Compassion and Climate Chaos

Lent 3C: Suffering and Blame

In a post at the beginning of Lent, I shared my plan to read David Wallace-Wells’s book The Uninhabitable Earth alongside our daily lectionary readings and Lenten prayers. This being the Lenten wilderness, I didn’t know what I might encounter along the way since by definition the wilderness has no set paths to follow and no guarantees of what we might find. Along with other Nebraskans, not long into Lent I found myself in unfamiliar territory.

On Thursday, March 14 in Nebraska, blizzard conditions followed heavy rains as air pressure dropped in a “bomb cyclone” event. With the ground still frozen hard and more snowpack than usual melting, rivers and creeks flooded and huge chunks of ice got pushed into areas near waterways, resulting in great destruction in both rural areas and towns. Roads and bridges were badly damaged or destroyed, making areas already cut off by floodwaters even more isolated from aid. 

In the days since, we Nebraskans have greatly appreciated the assurance of prayers from people in other places, just as we have appreciated all sorts of practical help, such as money to help with flood relief, farmers from other states bringing hay to feed Nebraska livestock, and skilled volunteers simply showing up to help. And Nebraskans have been helping their neighbors and encouraging each other as communities begin the process of clean-up and rebuilding. Among the shock and sorrow at the losses resulting from the floods, the compassion people have given to other people and to animals has been a bright light showing the way forward and drawing us together. 

However, compassion has not been a universal reaction to our suffering. In this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 13:1-9), 

Jesus is asked whether people who died in terrible ways were worse sinners than others; in other words, Jesus is asked whether people who experience unusual suffering somehow especially deserve their suffering. Today we might ask, do bad things really happen to good people? (Yes, they do.) Yet even if we know perfectly well that terrible things can happen to people who personify faith and kindness and moral goodness, we still in our culture — perhaps especially in our recent history — have a tendency to look for someone to blame when things go wrong. When we assume someone is to blame, and especially when we make an assumption, conscious or unconscious, that the someone who is to blame is probably the very person who is suffering, compassion dwindles. 

Jesus’s answer to this question about sinners getting what they deserve is basically that we are all sinners, all in need of repentance. If bad things happen only to people who have sinned, we are all in trouble. 

We know that the more our planet warms, the more extreme weather events we will have as a result of climate chaos. Spring flooding is not atypical in this part of the United States, but floods of this magnitude are atypical. (See, for example, the article Climate change’s fingerprints are on U.S. Midwest floods: scientist from Reuters.)   It is fair to say, then, that our failure to stop climate change when we could have done so or our failure to mitigate climate change now that it is upon us contributed to this disaster. If we are invested in the blame game more than we are invested in Jesus’s Way of Love, it’s an easy step to go from acknowledging our collective failure to looking for specific people to blame for that failure and hoping to see them suffer.

Those of us who made the mistake of reading the comments on articles about the destruction here in Nebraska learned that while many people in other places had a compassionate response to our suffering, many others had no compassion for Nebraskans because we have elected political leaders who refuse to do anything to address climate change. The general tenor of these comments was that the writer didn’t feel sorry for us at all because we had brought this all on ourselves by electing the wrong sorts of people, that we got just what we deserved. (On top of being mean-spirited, these comments seemed to me especially ill-conceived given the obvious contribution of Nebraskans to stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.)

Our world needs people whose first impulse is compassion rather than placing blame; as we experience more and more of the results of climate chaos, our world needs Jesus’s Way of Love perhaps more than ever before. The basic foundations of human civilization are endangered by climate instability. Such a critical point of history requires us to demonstrate the best human values and to resist the temptation to divide further into warring factions. Hope for our world in an era of environmental collapse depends on compassion for one another. That compassion, that ability to care, will, I think, yield our best outcome in generating the political will to act to mitigate climate change as well the best outcome in responding to what David Wallace-Wells calls the “cascades” of challenges and disasters resulting from climate chaos. 

Do we need to elect leaders who make addressing global warming a high priority? Yes, we do. Should people and animals who live in places that don’t elect such leaders — and right now that would be most of the United States since it’s pretty obvious from looking at legislative records and listening to campaign rhetoric that few of our leaders of either major party see climate change as a top priority or have any grasp of the size of the challenge before us — be left to suffer on their own when floods, tornadoes, droughts, or wildfires happen? No. For Christians, such a lack of compassion would simply be against everything that Jesus taught. We don’t require a moral litmus test in order for people to access basic necessities. 

And for anyone, even those who live by an “eye for an eye” blame game ethics, the ethics of blame and self-righteousness makes no sense since we don’t (at least at the moment) live in a country in which the red people all live in one place and the blue people all live in another place — not that political affiliation really tells you anything about any given individual’s concern about climate change.  

Jesus answered a question about why he made a practice of sitting down to eat with known sinners by saying, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13) Now in this era of climate chaos we still need to learn what it means to show mercy to people in need rather than demanding moral purity. 

The Diocese of Nebraska has published a suggested list of links to agencies accepting monetary donations for flood relief along with thanksgiving for your prayers:

The Diocese of Nebraska Flood Relief & Support Fund  

American Red Cross of Nebraska and Southwest Iowa  

Episcopal Relief and Development  

Lenten Wilderness: The Uninhabitable Earth

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, published two weeks ago, will help to shape my Lenten experience this year. In turn, I suspect my observance of Lent will color my reading of David Wallace-Wells’s blunt and lucid account of the present reality of climate change. My intention during Lent is to figure out every day what to give up or let go of to ensure time for a close reading of a chunk of this book along with a close reading of the Daily Office readings for that day and plenty of time for prayer. 

“It is worse, much worse, than you think,” reads the first sentence of The Uninhabitable Earth. 

