The Fire Next Time (2)

First Sunday in Lent, Year B

Part II

In the story of Noah, it’s clear that we make our moral choices in the context of the web of relationships among God, humans, and all of creation. The rainbow set in the clouds as a sign of the covenant between God and all the creatures of earth has become for us a sign of God’s promise and a sign of hope.

Christians live in hope, and hope is one of the gifts we bring to discussions of the climate crisis.  Hope that discounts reality is not hope; it is self-deception or denial. To live in Christian hope does not mean living in denial with some vague idea that God will somehow keep us from the consequences of our actions. (To the contrary, a reading of the Hebrew prophets will remind us that God, like a good parent, allows us to experience the consequences of our actions, both good and bad.)

Our hope is that no matter what else, ultimately all will be well. Our faithfulness to God and God’s promises will not be in vain. As the global warming situation grows more dire and signs of climate change become less subtle, hope requires a deeper faith to sustain it.

In Nebraska, the threat to our land and water has made us aware of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline and, to a lesser extent, aware of the mining of the tar sands and the environmental problems associated with it. Bill McKibben published a piece on Friday called Beyond Keystone that puts the issues around the mining of the tar sands within the perspective of fossil fuels in general:

If you burned all the tarsands we know about now, you'd raise the planet's temperature more than half a degree -- i.e., half again as much as the global warming we've already seen, which has been enough to make the seas 30% more acid and cut Arctic sea ice 40%. But if you burned all the coal we know about it, the temperature would go up 15 degrees. 

At a certain point, I suppose, it doesn't matter -- most scientists think anything more than two degrees Celsius puts us into a zone of extreme danger, and we're already halfway there. Fifteen degrees would be just gilding the lily.

 Fighting the pipeline has required a lot of time, energy, and resources from many Nebraskans. Fighting the environmental hazards of expanded coal projects, like the “truly massive new coal port in Washington State that would take eight mile-long coal trains a day from the Powder River Basin of Montana and Wyoming and ship them straight to China” described in McKibben’s article, is a huge task.

Our hope is that there is some sense in trying, some sense in being Davids standing up to the Goliath of powers that would extract and burn as much coal and oil and tar sands as possible from the earth. While the idea of hope might seem impractical, even foolish, real hope is very practical; hope can keep us doing what needs to be done. It makes the best of the slimmest of possibilities, maximizes the odds of reaching a good outcome, and gives us our lives meaning and dignity no matter what the outcome.

The February 22 issue of Christian Century quotes Vaclav Havel’s differentiation between hope and optimism (p. 8). Hope, he said, is “an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed…[Hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.”

Being in good relationship with God, one another, and all of creation makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. “God gave Noah the rainbow sign; ‘no more water, the fire next time.’” Even if this turns out to be “the fire next time”, God still gives us the rainbow sign.

The Fire Next Time

First Sunday in Lent, Year B

Part I

God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, the fire next time. (O Mary, Don’t You Weep)

The reading from Genesis (Genesis 9:8-17) today tells about the covenant between God and “every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth”. God promises that never again will there be flood to destroy the earth.

The spiritual O Mary, Don’t You Weep is for the most part about hope; just as the waters drowned Pharoah’s army, ensuring the escape from slavery of the Hebrew people, so “there’ll be good times by and by” for others suffering oppression. One puzzling verse is the one about Noah: while the rest of the song celebrates God’s use of water to drown the oppressors, this verse remembers God’s promise not to send another flood that covers the earth, but then says “Next time it will be fire!” It suggests that we not take the promise of this covenant to mean that nothing can harm the earth. In the context of giving hope to oppressed people, it suggests that we remain aware of dangers and not get lulled into false security.

Here's Bruce Springsteen's version of O Mary, Don't You Weep:

Others have discussed “the fire next time” in light of the climate crisis. A piece by The Rev. Peter G. Kreitler, The Spirituality of Global Warming, talks about both the severity of the global warming crisis and the place of hope in the response of people of faith to the crisis. He writes:

The fire this time, our warming fragile island home, is our religious and moral wakeup call; Noah's generation heard and felt the fury of rising waters. Today the heat on the earth is bending the established rules of nature and the winds and the waves are compromising the integrity of creation; yet the arc of the rainbow can still be seen to offer us hope amidst the fury of nature's wrath.

