by Bruce Davis, Intern Minister

A sermon given April 25, 2004

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

Reading         

Something will have gone out of us as a people

If we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed,

If we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into

Comic books and plastic cigarette cases,

If we drive the few remaining members of the wild species

Into zoos or to extinction,

If we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams

And push our paved roads through the last of the silence,

So that never again will Americans be free in their own country

From the noise, the exhausts,

The stinks of human and automotive waste.

And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves

Single, separate, vertical and individual in the world,

Part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil,

Brother to the other animals, part of the natural world

And competent to belong to it.

--Wallace Stegner

Four years ago, when I was just getting started on this path to ministry, I went to the woods for a long weekend with a UU minister I was getting to know. Over the years Jon has been both friend and mentor, and I would not be where I am now without his support. We retreated together to a cabin in the Olympic rainforest on Lake Quinault, as Thoreau in his day retreated to his cabin at Walden.

I am remembering a walk we took one morning on a forest path. A winding trail led up a stream that had carved grottos lined with lady fern. Old growth Douglas fir, western red cedar, and Sitka spruce surrounded us. So tall and massive were these ancient trees, their canopy releasing now and again shafts of sunlight to the forest floor, we felt as if we were in a great natural cathedral. One massive spruce on the lakeshore was so huge that it would take twenty of us, hand in hand, if we wanted to circle it ‘round. At a boggy place we spotted an owl on top of a silver snag, watching us watching it.

The next week, in a moment of reverie between seminary classes, I reflected on that walk. No doubt Jon was becoming a close friend. But I noticed that I also had a feeling of warmth for the sacred woods we had enjoyed together. It was as if I felt something like friendship for those ancient trees and green grottos, and for the owl that kept an eye on our progress. When I got home after school that day a small package was waiting at the door. Jon had sent a slim volume of poems, written by the Indian mystical poet, Rabindrinath Tagore. I opened to the middle of the book and was caught by a poem, only four words long: “These trees are prayers.”

Many of us in the Pacific Northwest count moments of natural beauty like this as key aspects of our spirituality. But, unfortunately, sacred moments are not our only experiences in nature.

The day after our hike, Jon and I drove from Lake Quinault down to the ocean beach, about twenty miles away, to watch the waves and the listen to the mewing of the gulls. What we found as we drove west were great expanses where the old-growth forest had been replaced with seedling trees, and fields where burning slash piles attested to recent clear-cut logging. Walking on the beach, we could not help but notice the plastic bags, plastic bottles, and chunks of Styrofoam mixed in with the driftwood: the jetsam of our consumer culture.

In moments of epiphany in Nature we really get that we are one with our earth. Our perception shifts, and we begin to see the beings around us in an intimate and sacred way. “These trees are prayers,” the poet says, and in our hearts we know it’s true. But such moments are all too rare—the exception rather than the rule. More often humans see the world around them in terms of its uses. How many board feet can we get from this hundred-acre plot? How many fish sticks can we make from ten tons of rockfish? And, whether lumber or fish, what price will we get for our labors?

Ecological theologian Sallie McFague comments on the tension between these two ways of knowing our world. Our intention towards use and exploitation of earth and her resources objectifies what we see. If we are thinking in terms of two-by-fours and shingles, we know the tree as a subject knows an object. During those moments of epiphany when we really do feel the essence of the natural world, expressing its being in myriad ways, then we as subjects know the world also as subjects. What have been the objects of our knowing shift, if only for a moment, into subjects. When this shift happens in my perception of another person—when I get the subject that you really are, not the uses I may put you to or the roles you may play in my life—then I know you are my friend. McFague says that saving earth from our exploitation will depend on more of us, more of the time, aspiring to a relationship like friendship with the natural world.

She describes the shift in perception this way:

One day while hiking, I recall coming across a bi-footed, tri-colored violet, a rare and extraordinarily beautiful flower. It was all alone by the side of the trail…. I was transfixed by its beauty, its specialness, its fragility, and by the sense of privilege I felt to be looking at it. It was seeing it as a subject; that is, I was relating to it with a recognition of its own intrinsic value quite apart from me. It was not simply an object to me. Rather, it had its own very special being.

We walk heavily on earth, we first-worlders, especially we Americans. Our footprints leave deep marks in the fragile balance of the planet. You may have seen the Sierra Club’s book, Material World, in which statistically average families from all over the world are photographed in front of their dwelling with all their possessions. As you might imagine, the average American family needed a wide-angle lens to get all their stuff in. The world average for material consumption is only a third of the U.S. average.

There’s a website that can give you a way to calculate how heavily you and your family are walking on earth. Just do a search on “ecological footprint.” But the website starts right out with a caution.

WARNING: The results your answers produce may disturb you. In a few reported cases, the users' mental well-being was affected and some serious thinking was induced.

When I calculated my own footprint I realized that it takes 4.2 acres of agricultural land to feed me for a year. Although I come in at about 85% of the American average, I would need to reduce that to about 33% of the American average if I want my individual consumption to be consistent with sustainability. The decisions are clear. Less meat in my diet. A fuel-efficient car that I use less. A smaller home. The website is set up in a way that allows me to monitor improvements I might make in the months or years ahead.

As Denise Levertov asserts in our responsive reading, we are beginners in this work of aligning our lifestyle to what earth can sustain. We don’t begin at the end. We start by asking ourselves, what can I do next? What must I do next? The answer will be different for each of us. Modest beginnings can lead to dramatic transformations.

