Australia: Prayer and Action and Apocalypse

The new year has begun with news of the growing Australian wildfires, with thousands of people fleeing the fires and heading to beaches for safety and evacuation and an estimated 480 million animals dying in the fires so far. Headlines about the fires in recent days have described the fires as ‘apocalyptic’; The Times of London on December 31 said “Thousands trapped on Australian beaches by ‘apocalyptic’ fires”, while a New York Times article  bears the headline “Apocalyptic Scenes in Australia as Fires Turn Skies Blood Red”. 

While it’s understood that this use of the term ‘apocalyptic’ does not line up formally with the theological sense of the term, it’s an apt word for what is happening in Australia for the people whose world as they have known it does seem to have come to an end. When your home, your land, the familiar plants and animals are all gone, it feels like the end of the world, and it is certainly the end of a way of life in a place that is forever changed. These fires have taken hold at the end of the hottest year in Australian history, with the average 2019 temperature 1.52 degrees C hotter than the long-term average temperature. Australia is experiencing the effects of climate change on a big scale. 

Maybe we need a new term for this sort of “apocalypse”. Instead of talking about the “end times”, we could talk about “death times” or a time of loss on a scale most of us can’t imagine. It is not only the death of individuals, both human and non-human, that makes us reach for the language of apocalypse to describe it, but also the threat of losing entire species as bigger areas come under threat on a continent that is known for its unique fauna and flora. 

How can we in the Church respond to a climate-fueled tragedy of this scale? As with any loss, we can acknowledge it and talk about it, making it clear that we do see what is happening to a nation that is one of our closest allies. Many Americans seem only vaguely aware of what is unfolding in Australia as 2020 begins. Ignoring the suffering there goes against the command to love our neighbors; moreover, not learning from this tragedy and continuing to let climate change accelerate at a rapid pace puts others — and at some point, ourselves — in danger of other large-scale losses.

The Episcopal Church’s online resources for Creation Care  include some practical, close-to-home actions we can take. These resources are a great starting point, especially commendable for helping us to think more intentionally about caring for God’s creation. Yet we know that even our best efforts at stewardship and conservation as individuals and parishes, while good and worthwhile, aren’t enough to make enough of a difference.  

What then should we do once we have seen and acknowledged the damage not only of the fires in Australia but of the past year’s fires in California, the losses here in Nebraska and so many other places around the world from flooding, the end of traditional ways of living as permafrost melts in the Arctic and sea level rise threatens island nations? 

The temptation is to do nothing in the face of such a great threat because our efforts seem so small and futile. However, the Gospel lesson for today’s Daily Office holds a different suggestion for us. The lesson is John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1-14). In John’s telling of the story, Jesus asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip responds by saying that the challenge is too great. In saying “six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little”, Philip basically says that the problem is too big for them to address. Then Andrew says, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.” Andrew immediately adds, as if to show that he understands the impossibility of feeding all these people, “But what are they among so many people?” What I love about John’s version of the story is imagining the boy calling Andrew’s attention to what he has to offer. When small children hear that someone needs help, they are often eager to offer their help even when the adults in the room think that the child has nothing significant to offer. I imagine this boy overhearing the conversation about finding food for all these people and saying, “Look! I have some barley loaves and two fish. You can have those to help feed the people!” 

While Philip and Andrew made it clear that they were too sophisticated to take the boy’s offer seriously, the fact that the child offered what he had made all the difference. It was all that Jesus needed. This suggests that rather than do nothing about climate change because nothing we can do seems big enough, we should instead humbly offer what we have: our ability to stay informed and talk about what is happening, our acts of stewardship and conservation, our phone calls and letters to elected officials, our ability to organize or attend meetings and rallies and marches to call attention to climate change and call for significant policy changes to address it, and our prayers. I’ve seen several poignant requests for our prayers from Australians via social media this past week. We may feel like our prayers are insignificant — and there has been some public shaming of people who offer “thoughts and prayers” when more seems to be in order — but some of the people in the middle of these fires want us to offer them anyway. 