The fire next time isnow: Environmental historian Angus Wright’s call for a planetary patriotism is Robert Jensen’s interview with Angus Wright. Jensen says that in a conversation with other environmentalists about what words to use to convey the urgency of the crisis while making the ideas accessible, Wright suggested this as a slogan: “No more water, the fire next time.”  

Jensen’s interview with Wright ends with a discussion of hope. Jensen asks if we are facing “the fire next time” and whether there is “a way out of the trap we’ve set ourselves.” Wright says, “I don’t know if there is a way out, but we have to try.” He says we have to try if we want to maintain our self-respect, then says: “I maintain a certain faith that many people are going to make the right choices, and we can hope that is enough.”

God made a covenant not only with humankind, but with all the creatures of the earth. In doing so, God shows us that the web of relationships among God, humans, and all of creation is the context in which we make our moral choices. Our hope is that as remembering who we are in relation to God and God’s creation, and we will choose wisely.

Ash Wednesday Repentance

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,

Accept our repentance, Lord.

Our confession of waste and pollution of creation and of our lack of concern for future generations bears on environmental stewardship more obviously than do other parts of the Litany of Penitence. A closer examination and reflection on our Ash Wednesday prayers, however, reveal many links between the faults we confess and the way we do -- or do not -- care for the earth.

Confession of our self-indulgence, exploitation of other people, an intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our blindness to human needs and suffering are intertwined with the way we care for the environment. In particular, environmental degradation often affects people living in poverty to a greater degree than it affects wealthier people.

On April 21, the Episcopal Church will sponsor an ecumenical forum on the topic of The Intersection of Poverty and the Environment. The forum, which will be webcast at 11:00 Central time, will feature Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. For now, the fact that the church is highlighting the relationship between poverty and environmental degradation provides a starting place for reflection during Lent.

Today’s text from Isaiah (Isaiah 58:1-12) says that a true fast, a day truly acceptable to the Lord, consists of acts of mercy and justice. When we do these things, says Isaiah, we will find ourselves strengthened and guided by God. The passage ends with the statement that those who meet the needs of others and relieve suffering will “be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in”. We cannot repair and restore the world so that everyone has adequate food and water and health unless we greatly reduce pollution and address climate change. In a complex world, habits and actions that seem innocent and harmless to us might very well be causing hardship for people somewhere else. Part of following Jesus is learning more about our world, more about the sources of pollution and climate change and their effects, so that we can be certain it is Jesus we are following.

God of the desert, as we follow Jesus into the unknown,

may we recognize the tempter when he comes;

let it be your bread we eat,

your world we serve and you alone we worship.

(From the Collects for Ash Wednesday in A New Zealand Prayer Book , p. 573.)

Transfiguration: Doing and Being

Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. (From Mark 9:2-10 )

The beauty and wonder of the Transfiguration so overwhelmed Peter, James, and John that they were terrified. Not knowing what to do or say with that depth of experience, Peter says: “…let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He wants to fix the moment, enclose the wonder, keep it. Doing so would make it manageable; the dwellings would literally enclose Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.

Creating objects to make life better is an essential human trait; creativity is something we cultivate, encourage, and applaud. However, our doing and creating needs to be balanced with being and wondering. The urge to create, to make something, to do something, can keep us from being still in the face of wonder. If we substitute doing and building for standing in wonder at a vision of the holy or an experience of great beauty or emotion, we keep ourselves from spiritual maturity. And when we build and engineer and manufacture without awareness of the way we and the things we are creating fit into God’s creation, our creativity leads us to be agents of destruction of God’s creation rather than the co-creators God invites us to be.

I’m on the Hawaiian island of Kauai this week, a place full of beauty and wonder. It’s been a good place for reflection on the Transfiguration Gospel for the last Sunday in Epiphany. Here are a couple of observations of our impulse to do something and the unintended consequences when we create things without calculating the consequences.

The weather this morning was wild – lots of wind with passing showers and high surf. When I walked on the beach early this morning, I saw all sorts of things that had washed ashore. The power of the ocean, the changing sky, the birds that sang every time a rain shower ended and the sun returned, all were worthy of a few moments to simply watch and listen. Like others along the beach, I took some photos, but also stood and absorbed the wonder of the morning. 

Later in the day, I returned to the beach and saw this marvelous structure made from driftwood. I wonder if this creation came about as a response to a moment of wonder, or if the wonder were pushed aside in order to do something to bring order out of the chaos of the storm and keep it at arm’s length. It may be something like the dwellings or booths Peter was ready to build for Jesus, Moses and Elijah!

