An
Invitation to Stewardship of the Earth
Rev. Margaret A. Hart
April 20, 2008
First Universalist Society of Central Square, NY
Earth Day
and Arbor Day are coming up on the 22nd, and so we are celebrating them
today. Our children’s story this morning
was “A Tree Is Nice”, and Arbor Day encourages the planting of trees. In anticipation of Earth Day, Rita gave me
something on the history of Earth Day that she found on the web, and I’d like
to share some of it here:
“During the late 1960’s, a concern for the environment emerged into the public view with people such as Ralph Nader (safety
issues) and many others fighting the pollution of our waters by huge
corporations-- especially chemical plants.
But the idea of
preserving our environment wasn’t a new idea. Explorers, writers, poets,
naturalists, artists, photographers in the past were all speaking out about
saving the beauty of what they saw.
It was through their
efforts that the national park system in the United States was developed, as
well as nature groups like the Sierra Club and the Widerness
Society.
But it was really
Senator Gaylord Nelson who came up with the idea for setting aside a day to
honor the environment in which we live.
This “Earth Day” resolution to hold a “teach-in” day was passed by 42
states. The original Earth Day consisted
of a full day of rallies,
speeches, lectures, marches or parades and other programs
designed to raise public awareness of the hazards facing our environment.
Sen. Gaylord Nelson is
also credited with being the first Senator to introduce the bill banning
DDT. He later sponsored numerous bills
preserving the Appalachian Trail and other wild scenic areas.
The first Earth Day was
celebrated on April 22, 1970. More than
20 million Americans took to the streets to demonstrate their concerns for
making a safer environment.
How cities celebrated
Earth Day varied. Some, to help cut down on auto emissions, lowered bus fares
that day to get more people to take the bus [rather] than drive cars. At Boston’s Logan Airport, 200 demonstrators
carried empty coffins into the airport as a protest against noise-pollution
because the airport had plans to expand.
Others even did more sticky and drastic
expressions such as dumping garbage on the steps of their local government
buildings like courthouses.
Mayor John Lindsay of
New York led a march that closed down part of the city’s Fifth Avenue (one of
the busiest commercial streets in the world.)
[While] the observation
of Earth Day [may have] lost some of it’s original
enthusiasm, that hasn’t stopped it from spreading worldwide. It is estimated that approximately 200
million people in 136 countries celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Earth
Day movement [in 1990].”
In the
weeks leading up to this Earth Day, there has been much related to the
environment in the local press, on the television, and on e-mail from various
good causes with which I am associated.
There have been cleanups of litter by various groups in the community in
honor of Earth Day. Some groups, such as
our own Adopt-a-Highway team, don’t limit their efforts to Earth Day, but
having this holiday focuses our attention on the importance of advocating for
the environment throughout the year. The
UU Service Committee always promotes the importance of working to ensure basic
human rights. One thing they are
focusing on is protecting the right to access clean water, something which is increasingly rare in many
parts of the world. A NY State advocacy
group for the environment has been suggesting actions which we can take as
individuals to help protect the Great Lakes, and other environmental treasures
whose health is threatened. As I think
back to the issues involved in the first Earth Day, I can see that there has
been progress. The banning of DDT has
helped the environment tremendously, including the return of eagles, a national
symbol and a glorious sight which had become endangered.
There is
still a frightening array of contaminants in our atmosphere and in our
water. Our environment is still
threatened by our population growth and our so-called progress. Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth has
helped to raise awareness of global warming and climate change, and the
importance of taking action now to stop contributing to the degradation
of our environment. The pictures of the
melting polar ice sheets, and the concomitant endangering of the polar bear
population, are potent arguments for the urgency of now. And then we have the loss of rain forest
acreage-- through slash and burn techniques in which habitat is destroyed along
with all the inhabitants which depended on that habitat. And with that loss of rain forest habitat and its
occupants, the ecology which helped to support the world, is forever gone. It’s a bit like cutting off one of our limbs,
and expecting to continue to thrive as we have up until the loss of that limb. We are all connected, and what happens to one
part of our body, the earth, affects all of us.
And yet,
there are still those who argue that global warming is just a myth rather than
a reality, and that if a reality, then cyclical patterns rather than human
behaviors are responsible. But what if
the doubters of global warming are wrong?
What if human behavior is at least partially responsible for endangering
our environment? And what if we fail to
change those damaging behaviors until it is too late? Some people talk about inhabiting the moon or
some other planet if we trash the earth so badly that it becomes
uninhabitable. But I question whether
this is even possible, let alone desirable.
