Worth, Dignity, and Environmental Justice

Sermon delivered November 8, 2015 at Prairie Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, Hutchinson, Kansas.

Now I know you are all expecting me to talk about climate change and climate justice, and I’ll get to that, but to start I’m going to talk about television and drugs. Last weekend I finished watching the first season of The Wire. For those of you who don’t know, The Wire was an HBO series of the last decade that looked at the drug scene in Baltimore from the perspective of the cops and the dealers. Hopefully I’ll be vague enough that I won’t spoil it for anyone who might want to watch it.

            Among those involved in the drug trade, there are some who are more sensitive, and have more of a conscience, than others. To be clear, none of them could care less about the addicts whose lives are destroyed by the drugs. But as bodies start adding up, of innocent and not-so-innocent alike, it starts to weigh a little too heavily on some souls.

            At one point a pivotal character in the drug trade, after arrest, finally turns and agrees to testify against the drug syndicate, in return for his own protection and chance to start over. But then his mother shows up and convinces him to rescind his statement and do his time for the sake of his family, whose wellbeing and privileges rest upon the money the drug empire brings in. The argument is clear: the system must be protected at all cost for the people who benefit from it. And the people who benefit most are not the ones directly involved. The kids who are actually selling drugs on the street are treated as expendable; they might gain some pocket change and respect but they are still poor kids just struggling to get by. It is people like the mother, who never touch the stuff, who benefit most demonstrably from the system.

            By now, you may have figured out where I’m going with this. The situation of this corrupt drug empire in Baltimore is totally analogous to our own climate-destroying systems – particularly fossil fuels and conventional agriculture. The loudest arguments in defense of these destructive systems are the ones that say we need them to keep living comfortable and secure lives. As though upper-middle-class respectability were the end all and be all and we could all achieve it if we just play our cards right.

            Both we and the drug dealer are caught in a Catch-22. How far are we willing to go to protect a lifestyle built on the exploitation of others, a lifestyle that gives us comfort and security but not necessarily meaning, a lifestyle that will always be threatened by the forces of good at work in the world? The character on The Wire took a twenty year sentence, because, as his mother reminded him, the alternative was too scary and lonely – to start over, all on his own, in a totally unfamiliar environment, and never be able to see his family again. We hopefully don’t have to make that choice – our families won’t kill us because we disagree with them about the environment and economics – but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Who in their right mind, with their retirement tied up in the stock market, is going to rail against that institution? Who, who has worked tirelessly to provide for their family, to make a living in rural America off of oil or agriculture, is going to turn against the institutions that have fed them? It is only when situations become too horrific that we have whistleblowers from ExxonMobil or Monsanto.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that on some level or another, we all care about the environment. We like having clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. We like to go hiking or biking or hunting or fishing, to watch the sunrise or the migrating birds, to hear the wind through the grasses or see the snow on the mountain. And we all want a world where we can continue to enjoy these things, where our children and grandchildren, and future generations of humans, can enjoy such things. But it’s easy to take a livable earth for granted, because we’ve always had one. Likewise, it’s easy to take our own bodies and their abilities for granted until they are threatened. Earlier this week a ladder slipped out from under me. My body did everything right to save me from as much harm as possible and I am in awe. I eat well and get plenty of activity and generally speaking try to take good care of my body. But this incident reminded me how important that is. If my upper arm strength and balance and ability to land weren’t as good, I’d probably be lying in a hospital in a cast right now, instead of standing in front of you with some bruises and chipped teeth. Sometimes it takes having something dear to you, something essential to you, threatened, in order to remember how important and valuable it is.

And now the situation is dire enough that more people are starting to pay attention – powerful people. Even the Catholic church has taken a stand. Pope Francis’s recent encyclical, Laudato Si, has been a powerful contribution to this movement, in particular to the conversation on the connections between environmental and economic exploitation. In general, Christians and other people of faith are slowly starting to speak out in defense of the climate. And on Friday, President Obama finally rejected the Keystone XL pipeline. I’ll admit I haven’t been a part of this battle, but for my friends who have been involved in the struggle for years, this is huge. It’s huge for the rest of us too. The nature of our political system is such that a politician will usually only do the right thing if it’s politically viable. Obama blocked the permit for political reasons: to strengthen America’s position in climate negotiations, such as the upcoming Paris talks. But what this means is that it is now politically viable for a politician to take a strong, impactful, and controversial stand against climate change.

