Advent 3: Prayer and action

The Third Sunday of Advent this year brings John the Baptist exhorting the crowd to “bear fruits worthy of repentance”. (Luke 3:7-18) and the crowds asking him in return, “What then should we do?”

John talks about the changed hearts of repentant people and their actions – those “fruits worthy of repentance” – being of one piece. Virtue ethicists going back to Aristotle have said we can acquire various human virtues by making a habit of doing virtuous actions. Today we talking about “acting as if” or tell people to “fake it until you make it”; it’s the same principle. So if I want to be the sort of repentantly generous person John describes when he says, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise”, I begin by giving away a coat or some food even if I don’t feel as if my heart is in this. When I get in the habit of doing such things, I will find that I have acquired the virtue of generosity along the way. On the other hand, John describes these actions as the fruits or results of a change in heart, and such actions should follow naturally from a deeply changed heart. The inner state of a changed heart and the outer state of changed actions are bound together.

John exhorted the crowd to have a profound change of heart and to act in a way that reflected the interior change.  Environmental activists exhort us to action, but sometimes fail to encourage us to do the inner work that helps us to sustain the outer work of advocating for a healthy environment.

On his Inside Passages blog , Kurt Hoelting recently posted on Embracing our inner tipping points on climate. When I went through the GreenFaith Fellowship Program, Kurt was on the faculty for our retreat focused on spirit; he led us in meditation and Qi Gong, and talked to us about how important this inner work is to our external work. In the blog post, he writes that meditation practice is often assumed to be a sort of “self-improvement project, a mere tool to reduce our stress and return some sense of balance, while making no demands on us.” He asks then if there isn’t “a deeper purpose that has to do with clear seeing, with the hard work of burning off the fog of our ego-driven perceptions”.

The news about our climate in recent weeks has not been easy to process or contemplate. As 2012 nears its end, we are on track for it to be the warmest year in U.S. history. Climate change is becoming more real to us in our weather records, our drought on the Great Plains, and the huge reality check of superstorm Sandy. With our political leadership still enthralled by the fossil fuel industry and the power it exerts, and with so much at stake, the work ahead of us is difficult. Even thinking about the magnitude and implications of the problem – a necessity if we are to advocate for significant changes – is emotionally and spiritually challenging.

Kurt Hoelting asks us to look at our own “inner tipping points”. What will move us from concern to action? He asks, “What more needs to happen before we decide to take it personally? And what does taking it personally look like for each of us?”

This evening we mourn the deaths of innocent schoolchildren and some of the school staff in Newtown, Connecticut.  The senseless death of so many children is difficult for us to look at and process. Even though we didn’t know these children, we care about what happened to them and are heartbroken by it. President Obama said this afternoon that “we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” Many people are echoing this thought, saying that the time has come to quit being timid about changing things so that this sort of violence will be less common.

If we look down the road, many children will suffer and die senseless deaths from lack of food, disease, or trauma from violent storms and floods if we don’t work hard to make this a better world with a sustainable climate.  The reality of our warming world is difficult to contemplate and won’t be easy to change, but our inner work of prayer can support and sustain us as do the hard work of advocating for changes that will result in less global warming.

In the Epistle reading for the Third Sunday of Advent (Philippians 4:4-7) Paul exhorts the Philippians to pray rather than worry. When we cut through the anxiety and choose prayer, says Paul, “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” When we do the inner spiritual work, effective work in the world becomes possible. 

What then should we do? Ground ourselves in prayer and commit ourselves to effective actions.

Advent 2: Listening to what counts

“In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius…” is the phrase that begins the Gospel passage (Luke 3:1-6) for the Second Sunday in Advent. Luke refers to various political and religious leaders in order to set the events he is describing in history, to pin down the year when John began preaching. Yet we pay much more attention today to the words of John than we do to anything the people considered “historical figures” said or did. What endures today isn’t so much what the rulers thought or did; what is important to us is what John was proclaiming out in the wilderness.

A big piece of environmental news this week was the publication of NOAA’s seventh annual Arctic Report Card. As you can hear in this video summary of the report, there are big changes in the Arctic; the Arctic “is entering a new state”, and these changes are taking place faster than had been anticipated.

