|
|
|
|
|
| Above Header is Always a Link to Our WEBSITE ! |
Aug. 4, 2009 |
|
| Dear Friends,
Many have requested a copy of Brian Clow's Earth Day Homily -- back in April, 2009. Finally, I am sending the sermon via this e-mail.
This sermon is also available to anyone visiting our St. Ann's Website . . . by simply scrolling to the bottom of the left column, clicking on "ARCHIVED Reflections & Announcements" -- then click on this e-mail which is archived there (dated 8/4/09).
Brian leaves for Middlebury College next week. You may want to send him your best wishes via this e-mail link. Thanks Brian! |
|
Homily -- Earth Day, 2009 -- Brian Clow -- St. Ann's Episcopal Church, Woodstock, IL
Good Morning and Happy Earth Day.
Just a few weeks ago I was lucky to go to Costa Rica with my environmental science class. I saw plants and animals that I had never seen before. Rainforests that presented a dappled canopy of light, howler monkeys in the tree tops, carpenter ants carrying leaves 100 times their size. I was amazed by God's creation.
On another trip last year to Ireland the Woodstock High School choir sang in beautiful churches and awe-inspiring cathedrals. But it was the Cliffs of Moor that stretched hundreds of feet up from the seashore where I really felt the presence of God. So while I found the cathedrals beautiful and while I am comfortable here at St. Ann's, the natural world is God's true home.
Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970 when American society was just beginning to recognize the destruction that humans were inflicting on our environment.
Almost 40 years later we celebrate Earth Day here at St. Ann's to demonstrate our love for the Earth and explore various ways that we can care for creation and minimize our harmful impacts on the planet.
However, in addition to the celebration, we must recognize that something has gone wrong with our relationship with the natural world. Something that we need to fix... a spiritual connection that needs repair.
What has gone wrong? Does recognizing the disconnect between our love for the natural world and the way we treat it bring us into a danger zone? If we recognize the true magnitude of our ecological crisis will it just paralyze us? Does the steady drum beat of ecological degradation and climate change not only make us feel unable to make change but too depressed to accept the need for action?
We see these signs of crisis everywhere....even in our own backyard. Mercury is found in fish in Lake Michigan, Wetlands are being paved over, our farmland is disappearing, our supply of clean drinking water is shrinking. Glaciers and ice sheets in the Artic are melting much faster than expected. Warming temperatures over the next century could turn rich agricultural land into desert, dry out rainforests, raise sea levels, extinguish countless species and cause disastrous storms.
This sounds almost apocalyptic. Like the language of Revelations that conjure up imagery of the end of times and the mysteries of God, the environmental challenges we face are real. The threats we face however are not orchestrated by God, but self-inflicted.
So how do we, as a people of faith, speak to these issues?
This apocalyptic language is not meant to paralyze us with fear but to spur us to act and invest us with hope. Ezekiel offered a vision of a new day when exiles would return home and the land would be restored and bloom as if it were the Garden of Eden. We need to actually feel what is going on to have the capacity to change it.
Janet Parker, Pastor at Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ in Arlington Virginia writes that we should actually start reading the Bible backwards. Begin with the Book of Revelation, not with the pristine garden. We reach toward a new genesis, a new way of living in harmony with the Earth, a change of consciousness and a re-rooting of all our religious traditions in eco-friendly soil. This vision of the new Earth can be captured by the next generation.
We are entering a new era when the importance of the ethical and moral dimensions of the environmental crisis are more obvious. This is where a religious perspective can help us to discover and implement strategies to help us solve the crisis. The crisis will require us to actually change human consciousness and behavior. This will take more than science and policy. We will need to invoke values grounded in religion and spirituality. We will need to establish a moral vision and set of spiritual values which invoke empathy, compassion and sacrifice so that future generations may survive.
Religious perspectives can help us recognize that all humanity is inherently linked by a sense of interdependence on Earth. It is time to extend our moral concern to other species and ecosystems and to translate that concern through religion into energy needed for restoring the Earth
As the new generation of leaders emerges in the environmental movement, religion can provide a critical basis of energy and support.
The next generation, my generation, is searching for ways to contribute. We must inspire that participation. Now that we have a growing awareness of the extent of environmental problems, how do we transform that awareness into change.
This sort of change takes a long time and while to me 1970 seems like a long time ago, two decades before I was born, environmental awareness is still a relatively new concept for many. History shows us that change takes place over an uneven and unpredictable path. Abolitionists started to fight against slavery in the mid 19th century but it was the civil rights movement of the mid 20th century where most civil rights victories were claimed.
The environmental crisis also provides an opportunity for different religions to transcend their differences and work together. These efforts have already begun as the Harvard Divinity School held an international conference series from 1996 to 1998 on the interrelationships of world religions and ecology. The Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and the Yale Divinity School now offer a joint masters degree program in the area of religion and ecology.
According to Tucker and Grim from Yale University, Judaism, Christianity and Islam are formulating original eco-theologies and eco-justice practices regarding stewardship and care for creation. Hindu and Buddhist sects conduct projects on ecological restoration. In the US, communities just like St. Ann's are greening churches and synagogues with sustainable building materials, rain gardens and renewable energy sources.
These examples illustrate that the alliance of religion and ecology combined with a sense of global ethics is moving forward. The world's religions, as well as our own community-based churches, have a role to play in advancing comprehensive environmental ethics. Our Earth community and the success of the future leaders depend on it.
As I step off to the next stage of my life, I feel a calling to learn more about the environment, and to find out what I can do to make these changes. I am part of the generation which will have to deal with these issues in a very real way. I am convinced, however, that it will not be just the policy makers in Springfield or Washington or the biologists in Belize and Antarctica but the leaders of the faith community who will help people change their behaviors, adjust their viewpoints and take responsibility for saving the fragile Earth.
We need to identify the vision and values that will help us reach a sustainable future. We can't just use legislative approaches to require new limits to Carbon Dioxide. We must change behavior to lower demand or actually create demand for alternative energy. To change behavior, we can use techniques such as empathy, compassion and sacrifice -- which are deeply rooted and more easily pursued through the religious community.
We must find solutions to the environmental crisis that inspire participation, not frighten people or disempower them. It is time to recognize that as humans, we are more than just stewards of the earth, but actually are bound together with the earth in a single destiny. The environment is not separate from us but actually a part of us "shaping our minds, nourishing our bodies and refreshing our spirit"
The next generation understands this. Help us find a way, through our faith, to contribute to a positive future.
BY: Brian Clow | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
