First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Matthew Johnson
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
April 21, 2002

The Gospel of Ecology

I suppose that even though I am young I am old enough to know that one ought not count on the weather. Nonetheless, there I was, last Wednesday and Thursday, beginning to write this sermon anticipating a warm spring day.

I was going to tell you that there is something a little foolish about preaching about nature on a beautiful spring day. Like Whitman, who found the astronomy lecture far less inspiring than the actual stars, you may well have decided that no words can compare to the soft breeze, the singing birds, the crystal lakes of a spring day. It is, I guess, even more foolish to preach as if the weather will hold. But snow or rain will work as equally well for my purposes: after all, when Ralph Waldo Emerson instructed the graduates of Harvard Divinity School in 1838, he says "I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to say I would go to church no more" because that preacher, compared to the snow-storm Emerson could see through the window, was "merely spectral, and the eye felt the sad contrast in looking at him, and then out of the window behind him into the beautiful meteor of the snow." Regardless of the form of the weather, Emerson and Whitman's point remains--our words about existence so often fall short of the simple beauty of the earth itself. The windows here are large—and so I do feel a little foolish preaching about nature. But tomorrow is Earth Day, and I do believe that it remains possible for us to speak about nature in a way that adds to our experience, and does not simply suffer the comparison.

I want to talk this morning about the gospel of ecology—the good news of the earth. I remain convinced that true faith brings joy—the happiness of living in harmony, the satisfaction of a sense of meaning. And so, if we Unitarian Universalists are to be an ecological faith, if we are to honestly respect the web of life, then there must be good news. And I hold that it is true that to live in harmony with creation is good for the soul. In nature writers across the centuries, there is this suggestion that in nature we might discover peace and union with the divine. This is Whitman's "mystical moist night-air"—this sense that when we are in the wild, we are closer to what is real in the world. And I doubt that I am alone here in having felt something like this, when out in the woods, when standing on the rocky shores, when looking up at the stars. So there is something here, some insight about who we are as human beings, about what it means to be connected to the earth, that is true.

When I was a child, we lived next to a ravine. The path down to the creek bed started in our backyard. At the top of the ravine, if you listened closely, you could barely hear the running water most days, but it grew louder as you descended. I spent hours and hours down on the creek bed, watching the water roll over the rocks. I sat under the trees, watched the birds and insects in their dance, got my hands dirty with the clay, and got dirt on my pants from slipping and sliding up and down the path. I remember the sun only barely shining through the trees, casting a soft green glow on all the world; unless it was noon, when the sun came right down the center of the ravine and made the water glitter and sparkle. During those few dry weeks in August, the creek would dry up almost completely, only a trickle sliding past the rocks. And in March, when the rain was heaviest and the snow in the mountains was melting, my mom would send me off with a "be careful" because the creek ran full, over the tops of the rocks I usually stood upon to get across. So my feet got wet instead.

What I remember feeling about those years is that down in the ravine was where I felt most at peace, the place where the world seemed most real. It was the place where what seemed false--school cliques and fair-weather friends--faded away. It seems to me now, looking back, that in being in the ravine I was coming back to myself in some fundamental way; and that even today, when I am more comfortable in the world and have relationships that are genuine, being in the natural world, even if that means walking down a tree-lined city street, feels right. Wherever I am in the world, sitting under a tree makes me feel like I'm at home.

I have talked with other people like me, and they often share this sense. Especially other Unitarian Universalists. After all, that oft-used reading in our Hymnal from Unitarian Universalist minister Jacob Trapp begins:

And so I guess I'm not too surprised to hear that other people like me--religious liberals, middle-class folk--have this same sense of the natural world as somehow intrinsic to our being. And nor am I surprised that people who live closer to the land, indigenous people around the world, farmers and people that live "out in the country" feel this way about the earth. I am not surprised that people who have gardens, or plant flowers feel this way.