The leaders of the world’s large nations are neither decreasing greenhouse gas emissions enough to significantly mitigate climate change nor to preparing adequately to adapt to our rapidly warming world. The political leaders – presidents and prime ministers -- whose names might very well be those that will serve as historical markers in the future – are not the ones doing the important work. It’s clear that we need to find ways to effect big changes fairly quickly without waiting for the world’s leaders to take charge of the situation. The people whose names are in the news most days may not be the ones carrying a message for us this Advent; we need to look around to find out what’s worth our attention.

This Advent, important messages are coming from scientists, like those whose research contributed to the Arctic Report Card. Other living things bring us messages if we will listen and look. Many of the biggest and oldest trees in the world are dying [see Mighty Old Trees Are Perishing Fast,Study Warns; the reasons for their dying and the way their loss will impact other living things deserve our attention. This Advent, important messages are coming from climate activists, some fairly well-known and others less noticed. Bill McKibben has just finished the Do the Math tour advocating for institutional divestment from the fossil fuel industry to effect the sorts of changes we need without waiting for the world’s official leaders. People dealing with the effects of Superstorm Sandy in the U.S. and the Caribbean have important things to tell us that can help us get a sense of how climate change impacts people now, and a taste of what we can expect on a greater scale in the future. And people around the world who are feeling the effects of droughts, floods, fires, sea level rise, or melting permafrost have much to tell us about the human implications of climate change.

Listening to these messages – today’s wilderness voices -- with our hearts as well as our ears can bring us to repentance and renewal just as John and the ancient prophets did for the people of their times.  

Advent 1: Doing the math in hope

Our Advent Scripture readings, hymns, and prayers emphasize the themes of expectation, hope, and repentance.

Today’s reading from Jeremiah (Jeremiah 33:14-16) is a prophetic voice of hope in a situation that looked hopeless. People of faith are people of hope. A gift people of faith can bring to conversations about the environment – and especially about the climate crisis – is hope.

The Do the Math tour presented by Bill McKibben and 350.org was in Omaha last night. The Do the Math website summarizes Bill McKibben’s primary message:

It’s simple math: we can burn less than 565 more gigatons of carbon dioxide and stay below 2°C of warming — anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatons in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they’re planning to burn it all — unless we rise up to stop them.

An article published today by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press drawing on new international calculations on global emissions published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change says that rather than decreasing the amount of greenhouse gases, in the past year the amount increased by 3 per cent. The study’s lead author, Glen Peters at the Center for International Climate and Environmental Research in Oslo, Norway, says that the only possible way to stay within the goal of two degrees of temperature rise is to start reducing these emissions now and “throw everything we have at the problem.” Given how little we have thrown at the problem up to now, it seems unlikely to happen now.

With 0.8 °C degree of warming, we have seen all sorts of extreme weather in 2012, including Superstorm Sandy, the drought in the Midwest, and wildfires such as the one that forced evacuations around Estes Park, Colorado, this weekend. Imagine what two degrees would bring! Some scientists have said that reaching even the two degree limit would be disastrous , but it’s clear that our earlier failure to notice the signs and turn things around makes it nearly inevitable. Anything beyond two degrees changes our world in even more extreme ways, ways that are nearly unimaginable.

In today’s Gospel lesson (Luke 21: 25-36) , Jesus talks about paying attention to signs that are right in front of us, signs that people tend to deny or ignore. He describes distressing, fearful times and then says (Luke 21:28): “Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” 

In Omaha last night, Bill McKibben said that even though the information he was presenting was very discouraging, he found it exciting in a way because we are getting “nearer to the heart of things”. And we are indeed down to what is essential to survival; we are down to questions of meaning and questions about our priorities; we are down to questions about where our hearts lie when we face the finitude not only of our own lives but of our biosphere, our planet, and the way of life it has supported. Our search for hope in this seemingly hopeless situation leads us to a place of repentance and conversion: Are we willing to do what it takes to make hope possible?

The Do the Math campaign is taking a page from the anti-apartheid campaign and asking institutions – including religious institutions – to freeze new investments in the fossil fuel industry and then to fully divest themselves of all fossil fuel investment within five years unless those companies change their way of doing business. When energy companies are willing to leave most of their current reserves underground, to stop exploring for new hydrocarbons, and to stop lobbying for special breaks and for the defeat of legislation that would promote a switch to other forms of energy, in short, when the fossil fuel industry puts life ahead of profits, then divestment will become unnecessary.

