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  

Cruelty or Compassion

End of the Day, Feast of St. Francis, 2018

My heart has been heavy this year on the Feast of St. Francis. After looking at today’s main news stories this morning, I went outside — where the temperature had dropped some 50-60 degrees since yesterday afternoon — thinking that breathing some fresh air and moving around doing some garden clean-up would make things brighter. I was working on a flower bed that surrounds our small statue of St. Francis when one of our resident cottontails hopped out from under a bush. It surprised me, though, by not hopping away as they often do when we startle them. Instead, it hopped to a spot a couple feet away from me and then stopped and simply watched me.

This bunny’s lack of fear reminded me of the stories of wild animals and birds approaching him. The animals and birds seemed to sense that Francis was compassionate, that near him there would only be kindness and not the cruelty other people sometimes aimed at wild creatures. 

Francis sensed the interconnectedness among all things that the modern study of ecology has demonstrated. That interconnectedness in the natural world is paralleled by interconnectedness of events and issues in the economic and political spheres that may at first glance seem unrelated. There are many important issues demanding our attention right now, but all of them — including our failure to address climate change in a significant way — are interrelated. Environmental concerns tend to get pushed aside given other immediately compelling issues, but our welfare depends on not losing sight of the state of the biosphere both for its own sake and because of the way it connects with all the other concerns before us. 

The welfare of the birds is something to consider as we remember St. Francis. BirdLife International’s 2018 State of the World’s Birds report describes a “steady and continuing deterioration” in the state of the world’s birds. Even some of the world’s most well-known bird species are declining, and this should concern all of us: “These statistics aren’t just bad news for birds, they are also warnings for the planet as a whole. The health of bird species is a good measure of the state of ecosystems in general.”

One of the news stories I read this morning bore the discouraging heading Climate scientists are struggling to find the right words for very bad news. Reporting on the 48th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Washington Post reporters Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis report on our increasing understanding that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C. is essential to avoid global catastrophe and the IPCC’s task of communicating their knowledge and helping the world’s nations come to agreements that allow us to do this urgent work in a fairly short amount of time. 

Other news stories today were about the confirmation process for a new Supreme Court justice and the related issues around women’s rights and the #MeToo movement that have been highlighted by this process. And there were stories about other things such as the immigrant children who have been separated from their parents, gun violence, and ongoing wars and civil disturbances. 

Given all of that, here is what struck me as especially insightful on this day when we remember St. Francis. The Atlantic published a piece by Adam Serwer called The Cruelty Is the Point. Serwer suggests that the many events and current policies which seem cruel aren’t cruel as an unintended consequence of some noble goal, but rather that the cruelty — and the bonding around the “joy” of inflicting cruelty among supporters of current policies — is the point. In reading it, I thought about our lack of concern for the birds and other living things, the indignation of many Americans at the thought that we might choose to change the ways we produce and use energy so that people in other places might live, and the cruel things said and shouted at women in recent days who dare to speak their truth. It’s all of one piece, and that one piece couldn’t be further from the compassion that St. Francis embodied and taught.

Deeply rooted kindness, heartfelt compassion, simple Christian love are the antidote to cruelty. Animals do sense which people are kind like Francis and which people are cruel, and when we humans are paying attention we do a good job of sensing that, too. Francis was known for his devotion to God and his compassion for all living things. Strengthening our own devotion to God and our own capacity for compassion are the essential elements to ready ourselves for the work that lies before us for our nation and for every living thing with which we share our planet.

St. Francis Day: Extending the Circle of Compassion

Maybe it’s just that social media has made it easier to know about what is happening in parishes across the country, but it seems like St. Francis Day is celebrated more widely than it used to be. Parishes bless pets on or near October 4, and people remember some of Francis’s words or share images of St. Francis with their friends. 

Once we get past the sentimental side of St. Francis, we see a saint who showed great compassion to poor people, giving up his own privileges to live in solidarity with the poor. While it is nearly as easy to romanticize or sentimentalize his poverty and his compassion for the poor as it is his compassion for animals, when we set aside the sentimental side, his story is very striking. Francis took Jesus’s teachings seriously, and his life shows us what following Jesus can look like.