Our prayers and our actions seem so small, but we don’t know how they will be used, how they will combine with the efforts of others, how we might eventually change the hearts of the people with the power to make the large-scale societal changes that can mitigate these disasters in the long-term. 

Please pray for Australia, for its people, plants, and animals, and for our global climate. And please act in accordance with these prayers, offering in faith whatever actions each of us can offer. 

Compassion and Climate Chaos

Lent 3C: Suffering and Blame

In a post at the beginning of Lent, I shared my plan to read David Wallace-Wells’s book The Uninhabitable Earth alongside our daily lectionary readings and Lenten prayers. This being the Lenten wilderness, I didn’t know what I might encounter along the way since by definition the wilderness has no set paths to follow and no guarantees of what we might find. Along with other Nebraskans, not long into Lent I found myself in unfamiliar territory.

On Thursday, March 14 in Nebraska, blizzard conditions followed heavy rains as air pressure dropped in a “bomb cyclone” event. With the ground still frozen hard and more snowpack than usual melting, rivers and creeks flooded and huge chunks of ice got pushed into areas near waterways, resulting in great destruction in both rural areas and towns. Roads and bridges were badly damaged or destroyed, making areas already cut off by floodwaters even more isolated from aid. 

In the days since, we Nebraskans have greatly appreciated the assurance of prayers from people in other places, just as we have appreciated all sorts of practical help, such as money to help with flood relief, farmers from other states bringing hay to feed Nebraska livestock, and skilled volunteers simply showing up to help. And Nebraskans have been helping their neighbors and encouraging each other as communities begin the process of clean-up and rebuilding. Among the shock and sorrow at the losses resulting from the floods, the compassion people have given to other people and to animals has been a bright light showing the way forward and drawing us together. 

However, compassion has not been a universal reaction to our suffering. In this Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 13:1-9), 

Jesus is asked whether people who died in terrible ways were worse sinners than others; in other words, Jesus is asked whether people who experience unusual suffering somehow especially deserve their suffering. Today we might ask, do bad things really happen to good people? (Yes, they do.) Yet even if we know perfectly well that terrible things can happen to people who personify faith and kindness and moral goodness, we still in our culture — perhaps especially in our recent history — have a tendency to look for someone to blame when things go wrong. When we assume someone is to blame, and especially when we make an assumption, conscious or unconscious, that the someone who is to blame is probably the very person who is suffering, compassion dwindles. 

Jesus’s answer to this question about sinners getting what they deserve is basically that we are all sinners, all in need of repentance. If bad things happen only to people who have sinned, we are all in trouble. 

We know that the more our planet warms, the more extreme weather events we will have as a result of climate chaos. Spring flooding is not atypical in this part of the United States, but floods of this magnitude are atypical. (See, for example, the article Climate change’s fingerprints are on U.S. Midwest floods: scientist from Reuters.)   It is fair to say, then, that our failure to stop climate change when we could have done so or our failure to mitigate climate change now that it is upon us contributed to this disaster. If we are invested in the blame game more than we are invested in Jesus’s Way of Love, it’s an easy step to go from acknowledging our collective failure to looking for specific people to blame for that failure and hoping to see them suffer.

Those of us who made the mistake of reading the comments on articles about the destruction here in Nebraska learned that while many people in other places had a compassionate response to our suffering, many others had no compassion for Nebraskans because we have elected political leaders who refuse to do anything to address climate change. The general tenor of these comments was that the writer didn’t feel sorry for us at all because we had brought this all on ourselves by electing the wrong sorts of people, that we got just what we deserved. (On top of being mean-spirited, these comments seemed to me especially ill-conceived given the obvious contribution of Nebraskans to stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.)

