Christian Witness In a Wounded World

When I visit with church people about the environmental crisis, the most common question is “What can we do about this?” or (tellingly) “What can I do about this?” Sometimes, of course, the response is a less positive “I can’t let myself think about this!” that points to an underlying assumption that there is nothing any one person can do about the environmental crisis, and so no point in putting any energy into thinking about something so unsettling. The people who want to do something, either collectively or individually, have the moral response right, I think: We need to do everything we can to make our situation better. The people who are overwhelmed, though, have one piece of it right: It’s too big for our small efforts at stewardship — e.g. recycling our plastic, turning down the thermostat a degree or two — to make much difference. 

Along with thinking about what sort of honest response to give people who are eager to do their part in repairing the Earth, I wonder about what particular gift we Christians can offer as humankind faces a challenge unlike anything else we have faced before. It would be silly for us to try to duplicate the work done by the big conservation and environmental advocacy organizations, who employ professionals who are better equipped than we are to lead in small mitigation efforts and in advocacy. We can pray, and we certainly know something from salvation history about hope. 

I was invited to preach at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Hastings, Nebraska, this past Sunday. This congregation looked at consumer habits and plastic pollution during Lent, and I was asked to preach about where this fits into the bigger picture of our environmental crisis.The Gospel lesson (John 20:19-31) was the story of “Doubting Thomas” encountering the risen Jesus. Reading this story again in light of questions about plastic pollution and climate change helped me articulate better some of what the Church’s call might be in this century. Here’s my reflection on this passage in light of these questions:

But [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” (John 20:25)

Good morning! I’m delighted to be here with you this morning, and especially delighted that I’m here because this congregation has been studying the problem of plastic pollution and looking at the sorts of habits to adopt as a congregation and as individuals in response to that problem. No doubt most of you now know more than the average American about the size of the problem and its ramifications for human health and the ecosystems in which we live. I don’t know about you, but when I look at the statistics about the amount of plastic produced and how much of it ends up as trash, I can’t even wrap my head around it. What I do know is that I’ve taken photos along shorelines from our little lake here in Hastings to the Great Lakes to the Hawaiian Islands of plastic trash that all looks the same — those brightly colored bottle caps stand out everywhere. 

I serve as a deacon in The Episcopal Church. While deacons get assigned to a parish — mine is Church of the Resurrection in North Omaha — we serve directly under the authority of the Bishop. Our charge is to serve as a bridge between the church and the world, interpreting the needs and concerns of the world to the church and making Christ’s love known to the world in word and deed. We have a special call to serve the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely — in other words, to help and advocate for people who are marginalized. I began my ministry as a deacon working in hunger ministry here in Hastings when we were first starting the Open Table lunch program, a typical sort of ministry for a deacon.

In 2007, while serving our parish in Grand Island, I went to a national conference for Episcopal deacons where our Presiding Bishop — our equivalent to an Archbishop — told us that given our charge to care for the poor, the sick, the hungry — for people in any kind of need — we needed to get to work on the environment! She explained that pollution and climate instability exacerbated all of the miseries we deacons traditionally addressed. That was what I needed to hear, as I had already become excited about something called the GreenFaith Fellowship Program that trains religious environmental leaders. I entered the fellowship program and changed the course of my ministry.

GreenFaith, an interfaith group, organizes its work in three categories: spirituality (connecting the wonder we experience in nature with our faith), environmental stewardship (the sorts of practices that help conserve our resources and keep our air, water, and land healthy), and environmental justice (noticing that the impacts of pollution and climate change often hit the poorest communities and communities of color first and worst, and advocating for better policies and systemic practices to change that).

As part of our fellowship program, we attended retreats around each of those areas. To my surprise, the most spiritually moving of the three, the one where I truly felt I had stood on holy ground, was our environmental justice tour of the toxic sites of the Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey.

One of the many sites we saw that day was the biggest trash incinerator in New Jersey, which sat within a half mile of two low-income housing projects. It was also near the intersection of several freeways. The air quality was not good. We exited one of those freeways and got off our bus and stood at the gate of this place.  As our guides told us more about what we were seeing -- about the mercury emissions and the high asthma rates near the incinerator – I watched an unending stream of garbage trucks come off the expressways and go through the gate to the incinerator.** I turned to Rabbi Troster, the head of the fellowship program, and said that this must be like the lowest circle of hell. He said that was what he had thought when he had first visited the incinerator. Yet there was something holy in witnessing this. 

When the entire tour was done and our group was reflecting on it, we found that everyone in the group had had a similar experience as we made our pilgrimage and stopped at several toxic sites. Seeing those things had connected us to the holy. The sense I made of that was that seeing how our habits of consumerism and carelessness affect some of the most marginalized people in our own country had given us a glimpse of how our way of life affects Jesus. As we treat the least of the members of God’s family, so we treat Jesus. When we stand as witnesses to suffering, we stand close to Jesus.