Francis’s compassion flowed out of his love for Christ. Francis did not neglect worship, and his attention to the words of Christ in the Gospel guided his heart and his mind, but he also did not neglect action in the world.  As Francis understood as a deacon, when the Gospel works long enough on someone’s heart and mind, the natural result is compassion that extends in an ever-widening circle.

The great work for Christians today is to extend that circle of compassion not only in wider and wider circles in our present world, but also to extend that circle to future generations. Compassion says that if we see the potential for living things to suffer now or 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now, we should do whatever we can to alleviate 

that suffering.

We are told that St. Francis preached to the birds, and he is often depicted as a friend to the birds. The reality this St. Francis Day is that climate change is endangering the birds. Climate change is threatening all living things, but we are so paralyzed by this that this evening’s debate for vice-presidential candidates did not include a single question about dealing with climate change or its effects. We spend much of our lives acting as if nothing is happening. 

Bill McKibben recently wrote Recalculating the Climate Math, which very clearly explains why we have to leave fossil fuels in the ground and rapidly develop clean energy sources. Using new information from Oil Change International, McKibben’s essay argues that to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees C. “we’ll need to close all of the coal mines and some of the oil and gas fields we’re currently operating long before they’re exhausted”. 

We are nowhere near doing that. We may admire St. Francis’s compassion for the birds and for the people who stand to suffer first and worst from climate change, but our compassion is not yet great enough to overcome the fear of change that keeps us from doing what we must to address climate change in any meaningful way or even to talk about it very often.

Perhaps next St. Francis Day our churches could honor Francis by hosting serious discussions about climate change and its impacts, or by encouraging parishioners to advocate for action on climate. If we can find as much compassion for people suffering the effects of climate change and for the birds and wild animals and plants as we have for our domestic pets, we all might stand a chance of surviving this century.

St. Francis: Action Grounded in Compassion

“What did you do once you knew?”

This year’s celebration of St. Francis falls at a time when there is growing awareness of climate change and its effects. The effects are all around us now, even if we don’t always articulate the connection between these effects and rising global temperatures. Global warming brings exceptionally dry conditions to some areas and torrential rains to others, while rising sea levels make coast flooding more frequent.

This week, heavy rains associated with Hurricane Joaquin are causing historic flooding along parts of the eastern seaboard in the United States. On Thursday, a rain-soaked hill in Guatemala collapsed in a landslide. CNN reports that at least 73 people died in the landslide, and hundreds are missing. And this same week, Ed Struck reports that rising temperatures, changes in precipitation, and increased lightning strikes are leading to ever-larger wildfires in the northern forests of Alaska, Canada, and Siberia. Some of the ecological effects of these fires are already evident; some of us in Nebraska remember some smoky days this summer from fires in Canada and the northwestern United States. Down the road, if these fires burn through the organic layers that protect the permafrost in northern regions, the carbon concentrated in permafrost will be released, accelerating global warming. 

St. Francis Day this year comes also on the heels of Pope Francis’s visit to the United States. During his visit, Pope Francis exhorted the American people and our leaders to pay attention to climate change and make the changes we need to make in order to allow us and all living things to thrive. His visit makes it easier, perhaps, for us to look beyond the blessing of pets to the deeper teachings of St. Francis that are so important for us to heed in the 21st century.

St. Francis’s compassion extended far beyond domestic animals. Most notably, Francis had compassion for poor people. Born into comfortable circumstances, he left all of that to live as poor people lived. Today we might say he stood in solidarity with the poor. His compassion extended to all living things: people, plants, water, the wind, the sun, moon, and stars. His compassion even extended to death itself, part of the great web and cycles of life. 

His compassion flowed out of his love for Christ. His grounding in Christ was evident in his loving restoration of ruined churches and in his creation of the first crèche to make the story of the Nativity more accessible to people. Francis did not neglect worship, and his attention to the words of Christ in the Gospel guided his heart and his mind, but he also did not neglect action in the world.  As Francis understood as a deacon, when the Gospel works long enough on someone’s heart and mind, the natural result is compassion that extends in an ever-widening circle.