Our world needs people whose first impulse is compassion rather than placing blame; as we experience more and more of the results of climate chaos, our world needs Jesus’s Way of Love perhaps more than ever before. The basic foundations of human civilization are endangered by climate instability. Such a critical point of history requires us to demonstrate the best human values and to resist the temptation to divide further into warring factions. Hope for our world in an era of environmental collapse depends on compassion for one another. That compassion, that ability to care, will, I think, yield our best outcome in generating the political will to act to mitigate climate change as well the best outcome in responding to what David Wallace-Wells calls the “cascades” of challenges and disasters resulting from climate chaos. 

Do we need to elect leaders who make addressing global warming a high priority? Yes, we do. Should people and animals who live in places that don’t elect such leaders — and right now that would be most of the United States since it’s pretty obvious from looking at legislative records and listening to campaign rhetoric that few of our leaders of either major party see climate change as a top priority or have any grasp of the size of the challenge before us — be left to suffer on their own when floods, tornadoes, droughts, or wildfires happen? No. For Christians, such a lack of compassion would simply be against everything that Jesus taught. We don’t require a moral litmus test in order for people to access basic necessities. 

And for anyone, even those who live by an “eye for an eye” blame game ethics, the ethics of blame and self-righteousness makes no sense since we don’t (at least at the moment) live in a country in which the red people all live in one place and the blue people all live in another place — not that political affiliation really tells you anything about any given individual’s concern about climate change.  

Jesus answered a question about why he made a practice of sitting down to eat with known sinners by saying, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13) Now in this era of climate chaos we still need to learn what it means to show mercy to people in need rather than demanding moral purity. 

The Diocese of Nebraska has published a suggested list of links to agencies accepting monetary donations for flood relief along with thanksgiving for your prayers:

The Diocese of Nebraska Flood Relief & Support Fund  

American Red Cross of Nebraska and Southwest Iowa  

Episcopal Relief and Development  

Lenten Wilderness: The Uninhabitable Earth

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming, published two weeks ago, will help to shape my Lenten experience this year. In turn, I suspect my observance of Lent will color my reading of David Wallace-Wells’s blunt and lucid account of the present reality of climate change. My intention during Lent is to figure out every day what to give up or let go of to ensure time for a close reading of a chunk of this book along with a close reading of the Daily Office readings for that day and plenty of time for prayer. 

“It is worse, much worse, than you think,” reads the first sentence of The Uninhabitable Earth. 

“We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.” We pray this confession in our Litany of Penitence as one of many particular faults. All of the sins we confess on Ash Wednesday have some bearing on the particular sin that most directly speaks to the subject of The Uninhabitable Earth: 

For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,Accept our repentance, Lord. 

Yesterday’s familiar Daily Office reading from John’s Gospel (John 1:1-18) reminded us of the reality of the Incarnation, the Word that came to live among us in our world of earth, air, fire, and water. While some forms of piety emphasize a heaven / earth dualism during Lent, the reality of our faith and of our lives is that we are part of the world God created and pronounced good, the same world so deeply loved by God that Jesus, God Incarnate, came to dwell here with us. Whether we can understand it, and even if we deny it, the laws of chemistry and physics and our past and present actions are resulting in big changes that have forever changed life on our planet. And whether we can understand it, and even if we deny it, God’s love for us and for all of creation, the love that we know through Jesus’s love, is with us as we respond to the huge challenges we face. 

I’ve chosen to read The Uninhabitable Earth not despite the psychological and spiritual challenge of looking squarely at our present situation on this planet, but because of the enormity of that challenge. The temptation to look away is a true temptation, a temptation to sin. Our failure to acknowledge climate change as the central issue of our time — our practice of willful ignorance, of ignoring the very warm elephant in the room as we allow ourselves to be distracted by all sorts of craziness along with all sorts of other serious concerns that will only worsen as Earth’s temperatures soar — is more than an oversight. Our willful ignorance that results in human suffering and species extinction is a sin, and the only way to repent of willful ignorance is to seek knowledge. 

I have no idea what I’ll encounter in the practice of reflecting on this latest summary of our perilous condition alongside our daily lectionary readings and Lenten prayers, but when any of us chooses a serious Lenten discipline, we have no idea what we will encounter in our chosen wilderness. By definition, the wilderness has no set paths to follow, no guarantees of what we will find. 