Our Gospel reading about Thomas illuminates that sort of witness to environmental degradation and injustice. I believe that a major piece of an appropriate response from Christians to the big environmental challenges of our time — and I’d put plastic pollution and climate change at the top of a list of those challenges — is better understood in light of this story about Thomas and his doubt.

In this story, the other disciples believed Jesus was alive because he had appeared to them, but Thomas expressed doubt because he wasn’t there to see it for himself. (Notice that Thomas was evidently the only one who had had the courage to leave the locked house.)

If you’ve been a church-goer for a number of years, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve heard a preacher say we should be more like the other disciples and less like Thomas. Here’s my full disclosure this morning: I really like Thomas, just as I really like Martha, Lazarus’s sister who didn’t choose the better part. They are my kindred spirits, and since both of them are considered saints, I think that’s okay.

I like Thomas because I think there’s something deeper than garden variety doubt going on here. Thomas said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” These aren’t the detached words of a mere skeptic; these are the words of someone who is passionate about knowing the truth, and the words of someone experiencing deep grief. 

To take the word of others and believe that Christ is alive – which is the one thing Thomas would like to be true more than anything – means taking the risk of believing too hastily. If he took their word for it only to discover later that this belief was wrong, it would be like losing Jesus all over again. Thomas is already too heartbroken to take that risk.

Notice that when Jesus appears to Thomas and shows him the evidence, so-called Doubting Thomas not only believes that Christ is risen but goes beyond what any of the others have said. He addresses Jesus as “my Lord and my God”. Thomas may have understood the meaning of Christ’s being alive more than did some of the others, and perhaps that’s why he was so cautious about believing. For Christ to be alive and appearing in various places, including locked houses, implies that Jesus was indeed more than beloved teacher and friend. He was God! The truth of Jesus’s resurrection changes everything, and I think Thomas understood that in a profound way. Being clear about the truth was more important to him than being offered hope that might prove to be false or comforting words that could be half-truths meant to make him feel better. Thomas wants to be a witness to the truth.

The truth about Jesus was a joyful truth. The truth about environmental degradation in the 21st century is discouraging and sobering. Most people in our nation manage to ignore this truth most of the time, either by outright denying it or simply not thinking about it because it’s emotionally difficult to do so. But the truth, whether it be joyful or sad, has a way of bringing us closer to Jesus and grounding us more deeply in our faith. And standing close to Jesus on a solid foundation of faith is a good place to stand as we look at the scale of the challenge before us.

For most of us, the first steps in bringing our faith to bear on the environmental challenges facing us is to commit ourselves to greater personal responsibility for reducing our use of toxic substances and energy, reusing items instead of throwing them away (because there isn’t really any “away” where they can go), and recycling whatever we can. Along with our small contributions toward reducing the amount of plastic waste or carbon emissions, these practices keep our awareness of environmental issues in the front of our minds and serve as an example to others.

But we are so far down the path of environmental degradation that the amount of real difference we can make depends on our efforts toward environmental stewardship being done as one piece of systemic change, not in isolation.

So the next step for people of faith facing our environmental challenges often is to advocate for better corporate and government policies. We can write letters, visit with legislators, and use our power as voters either as citizens, members of church councils, or stockholders. 

Environmental stewardship and advocacy are important, and we need to encourage each other in our efforts. But these are good practices for anyone, no matter what their faith or lack of same. To be honest, there are several fine environmental organizations that are better equipped to lead us in environmental stewardship and advocacy than are most of us in the church. 

What we can offer in ways others can’t, and, I suspect more and more, what is a call from God to the church today, is to serve as Christian witnesses to the environmental crisis. We can look at the truth about plastic pollution and climate change and, instead of ignoring it, denying it, or sharing a false hope that things will magically get better without our having to do anything inconvenient, we can simply stand prayerfully with that truth. Standing close to Jesus on a solid foundation of faith is our unique gift, a gift that gives us the inner peace, strength, courage, and love to bear witness to the truth. 

Tom and Cathie, who are sitting right here with us this morning, continue to serve as both advocates and witnesses for our land and water in Nebraska by their perseverance in attending rallies, hearings, and landowners’ meetings in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Tom participated in civil disobedience, a now traditional way for Christians to stand as witnesses to the truth. If you want to know what witnessing to the truth looks like, you have good resources right here in your own congregation.

Witnessing to the truth requires us to do some homework and be discerning about what we read and listen to. The pursuit of truth takes some effort!  We can be witnesses by gently speaking the truth in our words and actions, whether that be in conversations with family and friends, in the course of our advocacy efforts, or by standing with others in actions like rallies or marches that advocate for better policies. 