 
Divers have observed a large die-off of sea urchins off the coast of Kauai. An article in The Garden Island newspaper quotes a scientist saying that sea urchins are “a keystone species”; they serve as sort of early warning system for major changes in the ocean. The die-off of sea urchins often precedes the death of coral reefs.

Coral reefs elsewhere have been dying as a result of warming oceans and ocean acidification caused by oceans absorbing the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Scientists haven’t determined why these particular sea urchins are dying. The die-off happened where soil from corn fields planted with GMO corn gets washed into the sea. Whatever the cause, it may well be connected to something we have created – the use of fossil fuels or genetically modified crops or something else intended to make our lives easier or better – without considering and calculating the consequences.

Peter’s terror of the wonder of the Transfiguration causes him to want to rush in and do something; Mark tells us he didn’t know what to say, how to respond. Our constant rushing in to do things and make things sometimes reflects our inability to respond appropriately to the wonder of God’s creation. Learning to be still and wonder is something we Christians can model to encourage better stewardship of God’s creation.

A Carbon Fast for Lent

Lent is just around the corner. People who follow the spiritual discipline of fasting on something for Lent might consider a carbon fast this year.

A Lenten carbon fast encourages us to reduce our carbon footprints and walk more lightly on God’s earth. When we reduce our own carbon footprints, we give up some small degree of comfort or convenience to benefit the people who generally suffer first and worst from environmental degradation: the poorest people in the world, who often rely on subsistence agriculture or fishing, or who live in places especially vulnerable to pollution and extreme weather events. Along with doing something for others, we benefit from living more simply, opening up space for God in our lives.

A carbon fast can take the form of giving up or taking on one habit that results in using less electricity or other fuel, or of following a calendar that suggests a different activity for each day during Lent.

For those wanting a different activity each day, the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast  from the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC will send daily e-mail messages with an activity for each day.  Earth Ministry offers an online Lenten calendar with activities for each day.

Here are five examples of single habits to consider changing for the season:

1. Turn down thermostats 2 degrees from usual settings.

2. Turn off lights and screens when no one is in a room.

3. Turn off computers, printers, and their powerstrips at night.

4. If you usually drive to work, school, or to do errands that are within a safe and reasonable walking distance, walk instead of driving.

5. Unplug chargers for phones and other electronic devices when they aren’t in use.

Mother Nature and Her Groundhogs

Feast of the Presentation

Depending on your viewpoint, February 2 is Groundhog Day, the Feast of the Presentation, Candlemas (for those preferring the old name for the Feast of the Presentation), or some combination thereof.  Of Americans who know February 2 is some sort of special day, probably more people are familiar with the secular Groundhog Day than with the liturgical day. (See Feb 2 2011 post Candlemas Light  for more about the Feast of the Presentation.)

Groundhog Day is when “the groundhog” – traditionally any old woodchuck, real or imagined, that happened to poke its head out, but increasingly taken to mean a specific groundhog kept in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania – looks out after a long winter’s sleep. If the groundhog sees its shadow, it goes back in for six more weeks of winter; if it doesn’t see its shadow, it sticks around for an early spring. It’s the sort of folk observance that can be fun; it’s only when people take it as seriously predictive that it stops being fun.

Sandhill Cranes, Hall County, January 2012

We have a winter storm on the way this week, but so far this winter has been mild, with some temperatures above average and precipitation below average. While we have been experiencing our pleasantly abnormal weather, other places have experienced unusual weather patterns that resulted in the sorts of severe weather and floods we might expect in spring rather than winter. If we do have a mild end to winter – an early spring – we would do well to look for causes other than a woodchuck afraid of its shadow.

It’s common for weathercasters and the rest of us to talk about Mother Nature controlling the weather. No doubt someone this evening is saying, “Mother Nature has some winter weather in store for us”. The personification of natural forces in Mother Nature goes back to ancient times and its part of our language, but we know that changes in weather have causes other than the whims of an unseen woman. We run into problems when people stop at the playful explanation and lose interest in reality.

The Gospel reading for the Daily Office on the Feast of the Presentation is John 8:31-36: “…you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” The reference to the truth in this passage is to the essential, saving truth in Christ’s word. The Greek word translated as truth is the negative noun form of a word meaning to keep hidden or secret, to lie. Later in John’s Gospel, Jesus, using the same word, says, “I am the truth”. Christ is the personification of truth; belief in Christ and belief in truth are bound together.