Bill McKibben said that people tell him this sort of campaign is impossible, that it’s a “David and Goliath” situation. He said these words were discouraging until he though, “Wait a minute! I’m a Methodist Sunday School teacher; I know how the David and Goliath story ends!” We know not only how that story ends, but how the entire salvation story ends, and that is why we hope when all seems hopeless.

The questions we must answer are Advent questions; the journey of the heart we take to repent and turn ourselves and the world around is an Advent journey. Where do our hearts lie? How do we hope when everything seems dark? Can we set aside lesser priorities of personal convenience and comfort in order to do what needs to be done for the greater common good both close to home and in corners of the globe about which we know very little?

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility…(From the Collect for the First Sunday of Advent)

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)

The Least of These and the Environment

“Not a secular fuss imported into the church”

Hurricane Sandy brought home to Americans the human suffering that often results from the kinds of extreme weather that are becoming more frequent – and more extreme – as climate change caused by global warming accelerates. This huge storm, of course, was not the first instance in 2012 of U.S. weather extremes affecting people’s lives in important ways. An active and destructive wildfire season impacted parts of Nebraska, and the Waldo Canyon fire in Colorado destroyed 600 homes. A Midwestern drought also impacted much of Nebraska. This drought, the most extreme in 50 years, has caused a rise in food prices that is felt far beyond the Midwest. (See A year of extreme weather – and little climate change talk   from The Washington Post.)

Around the world, the personal and economic consequences of climate change impact people. Those who already know that lack of food or clean water can threaten their security now face additional burdens as a result of floods, droughts, or storm damage. Haiti, for example, was not directly hit by Hurricane Sandy, but Sandy’s heavy rains resulted in at least 52 deaths and destroyed crops. (See Yet Another Blow to Haiti from A Natural Disaster .) 

Both a forum at the recent meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in Auckland, New Zealand, and a resolution from our own recent Annual Council speak to the moral imperative for the church to do more to address environmental degradation and to lead in environmental stewardship.

Archbishop Rowan Williams chaired a public forum about environmental change at the ACC meeting. (The story from the Anglican Communion News Service – worth reading in its entirety -- is available here.)   The Archbishop said that “running out of a world to live in is a mark of our unfaithfulness”, and made it clear that environmental issues are moral issues for Christians, and not “a secular fuss imported into the church”. Archbishop Thabo Makgoba of Southern Africa said “This is not a social problem, it is not an economic problem, it is not an environmental problem, it is a moral problem and it needs a moral response.” 

Something else Archbishop Thabo said resonates with the resolution entitled The Least of These that we passed at our Annual Council. This is the resolution that asks all committees, commissions, and parishes to prayerfully include as part of every meeting in calendar year 2013 the following agenda item: “How will what we are doing here affect or involve people living in poverty?” Our impact on the environment needs to be included in our reflections on this question.

Thinking about environmental change and the underlying issues of water, food, and energy, Archbishop Thabo asked a similar set of questions around what we do in the Eucharist. According to the report, he asked:

“When you are receiving Communion, have you stopped to think about the water that we use to mix with the wine? Where has it come from? How clean is that water? Have you stopped to think about...those who do not have access to basic and of the resultant illnesses that go with poor sanitation and water? When you receive...wafers, have you spared a thought for those who do not have food?

“During the service, out of the small chalice, you are all able to share. Have you not thought that you could replicate that, that there is a plenty in the world and no need for others to suffer?”

The Sound of Silence

 I am the Lord your God…you shall have no other gods before me. (Exodus 20:1)

This week, in what will most probably be the 332nd consecutive month with global temperatures above the twentieth century average, another record of sorts was broken: for the first presidential election cycle since 1988, climate change resulting from global warming was not mentioned in any of the presidential or vice-presidential debates. With climate change already affecting the lives of people all over the world, talking about economic issues, military and geo-political issues, health, or any other topic concerning our future without taking into account the impacts of climate change – and the need to do something about it – is foolish at best.

On one level, this silence seems to be a purely political phenomenon. Even though the majority of Americans believe climate change is real and that we need to pay attention to the issue, politicians know that addressing climate change in any meaningful way will be politically difficult. Bringing down the levels of greenhouse gas emissions to a level that minimizes the climate change feedback loops we have already entered would require some hard choices. As Bill McKibben points out in his book Eaarth – and as many others have pointed out in other discussions – the changes we need to make won’t necessarily make our lives worse. In fact, our quality of life in some areas might very well become better. But the changes we need to make will be changes. Asking people to change the way we live takes political courage, a willingness to risk losing political power by doing something that needs to be done but that might not be popular.