Are our acts of prayerful witness successful in terms of convincing others or improving policies? We always hope they will be, but often they are not. However, that doesn’t mean we are powerless. In times like ours, it’s important to speak the truth for its own sake. That is what gives our lives meaning and also gives our souls true peace. Standing in witness is a form of prayer, and we know prayer is important even when our prayers appear to be unanswered.

Our world is wounded; pollution and climate change are intertwined with other justice issues, and there is work to be done that requires both actions of stewardship and advocacy and contemplative practices such as prayerful witness to the truth. Thomas was passionate about knowing the truth about Jesus; Jesus invited Thomas to touch his wounds. In a wounded world, faithful Christians — the ones who know and follow Jesus — don’t shy away from touching the wounds.

If we remain faithful to truth and bear witness to it alongside Jesus, whatever happens will have meaning. That in itself is a form of hope that might serve us well in the years ahead — the hope that we live meaningful lives of integrity no matter what. Amen.

_______________

**For an update on the incinerator, here’s a 2012 article about emissions controls being installed on it. GreenFaith was part of the coalition of activists pushing for emissions controls. http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2012/09/newark_incinerator_plant_to_ge.html

No Bird Sang: Murmurations, Broken Oceans, and Hope

Out in the open Nebraska countryside in October, clouds of birds are easy to follow. I've been marveling at how big groups come together and fly one way and then another with each member of the flock synchronized with the others. When the birds are starlings – as the groups I see forming near cornfields often are -- these groups are called ‘murmurations’.

This video of some huge murmurations, shot over the River Shannon in Ireland, shows the same sorts of dramatic turns and formations I’ve been marveling at in Nebraska:

Many of us are fascinated by birds. Their behavior, their songs and calls, their colors and forms bring delight and wonder. One of the joys of winter, when there are so few signs of living things in the landscape, are birds that appear at feeders and other protected places. An early flock of robins in a still snowy yard is a delight of early spring.

 Last week the Newcastle (Australia) Herald online ran The ocean is broken by Greg Ray. Ray reports on yachtsman Ivan Macfadyen’s journey from Melbourne to Osaka, and then on to San Francisco via Hawai’i. MacFayden said that when he had sailed from Melbourne to Osaka ten years earlier, he and his crew caught a good-sized fish each of the 28 days of the journey; this year, they caught only two the entire time. But what struck me most was this:

 No fish. No birds. Hardly a sign of life at all.

"In years gone by I'd gotten used to all the birds and their noises," he said.

"They'd be following the boat, sometimes resting on the mast before taking off again. You'd see flocks of them wheeling over the surface of the sea in the distance, feeding on pilchards."

But in March and April this year, only silence and desolation surrounded his boat, Funnel Web, as it sped across the surface of a haunted ocean.

No birds, only “silence and desolation”. The “brokenness” of the ocean described in this article is from a combination of overfishing, plastic pollution and other debris, and the effects of climate change. The silence is ominous, a sign not only of the damage done to the oceans but of the damage being done to our entire biosphere.

The absence of “all the birds and their noises” reminded me of “And no bird sang”, something the choir at St. Stephen’s in Grand Island has sung several times for Holy Week services.

 The belief that faith communities can bring an authentic voice of hope into discussions about the environment is something I've affirmed in this blog several times. Our voice of hope is authentic because it is the sort of hope that acknowledges the reality of desolation and despair. It is a hope that rests not on denial but on a willingness to be present and aware in deep ways. It is not a hope that says “Everything will be okay” when it won’t be, but a hope that we can find meaning and humanity and experience the love of Christ even when our hearts are broken because the birds are disappearing. It’s a hope that knows that new life can come from death. And it’s the sort of hope that will keep us doing our best for the birds, ourselves, and all living things no matter how dire things look.

Worshiping Molech

Proper 8A

Genesis 22:1-14; Romans 6:12-23

Molech was an Ammonite deity who was thought to require child sacrifice. This week's lesson from Genesis (Genesis 22:1-14) about Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain because he has heard God tell him to offer Isaac as a burnt offering reminds us of Molech, first in the nature of the command Abraham hears, and then in the moment when God says, “Do not lay your hand on the boy”, revealing God to be very different from Molech and the other lesser gods.

It’s worth noticing that the same week our Old Testament lesson brings Molech to mind, we had news about the environment that once again told about the perils we and our children face in the fairly near future.