The great work for Christians today is to extend that circle of compassion not only in wider and wider circles in today's world, but also to extend that circle to future generations. Compassion says that if we see the potential for living things to suffer now or 10, 20, 50, or 100 years from now, we should do whatever we can to alleviate that suffering.

What do we do? What response is one we would be happy for people who may be alive in 100 years to know about? What response is one we are happy for God to know about now?

A prayerful reflection on how we act with compassion in today’s world might start with this passage from Hieroglyphic Stairway read by the poet, Drew Dillinger:

Good Friday: The Goodness of Grief

Reflecting on the Solemn Collects of our Good Friday liturgy last year in the post Good Friday: Grief, Compassion and Hope, I talked about the weight of grief as we hear again the story of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion and the way that resonates with the weight of grief felt by people paying to attention to climate change and its effects on all forms of life on this planet.

The weight of that grief is heavier this year than it was last year. Since last Good Friday, 2014 has been declared the warmest year on record. As 2015 is underway, we continue to break records for the hottest continuous twelve months on record.  Arctic sea ice has hit its lowest winter maximum on record. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now commonly at or above 400 ppm. A new study shows that the rate of sea level rise is greater than previously thought.

California is under a Drought State of Emergency while the northeastern United States is emerging from big winter snow totals that broke records in places like Boston. Both situations produce negative economic impacts for people. Some parts of the world suffer from flooding and damaging storm winds while others see worsening drought. Along with producing immediate harm from floods, winds, and burning forests and prairies, these extreme conditions increase food insecurity. 

But Good Friday reminds us that we do not grieve alone. It can feel that way, because we live in a society that often turns away from facing challenges like climate change because we don’t know what to do with grief. Good Friday gives us a day when grief is acknowledged, felt, and even expected. It’s a day for people paying attention throughout the year to feel less alone in our grief and to be part of a worshiping community that can gather to grieve

The weight of grief for our biosphere has grown heavier in a year, but the promise of Good Friday that compassion for those who suffer can lift us all into a place of some sort of hope still rings true. Hope is not uninformed optimism; hope is not an irrational belief that we will magically return to a time before climate destabilization. Hope is faith that love has power we cannot fathom and even the worst of human experience can be redeemed.

And, more than ever, I still believe this part of last year’s reflection to be true:

Gathering our strength and doing whatever we can to prevent and relieve the human misery that results from environmental degradation is the only choice we have as followers of Christ. Choosing to acknowledge the problems we face and working to address them with so little evidence that we can succeed is where we draw on our faith and our hope.

We are an Easter people, even on Good Friday and because of Good Friday. Opening ourselves to grief, lamenting and being present to the reality of so much loss, also allows us to experience genuine compassion, the entry point to genuine hope.

Good Friday: Grief, Compassion, and Hope

Our Good Friday liturgy helps us bear and work through the weight of grief that we experience as we listen to the story of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. It is one point in the church year when profound grief is acknowledged and expected, even as we live in the knowledge of the Easter story and anticipation of a joyful celebration of the resurrection.

The grief we experience when we think of Christ, God Incarnate, on the cross is an elemental grief that contains all our other particular forms of grief. What we say and do on Good Friday in response to the Passion Gospel can help us find our way through our grief for the living things on our warming planet and can help us form and sustain a holy, healthy response to climate change.

For people paying attention to what is happening, the beauty of springtime can be bittersweet as we stand to lose 25-50% of species this century from habitat destruction, pollution, and global warming and ocean acidification. (See the book The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert for a good overview of the situation; a short and clear discussion is in this post from Dr. Jeff Masters.) Not knowing how much longer the flowers, trees, and birds that we love will be found where we live or anywhere on earth for that matter brings some heartbreak along with the delight in seeing them again after a long winter. And of course we have grief for people who have already suffered from drought, fire, floods, sea-level rise, and other effects of climate change.

The third of the Solemn Collects asks for the cry of those in misery and need to come to God; it also prays for God to “give us…the strength to serve them for the sake of him who suffered for us.” Gathering our strength and doing whatever we can to prevent and relieve the human misery that results from environmental degradation is the only choice we have as followers of Christ. Choosing to acknowledge the problems we face and working to address them with so little evidence that we can succeed is where we draw on our faith and our hope.