When we start asking what all is involved here, though, the silence reveals itself as something deeper than a political phenomenon. The silence about climate change is rooted in traditional spiritual issues.

The old Simon and Garfunkel song The Sound of Silence included this line: “And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they’d made”, and it helps us name one of these spiritual issues. Our national failure to speak or to act in a timely manner to mitigate climate change is rooted at least in part in idolatry. We know that God created the earth and its living things, and we know that God made humans stewards of the earth, and we know that God cares very much about the people who face hardship because of global climate change. But despite knowing that and saying we worship God, a way of life that includes habits of convenience and consumerism seems to be more important to us than what matters to God. If we cannot let go of something to do what God calls us to do, that thing is an idol that has replaced God in our lives. As is often the case with idolatry, greed and fear and sloth prop up the false god.

As Christians, we are empowered to recognize and challenge false gods. We can and must break the silence around climate change. We can imagine that new ways of living might not only be bearable, but might in fact bring us closer to God and to one another. The agreed upon national political conversation does not dictate our conversation.

Little Gods: "We get our wealth from this business."

Part of today’s lesson from Acts (Acts 19:21-41) has echoed throughout the day as I've caught up with the news, especially about the news about the protests in Texas where TransCanada has begun building the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline.

In this passage from Acts, Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines (evidently miniatures) of Artemis gathered his artisans and others who made and sold gods and riled them up, saying:

Men, you know that we get our wealth from this business. You also see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul has persuaded and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods. 

Then Demetrius suggested that Paul’s words might very well cause people to disrespect the temple of Artemis, depriving her “of the majesty that brought all Asia and the world to worship her.” This caused a riot that went on for hours until the town clerk persuaded the crowd to settle this in their regular assembly so they would not be charged with rioting.

Paul was right, of course: gods made with hands are not gods! Given a choice between gods made with human hands and the Living God Paul worshiped, the only wise choice is God. There is only one God, even when making smaller gods and keeping a temple to a false god create wealth.

One reason it’s so hard to address environmental issues in our nation is the power of the fossil fuel industry. The executives of these corporations get their wealth from this business, and use of cleaner sources of energy such as wind and solar energy threaten their profits. Given a choice between energy from fossil fuels that creates the carbon emissions that have contributed greatly to our climate crisis and cleaner energy that can help keep our planet livable, the only wise choice is clean energy. But those profiting from fossil fuels choose wealth over life.

In Texas, protesters have been trying to stop construction of the southern leg of the Keystone XL pipeline. Unlike the resistance in Nebraska which is largely based on local – and very legitimate – concerns about the land and water in our own state, many of these protesters are concerned with the effects of the entire project, from the pollution and forest destruction where the tar sands are mined in Canada to the environmental dangers along the pipeline route to the vast amounts of carbon that will be released if the tar sands are refined and burned.

Among the protesters this week have been tree sitters – people sitting in trees that TransCanada is clearing for the pipeline. To help protect the people in the trees, two protesters on Wednesday locked themselves to logging equipment. Bill McKibben wrote about it in the Huffington Post. (See TransCanada Turns Sadistic in Texas:Keystone XL Protestors Tased and Pepper Sprayed ) Reading the reports about what the police called in allegedly did to the protesters is very difficult: chokeholds, pepper spray, and tasers.

Violence against environmental activists in other parts of the world has been on the increase. In June, the group Global Witness reported that over the past decade, 711 activists, journalists, and community members defending land and forests had been killed. In 2011, the total was 106 people.

When wealthy industries are threatened by people advocating for care of the earth, their reaction is often to bully the activists in some way, sometimes to the point of death. Like the makers and sellers of little gods in Ephesus inciting the crowd to riot against the Christians, those whose god is profit use violence against those speaking their truth about caring for God’s creation and defending the living things that depend on climate stability.

O God, our Father, whose Son forgave his enemies while he was suffering shame and death: Strengthen those who suffer for the sake of conscience; when they are accused, save them from speaking in hate; when they are rejected, save them from bitterness; when they are imprisoned, save them from despair; and to us your servants, give grace to respect their witness and to discern the truth, that our society may be cleansed and strengthened. This we ask for the sake of Jesus Christ, our merciful and righteous Judge. Amen. (Book of Common Prayer, p. 823)