            To me, one of the most significant things about this victory, and the thing that has made this particular struggle more about justice than just mitigating climate change, is the leadership of indigenous peoples. In so many ways this is the heart of the issue. This planet may be our “common home,” but once upon a time this continent was not our home. My ancestors and probably most of yours showed up and decided that if we could exploit the people and resources here, we could claim the land. From the early colonists to the Homestead Act, the thinking has been that if you can make it work out there, find utility from the wilderness, it’s yours. As though there were no other people here already, people who found value from the land in ways we couldn’t even recognize.

            We know what we did to the Native Americans was wrong. We teach our kids that the Trail of Tears was a stain on our nation’s conscience. But when are we going to learn to listen to them, these people who first gave Europeans the knowledge and tools they needed to survive on the harsh shores of Massachusetts and elsewhere? Do we assume that we have so destroyed their culture that they are no longer capable of teaching us what we need to do to survive?

            Or are we finally learning to listen and let them lead?  Obama did not cite indigenous concerns in his statement on rejecting the pipeline. But the resistance of tribes, alongside that of ranchers and environmentalists, is what forced the issue.  The Keystone XL pipeline was more symbolic than anything; other pipelines exist, the tar sands are still being mined, oil is still being shipped. But something is shifting, and we need to keep pushing that shift in the direction of the world we’d like to live in.

So what do we do?

Honestly, I think the biggest thing we can do is to talk about it. But not in the fear-mongering way, gosh no. In a here-are-my-ideas-on-how-we-can-create-a-better-world way.  Because we already live in a world with enough fear. Recently I was in central Missouri and picked up a local newspaper. One article featured the assignments of a fifth grade class talking about themselves by filling in the blanks: “I am _____ and ______. I feel ______. I see ______.” Etc.  And it was upsetting for me to read how many of the kids feared that the world would end soon. Is this what we are teaching our kids?  I don’t think we should be protecting them with lies, that everything will be all right when we have no idea, when in fact we know that we have been squandering their future. But it’s when people are scared that they start grasping and stop appreciating. If you are pretty certain that there’s no hope, you stop working towards a livable future, and it’s that lack of perspective that justifies extractivism, the taking of what you can get while it’s still there and before anybody else. But we don’t need to grasp for oil to have power, we don’t need to grasp for power to have light, and we don’t need to grasp for light to see. There are other ways. Learning to listen to other cultures, particularly native ones, is one way to explore how we can reorient our relation to the planet. Another is to learn from the natural systems already at work. Biomimicry. Permaculture. Holistic management. Natural systems agriculture. There are a growing number of approaches based on understanding ecosystems and life forms, rather than forcing them to work for us.

Feminist theologian Sallie McFague suggests the metaphor of the earth as the body of God. I’ll admit I’m not that familiar with her work, but it intrigues me. In general I do believe that our attitude to the land and to natural resources is symbolic of our attitude towards life overall. I believe that if we can’t treat the land with reverence and respect, as something of value in its own right beyond what it can provide to us, we will never be able to treat each other with that respect for inherent worth and dignity either. And to me, the land is essential because we are created out of it, Biblically and literally. We all need to eat, and the process by which our food gets to our mouths binds us to each other and to the planet.  To go a little sacramental on you, every bite is a communion, but whether it is holy or otherwise is up to us.

The UU community prides itself on its leadership on justice issues, and I think that despite our disparate views, theologically we have a lot to offer the climate justice movement. The Dominican Sisters that I currently work for often note that they’ve never heard a sermon on the environment, and I think it is safe to say that these women have sat through more sermons than almost anyone else on earth. Yet I think it would be odd to sit through a year of UU sermons and not hear about the environment. In his address at The Land Institute’s Prairie Festival this year, Wes Jackson joked that a Unitarian would care about even the poorest of soils, while a Methodist probably would not. And I think he’s on to something here. Mountaintops don’t have the best soil, but that doesn’t mean we should take them off to get to what’s underneath. And this, I think, has more to do with inherent worth and dignity than the traditional environmental principle of the interdependent web.

            There’s an element of some Christian thought that says, We are all unworthy, but God loves us anyway. And on my most broken feeling of days, this can be comforting to hear. But as a Unitarian Universalist, on a basic level I disagree. I believe that despite our brokenness, we are all worthy – of God, of life, of all the blessings of the world we might experience. This doesn’t mean we have earned these blessings, and we should feel humbled by them, but we are certainly worthy of them. Our worth is inherent. But it’s not just human worth that is inherent. It’s not even just animals that have worth. Everything that is, is important, regardless of if we can figure out a reason why.