It strikes me as being rather an adolescent viewpoint, and I apologize
to the teenagers among us. I can picture
the room of a teen, the wastebasket surrounded by items on the floor, that never quite made it into the basket.
One would
hope that this is just a stage to be outgrown.
But I have known many considerate and responsible teenagers, and this is
not just teenage behavior. Sadly, I have
seen an adult empty his car ashtray onto the ground in a parking lot, and many
people toss litter and even lit cigarettes out of automobile windows. And people routinely discard litter on
sidewalks and roadways. Even though
there are laws against littering, it doesn’t seem to prevent some from treating
the environment as a trash heap. There
was a time that the ocean was thought to be so expansive that it could absorb
whatever garbage was dumped in it. But it
is becoming clear that the ocean, too, can become polluted, and that what we
dump into it despoils it, and us in the process. Recently several brush fires were burning in
Central NY. As one fire official pointed out, dry tinder on the ground itself
didn’t start the fires, they were most likely ignited by carelessly discarded
lit cigarettes or outdoor fires which had been set by people.
As I have
been thinking about our environment, I find it can become rather distressing,
if not downright depressing. And yet, we
need to make sure that in this, as in so many things, we don’t give in to
despair. And so, I’d
like to focus on what we can do, and are doing, which is hopeful. The litter by our roadsides is almost free of
soda bottles and cans for which there is a nickel deposit. This is because they are worth returning,
rather than throwing out; if they are discarded, chances are that someone will
pick them up and return them for the deposit.
But since the bottle bill was enacted, bottled water and other non
carbonated drinks have become popular, and they aren’t covered by the bottle
bill. So there is a move afoot to expand
the bottle bill to include deposits on these beverages as well, so that their
containers won’t continue to litter our roadsides. You can support passage of this expanded
legislation, the Bigger Better Bottle Bill.
You can also advocate that the deposits which are not claimed by
returning bottles will go into a fund to support environmental protection,
rather than being retained by the bottling companies.
This church
has a Green Committee, and is in the process of working toward Green Sanctuary
status. This process includes doing an
audit of our practices as a church when it comes to energy use, recycling, and
so on. It also includes education, such
as the Green Minute column in our newsletter, Religious Education
modules and sermons having to do with the environment, and encouragement of
individual as well as communal good ecological practices. The Green Minute column provides some
very practical, and achievable, steps we can take to help our environment. For example, a recent column asked:
“What can I do?” and provided the following answer:
“Simply reduce the amount of fossil fuels you burn. In the
coming months we will be introducing the 1-2-3 pledge. By committing to the
pledge, each household can reduce the carbon dioxide it generates by more than
1,300 pounds a year and save nearly $100 per year. We will be asking you to
pledge to do three simple things to achieve this goal:
1. Reduce your thermostat setting at home by 1
degree.
2. Reduce your driving speed by two miles per hour.
3. Replace three regular light bulbs with compact
fluorescent bulbs in
extensively used fixtures.”
So, it can be as simple as 1, 2, 3. Of course it’s not simple at all to protect
the environment, and yet it is simple enough to all get started. Sometimes when
we do get started we discover things that surprise us. For example, I am used to driving a bit
faster than the speed limit, with the flow of traffic. But I read recently that my fuel use would be
more efficient if I drove at the speed limit.
So, I tried setting my cruise control at 65 mph on the highway, and
almost everyone passed me. I wasn’t in a
particular hurry, and it felt great and much more relaxed. I moved to the right hand lane so people
could more easily cruise past me, as I could remember being in a hurry, and
didn’t want to be an obstacle to others who were, and certainly didn’t want to
cause an accident!
I saw something on the television news the other day about “free
cycling”- kind of like recycling, but even better. The idea was that you could go on the
internet and either give something away that you no longer needed, or you could
obtain something that you needed from someone who was through with it. I liked this a lot, and it reminded me of
when I was in a meditation ashram in India, and there was a “free box”. People could deposit or withdraw items as
they wished, and I found it a good source of clothing as well as other
items. It was also a great place to put
things I no longer needed, knowing that they would be used by someone else. We didn’t have access to television or radio,
and I was there for 3 years. So I was happy at one point to find a news
magazine in the free box. I was reading
it with great interest, only to discover later that it was a year old! Also in India, I saw huts constructed from
corrugated metal and other objects which had been discarded, and which might
have lain in a ditch or landfill here.
When the soles wore out on my sandals, a local shopkeeper was able to
resole them using rubber strips from an old automobile tire. Necessity is the mother of creativity and
invention. Since one person’s trash is
often another’s treasure, “free cycling” is a great thing.