Choosing to act out of compassion allows us to get out from under the weight of our grief. Drawing on our faith for strength, we find energy for the work ahead. A response rooted in compassion is a holy and healthy response to our grief.

St. Francis Day: “What did you do once you knew?”

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which
You give sustenance to Your creatures.

As we remember St. Francis today in Nebraska, Brother Wind is very much in evidence, from the winter storm winds in the northwest to the aftermath of last night’s tornadoes in the southeast and everywhere in between. Meteorologists tell us that we have had an unusual weather pattern for early October, and as I sit on my porch in south central Nebraska writing this, it feels more like early September than early October. I know this warmth will be short-lived, though, as those cold winds out of the northwest will get here soon. I also know that unusual weather patterns with more severe storms dumping heavy precipitation are what climate scientists have predicted as global temperatures warm, the Arctic ice melts, and the Earth changes in very significant ways. Yesterday our area got a record amount of rainfall for a day in October. The Platte River was already bank full with water from the September rains in Colorado, resulting in the countryside looked in many ways more like it does during a spring thaw than in a more typical October.

Skiers are excited about the early and plentiful snows in parts of the Rockies. Farmers always welcome moisture for the soil, but would prefer dry conditions as the harvest season progresses. Some football fans will welcome cooler temperatures in Lincoln tomorrow, while others will be unhappy if the wind makes tailgating difficult or a cold wind brings discomfort. From what we know of St. Francis, I suspect he would rejoice in the snow, the storms, the wind, the rain, and whatever else he experienced in God’s creation. We celebrate his compassion for animals, bringing pets and farm animals to churches for a blessing on this day, but of course his compassion extended much farther than the animal kingdom.

Most notably, Francis had compassion for poor people. Born into comfortable circumstances, he left all of that to live as poor people lived. Today we might say he stood in solidarity with the poor. His compassion extended to all living things: people, plants, water, the wind, the sun, moon, and stars. His compassion even extended to death itself, part of the great web and cycles of life.

His compassion which flowed out of his love for Christ was evident in his loving restoration of ruined churches and in his creation of the first crèche to make the story of the Nativity more accessible to people. He did not neglect worship, and his attention to the words of Christ in the Gospel guided his heart and his mind. But he also did not neglect action in the world.

Francis was never ordained as a priest, but served the Church as a deacon. Our understanding of deacons today is that our attention to the Gospel and our love of Christ result at least as much in service in the wider world as in service within the institution of the Church. As Francis understood, when the Gospel works long enough on someone’s heart and mind, the natural result is compassion that extends in an ever-widening circle.

The great work for Christians today is to extend that circle of compassion not only in wider and wider circles in our present world, and also to extend that circle to future generations. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) Fifth Assessment Report , released at the end of September, is clear about the significant negative consequences of unmitigated global warming on today's children and those who come after them, and it is also clear that we can indeed mitigate the consequences if we care enough to make the necessary changes now. Compassion says that if we see a big problem for future generations and can do something ourselves right now to prevent suffering 20, 50, 100, or 200 years from now, we should do it.

Poet Drew Dellinger recites an excerpt from his poem Hieroglyphic Stairway that is a good place to begin prayerful reflection on this St. Francis Day:

If people fifty years from now asked, how would we answer the question "What did you do once you knew?"

Compassion for Us All

Proper 11C: Amos and Martha and Mary

Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? We will make the ephah small and the shekel great, and practice deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”… I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation; I will bring sackcloth on all loins, and baldness on every head; I will make it like the mourning for an only son, and the end of it like a bitter day. (Amos 8:4-6, 10)

Sunday’s reading from Amos (Amos 8:1-12) does not describe the people with power and money in Amos’s time in a flattering way. They walked all over poor people in order to advance their own enterprises. Far from enjoying the opportunity for rest and joy in God’s creation on the Sabbath, they were impatient for it to end so that they could get back to selling wheat and making money. While they followed the letter of the law by not working on the Sabbath, their hearts were centered on their wealth rather than God.