            We’re still in a Catch-22. We’re standing where we are today upon the shoulders of others who don’t really like being stepped on. But what if we recognized that these people and things have worth beyond what they do for us? What if we stepped down, and moved forward together? Imagine all the places we might end up. 

Mark 8:27-38 and Climate Justice

I delivered this sermon (my first!) today, at St. John's Episcopal Church in Great Bend, Kansas. For reference, the day's lectionary reading can be found here.

 Good morning. Since this is my first time in this pulpit I suppose I should start with a little introduction. I work for the Dominican Sisters of Peace as the organic farm manager out at Heartland Farm, and I am not a Catholic nor even an Episcopalian but rather a Jewish Unitarian Universalist. But I am discerning a call to ministry and was invited to preach here. A week after receiving that invitation, I was at a climate justice organizers training where I was asked to go out and preach on the topic of climate justice. And so, here I am, which is kind of crazy in so many ways. A few months ago I would have avoided a conversation about climate change. The statistics, the fire and brimstone, the end of the world narrative turn me off, and I’m sure it turns most of you off. No one wants to think we’re doomed. And so I didn’t really think about climate change. I just thought about caring for the earth, and ways of living on this planet that were good for me and good for the environment. I rode my bike and grew my own food and tried to opt out of destructive systems as much as possible. But the systems continued.

I lived and farmed for four years in Arkansas, and my community there was passionate and dedicated, but among those of us wanting to farm and to care for the earth in a meaningful way, I felt a creeping spiritual malaise. In part that discomfort led me back to religion, and in a desire to connect with my fellow Unitarian Universalists engaged in a struggle for a better way of living, I found my way, a month ago, to that climate justice organizers training. I expected to be a voice saying, enough of the fire and brimstone, we’re not going to move people, reach people, if we scare them. But I found, among that group, that I did not need to be that person because everyone understood, everybody understood that this is about more than polar bears, this is about environmental justice, about the fact that poor people and people of color are more likely to feel the negative consequences of climate change as they have negatively felt the consequences of our continuous methods of exploiting people and the environment. We build trash incinerators in poor neighborhoods, we let our pollution float downstream, we extract resources from the parts of the country that don’t have the wealth and power to say otherwise. And it’s frustrating and depressing. And I don’t want to stand up here frustrating and depressing you all this morning. That’s not my point. My point is to provide hope, and another way, a way forward. And at this organizers training I found hope, hope that there’s a future for us on this planet, and it may not look like what life looks like now, and in some ways it can’t look like the world looks like now, but there are enough people who care enough that we can make a difference. And maybe I’m just naïve. But I’ve studied enough of social movements to know that change is possible. It is possible for us as a culture to break free from our habits of excessive consumption, to break free of a way of life that is destructive towards other people and the environment, that there are a growing number of people who care about the earth and how we relate to it in our lives. Every few weeks another young person comes to stay on our farm for a little while, wanting to learn more about growing vegetables and caring for animals and totally willing to work hard and get dirty in exchange for room and board. Most of these folks won’t go on to become farmers, but I’m confident that after the experiences they are having they won’t stop caring. And hopefully they’ll have seen enough alternatives to build better lives for themselves. I’m fully aware that I am speaking to you in an oil town, but the price of oil isn’t reliable and thus neither are the jobs. Climate justice doesn’t just mean preserving nature and organic farms. It also means providing reliable and meaningful jobs for all of us. It means supporting farmers so that they don’t feel compelled to drill on their land in order to make any money off of it. It means identifying ways in which we can support each other, and the environments in which we find each other, at the same time.