“We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.” We pray this confession in our Litany of Penitence as one of many particular faults. All of the sins we confess on Ash Wednesday have some bearing on the particular sin that most directly speaks to the subject of The Uninhabitable Earth: 

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

Yesterday’s familiar Daily Office reading from John’s Gospel (John 1:1-18) reminded us of the reality of the Incarnation, the Word that came to live among us in our world of earth, air, fire, and water. While some forms of piety emphasize a heaven / earth dualism during Lent, the reality of our faith and of our lives is that we are part of the world God created and pronounced good, the same world so deeply loved by God that Jesus, God Incarnate, came to dwell here with us. Whether we can understand it, and even if we deny it, the laws of chemistry and physics and our past and present actions are resulting in big changes that have forever changed life on our planet. And whether we can understand it, and even if we deny it, God’s love for us and for all of creation, the love that we know through Jesus’s love, is with us as we respond to the huge challenges we face. 

I’ve chosen to read The Uninhabitable Earth not despite the psychological and spiritual challenge of looking squarely at our present situation on this planet, but because of the enormity of that challenge. The temptation to look away is a true temptation, a temptation to sin. Our failure to acknowledge climate change as the central issue of our time — our practice of willful ignorance, of ignoring the very warm elephant in the room as we allow ourselves to be distracted by all sorts of craziness along with all sorts of other serious concerns that will only worsen as Earth’s temperatures soar — is more than an oversight. Our willful ignorance that results in human suffering and species extinction is a sin, and the only way to repent of willful ignorance is to seek knowledge. 

I have no idea what I’ll encounter in the practice of reflecting on this latest summary of our perilous condition alongside our daily lectionary readings and Lenten prayers, but when any of us chooses a serious Lenten discipline, we have no idea what we will encounter in our chosen wilderness. By definition, the wilderness has no set paths to follow, no guarantees of what we will find. 

In this age of global warming, we are all in the wilderness, all lost whether or not we realize it.  Choosing a forty day interior wilderness journey that acknowledges our material situation seems appropriate to me this year. I’ll post some reports along the way if I find something worth sharing.

Wilderness

A week ago, those of us who observe Ash Wednesday and want to encourage others to practice those things that give us a holy beginning to Lent were wondering how much of a shadow Valentine’s Day would cast over the beginning of Lent in the greater culture. What would people be thinking about Wednesday evening — hearts and flowers, or the beginning of our forty day wilderness journey? By evening, though, the nation’s focus was on yet another in a series of horrible acts of violence, this one a school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed seventeen people. Once again, American children were killed at school. Once again, our nation’s leaders were big on thoughts and prayers but not so interested in talking about what substantial policy changes they proposed to help protect our children from deadly violence at school. 

We are in the wilderness, and not just the figurative wilderness of our Lenten journey. We are lost in a place that is empty and disorienting and frightening. Taken as a group, the adults of our nation have forsaken our responsibilities to our children. We have said we love our nation’s children even as we allow greed and sloth and probably several other deadly sins to keep us from having policies such as those in other nations that would make our public places, including our schools, much safer places for children. 

That we Americans allow sin to keep us from protecting our children is no new revelation, of course. We have been in the wilderness a long time, watching global temperatures rise along with concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere while greed and sloth and probably several other deadly sins keep our leaders from developing policies that could mitigate the effects of climate change. 

Much has been made of the hollowness of “thoughts and prayers” without action after events like mass shootings. Prayers of confession and repentance, though, necessarily result in action. Truly changed hearts result in truly changed lives. Truly changed hearts in our nation’s adults would produce genuine love that would not let sin get in the way of protecting our children. That said, we as a culture are far from that point of conversion. So long as a short-sighted desire for a perceived private gain trumps any impulse toward the public good in the hearts of voters and the people they choose to develop our public policies, we will remain in the wilderness. 

At its best, the wilderness is a place where so much is stripped away that we see ourselves as we are — our sins along with the gift of being beloved children of God — and repent. This is why many Christians choose some sort of discipline for Lent that echoes the wilderness experience; that wilderness experience can bring us closer to God when it results in penitent hearts. When we see clearly who we are and the things that tempt us and then choose to turn our backs on the temptations, we are ready to leave the wilderness. 

But some of us won’t even acknowledge that we are in the wilderness.  If we refuse to acknowledge the reality of our situation, if we pretend that we can continue living as we do and putting our sinful desires before our love of God and our neighbors — including our children — we will remain stuck in the wilderness, lost in a place that is empty and disorienting and, if only we would let ourselves feel it, frightening.

This week, much of our nation was shaken by yet another school shooting. This week also the Bering Sea lost a shocking amount of sea ice, something that should not be happening at all in February. The upshot of these big changes in the Arctic region is that changes in the Arctic create changes in weather patterns further south that promise to be very disruptive. An unstable Arctic means an unstable planet, and an unstable planet means a terrible legacy for our children and grandchildren. 

We are in the wilderness. Some of us want to do what we must to get out of the wilderness, and some of us don’t care enough about ourselves or others to even tell ourselves the truth about where we are. Our work is to do our own work of repentance, and then take the news — both the news of the reality of our situation on earth and the good news of repentance and restoration — to others. 

For everyone this year, not just observant Christians, Ash Wednesday revealed just how far astray we have gone. Jesus calls us back to the discipline of love that will make all the difference in how we live. 

Lent 2017: Repentance, Hope, and Praying the Earth's News

We began Lent yesterday with the Litany of Penitence (pp. 267-269, The Book of Common Prayer). We confessed our failure to love and serve, our unfaithfulness, the “pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives”, our self-indulgence, our anger and envy, our dishonesty, our “intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts”, and our failures to pray, worship, and share our faith as we should. Then we asked God to accept our repentance for some specific sins, including this:

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

Acceptance our repentance, Lord.