When we look at the people Amos describes as a group, it’s hard to find any compassion for them. They sound like arrogant, self-centered people who think their agenda is more important than the lives of those who have less than them and even more important than God and God’s commandments. But I wonder what it was like to be one of these people. A child growing up in a family and a community that has unholy priorities will learn the same twisted values as the generation before. Someone wanting to make a living and have a comfortable enough life could easily have gotten caught up in business practices that oppressed the poor out of fear that not participating in the same deceitful practices as others might put them at a disadvantage in the marketplace. Close attention to God’s word could have reminded people that their way of life was sinful, but the system that encouraged all of this taught people to care for the acquisition of wealth more than the word of God. Only those like Amos who managed to stay spiritually awake and focus on God’s could see this oppressive system for what it was. While everyone going along with the system could and ultimately would be held morally responsible for their actions, most of us know all too well how easy it would be to go along to get along.

Even while seeing from a distance how wrong this way of life was, we can then have some degree of compassion for them. If we are honest with ourselves, we can see that our own situation has a lot in common with theirs, giving us reason to feel empathy for these ancient people and reason to reflect on changes we need to make here and now.

Our culture holds up prosperity and comfort as ideals. A perfunctory practice of Christianity that ignores most of the teachings of the Gospel is encouraged in an attempt to support the pursuit of wealth and jingoism.

Just as poor people in Amos’s time suffered because of the pursuit of wealth by the powerful, the poorest people in today’s world suffer because of our pursuit of wealth. Greenhouse gas emissions, most of them historically from the wealthiest countries, have already produced enough warming to cause drought, record heat, epic flooding, and sea level rise that affects people in other places right now. Some people worry about climate change because of the effects it could have on their grandchildren, and that’s a legitimate and serious concern. But in many parts of the world, the suffering has already begun for other people’s children and grandchildren, and for adults whose seasons for planting and harvest have been disrupted, whose homes have been destroyed by floods, high winds, or rising seas, and whose risk of acquiring diseases like malaria and dengue fever have increased. So much of the suffering is invisible to most people in the United States, as it gets little news coverage and all seems so far away.  But that’s the way it has always been when poor people suffer because of the self-centeredness of others: they are all but invisible to those whose way of life produces the suffering. As Christians, though, we are called to see them and to have compassion for them.

Like the people of Amos’s time, we are caught in a system not of our own making. We can be gentle with ourselves even as we step back from it all and resolve to work for changes that make life more sustainable for all of us. God’s word can help us see the way; immersing ourselves in the Gospel can keep our eyes clear and our hearts focused. If we have compassion for ourselves, we can allow ourselves to step back from a destructive system and ground ourselves in Christ.

Sunday’s Gospel lesson (Luke 10:38-42) is the story about Jesus’s visit to the home of Martha and Mary. Mary is focused on listening to Jesus’s words, while Martha is busy with her household tasks. There will need to be a meal for the entire household and its guests, so at least some amount of work is necessary. But evidently Martha’s tasks have distracted her to the point where she isn’t listening to Jesus’s words, as he says: “Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

Our distractions have skewed our priorities, making it difficult to hear God’s word and making it difficult to see the very people in the world that Jesus always managed to see and feed and heal. Compassion for others calls us away from our system of selfish distractions to a willingness to see and serve those who are suffering in today’s world. Compassion for ourselves and our children and for all of our sisters and brothers on this planet calls us to ground ourselves in the Gospel so we have the strength and faith to do whatever we must to make life more sustainable for all of us and to rediscover the joy of following Christ.

The World Is Too Much With Us

(William Wordsworth)

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

Praying the News

News about Superstorm Sandy and its after effects, new information about the dynamics and effects of climate change, and the convening of a United Nations climate conference in Doha, Qatar, give us much information to process.  One way people of faith process news is by sitting with it prayerfully, holding up our concerns and intercessions to God even as we listen to catch what the Spirit nudges us to do in response.

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect For the Conservation of Natural Resources (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 827)

Please pray for:

People coping with the effects of Superstorm Sandy.  Superstorm Sandy caused more damage in New York State alone than Katrina did in the entire Gulf Coast region. (See Cuomo: Sandy cost N.Y. $32B in damage and loss.) Episcopal Relief and Development reports on some of the relief efforts. 