Speaking of “free-cycling”, a practice which has long been in
vogue, before the inception of the internet, was the donation of unneeded items
to agencies like the Rescue Mission or the Salvation Army; items which were
then sold for a small fee to people who needed them. Here in Central Square we have the Downstairs
Scotty at the Catholic Church, a food pantry as well as a low cost
distributor of clothing and household items.
Our church collects paper products to contribute to the food pantry
there. This is another small way in
which we can work for economic justice, which is a part of environmental
justice.
As I was thinking about Earth day, I came across a reading in the
back of our hymnal which is attributed to Chief Noah Sealth:
This we know. The earth does not belong to us; we
belong to the earth.
This we know. All things are connected like the blood
which unites one family.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and
daughters of the earth.
We did not weave the web of life; We
are merely a
strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
In Native American cultures
the Earth is often referred to as Our Mother.
As I got thinking about how we have treated the earth, I wondered if we
would even think of treating our mothers in that way. I know I wouldn’t, regardless of how
irritated I might become with my mother at times. I couldn’t even contemplate trashing her,
raping her, or stealing from her. And if
we think about the Earth as our Mother, having given us birth and sustained us
selflessly during our lifetimes, prepared to welcome us back into her arms at
our deaths, we too would not be able to contemplate treating the Earth
badly. I know I am anthropomorphizing
the Earth now, but maybe that is what it will take for us to relate to the
Earth, as a living, breathing, entity which can suffer irreparable damage if we
fail to treat her with respect. This
Earth Day, let us think about the Earth as our Mother,
and consider how we will walk upon her back in the days to come. Will our
footfalls be heavy and create ruts and gouges in her back? Or will we walk
gently, with tenderness and care? May we
choose carefully.
I met a retired farmer the
other day, and said I was going home to finish writing my sermon. He shared how impressed he had been listening
to the Pope on television, especially the Pope’s meeting with survivors of
priest sexual abuse, and he suggested that I could talk about the Pope. I replied that I was going to talk about
Earth Day, and I thought that it would be better received in a Unitarian Universalist church than a talk about the Pope. He agreed, and recommended that people in the
church compost their yard waste, and bring leaves to a
common compost bin at the church. Upon
later reflection, I thought that we have a water communion in the fall, an
ornament communion in the winter, a flower communion in the spring, and we
could start a compost communion in the spring and summer. I think of Earth Day as a High Holy Day in
the Unitarian Universalist church, somewhat like
Easter is in the Roman Catholic church. We have our rituals, our vehicles for coming
together in community, and our signs of hope.
We understand that it is the responsibility of each of us to continue
the work of protecting our earth and helping to build a beloved community here
on the earth. May it be so.
Last Sunday, Andrea Abbott
announced that the poet Mary Oliver was going to be speaking in Syracuse on
Tuesday evening. She lamented that she
couldn’t attend and it got me to thinking. . .I wonder
if there is some way that I can get there. . . Well, I managed to attend. I had wanted to share some of Mary Oliver’s
poems for Earth Day, as she is so attentive to describing the natural
world. I own several of her books, which I haven’t
been able to find since we moved to Central Square, despite my husband helping
me look for them on more than one occasion.
But fortunately her autographed books were for sale before the lecture,
and I bought the most recent one, Red Bird. In the lecture, Mary Oliver had selected
poems from her various books which she proceeded to read to us for about 45 minutes. . . early poems to some from her most recent book.
Then she responded to
questions from the audience for about 15 minutes. Some people asked her to read specific
poems. One asked about her writing
process, and she said that she always carries a notebook with her, and if an
idea or an observation comes to her she writes it down, even just a
phrase. As she said, these things are
gifts and must be captured. She said
that she sees the world as sacred, and she loves it, and that is why she
attends to it so well. She said that
when we love something we attend to it closely, and when we attend to something
closely we begin to love it more. She
also said that she blocks out time to sit and write regularly so that it happens,
and she doesn’t miss the opportunity.
When asked if she had a favorite poem, and what it is, she said that she
has several, and she wouldn’t say what they are, as each person needs to be
free to choose what their favorites are, without being influenced by her. She also showed a sense of humor. She described a poem she had written called Rice,
in which she and her partner had rice with almonds and chicken, but the almonds
were imaginary and the chicken had run away.
She said
that it was simpler when she had only written one book of poems. But then she corrected herself and said, “not simpler, but easier to carry” as she proceeded to lug a
stack of her books off the stage.
In closing, I’d like to share
with you 3 poems which I have selected from Red Bird: pp 45, 44, 18-19.