The future of humankind might very well rest on our paying serious attention to things like the extremes that have been so apparent the past several months. (See for example NOAA: 2011 a year of climate extremes in the United States.) Most climate scientists think that there is a connection between climate change and these extreme events; the question is the degree to which climate change is involved. If that’s the case, then our weather will become increasingly extreme.

We will be in much better shape to respond to what is happening and to take care of ourselves and our global neighbors if we quit hiding the truth behind Mother Nature’s skirts and bring ourselves to look at reality.

Time and Hope

Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last Green Sprout’s post. A combination of family obligations, travel, and a painful shoulder that has made writing difficult is mostly to blame for so much time passing between posts, but it’s not the entire reason for the lack of posts.

While time has passed, I’ve been thinking about time in relation to global warming, struggling to process where we find ourselves in January of 2012 and how to begin to articulate a response. We know how urgent this crisis is, yet our actions and those of our leaders seldom reflect that urgency. We know that our present course leads in this century to mass extinctions of species, to mass migrations of people from areas of flood, drought, and famine, to increased risk of tropical diseases, to major cities dealing with rising oceans, and to island nations disappearing. We know that our present course eventually leads to the end of life as we have known it, bringing a sobering eschatological element into the discussion.

By the end of 2011, we knew we were running out of time on climate; we knew we were up against what some had begun calling a “climate emergency”. This blog’s December 20 post, How Can This Be? , summarized some of the factors that were causing us to realize that global warming was an even more pressing issue than we had known it was at the beginning of the year. Yet while climate experts continue to publish information pointing to the urgency of the situation and the need for the world’s leaders to address it in significant ways very, very soon, even those leaders who acknowledge the problem speak and act as if we had all the time in the world in which to act.

Earlier this month, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of the symbolic Doomsday Clock one minute closer to midnight, putting us at five minutes until midnight. The move was made not only because of lack of progress on nuclear weapons reduction and proliferation, but also because of “inaction on climate change”.

 This week’s Scripture readings all address questions of time and eschatology in some way, with the Epistle and Gospel using the word kairos, “the appointed time” or the time when the kingdom of God draws near. Each of these lessons suggest something for Christians to consider as this new year in this still young century begins and we wonder about how to go about caring for God’s creation when so much seems to be working against us.

The reluctant prophet Jonah (Jonah 3:1-5, 10) warns the Ninevites that God will destroy the city in forty days. Much to his surprise, the Ninevites heed the warning and repent. Seeing their penitence, God spares them. The Ninevites might very well have either ignored Jonah and denied the truth of what he told them, or believed him but decided their doom was inevitable and so did nothing.  In our world, there are people in denial about global warming, people so deep in despair that they see no point in acting, and others who continue to work to address the issue even though we don’t know how effective our efforts will be. If we truly see what is happening, working to change things is a form of repentance. It’s the right thing to do.  (As Bill McKibben has said, “The only thing for a morally awake person to do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds.”)

Psalm 62 reminds us that power belongs to God. “For God alone my soul in silence waits” because God is the only thing worthy of our complete trust. Working for a healthier planet while all the power and money of fossil fuel corporations seems to be working in the opposite direction is discouraging, but compared to God’s power, their power is nothing. “On the scales they are lighter than a breath, all of them together.”

Paul’s words in First Corinthians (I Corinthians 7:29-31) remind us to put first things first, to “deal with the world” as if we have no dealings with it, to put the urgent matter before business as usual. This is something to consider, given that so many of the arguments in our country against addressing global warming have to do with our inability to consider giving priority to anything over business as usual.

In our Gospel passage from Mark (Mark 1:14-20), Jesus says that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near”, then goes about ministry in a very concrete, straightforward way. He approaches ordinary men who are fishing or mending nets and invites them to follow him. They in turn will go out to invite others to join them in following Jesus. We in Nebraska learned this past year about the power of ordinary power doing ordinary things – speaking with neighbors, writing letters to elected officials and hometown newspapers, telling our stories and the story of our land and water – that resulted in something extraordinary: keeping the Keystone XL pipeline out of the Sandhills. When we realize that we are living in an extraordinary time, our best response might be to go about what needs to be done in a fairly ordinary and straightforward way, relying on ourselves and other ordinary people to do the work and to invite others to join us.

This week’s lessons point to this: The best way for Christians to live in a time like this is to live in hope with our eyes wide open. That means learning everything we can about what is happening, acknowledging the truth of the situation, and doing all we can to serve God, all of God’s children, and all of God’s creation.