In the months since the last post on this blog, much has changed in our nation politically, while the changes occurring in nature to our climate and everything in the biosphere that depends on climate stability continue to accelerate. The question that has gnawed at me for awhile now seems even more urgent: How best can people of faith acting as people of faith respond to our ecological crisis? 

Two pieces of an answer return to me every time I pray and reflect about this: hope and prayer. Certainly there are important things to do in our roles as citizens; citizen advocacy for bold policies based on the best science is a necessity if we are to get out of this century with anything resembling the world as we humans have known it up to now. But that sort of action is a moral imperative for everyone, not just for people of faith. What do we uniquely offer a world in crisis? Hope and prayer.

We Christians offer the deep hope of people who are steeped in the Easter story of resurrection. We pray the litany of penitence because we have hope that true repentance brings about real changes in us and, through us, changes in the world around us. We know that God cares for us and all of creation, and our faith in God’s care gives us hope that our efforts to mitigate climate change and pollution are not meaningless even if we don’t reach the goals we have in mind for our efforts. We have faith that God is working with us and through us and for us when we work on behalf of other people and other living things, and that same faith gives us hope for a good outcome for our best efforts. I’ll be writing more about hope in the weeks ahead as move through Lent to Easter and then from Easter to Pentecost.

Prayer, however, is the most obviously unique gift to people of faith. Our hope informs and encourages our practice of prayer, and yet we also pray at times when our hope falters. 

During Lent, look for weekly posts here for Praying the Earth’s News for the week. The news about what is unfolding can be so daunting that we are tempted to ignore it, yet even when a problem seems too big to begin to comprehend or tackle, we can pray. It certainly is preferable that our prayer be accompanied by action if possible, but that doesn’t make prayer on its own of no use while we are still finding our way to action.

Theologian Walter Wink says this about intercessory prayer:

When we pray, we are not sending a letter to a celestial White House where it is sorted among piles of others. We are engaged rather in an action of co-creation, in which one little sector of the universe rises up and becomes translucent, incandescent, a vibratory center of power that radiates the power of the universe.

History belongs to the intercessors, who believe the future into being. If this is so, then intercession, far from being an escape from action, is a means of focusing for action and of creating action. (Engaging the Powers, pp. 303-3-4)

Ash Wednesday in the Anthropocene

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,
Accept our repentance, Lord.
(Litany of Penitence, Book of Common Prayer, p. 268)

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a season of penitence in preparation for Easter. Among the sins for which we repent is the sin of wasting and polluting God’s creation, a result of the sin of “lack of concern for those who come after us”. It’s a failure of love for the people of the next generation and the one after that, a failure to love our children and grandchildren enough to change the way we produce and use energy.

The ashes on our foreheads are a sign of our penitence and our mortality. As the ashes are imposed on our foreheads, we hear “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” We are mortal, created from “dust”, the fundamental stuff of the universe. Religious people perhaps more than others are tempted to forget this from time to time. When we recite the Apostles’ Creed, we say we believe in the resurrection of the body, but we Christians often speak as if we believe in the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul instead. Reacting to a culture that tempts us to see ourselves as bodies without souls — the root of many sins — we sometimes overcorrect and begin to think of ourselves as souls without bodies. Forgetting our embodiment, forgetting that we are made of dust, can also be the root of sins.

The dualism resulting from thinking of our souls and bodies as independent of one another is one source of our failure to care enough about God’s creation. We talk about loving God and loving one another, but somehow think we can do that by being nice people who don’t want to think about the ongoing destruction of the biosphere since the concrete world around us isn't "spiritual".

If you’ve been following the national political conversation leading up to the presidential election, it seems the risk climate change poses to human life is not on most people’s — or at least most politicians’ and commentators’ — lists of most important issues. The destruction of the biosphere is treated at best as some sort of side issue. It is amazing that the biggest threat ever faced by humanity is given only glancing mention at best, and is still downright denied by some.

Pondering our own mortality as individuals can be difficult intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually, but we recognize that coming to accept our mortality is necessary to our growth as mature Christians. Pondering the mortality of our species, and pondering it not in some distant age, is much, much more difficult, but equally necessary for Christians in this century to think about and pray about.

Phil Torres is a philosopher and the author of the book The End: What Science and Religion Tell Us About the Apocalypse. The book will be released in a week. From some of the reviews available, it sounds like Torres pits science / reason / observation against religion / faith / revelation (a different dualism from the soul / body split) and indicates that religious eschatology puts us in danger of not responding adequately to the very real risks to the survival of humanity we face in this century. Given this negative take on religion, it’s perhaps ironic that an article by Phil Torres published today on the Common Dreams sight gave me a deeper understanding this Ash Wednesday of the importance of pausing to think about and pray about our own personal mortality and the mortality of our species. Our survival might depend on our remembering our mortality, on our remembering that we are dust.

In Biodiversity Loss and the Doomsday Clock: An Invisible Disaster Almost No One is Talking About, Torres outlines some of the risks we face as a result of climate change and related forms of environmental degradation, and then notes:

We must, moving forward, never forget that just as we’re minds embodied, so too are we bodies environed, meaning that if the environment implodes under the weight of civilization, then civilization itself is doomed. 

Ash Wednesday brings us back to the reality of our embodiment. An adequate look at our own mortality this century must include embracing the reality of our environment.

Remember that you are dust.
Remember that we are connected to one another and to everything else on our planet.

Lent in God's Holy Creation

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

Accept our repentance, Lord.

(Ash Wednesday Litany of Penitence, The Book of Common Prayer)

     As Lent begins, people who follow the news about climate change are waiting for the release later this month of the next part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 5^th assessment report, this one about the impacts of climate change. A leak of the draft document suggests that the news will not be encouraging. Back in November, the New York Times published this article anticipating discussion of expected food shortages as the world warms.