Seasonable weather. The U.S. Drought Monitor for the past week  shows most of Nebraska in the “exceptional” category – the most severe drought category. Unseasonably warmer or dryer weather in the winter makes daily life easier, but we pray for seasonable weather because our ability to grow food depends on it.

Climate conference Another UN climate change conference – COP 18  --  has convened, this one in Doha, Qatar. There are low (“modest”) expectations for this conference, and even if it accomplishes all it sets out to do, it may be too little too late. A Washington Post story on the beginning of the conference  quotes Christina Figueres, the UNFCC executive secretary, saying: “The door is closing fast on us because the pace and the scale of action is simply not yet where it must be.”

The will to look at what is happening to our biosphere, hearts to have compassion for all living things, and the wisdom and courage to do what we must to sustain life. A dedicated issue of New Scientist discusses seven areas in which climate change “is even worse than we thought”: Arctic warming, extreme weather, food production, sea level, planetary feedbacks, human emissions, and heat stress. The World Bank just issued a report called  Turn down the heat: Why a 4° C warmer world must be avoided. The report says that even if the emissions pledges made at the climate conferences in Copenhagen and Cancun are fully met, there is still about a 20% chance of warming more than 4° C by 2100; if the pledges are not met, then we could reach this level of warming by 2070.

Avoiding disastrous levels of warming is not an easy task, and the powers opposed to limiting greenhouse gas emissions in the name of short-term profit and convenience are many and have a wide reach. The Do the Math tour from Bill McKibben and 350.org will be in Omaha this Saturday to talk about ways we can work for sustainability despite the powers working against it.

Compassion is something we cultivate through prayer and through gratitude. The more we connect with the natural world around us and with one another, the more we appreciate all living things, the deeper will be our compassion and our commitment to preservation of our biosphere.

As we pray for others, we might also pray for our own hearts to be open so we can see the needs in the world around us and gladly respond to those needs:

O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814)

Thanksgiving: Falling In Love Again

A day set aside to give thanks is splendid. The significance of the day deepens when we use it to commit ourselves to a regular practice of gratitude. Thinking of a few things every day for which we are grateful and giving thanks for those things is a powerful spiritual force when practiced regularly over time. It opens our hearts to be more responsive to others, more compassionate, and more aware of God’s presence in our world and our own lives. We are grateful for things that we love; feeling gratitude for something is like falling in love with it to at least some degree.

Gratitude is intertwined with love, hope, and faith, all essential elements of a spirituality that results in and supports an ethic of environmental stewardship. When we are grateful for the land, waters, plants, and animals and for our sisters and brothers with whom we share this planet, we are in compassionate relationship with the world around us.  The more we know the natural world around us, the more likely we are to fall in love with it and care for it.  A regular practice of gratitude helps us fall in love with the wonders of creation over and over again, deepening our love for and relationship with God’s creation each time we give thanks for some part of it.  As our love for God’s creation deepens, our love for the Creator deepens as well.

As children, some of us could hardly wait for the Thanksgiving dinner to be over so we could go outside and play.  Finding some time to get outdoors, even for a few minutes, and give thanks for what we find there brings joy to adults as well as children. May Thanksgiving joy be yours!

O may this bounteous God through all our life be near us, With ever joyful hearts and blessèd peace to cheer us; And keep us in His grace, and guide us when perplexed; And free us from all ills, in this world and the next! ("Now thank we all our God")

St. Francis: All of Creation

Praised be You, my Lord, through Brother Wind,
and through the air, cloudy and serene,
and every kind of weather through which
You give sustenance to Your creatures.

St. Francis expressed his joy in all of creation in his Canticle of Creation , sometimes known as the Canticle of Brother Sun. (We Episcopalians know this as Hymns 406 and 407, “Most High, omnipotent, good Lord”.)

Many parishes have a tradition of blessing the animals – dogs, cats, hamsters, and sometimes more exotic creatures – on or around October 4, St. Francis Day. This is a popular tradition; we appreciate the reminder that God loves our animal companions just as we do. St. Francis loved not only the animals, seeing them as his brothers and sisters, but all of creation – including the wind that is promised for St. Francis Day in central Nebraska. Perhaps we should bless our chrysanthemums and cottonwoods, our rocks and rivers along with the animals. We could make a point of rejoicing in the breeze, the songbirds, the stars and moon, the insects, and in our food, clothing, homes, and the people around us.

