanks.
The wisdom of the Iroquois prayer is that it assumes connection…our connection to one another and our connection to mother earth…our connection to creation.
That morning prayer assumes that we know…that we have not forgotten the connection in which we live. Not become divorced from the knowledge of who we are…earth’s children.
And it is a reminder…
That we do not stand, somehow, independent and apart…
We are bound together…all born of the earth..of Gaia, who is always calling us home…
All part of a process…not a fixed tableau…change is always taking place…
We are all part of a process of creation…of change…that is not moving toward some predetermined end…but a process of change shaped, at least in part, by how we…who are just one part of that creation…a process of creation shaped at least in part by how we choose to live.
To be human is an honor…and a privilege…
Happy Earth Day. I’m a bit early…Earth Day is Wednesday. But still…Happy Earth Day.
50 years ago, on April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans…10% of the US population then…took to the streets…to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet. That day launched the modern environmental justice movement.
Success followed. Legislation…Clean Air and Water Acts. Endangered Species Act. The progress was never enough…not fast enough…but progress it was.
Concern for the earth and questions about the sustainability of our human way of life gradually
became a part of what liberal religious folks did…and do.
There has always been pushback. But that pushback…in the last few years… has been so much more effective than we thought possible. Emission standards rolled back. Wilderness opened to drilling. The Keystone pipeline in operation again despite the leaks. Just last week, regulations on emissions of mercury from fossil-fuel fired power plants relaxed…again.
We know that these roll-back are ultimately self-destructive…ultimately bankrupt.
I mean bankrupt…literally…as oil prices plummet and supplies threaten to overfill every reserve…as the engine of demand slows…it is clear that we have created a fragile prosperity dependent on despoiling the earth that is our home.
It should be clear to all now that what we knew as normal is bankrupt financially.
But more importantly, it is bankrupt spiritually…requiring belief in the fiction of our independence and the denial of the truth of our reliance on the earth and all that we receive from her. Denial of the truth of our reliance on all the “essential” workers who are now most at risk.
Are we surprised that it is black and brown and immigrant communities that pay the greatest price. If the liberal community has learned nothing else in 50 years of reflection and study on race, surely…surely that cannot be a surprise.
But even with reactionary leadership at the national level reversing progress that we thought had been solidly made, we liberal religious folks celebrate the energy and commitment of young leaders…like Ilex, who preached earlier that environmental justice is not some noble choice, some self-sacrifice…but the only sustainable choice…because we are part of nature.
Activist Greta Thunberg said it powerfully: “How dare you.” “How dare you pretend that [climate change] can be solved with business as usual.”
But Thunberg has had to self-isolate after becoming symptomatic for Covid 19. She couldn’t be tested…like so very many here in the US… She is largely recovered, but she had to stop travelling…even by sailboat…
The world changed…just weeks ago. So many assumptions overturned. Both the fragility of life and the operation of privilege spotlighted with such clarity.
What do these days ask us to see? And to know? For what should we be praying on this Earth Day?
Rev. Galen Guengrich, minister at All Souls Church in Manhattan, writes:
“the challenge is to find a middle distance between an individual quest for freedom…that leaves us each isolated and an authoritarian insistence on certainty… that leaves us all in bondage. We need a way of being religious that sets us free but leaves us whole. …the hallmark of this way of being religious is the discipline of gratitude.”
A way of being religious that sets us free, but leaves us whole.
It is wholeness, I believe, for which we should pray this Earth Day.
I was so struck by this image from New Delhi, India. It shows the famous India Gate… last October on the left, and last week, on the right.
Same camera. Same distance. Same settings. What a difference.
One message to take from this image is the dramatic despoiling of our atmosphere…and our water…and our land…that we have come to accept as normal. You can hardly see the arch in the left hand image. And that was accepted…the price of progress…one of the unfortunate perhaps but inevitable by-products of prosperity.
How sad. How tragic. It is a message that calls for lamentation.
But that is not the only message we can find in this image.
Because it has been only weeks of fewer cars and mopeds, just a few weeks of less coal being burned…just a few weeks…and the skies have cleared…
The gate can be seen…
In Northeast India, the large indigenous Unitarian community there can see the Himalayas about which their hymns sing…but which they haven’t seen in years…they can see the mountains again.
Would it be stretching the metaphor too far to say that we can see, through that gate, a path toward health and wholeness…a path toward rejuvenation…a path toward honest gratitude?
We have allowed the earth to rest a bit for just weeks…and we can see the sky again.
The message that I want us to find is that it is not too late. That recovery is not impossible. That we can reclaim a different spirit as we return to whatever normal will become. That we can remember gratitude and also find hope…if we choose a new normal.
A new normal that does not mistake growth for happiness.
A new normal that does not protect the privileges of a few of us at the expense of so many of us.
A new normal in which past injustice is not allowed to replicate and might even be repaired.
A new normal in which human persons, not corporate persons, are most important.
A new normal in which we might, with open hearts, begin our days with gratitude…
To be a human being is an honor…We give thanks for all the gifts of life….and we promise to create a new normal in which our children and our childrens’ children can thrive.
As we celebrate this 50th anniversary of Earth Day, the task we must accept is to create a new normal in which both the earth and all of her peoples can thrive.
Will you pray with me now? Make yourself comfortable. There is a great deal that we need to hold.
Spirit of Life and of Love. Spirit of the Earth, of Gaia, of connection and of hope.
We hold first the victims of this virus. The thousands of families grieving losses. Those still struggling for breath. Those recovering, waiting for strength to return.
We hold the “essential laborers” among us. Those who labor for so little but without whose labor we would perish. Those who cannot stay at home.
We hold all those who fear. Those without work now or savings. Those in the food bank lines. Those in high risk groups. Those without secure retirement and those whose retirement has just become less secure.
We hold our leaders…all of our elected leaders…and pray that they may not forget that they serve the common good.
And, as we celebrate Earth Day for a 50th time, we hold Gaia, our mother with clarified appreciation and deepened commitment and unending gratitude for all we receive.
We look with reverence at the power of recovery the Earth makes plain.
We hold all of these intentions on this day…we offer our presence in prayer and we pray to sustain our awareness…to not allow the blinders of the normal we have accepted to shield our eyes from the truth that is being revealed to us in these covid-days.
We hold all of these intentions and we join our hearts with those who demand that hope is possible.
We align ourselves with the words of Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman. Her video, filmed at the LA Public Library, should be required viewing for us all.
“The question isn’t if but how we will weather this unknown together,” she wrote.
As one we will defeat both despair and disease.
…
In this loss we will learn to love.
In this chaos we will discern clarity.
In our suffering we must find solidarity.
Our grief can give us back our gratitude
And show us how to find hope if we lose it.
Do not give in to the pain. Give it purpose. Use it.”
Spirit of Life. Help us listen. Help us hear. Help us hope.
Great Spirit, we pray for the earth and for all of her peoples…
But we know that we are the ones we need to pray for most…
That it is our hearts that need to be healed…made whole…
Spirit of love.
Be with us. Within us. Among us.
Help us begin with gratitude that is informed by our grief but is not limited to it. Help us sustain both courage and clarity.
May we remember, always, that our task is to build a community that we can with pride call beloved, a community in which love is real and justice, to quote the prophet, flows down like waters.
On this anniversary of Earth Day, hear our prayers for the earth and for all her peoples.
Amen.
Topics: Possibility