Contemplation: Abiding in Love

Like many other Nebraskans, I have this year’s vegetable garden planted and spend a little time most days checking on it and weeding, watering, or doing whatever else needs to be done. My garden is small by Nebraska standards: two little rectangles in my yard, along with a few tomato and pepper plants tucked away in containers and odd spots in flower beds. Apart from watering during dry spells, daily maintenance isn’t really necessary, but, like most gardeners, I like to watch the garden grow. What I really do much of the time that I’m “working in the garden” is looking. Some May days the sun’s light and warmth make young plants grow so that the change is evident from one hour to the next.

The looking, though, isn’t confined to my little garden. The longer, warmer days of May give us good opportunity to look at both the plants and animals we live among. In our little piece of Nebraska this spring, I’ve watched baby squirrels figuring out how to climb up and down a tree, a mother rabbit carrying mouthfuls of grass clippings that were mulch for my garden but are now a nest for her babies, and many birds raising their young. And there is more to see: stars, clouds, rainstorms, lightning.

This week I started reading Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe by Judy Cannato. In the book’s introduction, Judy Cannato talks about contemplation as “a long loving look at what is real” (p. 12). This involves both an attitude of compassion and mercy rather than disapproval, and the ability to discern what is real from things that superficially mimic the real. Finding joy in looking at the world around us is living contemplatively.

When we think about these things in light of our recent Sunday Gospel readings from John 15, we see another dimension of Christ’s invitation to abide in his love. Jesus explains that we are the branches of the vine that is Christ; we are fruitful only if we stay connected to Christ, only if we live our lives rooted in Christ’s love. We will abide in Christ’s love, he says, if we obey his commandments; the commandment he gives is that we love one another.

That love for one another involves a “loving look”, looking at one another with compassion rather than disapproval. The way to stay connected to Christ, the way to be rooted in Christ’s love, is to cultivate gratitude, openness, and love in our hearts. The way to abide in Christ’s love is to learn how to look contemplatively, with compassion and mercy.

Looking at everything in the world in this way helps us to experience our connectedness to one another and to all of creation. We are indeed branches connected to a single vine; if we experience ourselves – either as individual persons or as a species -- as independent of everything else, we have lost sight of reality. The science about pollution of our air and water and about global warming bears this out; everything is interconnected, and when we live as if our actions had no consequences for anyone or anything else, we put our own lives in danger.

A friend reminded me today of something E.B. White said in an interview with Israel Shenker in 1969: "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." The world teaches us this false dichotomy between saving and savoring, between action and contemplation. It’s not only a false choice, but a dangerous way to think about the world.

The vine parable reminds us that we won’t succeed in improving or saving the world unless we take the time to enjoy or savor it; our work won’t be fruitful unless it is rooted in love, and love requires the loving look, the deep knowing, that is contemplation. Savoring the extra hours of looking at the wonders around us this time of year is in the long run one of the most productive things we can do! Enjoy!

Polar Bears, Ecological Intelligence, and Confession

The convergence of the arrival of Daniel Goleman’s new book Ecological Intelligence, some medical tests for me, and the Obama administration’s announcement that the Endangered Species Act cannot be used to restrict greenhouse gas emissions for the benefit of polar bears, has led me to think about individual and corporate responsibility for creation care.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said that the single greatest threat to the polar bear is the melting of Arctic sea ice due to climate change. However, the administration argued that individual power plants and factories can’t be singled out for emissions limits under the Endangered Species Act since it is the cumulative effect of overall greenhouse gas emissions that is causing the ice to melt. When everyone is responsible, it is difficult to hold an individual plant responsible.

This, on a large scale, mirrors a problem environmentally conscious individuals puzzle over in our daily lives. We are individuals, but are connected with various institutions. Any one person’s water and energy use, recycling efforts, and consumer choices don’t have much effect one way or the other on the environment, but our cumulative choices do. Throw in the decisions made on our behalf by institutions – like the disposable medical supplies used by the hospitals we visit for medical care – and we find a complex causal web that makes it very difficult for even the most motivated stewards of creation to know how best to live. Even the paper or plastic – or reusable canvas – shopping bag choice can be a dilemma.