In this age of global warming, we are all in the wilderness, all lost whether or not we realize it.  Choosing a forty day interior wilderness journey that acknowledges our material situation seems appropriate to me this year. I’ll post some reports along the way if I find something worth sharing.

Christmas: Wondering as We Wander

I wonder as I wander out under the sky

How Jesus my Saviour did come for to die

For poor on'ry people like you and like I,

I wonder as I wander out under the sky.

(Song by folklorist John Niles, inspired by a fragment of a folk hymn)

Christmas traditions run deep for many of us, yet despite the continuity provided by certain traditions, each year’s Christmas experience is unique. This year’s Christmas for at least a good chunk of Americans seems somewhat different as we are living through what feels like a new sort of moment in our nation’s history. The sense of instability has shown itself in recent days with a deep plunge in the stock market (heading toward possibly the worst December for the market since the Great Depression), a government shutdown, and the impending departure of Defense Secretary Mattis. Add the elements of environmental instability to this, with little encouraging news from either the scientific or the political spheres, and it’s no surprise that something feels different this Christmas. 

How any of this will play out is unclear. We have solid science to help us see what will happen if we continue on our current path of environmental destruction, but even that is uncertain as the future direction of the human actions that have gotten us into this crisis are unpredictable and the exact nature and timing of global warming’s feedback loops are still only partially known. 

The American social and political traditions and the environmental stability that felt like givens to those of us born in the middle of the twentieth century are now unreliable. Having lost our way, we are wandering, searching, hoping for something we can’t quite envision. 

The Christmas story is about hope, about light shining in the darkness. Mary’s song — our Gospel for Advent IV — reminds us that God shows mercy for people who are poor and oppressed, that those who are suffering in the present moment have real hope that a more just order will be restored. 

The Christmas story is also about wonder — the wonder of God being born among us, the wonder of a young woman receiving a visit from an angel and of a new baby with seemingly ordinary parents being seen as a King, but telling us when he is grown that his kingdom is not like other kingdoms. There is starlight, angels singing to terrified shepherds, and other people amazed at what the shepherds told them. And there is Mary, treasuring the words of the shepherds and, as Luke tells it, pondering them in her heart.

The Christmas story is about experiencing wonder as we wander toward the Light. Wonder isn’t the whole story — Mary went through the very real experience of pregnancy and childbirth along with those reflective and even mystical experiences — but perhaps it’s a necessary ingredient that we neglect at our own peril.

The wonder of Christmas was brought home for me yesterday when I went to see my young grandchildren in their congregation’s Christmas pageant. My three-year-old grandson was an angel, with the only directions being to hang around with the older angels and be where they were. But despite the efforts of the grown-ups in his life and the influence of Mr. Rogers in teaching the difference between real life and make-believe, the idea of people in costumes pretending vs. seeing the real thing is still shaky for a three-year-old, shaky enough for the enacted wonder of the story to become real wonder. When Mary brought out a baby doll that had been hidden away and put the baby in the manger, my grandson looked and looked at the baby, hovering near the manger and watching over the baby Jesus. His sense of wonder was evident and contagious. The story is still new for him, and that helped me hear the story in a new way as well. 

There are many occasions for wonder in our own daily lives. We have seen an amazing moon the past couple of evenings, a moon with a special glow. That science can explain why this moon looks different from others doesn’t take away from its beauty or its ability to expand our thoughts beyond our ourselves and our daily tasks. There are glimpses of joy on the faces of people of all ages; there are the small gray and brown birds that appear from hidden places to feed at feeders, the occasional sound of a wren, and the quiet of fields and woods far from town, and the winter skies seen from those same rural places. There is ice forming and melting, there are snowflakes falling like little stars, and the sight of friends and family who have been away from home. Wonder — and its companion, joy — are there for the noticing. 

