Earlier this month the Washington Post Magazine decided to illustrate its cover about climate change in an unusual way. To mark the occasion of Earth Day—and the scale of the impact of global warming—it produced not one but 24 magazine covers on the many ways global warming is affecting our lives.[1]

And I have to say they are some beautiful covers. ..With some sobering headlines and stories.

Insects around the world are in a crisis, according to a small but growing number of long-term studies showing dramatic declines in invertebrate populations.

More explosive and rapidly spreading fires leave communities with little notice or chance to evacuate. Such fire behavior stood out in the deadly 2018 Carr and Camp fires in California.

Antarctic glaciers have been melting at an accelerating pace over the past four decades thanks to an influx of warm ocean water— a startling new finding that researchers say could mean sea levels are poised to rise more quickly than predicted in coming decades.

A new scientific survey has found that the glaciers of the Arctic are the world’s biggest contributors to rising seas, shedding ice at an accelerating rate that now adds well over a millimeter to the level of the ocean every year.

Climate change is beginning to reorder the global wine industry, altering the patterns of how and where grapes are produced and testing whether the world’s iconic regions can find ways to adapt.

Deep breath. I don’t know about you but it feels like we read and hear stories like these every day. And I don’t know about you but I increasingly find I don’t quite know what to do with them all. So much seems to be happening so quickly. So much is at risk.

And with those stories come a lot of statistics. And in these days of fake news it may not always be easy to know what we can trust and what we can’t trust. Sad thing is that the people who spend the most time studying these things say that the statistics are very clear—that things are getting worse faster than expected. But it seems as if far too much energy goes into the wrong conversations when it comes to global warming.

A report published by Climate Central found temperatures rising across the globe. In our country some of the places that have seen the largest rise has been here in the West, with Alaska leading the way. In the years since the first earth day back in 1970 temperatures there have increased by over 4 degrees on average. Here in Oregon that has been closer to 2 degrees according to this source.[2]

Two degrees doesn’t sound like a whole lot but that is a big change in a short amount of time. It means that places that are dry are probably getting more dry. It means that places that are wet may be getting wetter. It means the scale of storms are such that more damage is happening and the frequency of storms is increasing.

Scientists widely agree that the main source of the problem is the amount of carbon dioxide that is being released into the atmosphere. That is happening because of how much fossil fuel like coal and oil we are burning. All that carbon means that heat gets trapped and can’t get out as much as it used to. Think of the inside of your car when it is parked in the sun and the windows are rolled up. It doesn’t take long for it to get very hot.

All the statistics and all the ways things are changing are pretty sobering—overwhelming, actually. All too often I notice in myself that feeling of overwhelm can quickly be followed by a sense of fear and dread. I don’t quite know what to do. I’m not sure where to begin.

The writer Wendell Berry says that too often the recognition that the problems are big leads us to look for the big solution, the one that will solve the problem all at once. But that probably isn’t the way it’s going to work. The truth is that the problem is big… and it won’t be solved easily. It has taken a long time for us to get to this place and the solutions may take a long time as well.

Wendell Berry himself has been thinking about all this for a long time. He is now in his 80s and has written over 40 books. Berry lives on a farm in Kentucky that has been in his family for over 200 years and his work and his writing come out of the context of that farm.

Berry says that our first task is to pay attention to what the earth around us is saying. His words:  “The answers will come not from walking up to your farm and saying “this is what I want and this is what I expect from you.” You walk up and you say “what do you need?”. And you commit yourself to say “all right, I’m not going to do any extensive damage here until I know what it is that you are asking of me.”[3]

He says this is something that can’t be hurried and that the situation we are now in will take a lot of patience.  And he notes that to be patient in an emergency is a terrible trial.

And perhaps that’s where the spiritual challenge comes in—we are asked to be present with the whole of it all and we are asked to act-and to act quickly.

Patience is not a quality that we see a lot in our culture. We want things to be quick and easy. But the reality with global warming is that we perhaps can’t even imagine all the ways that life will be different and what it will mean for all of our lives. We need to respond and we need to adapt.

And part of what we need to do is make a space to grieve what is being lost. When the reality of some of those magazine covers sinks in we are left with so much change that it can be overwhelming and leaving us not knowing what it is we can do.

Back in January the Rev. Sofia Betancourt was our guest speaker at Seminary for a Day. During the Q and A she was asked a question about global warming. I don’t recall the exact question but it had to do with whether she believed it was too late to essentially correct course when it comes to global warming. When she answered she talked about how it is no longer a question about the what—that life as we know it has changed and is going to continue to change—the question before us is the how. How will we face this going forward? And for Betancourt it started with the awareness of the systems that got us here in the first place. The systems that would have a few benefiting at the expense of the many, the cultures of patriarchy and white supremacy that would also benefit some over others. And that our first task in facing the future—as daunting and as overwhelming as it can be—is to look at how we might face that future in ways that don’t just replicate the problems that we already have and repeat the patterns that have gotten us to this place already.

When it comes to our relationship with the earth, much of our culture is grounded in the Judeo-Christian myths of creation that gives humans dominion over the planet. It is something that has been given to us to use. It is not so much seen as something we need to protect as much as it is seen as something to spend. Underlying this is the notion that it will always be there for us to use as we please, that it is an inexhaustible resource. Of course we know that isn’t necessarily the case. The drive for profits takes precedent over right relationship with the land and its resources. This certainly feels like the ethos in much of our government right now. We need to look not only at the short term goals but the longer-term ones as well. And it is important to note the parallels with how our treatment of the earth reflects our treatment of some of our human siblings as well, be they Native ASSmericans or people of color.