There was the summary report from the International Programme on the State of the Ocean (IPSO) which brought grim news about the deterioration of marine ecosystems. The report predicts that unless a massive effort is made to address the environmental stressors on the ocean, there will be a mass extinction of marine life sometime during this century. This is not good news for us, for our children, or for our children’s children, The same sorts of stressors affect the non-marine environment; these combined with the effects of the tragedy unfolding in our oceans do have and will have a profound effect on the world in which we and our children and grandchildren are living out our lives.

An article in Saturday’s New Zealand Herald, Toxic tide mankind’s next great threat, quotes a recent UN environmental program report known as Yearbook for 2011 describing plastics “lost” in the oceans as “the world’s new toxic time-bomb”. It seems that plastics floating in the ocean accumulate and concentrate chemicals we don’t want entering the food chain, such as PCBs and DDT. And as plastic photo-degrades, it eventually breaks into individual molecules of plastic that, invisible as they are, enter the food chain very easily.

These reports provide further evidence for what we already knew from looking at other forms of pollution and at climate change, its effects, and our failure to address the issue: we have chosen to sacrifice the lives of our children and our children’s children in the names of various gods -- gods of convenience and money and laziness and all sorts of sin -- gods too numerous to mention. These gods are today’s equivalent of Molech, deities that are not the true god but whom we mistakenly believe have so much power that we will sacrifice our children to them.

In this week’s lesson from Romans (Romans 6:12-23), St. Paul tells us “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Our understanding is that God offers us the gift of true life, ours for the taking, and that when we turn our back on that gift and instead choose to sin, putting all these lesser gods before our relationship with the Living God, the result of that is always death.

This understanding raises questions that should puzzle and disturb us more than the question of how Abraham could ever have set out in obedience to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice. Given a God who offers us the good gift of eternal life -- life at its deepest levels -- why do we ever choose anything other than God’s freely given gift? Why is it so hard for us to choose life for ourselves and our children? Why do we give everything in the world precedence over ensuring that we leave our children a planet that can sustain human life? Why do we sacrifice our children and our children’s children to these lesser gods?

Grief

Good Friday / Earth Day

For Christians walking through Holy Week, Good Friday is a day that stirs deep emotions. There is an emptiness in churches where the altars have been stripped. Our Good Friday liturgy begins in silence. We read John’s account of Jesus’ last hours (John 18:1 – 19:37), from the betrayal and arrest of Jesus through his death on the cross and the piercing of his side. The remembrance of Jesus’ pain – physical, emotional, and spiritual -- calls up deep sorrow and grief from us.

This year, Good Friday falls on the same date as Earth Day. Grief for the ways we have harmed the earth provides a common element between the two observances. Just as we go through our Good Friday grief and come out on the other side with Easter joy, the grief we experience when we witness environmental degradation and contemplate the future can show us some direction to find our way out to a place of meaning and Christian hope.

The average amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for March 2011 measured at the Mauna Loa observatory was 392.40 ppm; 350 ppm is generally considered to be the upper limit of the amount of CO2 that is safe for human beings and the other living things that sustain human life. (The last March reading below 350 ppm was in 1987. I recommend a look at the graph on the CO2 Now website) Rising CO2 levels result in ocean warming and acidification which are damaging shellfish and corals, and of course in rising world temperatures which melt ice, make oceans rise, and do much more. As the atmosphere warms, severe weather events become more frequent. Yesterday morning, The Weather Channel posted an update of severe weather in the United States in April. With the month not yet over, TWC says we have set a “tentative” record for the number of tornadoes in April. They also report this:

There have been over 5200 severe weather reports (tornadoes, hail, and high winds/wind damage) so far in April. On average, only about 3300 severe weather reports are tallied in an entire April nationwide.

There is grief in many communities where people have lost loved ones, homes, and businesses to tornadoes and other severe weather this spring.

The environmental damage linked to carbon emissions is only part of the damage that causes us grief this Earth Day. Japan has an ongoing nuclear crisis. Species extinction continues at an accelerated rate. Plastic pollution is everywhere. In a Huffington Post piece called Crucified Creation and the Hope of Eco-nomics Doug Demeo, a friend and GreenFaith Fellow, says that when he looks around the earth today “the weight of creation crucified seems too much to bear”. Doug talks about mountain top removal and hydro-fracking among other “environmental woes”.

Our Good Friday liturgy does something in the midst of our grief. After the story of Jesus’ final hours has been read, and perhaps a homily preached or a hymn sung that provides more reflection on the reading, we pray the Solemn Collects. Rather than staying stuck under the dead weight of grief, we open our hearts to the concerns of the Church and the world. With our hearts already broken open, these tend to be profound prayers.