    Meanwhile, a state of emergency exists in the Marshall Islands as increasingly frequent and intense king tides have caused widespread flooding that has displaced over a thousand people.

    Food shortages, floods, disappearing islands, and other effects of climate change are expected to have a huge negative impact on those who come after us. Our litany of penitence helps us name the sin of our waste and pollution and recognize the contributing factors of our inattention to the environment and our willful ignorance about the causes and effects of climate change.

   

     We begin Lent by confessing our sins. Lent, however, is about both penitence and repentance. Once we have recognized and confessed our sins, the work of Lent is the work of turning ourselves around. The absolution following the Litany of Penitence uses the language of repentance: “that they may turn from their wickedness and live”.

     Our Lenten disciplines, no matter how profound or perfunctory, are grounded in the idea of letting go of old, harmful ways and taking on something new that restores us to new life. Sometimes we give something up, sometimes we take on a particular new habit or activity that promises to deepen our spirituality or help us better serve in Christ’s name, and sometimes we simply follow a prescribed discipline or study that might help us better our understanding and find new ways to serve.

     People who prefer the latter sort of discipline might consider following one of the calendars of activities that help us look at various aspects of environmental stewardship. There are several of these offered each year; one that is widely used is the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast offered by the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. This may be of special interests to families with school-aged children as a way to learn about how our actions affect the environment that sustains our lives. These calendars are also good tools for people who like a highly structured Lenten discipline with some daily variety.

     Given the date of Ash Wednesday this year, though, I would propose a less structured discipline that is more doable in the lengthening days of early spring than in our usual more wintry start to Lent: going outside and looking around. Stroll or sit on a porch or putter in the garden. Take time to look and listen and enjoy. Watch the birds gathering nesting materials, see the cloud formations or the clearness of the sky, notice the spring flowers emerging from the ground and then blooming, look at the buds swelling on the trees.

     To do this, we need to give up whatever else would usually fill that time. We also need to give up the idea that we need to do something – mow a lawn, play golf, raise our heart rate – in order to justify spending time outdoors. Whatever we give up, we will be taking on something new that can restore our own lives and the life of the living things around us.

     Many of us have lost our connection to the outdoors, to our own habitats. Restoring that connection feeds our souls and deepens our connection to God the Creator. The simple act of going outside and looking around can deepen our spirituality in surprising ways, reawakening parts of our souls that are sometimes neglected.

     The same practice forms us to be better able to serve in Christ’s name. Our world is hurting from our poor stewardship of the earth. The poorest people on earth are hurt first and worst by drought, floods, the spread of tropical diseases, and the effects of extreme weather events. Spending time outdoors reacquainting ourselves with the wonder all around us may cause us to remember the joy and love that runs through all of creation; we may find ourselves falling in love with the natural world all over again, or maybe even for the first time. Our compassion for the earth, for ourselves and other people, and for all living things grows stronger.

     We care for what we love. If we love the part of God’s creation in which we live, we will be better stewards of the earth. And as our love and compassion break out of the confines of family and tribe, our compassion for those who suffer from pollution and global warming might also grow.

     Going outside and looking around can help us to turn away from the wickedness of our lack of awareness and from the soulless activities with which we often fill our time. It can help restore us to a more abundant life and equip us to serve. And springtime in Nebraska offers a great opportunity to connect with God by connecting with God’s creation.

**

This is adapted from an article I wrote for the Lent edition of The Nebraska Episcopalian.

Keeping Lent

The Presiding Bishop’s Lent message for 2013 encourages us “to pray, to fast, to act in solidarity with those who go without. Learn more, give alms, share what you have. Be conscious about what you eat.”

Awareness of worldwide hunger and how addressing that is tied together with our own spiritual healing is the theme of Episcopal Relief and Development’s Lenten meditations. The meditations are available as daily e-mails or in booklet form.

Awareness of what we eat, of how it is produced, packaged, and transported is intertwined with all sorts of environmental issues, and hunger around the world is exacerbated by the increase in extreme weather events resulting from climate change.

The Gospel teaches that the way we treat those in the greatest need is the way we treat Christ; our relationship with Christ is tied to our relationship with the hungry, the poor, and all those who are marginalized.  And even the most perfunctory Lenten disciplines – meatless Fridays or giving up sweets – are taken on with some sort of awareness of a relationship between our spiritual well-being and what we eat.

We are spiritually healthy when we are in good relationship with God, one another, and God’s creation. Being conscious about what we eat – or being intentional about just about any part of life – helps us become more aware of the web of connections in which we live. That awareness helps us see that when we desire to grow in our relationship in Christ, we can’t approach life as if our daily decisions affected no one but ourselves. That’s why stewardship, including environmental stewardship, is an essential piece of discipleship.

Robert Herrick wrote “To Keep a True Lent” in the 17^th century, but the core idea of the poem is very much in keeping with what Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori and Episcopal Relief and Development say to us as we begin Lent in 2013.

TO KEEP A TRUE LENT.
by Robert Herrick

Is this a fast, to keep
                The larder lean ?
                            And clean
From fat of veals and sheep ?

Is it to quit the dish
                Of flesh, yet still
                            To fill
The platter high with fish ?

Is it to fast an hour,
                Or ragg’d to go,
                            Or show
A downcast look and sour ?

No ;  ‘tis a fast to dole
                Thy sheaf of wheat,
                            And meat,
Unto the hungry soul.

It is to fast from strife,
                From old debate
                            And hate ;
To circumcise thy life.

To show a heart grief-rent ;
                To starve thy sin,
                            Not bin ;
And that’s to keep thy Lent. 

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.