We need to pay attention, I think, to what is happening. We also need to pay attention to the grief that is so much a part of all this. Grief in recognizing all that has been lost. Grief in recognizing what this will mean for future generations. It asks us to acknowledge what has been lost, and in that acknowledging we also come to acknowledge what we have had, maybe what has been taking for granted. Some of that comes with the recognition of our own privilege and how we have perhaps benefited from some of those very systems that have brought so much destruction.

Grief is a strange and mysterious thing. Grief can have a way of turning us inside out, seeing ourselves and the world in a different way. Maybe stepping back and seeing some of the very systems that got us to this place already. Maybe seeing how things might be different. How we are asked to be—to live—in a different way.

Wendell Berry says that we really don’t have a right to ask whether we’re going to succeed or not. The only question we have a right to ask is what’s the right thing to do? What does this earth require of us if we want to continue to live on it?

One of the things that grief does is it makes us aware of just how interdependent we are—how our individual lives are so very much connected with the whole. I think part of the theological call is to not forget that, to let that awareness infuse all we do.

There’s a dance, I think, between the first of our principles, the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and the last one, the call of the interdependent web of which we are all a part. It comes with awareness that those two go hand in hand. That the individual’s worth really can’t be inherent apart from the worth and dignity of the whole. And there’s a paradox with all this. As we feel more and more threatened does that actually call us back to that place of seeing ourselves as up against others—that as resources become more and more scarce it is up to us to first of all make sure that we ourselves are Ok.

I think that may be where the shift in consciousness most needs to come, that awareness that what affects one of us affects all of us—and most of all those at the margins.

Our inherent worth and dignity as humans really doesn’t mean much if we don’t have a home to live in in the first place.

It is a call to mindfulness. When we are in the presence of a tree, we think about where it has come from, how long it has been alive, perhaps longer than we have been. We think of the things that sustain it—the rain, the sun, the soil. We think about its future, how long it will be there. We imagine what will come after it.

In our own lives it might be an ever deepening mindfulness of those who have guided us, of the things we inherit from them. And we see what we will leave for future generations. Ecologist Joanna Macy calls this concept deep time. It is an awareness of what has come before us and what will go after us. It is paying attention to what we have, where it comes from and what will be left of it. When we are able to move and act out of the bigger picture, we are better able to work to preserve the world we live in, and we are more empowered in our lives.

As we see ourselves as part of something larger, we are more able to see our path to challenging the many divisions in our world—racism, sexism, ableism, ageism, classism—all the isms that disconnect us from the broader meaning behind the interdependent web, and what makes it so central to who we are as a religious people. What touches any one part of the system affects the system as a whole.

Words of Susan Griffin:

“And how we are each purpose, how each cell, how light and soil are in us, how we are in the soil, how we are in the air, how we are both tiny and great and how we are infinitely without any purpose you can see, in the way we stand, each alone, yet none of us separable, none of us beautiful when separate but all exquisite as we stand each moment heeded in this cycle, no detail unlovely.”[4]

One more cover from the Washington Post this morning:

A movement that began with a single teenager protesting outside the Swedish parliament last summer became a global phenomenon on March 15 as hundreds of thousands of students worldwide skipped school and took to the street to demand urgent action on climate change. That included hundreds of students here in Portland.

As is so often the case, it is the young people who are leading us when it comes to global warming, calling us to more action, more focus on future generations.

There is much to be done and there’s no time to waste. But to also remember that every task we do, every decision we make moves out of a deep sense of relatedness, that each moment of mindfulness that we bring, is all part of the healing of the world. We are all part of that whole.

Perhaps the starting place in life begins in that place of awe, that place of reverence. Sometimes maybe we need to be pulled out of our slumber to see things we hadn’t seen before. That, at least, is where the spiritual part begins—a recognition that our own life is totally dependent on all of the rest of life. And from there comes the choices we make every day of our lives. The food we eat and where it comes from, the choices we make about what we consume, or don’t consume. The choices we make about how we invest our resources. All of that needs to flow out of that realization of our interdependence. 

And from that spiritual place needs to flow the political and the practical. It is important that we find a way to make our voices heard in the process. 

We live in times that ask much of us, friends. This is not a time to be timid. One philosopher has called this a hinge point in history—the choices we make now will have far reaching implications for a long, long time.

Let us not forget, good people, that we are all in this dance together. Let us hold on tight. And let us all be sustained on the journey. So be it. Amen.

Prayer: Spirit of life, help us to be ever mindful of the blessings of our lives, most of all the blessings of this good, green earth we call home. Help us to be faithful stewards of all creation. Help us to see our lives connected through and through with mystery, with wonder, with hope. In this time of spring, in this time of new life, renew in us our commitment to work for justice that life might be sustained from generation to generation. Amen.

Benediction: Live with your hearts open, good people, listening what the earth might be telling us. Walk gently, love fiercely, and in all your days give thanks. Amen.

---

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/lifestyle/magazine/climate-change-covers/?utm_term=.303d28a49fe0

[2] https://www.climatecentral.org/news/report-american-warming-us-heats-up-earth-day

[3] http://billmoyers.com/episode/encore-wendell-berry-poet-prophet/

[4] From “Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her” by Susan Griffin. Harper Collins Publishers.

Topics: Atonement