Praising God in the storm

Instead of a Sunday morning at St. Stephen's or some other parish in Nebraska, I'm on an airplane from Memphis to Washington, D.C., having taken the very early flight to Memphis from Omaha this morning. I'm headed to the national Interfaith Power and Light conference; I serve on the board for Nebraska IPL and am representing us at this meeting.


It's a strange way for me to spend Sunday morning, and even stranger as I continue reading Bill McKibben's book Eaarth, check as I can for the latest news about the oil gushing into the Gulf, and fly in and out of the heavy rains and storms that Memphis has been experiencing. 


In my post The Day after Earth Day (April 23) I wrote: "The good news the day after Earth Day is that there doesn’t seem to be a major oil spill, though there is an oil slick that at the last report I heard measured ten miles by ten miles."   We have gone from that on April 23 to the headline Gulf Coast Towns Brace as Huge Oil Slick Nears Marshes as I checked today's New York Times. Describing the effects of the approaching huge oil slick, this story says: "But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it now seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together."


Meanwhile, the Revised Common Lectionary for today has us reading Psalm 148, which talks about all of creation being knit together in praise of God, the ruler of all creation:
⁷Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,

⁸fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!

⁹Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars!

¹⁰Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!

¹¹Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth!

¹²Young men and women alike, old and young together!

¹³Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven.

The book I'm reading talks about the increase of flooding storms as the temperature rises, since warmer air holds more moisture.  With the news from the Gulf getting more alarming by the day -- and the hour -- the attempt to solve some of our energy problems by increasing the number of offshore oil wells seems like a more problematic solution than some people, including some environmentalists, had led us to believe. Some of the things we have been seeing in recent months -- the increased snowfall in part of the United States and the heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro that caused loss of life and homes in landslides come to mind -- are most likely going to become more frequent.  


The solutions to our environmental woes aren't coming easily. They are difficult to figure out from an engineering and scientific point of view, and politically will be very difficult to implement, if we even find the political will to look past short-term concerns to the big picture. But people of faith are called to take on an extra challenge, to continue praising God in the midst of it all, to praise God in the storm.


When we join our voices with all of creation in praise, we become more aware of our connection not only to God, but to all of creation.  Praising God may bring us to the perspective we need: not an escape from the reality of what we have done to God's creation, not a denial of or escape from the realities of the world around us, but a place where our hearts and our sights are open wide enough to repent and do the hard work of reconciliation with God, one another, and all of creation.

O Ye Ice and Snow

“A grand cosmic vision” is the way Robert Alter describes Psalm 148 in a footnote to his translation of the psalm. (The Book of Psalms, trans. Robert Alter) This psalm of praise, one of the Evening Psalms for the Daily Office yesterday on All Saints Day, begins with the heavens and the heavenly beings, the angels, and then moves on to the Earth and the creatures of the Earth, including human beings.

I thought of the middle part of this psalm – “Praise God from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps; Fire and hail, snow and fog, tempestuous wind, doing God’s will” – when I happened across three different news stories about ice and snow today. Psalm 148 in turn reminded me of Canticle 1, The Song of Creation, in The Book of Common Prayer. This canticle is familiar to those of us who grew up with Morning Prayer as the principal service most Sundays: “O ye ice and snow, bless ye the Lord; praise him and magnify him forever."

The three news stories were similar in talking about places where ice and snow are melting at extraordinarily rapid rates. They are about three different locations: Mount Everest, Mount Kilimanjaro, and the Arctic region, including the North Pole. A story from the Associated Press tells about plans for the Nepali cabinet to meet on Mount Everest as a way to increase awareness of the threat from global warming, which is causing glaciers to melt in the Himalayas. The melting ice is forming lakes whose walls could burst and flood villages below. The second story, from CNN, tells about how the glaciers on Mount Kilimanjaro are melting at an increasing rate. The ice cap at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro could be gone within two decades at the current rate of melting. The third report, from Reuters via MSNBC, is about the ice covering the Arctic Ocean. David Barber from the University of Manitoba spoke to the Canadian Parliament last week and told them about the disappearance of “old ice”, ice that has formed over a number of years, in the Arctic. The ice that is left is thinner new ice, ice that is easily broken. The multiyear ice reached thicknesses of 260 feet; the new ice is 20 inches thick. This story reports that “An increasing number of experts feel the North Pole will be ice free in summer by 2030 at the latest, for the first time in a million years.”

This means that by 2030 there may be no ice at the North Pole in the summer and no ice cap on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro. The same year has often been mentioned as the limit for glaciers in Glacier National Park in the United States, though some scientists now believe 2020 is a more accurate prediction for the disappearance of those glaciers.

The loss of ice in these places and many other spots around the world have effects on entire ecological systems, including economic effects on the people who live near these places. Concern for people is enough of a reason for us to care more about the accelerated melting of glaciers and ice packs.

But I suspect part of the sadness I experience when I read about and reflect on what is happening is grief at the loss of a piece of that cosmic vision, the great expanses of ice and snow that, along with all of creation, are bidden to praise God. Somehow the diminishment of glaciers -- and the loss of many species of plants and animals, the acidification and pollution of the oceans, and all the damage done to creation, some of it soon to be beyond the point of restoration -- diminishes the fullness of the praises we offer to God. However, this is not surprising when we think about the disconnect between praising God with our voices while ignoring and even contributing to the destruction of God’s creation. Our spiritual health as well as our physical well-being depends on our acknowledging the harm we have done to the Earth, and repenting and changing. For the glaciers at least, the time left to do this is short.