Celebrate! (Into the Wilderness of Lent)

Quakes, Tsunami, and Spring Migration

Here in the Platte River valley the first week of Lent, the annual spring migration of the sandhill cranes has reached its peak. During the day, the fields are full of cranes feeding and dancing and making the sound that in this part of the world means the beginning of spring. At night, the cranes gather in the river for protection from predators. People fill blinds along the river and stand along bridges to see and hear the arrival of the cranes at sunset and to watch them take off again at sunrise. The Rowe Sanctuary offers a Cranecam that shows some of the wonder of this. (Sunrise and sunset are both around 7:40 now.)

Of course, the first week of Lent has also brought news of the 9.0 earthquake in Japan and the tsunami, aftershocks, and dangers from damaged nuclear power plants that have followed. The news, photos, and videos coming out of Japan have helped us see some pieces of this disaster that is too big for us to truly comprehend. It’s so big that its impact is felt here; we talk with one another about the latest news reports, we pray for the people of Japan, and we look for ways to help.

When we drove from Hastings to Grand Island for church on Sunday – a gray day with a “wintry mix” of showers, sleet, and snow – the fields were full of cranes. Nearly as dramatic were the fields of snow geese. Later that day I returned to Grand Island after checking the news and seeing updates about the extent of the damage in Japan and estimates of the loss of life. The day was still gray, and the mood of the weather seemed to match the news.

And then, on my way home, having brought communion and Ash Wednesday ashes to some of our older parishioners who can’t come to church any more and thinking about Lent and Japan and hoping the road wouldn't turn icy before I got home, I saw some movement in the gray fields. Some of the cranes were dancing. When cranes dance, they leap into the air and flap their wings. Some of the cranes are dancing in this video shot near the Platte:

On a sunny spring day, this dance fits right in with the mood of the day, and we humans think the birds must be sharing our joy. On this still wintry Sunday with such weighty news in the world, I was surprised to experience the same level of joy when the cranes began to dance.


The Omaha World Herald reported yesterday on Interior Secretary Ken Salazar’s visit to the Rowe Sanctuary on Monday. Secretary Salazar, says the article, stood “silent and transfixed by the spectacle” before saying, “It’s inspirational.” His reaction is typical of people who come from other places and see the cranes for the first time. It’s a spiritual experience.

On Sunday, March 27, St. Stephen’s in Grand Island will have a special Crane Sunday to celebrate the migration, reflect on its spiritual elements, and talk about the connection between that sort of experience and what we typically talk about on Sunday mornings in the church. Because the cranes come in March, our Crane Sunday always ends up being a Sunday in Lent. Far from detracting from a proper observance of Lent, we have found that celebrating something that is so much a part of our lives during Lent deepens our Lenten journey. We don’t forget the wilderness of Lent; the wilderness of Lent helps us to appreciate the joy of the crane migration and the other signs of spring.

In our part of the world, the annual visit of the sandhill cranes is commonplace; some Nebraskans wonder what all the fuss is and can’t understand why people from faraway places come to see the spring migration in the Platte Valley. Why would we celebrate something so ordinary, and especially during Lent?

A friend who lives in Tokyo sent me a message early today. Kirk describes what it is like in Tokyo right now -- empty grocery shelves, lines at gas stations, unpredictable train service and power supply, and aftershocks from the earthquake – and says everyone looks forward to a return to normalcy whenever that may happen. He knows it is much worse to the north, and that the return to normalcy there will be years in coming. He ends his message with this: “Celebrate your normal, everyday lives.”

Everyone is invited to join us at St. Stephen’s at 9:30 on March 27 to celebrate our normal, everyday lives in central Nebraska and to focus on the wonder and joy that is ours for the noticing.

Ash Wednesday

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

Accept our repentance, Lord.

Recently a relatively new acquaintance in the diocese told me that when he first met me and heard me talk about my ministry, he didn’t understand why anyone would do environmental ministry; for him it didn’t seem to fit the model of other ministries of the church. But he then said that after hearing me talk about creation care, he had begun to notice how often we pray for the earth and its resources, for God’s creation, and realized that concern for creation is found throughout our liturgy. I thought about this conversation after our midday Ash Wednesday service because repentance for our poor stewardship of the environment and for our lack of concern about that poor stewardship is spelled out clearly in these lines from the Litany of Penitence.

In fact, many of the sins we confess in the Litany of Penitence are directly related to issues of environmental stewardship: self-indulgence, exploitation of other people, an intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and our blindness to human needs and suffering (including the suffering of people whose health is affected by air and water pollution or climate change). As we pray this litany on Ash Wednesday, it’s easy to read the words and move on to the next part of the litany without connecting what we are saying to any particular actions or situations; it’s easy to be sincere about our penitence on an abstract level without connecting that penitence to areas where we could and should make changes in our own lives. It might be good to find some quiet time early on during Lent to pray through the Litany of Penitence (pp. 267-269 in the Book of Common Prayer) slowly, taking the time to think more specifically about where we have fallen short so that we can truly repent and turn toward better ways of living our lives.

Today’s lectionary 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”. Pollution and climate change are leaving many places where people live in need of restoration. God has work for us to do when we get up off our knees.

Lenten Alternatives

Spring is coming, and Lent begins tomorrow. Anticipating Lent, I've been paying attention to incoming messages about Lenten disciplines that are intended to help us become more faithful stewards of the environment. These are pre-packaged Lenten disciplines; participants commit to the general idea of carbon reduction or environmental stewardship, and then follow daily suggestions for carrying out that commitment. They are especially useful for folks who want to do something to become better stewards but who don’t know where to begin.

Along with looking at these creative approaches to Lenten fasting, I’ve been thinking about my own Lenten discipline, trying to get a feel for whether one of these programs or some other discipline feels like something that might best deepen my own discipleship during Lent. For this post, I’m offering links to a couple of the growing number of environmentally-related “pre-packaged” Lenten disciplines, then describing another alternative coming from a slightly different direction.