Wondering at the world around us and finding joy in God’s creation forms our hearts to love the world. We care for what we love, and the more connected we feel to other people and all of creation, the more easily we will see the way to live whole and holy lives even when the world feels unstable and fragmented. The world needs people who are whole and holy; God needs us to do the work of mercy, justice, repair, and love that will lead to a better world for all people and all living things. 

May Christmas wonder be yours during this Christmas!

Into the Darkness

Advent I

Perhaps it’s because Nebraska has had several snowy, wintry days already this year, or perhaps it’s because of the weight of the news about climate change. Perhaps it’s because the level of corruption, incompetence, and willful ignorance among some of our top elected officials is taking us farther from addressing global warming instead of bringing us closer to the sort of large-scale all-in effort needed to mitigate climate change and adapt to a warming world. Perhaps it’s that the scientific reports seem less abstract when we see photos of places destroyed by fires, floods, and sea level rise. Whatever the reason, as this Advent season begins, I feel more keenly than I ever have at Advent that we are journeying into darkness. 

We pray “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light…” in our Collect for the First Sunday of Advent, and we use phrases like “dark times” to describe a difficult point of our personal or collective history. But non-metaphorical darkness, real darkness, can be a welcome time of sleep. It’s when we dream and re-energize our bodies for another day. Clear, starry skies on the darkest and coldest nights pull us into a world of wonder. Darkness is neither bad nor good, it simply is. 

However, when we aren’t safely tucked away in our beds or purposely star-gazing, darkness can be scary because we can’t see what is around us and may be disoriented. That’s when we long for a light in the darkness. A small flashlight on a walk back from star-gazing in an open field or seeing a farmstead’s yard light ahead when driving on a dark night can make a big difference. 

As we enter Advent this year, I’m keeping an image in mind of entering a quiet, restful darkness while knowing where to find some light when I need it. Maybe in the darkness, even if it's sometimes uncomfortable, we will learn something, dream something, that will help us see and participate in a new thing. In Advent, we contemplate the mystery of Christ as the one who was, who is, and who is to come again, the one that John’s Gospel describes as the Word who was from the beginning. “What has come into being in him was life,” writes John, “and the life was the light of all people.” We know where to find the light, and we also know that it’s both a necessity and a joy to pass through the darkness of Advent in order to more fully receive the light that always shines in the darkness, the light of Christ we celebrate at Christmas. 

This year, our spiritual journey into darkness seems an especially good fit for what we are experiencing in our daily lives, in this unique moment in the intertwined history of humankind and planet Earth, and in our current political situation. In the Gospel for the First Sunday of Advent, Jesus talks about our ability to see the signs of the season such as the sprouting of green leaves telling us when summer is near. We can read the signs of our times if we pay attention. Reports of daily eco-disasters and scientific reports show us different kinds of signs of the same reality. As we pay attention, the darkness can seem overwhelming. It’s disorienting because we are in an unfamiliar place. However, as we allow ourselves to see the signs and enter the darkness of our current situation, we are also entering the more familiar darkness of Advent, that darkness that is meant to help us see the Light more clearly. Even though humankind has never before been in this same place, we know how to do this because we know how to journey through Advent and we know the Light is near. 

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For a daily dose of wonder to help us reflect on our place in the vastness of creation, check out the 2018 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.

Light in the darkness: What do we want?

Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.”  (Mark 10:51)

We Americans have had a harrowing week, the sort of week in which our Christian belief that light shines through the darkness becomes a matter of faith more than observation. But we do believe that the light shines in the darkness and that love is stronger than hate. Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s statement after the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh expresses our faith and describes the response of prayer and action that translates our sympathetic and loving thoughts toward our Jewish friends into a real sharing of love.

Nebraska Episcopalians who attended our Annual Council in Gering this week had a little more than a day of renewing and beginning friendships, being with and listening to our current Bishop and the two Bishops who preceded Bishop Barker, hearing a strong witness to Christian discipleship from Dr. Tom Osborne, and worshipping together. We were in a strikingly beautiful part of our state under clear blue autumn skies. All of this was light in the darkness. When we left Gering on Saturday morning and started hearing the news of what had happened to another faith community in Pittsburgh, I was grateful for the renewal and strength we took away with us, because those of us who are trying to follow Jesus at this point in our history need strong faith and minds and hearts. 