In Ecological Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains why many of the consumer choices that are labeled “green” are in fact not the best choices for the environment. Looking at the life cycles of products from extraction of materials through manufacture, and on to transportation of the product, use of the product, and its eventual disposal, we can begin to get a more realistic picture of the impact of our buying habits. Goleman sees us moving toward “radical transparency” of the impact of the products we might buy on the environment, thus enabling consumers to make better choices for the health of our planet and of our own species.

As we continue to think about the responsibilities of individual consumers, individual corporations, and other institutions, and as industrial engineers become better and better at helping us understand the true impacts of the decisions we make both individually and corporately, the necessity of the voice of the Church in the discussion becomes more evident. People look to religious institutions for moral guidance, and the question of how best to care for creation is both an engineering problem and a moral problem. Those of us who see the Earth as part of God’s creation have an important perspective to share.

In The Episcopal Church, we usually include a prayer of confession in our Sunday morning liturgy. Everyone present joins in the prayer; while many worshippers no doubt think only of their personal shortcomings during the past week as they pray, our prayers of confession are written in the first person plural: “We confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed…” We are confessing not only our personal sins, but our corporate sins. We as a people, we as a Church, have done things we should not have done, and failed to do other things we should do. Institutions, including the Church, are made up of individuals, but they are also more than the sum of their members.

Perhaps one of our distinctive contributions to understanding moral environmental issues might be some insight into how to confess our corporate sins, and how to turn as a people toward a way of life that allows us to delight in God’s will and walk in God’s ways. How can we best share this?

Extra Bits: More on the Wilkins Ice Shelf Breaking Up

At the beginning of April, the ice bridge holding Antarctica’s Wilkins Ice Shelf in place shattered. Today, the AP reports that since Friday, 270 square miles of ice have dropped off from the Wilkins Ice Shelf into the sea.

As noted here on April 6, the news about the shattered ice bridge came while we were learning more about the rate at which the Arctic sea ice is melting. What struck me most when I found this report this evening is the amount of ice that was lost since Friday, over the course of only five days. While we were busy with other things, these huge chunks of ice were falling into the sea, seen by humans only in satellite images.

Recovering Greenness

Today’s reading (April 27) from Forward Day by Day ended with these lines from George Herbert’s poem “The Flower”: “Who would have thought my shriveled heart / Could have recovered greenness?”

The past couple of weeks have brought much to feed our souls: a couple of lovely April days, flowering trees, and Earth Day’s reminders both of the wonder of God’s creation and of the heartening increase in environmental consciousness. Just this evening, news is being posted about today’s meeting in Washington to lay the groundwork for a United Nations agreement among the top greenhouse gas polluters to work on slowing or reversing climate change – a step forward.

On the other hand, the past couple of weeks have also brought news of the spread of a new kind of flu, continuing concern about the economy, and Earth Day’s reminders of the severity of the climate crisis and of the effects of pollution on humans and other living things. The less pleasant news seems like enough to shrivel our hearts, while the beauty and wonder of creation and the way our bonds with the Earth pull us toward better stewardship pull us in other direction, to what this 17th century Anglican clergyman and poet called “greenness”.

Late Sunday afternoon I did a little puttering in my garden despite the cool weather. The point wasn’t really the transplanting I was doing, but spending some time outdoors close to the dirt where I could hear the birds singing and see and smell some spring flowers. I had been paying attention all day to the news about the flu virus, and had read Andrew Revkin’s post “Contagion on a Small Planet” on Dot Earth. This post, referencing a Food and Agriculture Organization paper, mentions “the ongoing disruption of ecosystems” as a factor in the creation of “a global commons of disease risk”. The environment, the economy, and this latest health concern are, of course, interconnected, as all things are. As I dug a hole for some creeping phlox, I reflected on how “the environment” both weighed heavily on my mind and provided just the remedy to keep this weight from becoming so heavy as to keep me from acting.