The United Church of Christ has developed an Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast. Participants will receive a daily e-mail message with a suggestion for reducing carbon. A nice feature of this program is the promise that, where possible, a quantitative measure of the carbon reduction from the activity will be provided – an important feature for people who want to get some sense of how much difference such activities can make. Since this program will come as daily e-mails, I haven’t seen an overview of the activities, but it sounds as if it will be very focused on actual carbon reduction. As an alternative to signing up for the e-mails, the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast has a Facebook page where the daily activities will be posted.

Several other carbon fast programs combine true carbon-fasting activities with activities that develop good stewardship in other areas. Earth Ministries and Washington Interfaith Power & Light offers a carbon fast calendar that suggests a carbon-reducing activity on most days with an occasional activity focused on other areas, such as water conservation. Having this program as a calendar to view on the computer or to print makes it especially attractive for families taking on the discipline together. Children can anticipate the activities for coming days, and parents can think ahead about how to carry out the activity in their particular household.

The Tearfund in the UK has designed a carbon fast that includes activities that address overconsumption and nudge us closer to simpler living. The Tearfund is dedicated to reducing poverty, so their program is very intentional about setting carbon-reduction and the other activities within the context of global justice.

As an alternative to carbon fasts that mirror the traditional fasts of Lent, we might do something that shifts the focus just a bit to the sort of self-renewal that leads to renewal not only to an ongoing commitment to environmental stewardship but also to the sort of deep connection with the non-human world that deepens our relationship with God the Creator and God’s Son through whom, as we confess in the Nicene Creed, all things were made.

It’s fairly simple: Find a way each day to honor God through some action that tends to the connection we have to God through creation, and include a prayer of gratitude for God’s creation as part of that action. Some days this may look similar to the carbon fast activities, being intentional about caring for some aspect of God’s creation while giving thanks for that aspect of creation. Other days it might be something that doesn’t look at all like a fast -- spending some time really looking at the spring flowers that will begin blooming during Lent, going out to see the Sandhill cranes, planning or planting an early spring garden. It may simply be sitting in the sun and listening to the birds.

The point is to find something that works to renew our connection to the earth in a way that we experience as a deepening of our connection to God and to be intentional about thanking God for some specific part of creation. The hope is that the renewal of that connection and our gratitude for creation will bring us closer to God, to a place where care for God’s creation flows naturally from our relationship to God.

Seasons: Loving our Neighbors

Thursday was the sort of early spring day we in Nebraska have been awaiting all winter. The sun was shining, the wind wasn’t particularly high, we could see bits of color where crocuses and snowdrops were starting to bloom, and birds were singing. The Earth calendar says it’s now officially spring; the church calendar says it’s still in the Lenten season that started back in snowy February. And despite the warmth of the late March sun, the air is still cool and there’s another chilly rain coming, reminding us that it’s still very early in the spring. I heard someone this week remark that though spring is now here, she wouldn’t feel as if we were fully in springtime until Easter; once Easter arrives, we know that spring is really here and the heaviest winter clothes can be put away for several months.

My family and I lived in New Zealand for four years before moving to south central Nebraska. With southern hemisphere seasons the opposite of ours, The Earth seasons and liturgical seasons are easily separated there; the Lenten journey begins in late summer and ends with an autumnal Easter. It’s easy for us in Nebraska to forget that our liturgical calendar that arranges the church seasons in close order with the Earth seasons in the temperate part of the northern hemisphere doesn’t work the same way for people in other parts of the world. Our own immediate weather and our own immediate liturgical experience are what we know most easily, but we need to look beyond them to begin to understand the experience of people in other places.


As Easter approaches, even this early northern hemisphere spring, this not-quite-fully-arrived spring, is a great contrast to the cold and snowy winter we had this year. Stu Ostro, Senior Meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said that the best word to sum up this winter in the United States is ‘relentless’ -- one storm after another, one cold front after another. In a recent blog post, he gives a good overview of this winter and talks about the various climatological factors that came together to bring us so much snow and cold. He gives a fairly detailed look at the role of El Nino, both in the ways in which this was a typical El Nino year and the interactions with other factors that made it atypical in some ways. There’s a good discussion of the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and the AO (Arctic Oscillation), both blocking patterns that bring Arctic air much farther south than normal. These factors this year gave us more cold farther south than usual in the United States, while Canada had a warmer than normal year, witnessed by many of us when we saw the snow conditions in Vancouver during the Winter Olympics. Finally, he talks about the role of climate change in all of this, noting that as our atmosphere warms, we can expect “increased precipitation extremes”.

Canada wasn’t the only place warmer than normal the past few months. In the southern hemisphere, for example, Western Australia sweltered through its hottest summer on record. 

A draft paper from NASA concludes that “global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade, despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature,” and it predicts that a new record twelve-month global temperature will be set in 2010. In the Climate Progress blog, Joe Romm, quoting extensively from an e-mail message from climate scientist James Hansen, summarized some of the main points  for folks who don’t want to wade through the entire paper. As in Stu Ostro’s post, there is consideration of how various factors interact to determine both particular weather events and overall climate trends.

As Christians, we are called to love our neighbors; in this global village in which we all now live, loving our neighbors means caring about people all over the world as well as those who live in our own neighborhood, city, or state. Most of us are sympathetic to people in need in other parts of the world. We responded with great generosity to the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, for example, and we are interested in knowing how the relief effort is going and what else we might do to help.

In the same way, it’s important for us to understand not only our own immediate weather and the personal and economic effects it has, but for us to be aware of the global climate and how that affects our global neighbors as well as ourselves. This week, a tiny island that was claimed by both India and Bangladesh disappeared , covered by the rising ocean. This island was not inhabited, but other nearby islands – and, very significantly, the coastal areas of Bangladesh – are. What lies ahead for these global neighbors?