The Gospel lesson for today is the story of Bartimaeus, a blind man who calls out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” when he is told that Jesus is passing by. Jesus calls Bartimaeus over. Instead of assuming that what Bartimaeus needs most is to see, Jesus asks “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus is direct in his request: “My teacher, let me see again.” 

What do we want Jesus to do for us on October 28, 2018? Do we want an end to hate crimes and violence, or is there some payoff in personal status or social arrangements that makes us want a sort of half-healing where we gain some sense of protection while the currents of hatred and ignorance that fuel the violence continue? 

The week’s climate news was not only harrowing in its own right, but also very much connected to the other issues we are facing. The Red Cross president, Peter Maurer, talked about how climate change is exacerbating both domestic and international conflicts. [The Guardian: Climate change is exacerbating world conflicts…] Another article by National Geographic described the link between climate change and immigration from Guatemala. [Changing climate forces desperate Guatemalans to migrate.] Climate change is one of the societal global changes that feeds the racism and xenophobia that underlies so much of the politics of hate in the United States. 

What do we want Jesus to do for us? When we pray for our nation, do we pray for Jesus to help us find the strength and wisdom and courage to effect large scale economic and cultural changes, or do we simply long for some vague miracle that will make us safe? 

My plan for the next ten days includes standing in solidarity with our Jewish friends in Omaha, praying for real healing for our biosphere and our nation and for the strength, courage, and wisdom both corporately and personally to contribute to that healing, and keeping all of this in mind when I vote on November 6. 

We must become clear about what we truly want, and then ask Jesus for what we need to change our direction.

Servant Leaders Needed

Proper 24B: Mark 10:35-45

So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. (Mark 10: 42-44)

After James and John asked to sit on either side of Jesus when Jesus is seated in glory, the other disciples were upset with James and John for trying to assure their own status. Knowing the disciples were quarreling about who would be the greatest among them, Jesus explained that leadership among his followers differed from the leadership model they saw around them in the secular world, the world of the Gentiles. In a world dominated by the Roman Empire, rulers were tyrants who lorded it over others. This is reversed in Jesus’s vision of the beloved community of his followers: the greatest among them, the leaders, are there to serve the others, not to be served. A leader in God’s kingdom is primarily concerned with the welfare of others.

This is a timely Gospel text here in the United States. We are seeing in our nation today what happens when the well-being of the many is sacrificed to the pursuit of wealth and status for the few. We are seeing the middle class shrink while the wealthiest among us make decisions for their own benefit with little regard for the rest of us. Many of those in power don’t even pretend to care about the well-being of others, appealing to ideas more in line with Ayn Rand than with Jesus of Nazareth.

When leaders look only to their own short-term interest instead of the long-term interests of the majority, environmental degradation is one of the results. With regard to climate change, for example, the stakes are high. The World Resources Institute has produced a chart showing the difference half a degree of warming makes in a variety of areas that impact our quality of life and our economic well-being. I recommend taking a look at this, as it gives an accessible summary to help us better understand why climate change is such an urgent issue and why governments need to prioritize large-scale action to mitigate climate change.

In the United States, money from the fossil fuel lobby has heavily influenced those holding elective office, discouraging them from taking effective action against global warming. Officials have looked at their own short-term gain instead of the welfare of their nation. Instead of being servants of those who have elected them, they have effectively lorded it over us by lining their own pockets. To me, it’s especially offensive that many of those who fail to act as servant leaders self-identify as Christians, often emphatically so. Jesus is clear that supporting tyrants and pursuing our own status while ignoring the needs of those we should be serving is not compatible with Christian discipleship. This week's Gospel lesson is clear about the way for Christians to exercise leadership, and the science tells us we can't continue with business as usual. Our lives and the stability of everything that supports us and other living things are at stake.