Our Catechism teaches that sin is seeking our own will instead of God’s will, “thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.” (BCP, p. 848). A return to wholeness requires the restoration of health to this entire network of relationships. When we are in right relationship with God, other people, and all creation, we have the heart and energy to do God’s work with grateful hearts no matter how difficult and heavy the burdens might be. We recover our “greenness” by tending to these relationships and restoring them.

I had experienced this dynamic of burden and restoration during the week as I read about climate change and pollution and prepared an Earth Day sermon for the Wednesday morning chapel service at Hastings College. In the sermon, I told about the tour of the toxic sites of Newark, New Jersey, that was part of the GreenFaith Fellowship training program, so I spent some time reflecting on what I saw then and how it had affected me – more heart-shriveling stuff. But a lot of my reading and writing this time of year is done outside on my kitchen porch. My small yard, the neighboring trees, and the sky provided plenty of wonders to help me recover greenness: bright yellow goldfinches flying in their up-and-down pattern to come get some seeds at the feeder, a pair of golden eagles making an occasional appearance in the sky and a nearby tall tree, baby squirrels learning how to get around in the tree where they were born, a flock of gulls passing over.
And, of course, there were spring flowers, which George Herbert took as a sign of the return of greenness to our hearts and souls as well as to the earth. “The Flower” begins with these lines:

How fresh, oh Lord, how sweet and clean
Are thy returns! even as the flowers in spring;
To which, besides their own demean,
The late-past frosts tributes of pleasure bring.
Grief melts away
Like snow in May,
As if there were no such cold thing.

Who would have thought my shriveled heart
Could have recovered greenness?

Exsultet! Rejoice!

The Great Vigil of Easter is celebrated between sunset on Holy Saturday and sunrise on Easter morning. The determination of the time of the service according to the times of sunrise and sunset is significant, as the entire liturgy in its lessons and prayers and use of light, water, oil, bread, and wine points to the integration of spiritual things with the order of nature.

This first service of Easter Day begins with the lighting of the Paschal candle from the new fire. The deacon carries the Paschal candle into the church, and then sings the Exsultet (beginning on p. 286 of The Book of Common Prayer): “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels…” As a deacon, I practice the Exsultet throughout Lent, and get very familiar with the words – a necessity when singing an important piece of liturgy by candlelight. The Exsultet is in my head and on my lips as spring begins, the days get longer, and the first tiny green leaves appear on bushes and trees. “Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth, bright with a glorious splendor, for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.”

Some of my non-Episcopalian friends, both believers in other traditions and non-believers, comment on the connections to the Earth season as if they suspect that either our joy in the coming of springtime might somehow eclipse or diminish the appreciation of the Resurrection, or that the Gospel story is a sort of culturally approved and maybe even a slightly shady cover for a pagan celebration. What this tells me is that there are lots of people both in the Church and outside of the Church who want to keep the physical and the spiritual well separated: dualism has many devotees in today’s world.


Among the many gifts of the Holy Night proclaimed in the Exsultet is this one: “How blessed is this night, when earth and heaven are joined and [we are] reconciled to God.” That image of the realms of earth and heaven being joined together in unity, and the linking of that joining to the restoration of a good and holy relationship between God and humankind get to the depths of the Easter message: in Christ, the chasm has been bridged. All of creation is infused with God’s Holy Spirit; the spiritual and the physical are intertwined. That’s why the things around us can serve as signs of God’s grace; it’s why we believe in the sacraments, and also in sacramental living in a wider sense.

The Exsultet ends with an entreaty for God to accept the offering of the Paschal candle: “May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning – he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.”

May we remember throughout the year that Earth and heaven are joined, and that the world around us is God’s good and holy creation.

Extra bits

The Episcopal Ecological Network has sent out two messages since Friday: one about the Arctic sea ice melting faster than had been expected, and the other one about the ice bridge that held the Wilkins Ice Shelf in place in Antarctica shattering. Both are dramatic changes; both are very sobering. The reality of global warming seems to be hitting us much sooner than scientists had predicted. As ice is lost from both poles, there is more open water, which accelerates the warming of both the air and the oceans.