As the Lenten season concludes with Holy Week, we might spend some time considering the global climate. Where are we headed, and what does it mean for ourselves and our neighbors? At this time, how can we best follow Christ, who taught us that in serving others we serve him? Looking past our own immediate experience of Earth seasons to enter into the experience of our liturgical season will help us first to look at the challenges our global neighbors face, and then to enter into the fullness of Easter and the fullness of spring with renewed hearts centered on serving Christ through serving our neighbors.

Crane Liturgy

Once more the northbound wonder brings back the goose and crane, Prophetic Sons of Thunder, Apostles of the Rain.
In many a battling river, the broken gorges boom. Behold the Mighty Giver emerges from the tomb.

These words from John Neihardt’s poem Easter began the opening acclamation at St. Stephen’s, Grand Island,  on Sunday as we celebrated our second annual Crane Liturgy.

Sunday was, of course, also the Third Sunday in Lent; the juxtaposition of the Lenten journey with the arrival of the cranes on their annual journey says something about the way Christians live in the world. We welcome the joyful sights and sounds of the sandhill cranes returning to the Platte Valley once again and see through them the joy of God in creation; at the same time, we prepare ourselves for Holy Week and Easter and an opportunity to participate once again in remembering Christ’s own journey, the pain and sorrow of the cross, and the joy and power of the resurrection. We rejoice in and participate in the world while remembering we are grounded in the salvation story.

The tension between the Lenten journey and the spiritual effect of the crane migration on many of us was maintained by using the usual lectionary readings for the Third Sunday in Lent and continuing our Lenten practices such as not having altar flowers and not saying our usual alleluias in the liturgy. Because of the crane celebration, however, we also had a special banner hanging in the church, children processing in behind the choir with paper birds “flying” from poles, origami cranes placed here and there, and a garland of birds from our church school children on the pulpit.

At coffee hour, we enjoyed seeing some artwork honoring the cranes. Several of the late John Mayer’s crane pictures were on display along with other paintings and photos of cranes and some wonderful pictures from the children. It was a wonderful celebration, and we are already thinking about what we want to do with this next year. Our hope is to move it closer to the river, somewhere closer to the cranes and where more people from the community might be comfortable joining us and learning to connect the awe and wonder the crane migration evokes with the God we worship in our churches

Writing the sermon, I thought about how God can use lures like the burning bush that caught Moses’ attention and the cranes for us to nudge us to change our focus and be more open to hearing the message God has for us and seeing the things God wants us to notice. The sermon is included below.

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Sermon for Lent 3C and Crane Liturgy
Exodus 3:1-15; Luke 13: 1-9

Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”

In this morning’s lesson from Exodus, the familiar story of Moses and the burning bush, Moses displays a capacity for wonder. He was curious about the world around him and open to seeing and learning new things. His example fits very well with our second annual celebration of the crane migration, and with our observance of Lent.

With the warmer weather this week, more sandhill cranes flew in from the south. I went out to the Platte River at sunrise Friday morning to see cranes, and I wasn’t disappointed. I was downriver from where some cranes had spent the night. I could hear the crescendo of sound as they rose up from the river, and see them as they flew away from the river into the surrounding fields. Along with the sound of the cranes were the sounds of red-winged blackbirds and the occasional honk of geese. Despite the ice and snow underfoot that morning, I knew this all meant that the seasons are indeed changing and spring is coming in!

When people go and watch the cranes, whether they’re visitors seeing them for the first time or local folks who see them every year – they often talk about the experience using the same words we use to talk about other experiences that we easily recognize as spiritual. “It’s awesome!” or “Incredible!” they say, or “I can’t find the words; it’s indescribable.” As people of faith, it’s important for us to name this experience for what it is, to connect the dots between the wonder we experience out there by the river and the God we worship in our churches.

Even hearing some of the scientific facts about the cranes can evoke a sense of wonder: When they are migrating, for example, they typically fly 200-300 miles in a day; sometimes, with a good tail wind, they go as far as 500 miles. Fossils that are structurally similar to sandhill cranes are more than nine million years old, making this an incredibly – and wonderfully – old species.

And yet, from a different perspective, what the cranes are doing is unremarkable. While this is a unique animal, the birds that fascinate us every spring aren’t doing anything unusual or new: the cranes are simply doing what cranes do.

Before returning to Moses and his sense of wonder and curiosity, let’s take a look at the Gospel for this Third Sunday in Lent. Our passage this morning actually contains two distinct messages.

The first part of today’s Gospel looks at the question of why bad things happen to some people and not to others. How about those Galileans who were killed while they were in the temple offering sacrifices? Or those people who were killed when a tower fell down on them? Did bad things happen to them because they were worse sinners than other people? No, says Jesus; we are all sinners, and all need to repent, to turn toward God, or something worse than these things – the loss of our souls – will happen to us. When an earthquake hits Haiti, it’s neither good theology nor good science to try to figure out what great sin someone committed to cause the earthquake; ditto for hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and landslides. The children in Haiti who will go through life with missing limbs or missing parents because of the earthquake were not being punished by a vengeful God. When I hear people like our mission team members who have worked in the Dominican Republic talk about the poverty and hardship of the people in churches there, they usually also talk about how gracious and generous the people are. They are good people dealing with bad circumstances, no more sinful than the rest of us.

Why would people today ask this same question? Well, if I’m a pretty good person and think bad things happen only to bad people, then I can go around thinking nothing bad can happen to me. This sort of magical thinking disguised as piety lets me use faith as a charm to ward off troubles rather than a means of finding a path through life’s inevitable difficulties, big and small, in a way that glorifies God.