I was back in Arkansas this past weekend visiting farmer friends in the Ozarks and I stood there, talking to them while they worked, and I remembered that there’s something that these farmers get that most people don’t seem to get, there’s an understanding and an urgency that governs their lives and how they face the world, how they interact with the world, why they do what they do, despite the fact that they don’t have any retirement saved up, despite the fact that they have no idea how they are going to put their kids through college. And I think what it is, is that they realize, on a deep and intuitive level, that land care is a life or death matter. That, not caring for the earth might not necessarily kill them, as individuals, but to do otherwise is to destroy the future and to devalue and depreciate our present. There are things besides money worth valuing. I think the fact that the hardest working people I know are struggling isn’t justified by the fact that their lifestyle has priceless benefits, because they do still have to put their kids through college, and they do still have to worry about their health, and they do still have to be able to pay their employees. So there are bigger systemic problems that need to be fixed. But in their struggle to survive and provide quality food for their community they are embodying an ideal that I think we all ought to move closer to. That of creating a better, meaningful life for one’s self in such a way that enriches the life of the environment and the people around you. And I think the response to climate change has to do that, has to enrich our lives and enrich the earth. And I know it’s possible. I’ve seen it and experienced it in small places, and I think it’s one of the biggest miracles on this planet, that we don’t have to choose between one and the other, that the earth gives forth richness when we put into it, and when we have faith.

So what does today’s gospel reading have to do with any of this? A lot, I think. This is the first time when Jesus really explains what’s going to happen to him and what it means for him to be the Messiah. And Peter rebukes what Jesus says because Peter has a very specific idea of what Messiah means. He’s coming from a traditional Judaic understanding of what the Messiah is, someone who is going to lead the nation of Israel to greatness and redemption as a political and military leader. And Peter also thinks that following Jesus, who will be this great leader, will be easy, it will be a life of miracles and glory, and he can be alongside that. But the truth is that salvation isn’t easy, it’s not just about following the leader who is going to get you there. What Jesus tells us is that salvation comes at a price, that his future will be one of suffering and persecution. But then there will be resurrection, there is hope, there is redemption. But we need to first turn our minds away from human things to divine ones. Which means the solution probably won’t come where we expect it. It probably won’t be some simple cure-all technological innovation. It certainly won’t be as simple as just switching from oil to solar power. It’s going to be something that takes sacrifice, that takes change on our behalf in the way that we live now. But then, there’s hope on the other side of that.

Which is what Jesus is telling us when he explains what is required to be his disciple. Mitigating climate change is going to take sacrifice on our part, as individuals. We need to adjust our living habits and ways of thinking to move away from materialism and consumerism, away from a way of life that demands energy and fossil fuels. For what will it profit us to gain the whole world and forfeit our lives? There are lots of lists of green living out there so I’m not going to go into it and I don’t want to tell you what to do because there is no one right thing, but if we want to save our lives, to have a future for humanity, we need to be willing to change. And allow ourselves to be transformed as we learn to listen to the world around us. In the transformation, of individuals and of culture, lies salvation.

Tonight is Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New year, which commemorates creation, which God has asked us to care for. As a new year, it may be an opportunity to make a resolution for a change in your own life, such as recycling or using cloth napkins or drinking fair trade coffee or buying local food. It is also the first of the High Holy Days. Ten nights from now is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The interim days are for individuals to ask forgiveness from those they may have hurt in the past year. And on the eighth day the Jewish community gathers together and collectively ask for forgiveness from God. Because sins against God are a collective responsibility, and I think responding to climate change is a collective responsibility. Individual actions matter and I don’t want to disempower anyone, but it matters more when it’s an organized effort. Boycotting Taco Bell to raise how much the tomato growers get paid makes a much bigger difference than the fact that I just don’t go to Taco Bell. Monsanto doesn’t care that I don’t spray Round-Up. And so, while our personal actions matter and I think they are totally transformative to our lives, collective actions matter too. As a group we have the power to sway policy and create institutions. And I think we all agree with that or we wouldn’t be here today, gathered together in a group for worship of God.

I don’t know the solution. And I do know that it won’t be easy. This morning’s reading from James asks, “Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water?” No. And similarly, a solution that seems to helps humans at the expense of the planet in reality helps neither, and vice versa. But a solution that truly does help one helps all. Everything is connected. This natural order gives me hope. And I have hope because I see a lot of people with a strong desire for work that has meaning we can feel in our bones. And I see a lot of examples of people like my farmer friends doing such work, and living lives of beauty and generosity and abundance where others might see only scarcity. If we learn to change our perspective, if we set our minds on divine things and recognize the abundance before us, we will see, perhaps, what the future truly might offer.