It can be difficult to know where to begin doing something with our grief for the earth. With no significant national or international effort to address climate change or prevent future oil spills or stop covering the planet with plastic, we know our efforts are valiant but probably not enough. Yet just as our hearts are touched by Good Friday, our hearts are broken open by this grief, too. Prayers for the earth and her people are a good place to begin. We might pray for the Church and all people, praying that we continue to find meaning and hope in our lives even as the chances of sustaining life as we have known it on our planet get increasingly smaller. We might pray for open eyes, ears, minds, and hearts, for the ability to understand what we are facing and the will to do something about it.

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 alleviate the human misery that results from environmental degradation is the only choice we have as followers of Christ. Environmentalist Bill McKibben said it in a different way in his speech at the Power Shift gathering in Washington, D.C. last weekend: “The only thing that a morally awake person can do when the worst thing that’s ever happened is happening is try to change those odds.”

When we choose to acknowledge the problems we face and to work to address them with so little evidence that we can succeed is when we draw on our faith and our hope; when we make that choice, we get out from under our grief and, drawing on our faith for strength, gather energy for the work ahead.

What Earth Week can learn from Holy Week

...(and conversely)
“Be truthful and get to work.” (David Orr)

Our Holy Week has begun. From the Hosannas of the Palm Sunday liturgy through the remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion on Good Friday, we recall the crucifixion and the events leading up to it. As much as we are able from a distance of some two thousand years, we will look at these things, difficult though it may be to see them and think about them, because the events of Holy Week are a necessary part of the truth of the Easter story.

The point of all of this isn’t to wallow in guilt and suffering, but to deepen and widen our joy at Easter; the point is always the wonder of the Easter message. While we can have a happy Easter morning without observing Holy Week, we appreciate the wonder of the resurrection much more after we have looked at the reality of Christ’s death on the cross. Some folks seem to get stuck in Holy Week and miss the point of it all; others, believers in some variation of positive thinking, avoid Holy Week with its disturbing images of Jesus’ humiliation, its reminders of varying degrees of betrayal by the disciples, and its description of the crucifixion itself. But if we leave out either Holy Week or Easter, we miss the truth of the whole story.

Because Earth Day is April 22, Earth Week and Holy Week coincide this year. Earth Day and Earth Week are meant to focus our attention on our care of the environment, but ways to do that vary widely. Many Earth Week events will simply celebrate being outdoors in the springtime – a fine enough thing in and of itself – without talking about the realities of climate change and pollution and their very real impacts on our lives.

One thing people celebrating Earth Week could learn from the Church is the importance of allowing ourselves to look at and talk about things that are difficult to ponder. Often when I talk about climate change or plastic pollution and share my concerns with people, they know that what I am saying is true, but they tell me that they can’t let themselves “think about that”. This sort of reaction has caused some environmentalists to quit talking about those realities and focus instead on clean energy or green jobs as ends-in-themselves.

David Orr, author of several books including Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse, recently shared the preface to the coming paperback edition of Down to the Wire with the Climate Progress blog. (See David Orr on confronting climate collapse)

David Orr says “Because the issue is unlike any we have ever faced before, it would be difficult enough to handle without deliberate distortion and outright lies. The consequences are global and, beyond some threshold, they will be irreversible and catastrophic.… Yet we continue to talk about climate destabilization as if it were an ordinary issue requiring no great vision, no unshakable resolve, no fear of the abyss.”

He continues:

"Instead, many continue to believe that our failure to respond adequately is the result of our failure to present a positive image. We have, they assert, marinated too long in “doom and gloom.” Their advice, instead, is to be cheery, upbeat, and talk of happy things like green jobs and more economic growth, but whisper not a word about the prospects ahead or the suffering and death already happening. Perhaps that is a good strategy and there is room for honest disagreement. But “happy talk” was not the approach taken by Lincoln confronting slavery, or by Franklin Roosevelt facing the grim realities after Pearl Harbor. Nor was it Winston Churchill’s message to the British people at the height of the London blitz. Instead, in these and similar cases transformative leaders told the truth honestly, with conviction and eloquence."

The point, he goes on to say, “is not to be gloomy or cheery, but to be truthful and get to work.”

In our Holy Week liturgies, we show how to look at the whole truth without getting mired down in “doom and gloom”. Being truthful about why humankind needs the hope of the resurrection in the first place is one piece of what we do; and that truth is incomplete unless we look beyond it to the promise of Easter. As St. Paul knew, there’s no hope without a need for hope. Earth Week could learn from Holy Week the necessity of telling the whole story, the whole truth, both the difficult truths we would rather avoid and the hope we can find beyond that.

Conversely, the Church might consider the words “be truthful and get to work”. If we hear the whole story this week without then going out to serve in Christ’s name, if we celebrate the resurrection of the body without then getting to work as the Body of Christ in the world, we will have avoided once again the truth of the Gospel message. If we truly celebrate Easter, we will have the strength and hope to look at all the difficult things in the world and to bring Christ’s healing love to a world in very great need.