Sometimes this irrational thought that if I don’t do anything especially bad then nothing bad will happen to me leads to inaction. Just as a child who is regularly punished or belittled for any sort of mistake can become extremely withdrawn, we sometimes get so focused on avoiding any sort of risk that we don’t do much of anything at all. If we don’t do anything, then we don’t risk making a mistake. But the parable of the fig tree in the second part of today’s lesson says that eliminating risk by doing nothing is not acceptable.

A little later in Luke’s Gospel (Ch. 19), Jesus tells the parable of the talents. The slaves who take the talents entrusted to them and invest or multiply them are rewarded, but the slave who takes the talent he is given and wraps it up and hides it, fearful of making a mistake that will bring the nobleman’s anger on him, is the one who has everything taken away from him. Jesus makes the same point in today’s parable about the fig tree: the unproductive fig tree is taking up resources and not producing anything, so the owner of the vineyard wants the gardener to chop it down. The gardener intercedes on the tree’s behalf, getting another year for the tree to start producing figs. It’s nearly too late for this unproductive tree, but there’s still a second chance. Just as we delight in the cranes doing what cranes do, someone growing fruit trees and vines delights in these plants doing what they do – producing fruit. The problem with the fig tree isn’t that it isn’t producing apples or oranges, or that it isn’t solving a math problem like a human or singing like a bird, but that it isn’t producing any figs.

The point seems to be that we are supposed to be productive, to bear fruit, in some sort of way, but how do we know what God expects us to do? It’s obvious what God expects of a fig tree or a crane, but what does God expect of me? These questions are especially important during Lent, when we focus on the sort of self-examination and openness to God’s call that we hope to have throughout our lives.

This is where a second look at Moses and the burning bush can be helpful, because the story shows us how easy it can be to hear God when are willing to look and listen. A sense of wonder and curiosity helps us be open to hearing what God is saying to us.

Moses is curious not because there’s a bush burning but because of the way that it’s burning: there’s fire, but the bush isn’t being consumed by the fire. Moses notices this – the first step – and then chooses to look at it. “I must turn aside and look at this great sight,” he says. He doesn’t say, “I don’t understand it; that’s stupid,” or “I’m busy; I don’t have time to look at some bush,” or “It’s so boring here; there’s nothing to look at.” He doesn’t close his mind to the information; and he doesn’t refuse to believe what’s right in front of him even though it doesn’t fit with what he has always believed about bushes and their properties.

For those with eyes to see and ears to hear, God can use lures like migrating cranes and burning bushes and all sorts of things in the world around us to get our attention. And there are lots of ways to look and listen, especially today. Things that we can’t see or hear directly because of either their distance from us or their properties are things that we can know in other ways. Photos and video clips and sound recordings from every corner of the world are available to us; books and newspapers and magazines in both paper and electronic form bring us information. All sorts of scientific instruments coupled with our knowledge let us explore the smallest structures of living things on our planet, the physical properties of other planets and distant stars, and the patterns of ocean currents and air currents. We can know which species of plants and animals are nearly extinct and which are thriving; we can know the patterns of bird and animal migrations, study their behavior, and predict fairly well how changes in human population, land use, and climate might affect them.

Once Moses pays attention to the bush, to this sort of lure that God uses to gain his attention, God speaks plainly. God makes sure Moses is clear on God’s identity, and then says, “I’ve noticed the misery of my people in Egypt and have come to deliver them; so come, I will send you out to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt.” This is not something Moses really wanted to hear, and his initial reaction is to say, “Who am I that I should go talk to Pharaoh?” This is perhaps one of the reasons we keep our eyes and ears narrowly focused on familiar sights and sounds and keep our minds closed to ideas that don’t fit the narrow range of whatever specific worldview we prefer; when God speaks, what we hear can be intimidating or unsettling in some way. When we look around, we might see things that disturb us and might know that God wants us to pay attention to these things. But we aren’t left alone in our discomfort; God, knowing Moses’ discomfort, assures Moses that God will be with him. And we need to take the risk; refusal to look is refusal to follow God.

When Moses first turns aside to the bush, God instructs him to take off his sandals because the place where he is standing is holy ground. There’s no special tent or building there, no religious symbols or monuments. It’s holy ground because it’s where Moses is hearing God’s voice. Any place we walk can be holy ground if it’s a place where we are especially open to God’s presence. For many of us this time of year, the Platte River valley is holy ground. The sights and sounds of the cranes lure us out of our everyday routines and concerns, out to take some time to look and listen and feel the beginning of spring, out to reconnect with the Earth. It calls us to look up from our own small worlds so we can see the wonders of the world around us. Every place where we take off our shoes – where we intentionally take the time to look and listen – is holy ground.

Lent is a time when we often work on clearing space in our lives so that we can have more time to look and listen. Moses learned a lot about God and about the work God wanted him to do by paying attention to the burning bush. St. Thomas Aquinas taught that we can learn a lot about God and God’s purposes by studying nature; he also taught that the one uniquely human quality was reason. Just as fig trees flourish by producing figs, we flourish as human beings by using our capacity to reason. We can learn a lot about God and God’s purposes by looking and listening and then thinking about what we have seen and heard.

Humankind is reluctantly beginning to look and listen to the signs of changes in the earth’s climate that could progress to a point that will make life as we have known it unsustainable. Many people choose to look away from the scientific evidence, to discount, dismiss, or ignore it. It’s intimidating; it makes us uneasy; and thinking about it is just plain difficult. The implications of how we might have to change our lives are equally scary for many of us. The fig tree in the parable was using up resources but not doing anything useful; the gardener got it a little more time to try to turn that around. There was hope. We don’t know what happened to that fig tree, if the following year found it full of fruit or cut down.

We have a little more time also to look, listen, and find the courage to go where God calls us. May the presence of the sandhill cranes among us give us a sense of God’s presence as we experience the hope and joy of increasing light and warmth. Amen.