But I must confess: I thought like those architects who asked the children at the Robert Taylor Homes what their project's greatest need was, and expected to hear something like "burglar-proof doors" or "elevators that work." Not flower gardens. I guess I thought that living in nature was a luxury, something nice that people should have but not something insistent, not something that tugged at the very center of our own longing for wholeness. Yet the children named flowers. As Engel said, these children knew "that their stark sixteen-story buildings rising out of treeless blacktop needed flowers above all else."

Out of the mouths of babes. I also confess that I stopped heading down into the ravine when I was about sixteen--something to do with having a car. I wonder if the adults living in the Robert Taylor Homes would have the courage to say that what they needed was flowers. I wonder if children know, in a way we grown-ups have too easily forgotten, that being with the living earth is good for the soul. I wonder if children know that we are more complete when we are connected to the earth, and that human beings are not supposed to live without flowers.

Our care for the earth is the concrete form of our belief in the interdependent web, just as working for justice is our concrete form of our respect for the inherent worth and dignity of every person. These are deep theological insights with transformative power. But they must be made real. It is too tempting to make this theological insight of ours something abstract and mystical, and forget that this way of understanding the world and our role in it means we have to roll up our sleeves and act.

But let me be clear: we are called to act, we are called to care for the earth, but we are not called to perfection. It is not for us to throw up our hands and give up on ecological sustainability because we cannot affect it all at once. The good has been sacrificed for the perfect more often with respect to the earth than in any other endeavor. We must do what we can; but we must not succumb to the temptation to do nothing because we cannot do it all.

In my family, it is my sister who is the most committed environmentalist. She lives lightly on the earth--recycles or reuses everything, eats vegan most of the time, votes only for environmentalists, etc. She was an environmental studies major in college and now works for the State of Washington's Department of Ecology, working with local communities and county governments to improve their solid waste programs, to reduce pollution and toxins, and to recycle greater amounts of the waste they receive. This is her work: in college, she rode around campus on her bicycle and picked up food waste from the cafeterias for the college compost she helped start. She is, to say the least, dedicated to the cause. A few months ago, she dropped off her car, which she had really only used to come home on break, at our home. She was taking the bus to work, riding her bicycle around town, and was happy to get rid of the car. This was not a surprise move to any of us. My father had the brakes fixed and sold it. What is a surprise is that this week, she bought a car. A 91' Corolla Station Wagon. She can't get from her home in the city to our parents without a car--well, she could, but what is a thirty minute drive is a two and half hour bus trip. And she can't get out to the mountains without a car. Some might claim that this makes my sister a hypocrite, or that it proves their point that serious environmentalism is unrealistic and we should just give up.

I see things differently. We are not perfect. We will never be perfect. We have failed to do our part to care for the earth, and we can not live our lives in such a way that they make no impact on an already fragile world ecosystem.

But the gospel of ecology--that call within our being back to the earth, that sense of peace that comes from simply paying attention to life, that desire within the human heart that makes children in housing projects wish most of all for flowers--the gospel of ecology means that we are forgiven, and called to keep on trying. The gospel of ecology means that no matter how broken our relationship with the earth seems to be, by our own doing or by others, we are still connected. The truth of interdependence means that it is never too late to move towards ecological awareness, that the restoration of our ties to the earth, our home, is always possible.

The gospel of ecology means that we are saved from helplessness to relationship by an earth which wishes for us health. To be a strand in the web means that should we live in greater harmony we will also live in greater joy. The gospel of ecology proclaims the good news of work for the environment: life is better this way. When we live more simply, live in cooperation with the natural world, we will find, as millions already have and many of you already know, that our priorities are more just, our lives are more complete, and our time is better spent.

And so this is our hope and our dream: that the earth, our home, will be healthy and whole once again.

That we might in our brief time on this earth, leave it better than we found it.

That the joyfulness of creekbeds and flowers and night stars stays with us all, always.

That the deep power of being connected to all life, to all existence, would give us also the strength to respect those connections, to honor our home.

This is our hope and our dream: that we might, in the words of Wendell Berry,

"Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Put your faith in the two inches of humus

that will build under the trees

every thousand years."

May it be so. May we live our lives in peace, and in joy, and in service to a world that needs our love.

Please stand as you are willing and able and join in song number 163, "For the Earth Forever Turning."