Our unseasonably wintry weather on the Great Plains this weekend makes it easy to pretend that Earth’s overall climate isn’t warming. Some people joke about needing more global warming but really do understand the bigger picture; others really don’t understand that cold snaps can occur as part of an overall warming trend. (The Dot Earth blog had a useful post on April 3 about temperature fluctuations within an overall warming trend.)

Economic, social, and political instability have dominated the news this week. Some of these issues seem closer to hand for many of us, and may seem more urgent than environmental issues. But without environmental stability, the resources we spend in an attempt to create economic, social, and political stability can’t do their job, and ultimately won't matter. These two news stories from the opposite ends of our planet are a sign that things are changing fairly quickly and dramatically. We live far away from these regions, far away from any seacoasts, but we do live on the same planet, where everything is interconnected – all sorts of places, and all sorts of systems from the economy to personal relationships to the environment.

As many of us spend extra time in prayer and reflection this Holy Week, let's remember our Earth and the work of stewardship that God has given us. Let's remember our brothers and sisters who are most immediately vulnerable to climate change, and pray for people who are working to repair the damage to our atmosphere and restore overall environmental stability.

Early Spring Abundance

Spring officially began a little over a week ago, and in that short time there has been an abundance of blessings pertinent to creation care for Nebraskans. All of these events took place against a backdrop of typical spring weather, with cold, cloudy, and even snowy weather alternating with sunny days that helped the earliest spring flowers to bloom. A variety of songbirds, including robins, wrens, meadowlarks, and red-winged blackbirds, are making it sound like spring even when the temperature feels more like winter. Here’s a glimpse at some pieces of that abundance.

Dinner in Abraham’s Tent
The Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska has partnered with Temple Israel and the American Institute of Islamic Studies and Culture to form the Tri-Faith Initiative. Friday evening at the Qwest Center in Omaha was Dinner in Abraham’s Tent: Conversations on Peace. It was a wonderful evening to share our worship experiences, make new friends, and hear an outstanding conversation about peace.

The spirit of this event was very much like the spirit I’ve experienced at GreenFaith gatherings. GreenFaith is an interfaith organization that “inspires, educates and mobilizes” people of different faiths for environmental leadership. In working with GreenFaith in their Fellowship program, I’ve found that working on creation care can build bonds among people of different faiths and different Christian perspectives. All of us recognize the Earth as God’s creation, all of us feel closer to God when we experience the wonders of creation, and all of us realize that we have a moral responsibility to help care for God’s creation.

As I described my ministry to our dinner companions on Friday evening, there seemed to be an understanding that creation care would be something that people of faith should be doing. As we Episcopalians become more aware of how environmental issues fit into our religious lives, we might very well find a strong common bond with people of other faiths who are also beginning to recognize the connection between faith and the environment.

Crane Sunday at St. Stephen’s, Grand Island
Our liturgical celebration of the crane migration on March 22 went well. Parishioners brought in beautiful paintings and photos of the cranes to share; we had a crane banner and many, many origami cranes in the church itself; our music director tailored the music to the occasion; a parishioner worked with Rowe Sanctuary to provide a fact sheet about cranes that we included with the bulletin. The sermon articulated some of the connections between this migration that marks the Earth season and what is happening in our liturgical season. People seemed very pleased that we recognized the experience of the crane migration as a spiritual experience.

A Pastoral Letter
Right before the first day of spring – but after the last Green Sprouts post – the House of Bishops issued a pastoral letter. It starts out talking about the world financial crisis, then goes on to link it to the environmental crisis. The Bishops say that God is calling us to repentance for our preoccupation with internal affairs and for our narrow focus that has kept us from addressing the concerns of suffering people in our own country and around the world. It’s a remarkable and timely letter, one that speaks clearly about the links between environmental concerns and traditional justice concerns.

Extra bits
Posts to this blog have been biweekly. The plan is to continue regular posts on alternate Tuesdays, but also to supplement these longer posts that often center on the liturgical cycle or the Earth season with “extra bits” as they come along. These will be posts about recent events, or highlighting items culled from the abundance of material related to religious environmentalism -- items such as the letter from the House of Bishops, or environmental news such as the recent report that one-third of all bird species in the United States are endangered. (The report is hopeful since it tells about some things we all can do to help these species survive.)