It’s not just the total consumption by each person that’s problematic here. Over-consumption results in unintended toxicities, as when the carbon emissions of our cars deplete the protective layer of ozone in our atmosphere. And by over-harvesting naturally occurring earth gifts, like the fish in the sea or the mature forests, we disturb the balances that earth has taken eons to achieve.

From earth’s vantage point, it is our behaviors in the aggregate that matter most. How are we doing here in Oregon? Another invaluable web resource is called Northwest Environmental Watch, found at northwestwatch.org. The idea here is that it’s possible to identify key indicators of environmental sustainability and monitor them over time, noting where we have improved as a community, where we still have work to do, and where we’re actually worsening in our environmental performance.

Here are a couple of examples. In the last decade there’s been a decrease in suburban sprawl in Oregon, probably based on our growth management laws. Clear-cut logging has decreased by more than half in the last decade, and yet we are still clear-cutting an Oregon acre every five minutes—a sign that we’re still not seeing the forest for the trees. Oregon uses more highway fuel and non-industrial electricity per person than Californians or New Yorkers, nearing the rates of Texans. Although vehicle use is down per person, the popularity of pick-ups and SUVs to Oregonians in the last ten years has dramatically increased gasoline consumption. Good data like this help us to come up with specific strategies for specific problems regionally.

National and world responses to earth harms had some real momentum for a while. As early as 1972 the Stockholm Conference of the United Nations recognized the impasse between human demands and earth resources. By 1982 a Charter for Nature of the UN was passed, and in 1992 the United Nations held the Conference on Environment and Development. Recently the Kyoto Accords on world carbon emissions were ratified in Japan, albeit in a diluted form.

Yet, we’ve seen discouraging reversals of important ecological positions, especially in the last few years. Our own government withdrew from the Kyoto process entirely—simply walked away from the dialog—to the disappointment of people all over the world. Oil exploration in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge is on the table again, even though the area’s long-term value as a wilderness far exceeds the value of the oil that we might take from it. This refuge is described as “the most complete, pristine, and undisturbed ecosystem on earth. Here coastal lagoons, barrier islands, arctic tundra, foothills, mountains and boreal forests provide a combination of habitats, climate, and geography unmatched by any other northern conservation area—conditions that support the refuge’s diverse community of life.”

Environmental theologian Matthew Fox suggests that the momentum of the ecology movement has indeed slowed. Though the direct cause may be reversals where there had once been gains, Fox says we can only rebuild that momentum by coming to a new relationship with the planet. We must envision a healthy earth and we must imagine and live out a new kind of earth covenant if we are to uphold earth’s rights to health and wholeness. We must treat earth as worthy of our caring attention, as we might our parent or our child.

How can we take steps to strengthen our spirit-bond with nature? The answer, I think, is the same with any deep relationship. It takes practice. If our bond with earth is a spiritual relationship, and I believe it is, then developing that bond may become an increasingly important part of our spiritual practice.

Each of us must find our own way in this, but here are a few practices to consider.

We must preserve pristine natural settings, and retreat to them often enough to keep our relationship with earth strong. The relational quality that we bring to such places makes them the more sacred to us. We must, like Thoreau, become apprentices to nature’s beauty and wildness.

One night in canoes, we paddled the clear water of Willapa Bay, north of the Columbia River on the Washington coast. The phosphorescence shined so brightly in the saltwater that you could see the tip of your paddle two feet under the water. At dawn a great blue heron glided by, just two feet off our bow, unperturbed. As if she knew we belonged there, too. We can find moments of connection like this only if we have wild places to visit.

1.      Clear your mind.

2.      Let go of time.

3.      Slow down.

4.      Sit down.

5.      Let go of worries.

6.      Be quiet.

7.     Experience without analyzing and labeling.

8.      Look for the uniqueness in the commonplace.

9.      Listen to your heart.

10.  Let go of inhibitions and prejudices.

11.  Immerse yourself.

• Practices of earth relationship, as important as they are, are our play, not our work. A church group that goes hiking every month builds a deeper connection to earth while enjoying their outing. A gardener is not only a grower of vegetables, but is also growing her love of the soil and her affinity to earth’s cycles. By building daily practices of loving earth, each in our own ways, we have a greater chance to drop habitual patterns that over-use and abuse earth

Humanity’s relationship with the planet must change or dire and irreversible consequences will result. We keep hearing this. But fear and guilt are poor motivators. Another close friend and teacher of mine became so overwhelmed by feelings of environmental doom that he lost his optimism and withdrew from the issue entirely for many years. Making a difference depends on our ability to affirm ourselves and our planet. To bring hope and action together.

The spiritual message is this. Life itself is calling us to join in the struggle to save earth, to envision how it would be to live as siblings with beast and flower—closely and lovingly related. The Spirit of Life we sense deep within ourselves recognizes Spirit of Life in the natural world in which we live, if we allow ourselves to be open to it. Our connection with the natural world is itself natural. Drawn by the ineffable beauty of creation, we will find charm in sacred places and affinity to each sacred being. By love are we bound to care for them, for they are our kin.

May it be so.  Amen.

PRAYER

Holy Creator,

You have formed our world as a delicately balanced whole

And have given us our place in the family of things.

And yet, in our longing for safety and comfort,

We know that we have upset the balance,

And our dear earth is paying a heavy price.

Help us to know and love and serve

This tender planet that is our home

And our friend.

Help us to come back to our place

In the family of things.

In the name of the All,

Amen.

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Copyright 2004, Bruce Davis.  All rights reserved.