Waters of Baptism

The last two posts, Water followed by ...And More Water came out of wondering about the significance of the waters of baptism in light of a couple of big environmental issues that had been in the news around the First Sunday of Epiphany, when we remember the Baptism of Our Lord. Those issues were catastrophic floods several places in the world and plastic pollution in our oceans. Increased frequency of major flooding is one expected effect of climate change, one of the many effects that bring hardship to people around the world.

Thinking about this has brought more questions than answers to my mind. As noted in the first post about this, both the effects of climate change on people and other living things and the extent of plastic pollution and its effects on people and other living things are issues of such a large scale that it’s difficult to even comprehend the challenges we face, let alone reflect on their spiritual significance.

But the questions are persistent if still in formation, so in this post, I’m offering some first questions for reflection in hopes that we might have a conversation about the way we see and talk about the waters of baptism in a rapidly and significantly changing world.

Comments, stabs at answers, answers made in confidence of their certainty, are all welcome. (If you’re commenting on the blog, please sign your comments if you want them to be shown.)

The first question is an easy one, but serves to introduce the second: What characteristics have we traditionally associated with water that suits it to be the matter – the “outward and visible sign” -- for the sacrament of baptism? What new associations do we or will we have with water as more of the earth’s water becomes permeated with plastic and as we face extremes of flooding and drought in many areas of the planet? Will this change the experience for people witnessing baptisms?

It seems almost dishonest or as if we were in denial if, as these environmental phenomena unfold, we continue to use water liturgically in the ways we have always used it without commenting on or acknowledging what has changed. If the significance for us of something like water changes in our daily lives – if, for example, we someday find ourselves in a world where pure water is rare – what, if anything, do we say about that?

The promises we make in our baptismal covenant (Book of Common Prayer, pp. 304-305) raise questions for us as we struggle with these new sorts of issues. We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. When our brothers and sisters around the world suffer from the effects of climate change, how can we best respond to disasters such as the floods of January? What can we do to prevent these things from happening?

We promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We know that our actions, our comforts, are producing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, and we know that the effects of climate change are bringing hardship to many people. We know that the plastic things we use find their way into the oceans and other waterways and have an effect on living things that comes up the food chain. What is the just thing for us to do? Are we respecting the dignity of every human being if we can’t bring ourselves to acknowledge and name the problem? What changes can we make to help us better keep our baptismal covenant?

The core of these questions seems to be centered on truthfulness with one another and with God about the changes in our environment and the part our actions play both in causing those changes and in responding to their ill effects. Where does truthfulness rank in our priorities when we approach liturgy? If we are tempted to pretend the world is something other than it is, or if we deny the realities of our world, how does that affect what we do before God and God’s people?

...and More Water

Over a week ago, I started this series of posts about water by talking about floods, especially the flooding in Queensland, Australia, and in Brazil. At that time, the death toll in Brazil was 13 people. Yesterday morning that number was estimated to be at least 665. . This morning’s estimate is over 700, with the number expected to rise as bodies are found and as the region remains at risk for fresh mud slides.

While no single weather event can be linked conclusively with global warming, the floods in both Brazil and Australia are linked to exceptionally high ocean temperatures which would be expected to result in above normal precipitation. In a Reuters article Matthew England of the Climate Change Rese

arch Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney notes that “the waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon”.

CNN reports from South Africa that at least forty people have died in flooding, more than 6,000 people have been displaced, and more heavy rain is expected. Most rivers and reservoirs in South Africa have reached their capacity, so more flooding is expected.

After a week in snowy Syracuse, New York (where there has been more than 100” of snow this season, putting them on track to break their seasonal record), we came home to more snow in Nebraska. A video found here from The Weather Channel’s Earth Watch does a good job of explaining the link between the cold and snow in much of the United States and global climate change.

Ocean Plastics

The news this month about plastics in the ocean comes in the form of good news / bad news. The good news is that the now-famous garbage patches, including the most well-known of them, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, don’t seem to be growing in size. These “garbage patches” are, in fact, not the dense and easily visible areas some reports have led the public to believe, but contain mostly small bits of plastic. Marcus Eriksen’s post on the 5 Gyres blog, Beyond the absurdity of a ‘Texas-sized Garbage Patch’ lies a larger menace of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans , says that while the idea of a big, almost solid patch of plastic real estate appealed to the sense that someone could go do something about it (or with it), the reality is “much worse”. What we have instead is a “thin plastic soup”, and that in a way is better news than a floating island of plastic trash. But the bad news is also that it’s not in a definite area; it’s everywhere. That means it’s not something we can go out and clean up. The only way to address the plastic pollution in our oceans is to quit adding to it, and clean up the bits that get spun out of the gyres and onto beaches.