Discussion of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline has made many of us more mindful of the gifts of the Ogallala aquifer and of the soil and the grasses that help provide stability to the soil. We have learned about the tar sands in Canada and about the vast Canadian Boreal Forest. Aware of himself as part of God’s creation, St. Francis would see these resources, too, as brothers and sisters. Scholar Daniel Wildcat, quoted by Carol Berry on the Indian Country website , says something similar. Berry reports:

Wildcat suggested looking at tribal nations that “never had a word for ‘resources’ in their vocabulary” but instead called them “relatives,” pointing out that “You don’t treat your relatives like resources” and the “ATM” approach “is not going to cut it” given 200 years of withdrawals without many deposits.

Joy in creation is one strand of the life of St. Francis. An equally strong strand is his teaching of compassion for the poor. The Old Testament reading appointed for the Feast of St. Francis, Jeremiah 22:13-16, is about humility. It reminds us that God is more interested in justice and righteousness, in how we treat the poor and needy, than whether we are able to have luxurious homes. The two strands are intertwined, as finding joy in the everyday wonders of creation opens our hearts to compassion for all creatures, including our sisters and brothers in the human family.

Joy in God’s creation and compassion for the poor are two elements of environmental stewardship. We work for a sustainable environment because we know the poorest and least powerful people in the world usually suffer first and worst from any sort of pollution or climate change, but we also work for a sustainable environment so that we can preserve our non-human brothers and sisters, those animals and plants and places through which we encounter God in God’s creation.

Eastern Africa: Drought and Famine

Part 2

Proper 13A

When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, ‘This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.’ Jesus said to them, ‘They need not go away; you give them something to eat.’

Our Sunday Gospel reading (Matthew 14:13-21) is Matthew’s version of the story we read from Mark on Tuesday. Both accounts include Jesus’ clear instructions for the disciples: “You give them something to eat.” I posted Part I of this reflection about the drought and famine in Eastern Africa on Tuesday, talking about conditions in the refugee camps, the need for immediate aid, and the work that Episcopal Relief and Development is supporting there. The need is urgent; any compassionate response to the situation must include giving what we can to alleviate the terrible hunger and suffering in that part of the world.

But the size of this crisis in terms of both the number of people in need and the degree of the food crisis means that we need to do much more than send money in order to give our sisters and brothers in Eastern Africa something to eat. This week the Episcopal Public Policy Network (EPPN) called on Episcopalians to send a message to our representatives in Congress asking them to protect famine and drought aid to Africa. Noting that UNICEF has “called this the most severe humanitarian emergency in the world and the worst drought the region has experienced in 60 years”, EPPN reports that the House Appropriations Committee has proposed reducing humanitarian aid by 12% and food assistance programs by 18%. Along with sending our own dollars to aid agencies, we can advocate for compassion to remain as a priority in our national budget. A template making it easy to contact Congress is available from EPPN here.

Given that large-scale and long-term droughts are predicted to become more frequent as our climate warms, there are two more things people of faith are called to do in relation to drought and famine. First, we must continue to do all we can to curb global warming, working to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere and being willing to make changes in our own lives so that others might live.

However, with 393 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and 350 ppm being the safe limit for human life, warming will continue for a significant time even if the nations were to put policies in place that would limit greenhouse gas emissions to a safe level. And so there is one more thing for people of faith to do: pray, reflect, and develop policies to meet the need for humanitarian aid that is expected to grow as the effects of climate change – droughts, floods and disappearing coastal lands, windstorms, and loss of fish populations – become greater.

Our plans must include even more than the traditional aid response of food, supplies, and aid workers. As these needs increase, and especially as the number of climate refugees grows, there may well be a temptation by some in wealthier nations like ours to tighten our borders and hold tightly onto what we have. Christian compassion and Christian service may be in short supply. Our plans should perhaps include ways to prepare ourselves spiritually to remain compassionate to those in need, to be welcoming to strangers, and to be certain in our hearts that God cares for all of God’s children and all of God’s creation.