Writing on the Discovery News website, Emily Sohn writes ‘Great Garbage Patch’ not so Great After All , noting that these small bits of plastic throughout the oceans pose a variety of threats, especially as fish ingest them and as they break down.

Waters of Baptism

Water, of course, still has all the characteristics it has always had, and holds all the same meaning for human beings. Water has always been both essential and potentially destructive. But with plastic pollution in the oceans and the prominence of worldwide floods brought about by torrential rains, our understanding of water as a metaphor is no doubt shifting in some way, adding perhaps some new aspects of meaning to a very traditional sign. That's the subject of the next post.

Water

Despite the less liquid form of H2O covering much of Nebraska today -- and doing that beautifully -- I’ve been thinking about water for several days. Last Sunday we remembered the Baptism of Jesus, and many parishes had baptisms that day. The prayers of thanksgiving over the water in our baptismal service remind us that along with being essential to life, water has great spiritual significance.

Personally Challenging Task

In the week leading up to the First Sunday after Epiphany (The Baptism of Our Lord), stories were popping up in the news about floods in Australia and South Africa . The floods in Australia were fairly well-covered in the news; fewer people here heard about the ones in Eastern Cape Province and KwaZulu Natal. The same week, I came across more information about the plastic in our oceans – both the extent of the pollution and more evidence that plastic is entering the food chain. Not having a lot of time to sit and process all of this, I simply didn’t write the post during the week. When Saturday came, it was even more difficult to focus on something this complex after news of the shootings in Tucson.

Since then, I’ve been looking at why it was so difficult to put these pieces together. Thinking about water brings together two environmental phenomena that I find very difficult to really comprehend because of the scale of the phenomena and the unthinkable nature of their consequences: the effects of climate change on people and other living things, and the extent of plastic pollution and its own effects on people and other living things. Thinking about the waters of baptism, reflecting on the relationship between the physical properties of water and its spiritual significance for us, is a whole different exercise when done with an awareness of the environmental realities with which we now live.

With this next Sunday’s Gospel (John 1:29-42 ) beginning with John talking about the Baptism of Jesus, the blog plan for this week is to talk about floods in this post, plastic and water in the next post, and perhaps be able after that to put together at least some of the pieces in relation to the waters of baptism.

Floods

This morning there were new headlines: Dozens missing from flooding in Australian valley and 13 Dead After Heavy Rains in Brazil. No single weather event can be connected to changes in the climate brought about by global warming; floods happen and have always happened. But two things indicate an overall connection: first, the record-breaking rainfalls and severe storms that have caused the flooding are exactly what scientists have told us will happen as the earth’s atmosphere warms and holds more water vapor; and second, there have been multiple floods in the past year with the phrases “record-breaking rainfall” and “catastrophic flooding” attached to them. If we were experiencing weather phenomena within the old norms, we wouldn’t be breaking so many records.

Remember the July floods in Pakistan? In early December, a reporter for the British Telegraph reported on current conditions in the flooded areas . A recent PBS NewsHour report tells more about the aftermath of the flooding and other water issues there:

If we find it difficult to imagine what is happening in faraway places, we might look closer to home and re\member the floods in Iowa last summer. A report on the impacts of climate change on Iowa was released January 1. It’s a good report for Nebraskans to look at to help us think about how we might best live in the next several years, and it does a good job of laying out the connections between global climate change and local weather trends. Increased precipitation and flooding is discussed in this report. An Iowa State University press release about the role of some ISU researchers in the study notes that the university itself was flooded in August 2010.

Along with concerns about flooding caused by increased precipitation and severe storms, global warming brings coastal flooding from sea level rise. Flooding of both kinds is expected to increase in the years ahead. Disaster aid to victims of floods is the sort of charitable work that churches have historically done. One consequence of increased flooding will be an increased need for aid.

I suspect this is one piece of the connection to the waters of baptism. We who have made a covenant to "seek and serve Christ in all persons" should think about how we would respond to increased flooding both close to home and far away.

Waiting in Hope (With Feathers)

Advent 2

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit” (Romans 15:13)

Our God is the God of hope, and in Advent we wait in hope. Advent teaches us that even when the days seem dark, hope is as essential a part of our spirituality as are worship, repentance, and service to others.

There are signs of hope here and there with regard to the environment. People seem more aware of and accepting of alternative forms of energy; wind farms, for example, are becoming more common in our part of the country. Midlanders generally seem to be more aware of the need to recycle what we can and to use energy and water as efficiently as possible. In the work of our diocese, there seems to be an increasing sense of stewardship about the distances we travel to do our work; we more often make intentional choices about when we need to meet in person and when we can meet by telephone or video call.

 

On the other hand, there are less hopeful signs – the increasing rate of climate change and our increasing understanding of how short a time we have left to act , the increasing amounts of plastic in the oceans and the marine food chain, and the failure of policymakers in America (where the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming has just been eliminated) and other countries to address these issues and other environmental issues.

This year in Advent in Cancun – as last year during Advent in Copenhagen – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is meeting. Expectations are not high for significant agreements to come out of this conference, but there is hope of progress in some areas. No doubt the liturgical calendar has nothing to do with the scheduling of these meetings, but it’s interesting that Advent has become a time when we look for signs of hope that the nations might come to address the urgent problem of climate change to a significant degree. The expectations are low, but Advent teaches us to hope.

My brother, an historian specializing in American history, reminds me that in 1850, few “reasonable” people thought slavery would end in their lifetime, and that many serious writers in the late 1950’s saw no possibility of ending racial segregation for dozens of years. In some ways, these important societal changes happened just when things seemed least hopeful.

People of faith were instrumental in the abolition movement and the civil rights movement. Hope and faith go together. I’m no historian, but I wonder if the hopeful nature of people of faith was what kept these movements going against all odds so that when the time suddenly was ripe, there were visible advocates for these causes.

I’ve noticed flocks of geese and robins this week; I suppose they are beginning their journeys a bit late after the warmth of November. Meanwhile, juncos and finches have begun coming to my feeders more frequently.  Remembering Emily Dickinson’s words – “Hope is the thing with feathers”    -- the birds are a visible reminder both of hope and of God’s beautiful and wondrous creatures whose survival, along with ours, is at stake.

Hope

Summer mornings are good for the soul. With an early sunrise – just a little after 6:00 in central Nebraska – and pleasant temperatures at the beginning of most days, it’s easy to find time before the day’s activities to step outside and look and listen. For some of us, sitting on a porch or going for a walk while experiencing the sounds, sights, and smells of a summer morning helps us center down into prayer and be aware of God’s presence much more easily than we do indoors on dark winter mornings.  It’s a lovely and encouraging part of the day.

Most mornings this summer I'm sitting outdoors to read the lessons appointed for the Daily Office, spend some time in contemplative prayer, and then pray the Daily Devotions in A New Zealand Prayer Book (He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa).  The peacefulness of this time and the sheer joy of beginning the day with bird song and sunlight, with the greens of the grasses and trees, an often blue sky, and the colors of summer flowers contrasts with the discouragement brought on by the many environmental concerns facing us this summer. The disaster in the Gulf of Mexico as oil continues to spew into the ocean and, closer to home, the concerns about the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline crossing the fragile ecosystem of our Sandhills are in the news almost every day. Our failure to decrease greenhouse gas emissions when such a decrease might have prevented significant climate change is still there in the background (despite ongoing attempts from some quarters to deny the facts); this summer’s violent storms and flooding rains in the United States give us a reminder of what many scientists say will become our new norm as the oceans warm. Legislation that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions in an attempt to rein in the most extreme consequences of climate change continues to stall. And, meanwhile, there is a constant if quiet stream of news about plastic pollution, species extinction, etc.

This contrast between, on the one hand, the summer morning feelings of peace and joy in God’s creation and the hope those bring with them, and, on the other hand, the feelings of helplessness and discouragement about our failure to care for creation and the despair about those bring with them, has been part of my reflections in recent weeks.

This morning’s Epistle lesson from Romans begins with Paul talking about the hope that “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” and ends with his talking about the nature of hope. We hope, says Paul, not for what we can see happening but for something that we cannot yet see. Along with that reading, the prayers for the Saturday morning Daily Devotions in the New Zealand prayer book include these words (p. 134):

Giver of the present, hope for the future:

save us from the time of trial.

When prophets warn us of doom,

of catastrophe and of suffering beyond belief,

Then, God, free us from our helplessness,

and deliver us from evil.

Save us from our arrogance and folly,

for you are God who created the world.

Hope is not denial of reality. Hope is not pretending that our actions, the way we live our lives today, don’t have very sobering consequences. And hope is not thinking that God will suspend the laws of physics and chemistry and make those bad consequences miraculously disappear.

Hope is trust that God will be with us as we walk into the future we are creating. Hope is confidence that if we turn toward God, abandon our "arrogance and folly", and treat God’s creation with reverence, we have a future; hope says that no matter how difficult the future may be or how different from the present with its many comforts, our lives and our relationships with God, with one another, and with creation will still have meaning.

Gratitude can call us back to hope from despair. A beautiful summer’s morning in Nebraska can open our hearts to that gratitude that leads us to hope.