On Marriage

I was never really into marriage. Oh, I think weddings are a blast and it would be fun to have a big party with all my friends and family to celebrate and honor my love for another person. But I've never fantasized about what I would wear, or what it would be like, or what it meant. And I don't have a fully articulated opinion of the institution of marriage. A boyfriend once asked what I thought about marriage, and all I could say was, "Well, Wendell Berry says some interesting things about it in this book I recently read…" And he does, about marriage being a social institution, about it being not just between two people but between them and their community. Berry writes from the perspective of a heterosexual marriage, but what he says applies to all marriages. Today's Supreme Court decision is all the more powerful understanding marriage in this context - that communities must recognize homosexual relationships as social institutions that can serve to strengthen society. (Berry recognizes the destructiveness of his white, heterosexual, male, Christian privilege, on himself, others, and the world, but he has been silent on homosexuality, something that has frustrated me. But anyway, that's a side note.) I never really thought seriously enough about marriage, and its relevancy to my own life, to decide what I thought about it.

When this gay marriage fight began, I took a moderate stance. If the church wanted to claim providence over marriage, then I figured we could compromise and let "marriage," in whatever form, be the domain of the church, while limiting the state to issuing civil unions, to heterosexual and homosexual couples alike. If states went for gay marriage, that was great and I thought highly of their people and their politics, but I wasn't an advocate for it. The Defense of Marriage Act irked me, and made me dislike Bill Clinton, not just because I thought it was a piece of intolerant legislation but because I thought it violated the full faith and credit clause of the Constitution. As for states that responded to the "threat" of gay marriage by explicitly limiting marriage to between a man and a woman, that made me livid, but I eventually realized they were digging their own graves on that issue.

But still, was marriage for me? I didn't know, and didn't think I cared. An older gay friend of mine once said, "I thought being gay meant you didn't have to get married!" Not that many months ago, a co-worker casually asked if I thought I would marry the girl I was dating. "I couldn't here, if I wanted to," I responded, not so much angry with the questionable legal status of gay marriage in Arkansas at the time as I was relieved that I didn't have to actually answer the question. In general, I think my generation sees marriage a little differently than those before us. Although my parents are still married, as are the parents of very many of my close friends, we live in a world where half of all marriages fail. At 29, a surprising number of my friends are already divorced!  Marriage certainly has its benefits, but that doesn't mean that it is the right choice for a relationship. Long-lasting gay relationships are a perfect example of making things work without marriage. But just because marriage isn't necessary, per se, doesn't mean that it isn't a right, and I'm crying tears of joy in celebration of this day.

If I was born ten years later than I was, I would have explored and come to know my sexuality in a whole different world, one in which I imagine I would have been able to see myself more clearly, simply because the extension of marriage makes homosexual relationships more visible. Sure there was Will & Grace, and The L Word, but none of those stories resonated with my story. While something will be lost in moving away from the margins, the mainstreaming of homosexuality is a good thing for America. For those out there concerned about the "gay agenda," here it is: We want your children to grow up in a world where they can be their true honest selves, where they can love who they want to love without having to worry about sacrificing the rest of their lives to do so, and where they don't suffer the psychological repercussions of denial, shame, and ostracism.

I remember when gay marriage became legal in New Hampshire. At the time, the only person I could imagine marrying, if I had one of those pacts where if you are both still single when you're 35 you get married, was my closest female friend. And suddenly that was an actual possibility. We never made such a pact - it was a pretty gay idea, in retrospect - but that such a thing was possible! Doors were opening. Liberation was coming. The world was changing.

And now, here we are, a blink of the eye later, and the Supreme Court has declared gay marriage the law of the land! I shared an article on Facebook that reminds us that the struggle continues, that we must remember the margins. The margins are constantly changing, and we must keep learning from and leading from them. To quote my haggadah, which I seem to like to do here:

The struggle for freedom is a continuous struggle,

For never does man reach total liberty and opportunity.

In every age, some new freedom is won and established,

Adding to the advancement of human happiness and security.

Yet, each age uncovers a formerly unrecognized servitude,

Requiring new liberation to set man's soul free.

In every age, the concept of freedom grows broader,

Widening the horizons for finer and nobler living.

Each generation is duty-bound to contribute to this growth,

Else mankind's ideals become stagnant and stationary.

There are days when I struggle to believe that "the arc of the universe…bends towards justice," but on days like today, I have hope. The legalization of gay marriage in no way means that homophobia is dead and equality is the law of the land. The legalization of interracial marriage didn't mean the end of racism, nor did the election of a black president. But these are still victories. Victories that allow us to advance to the next and greater battle. Victories that need to be celebrated to sustain us for the continued fight.  I celebrated by putting a rainbow bow tie on my puppy, cuddling with him in the hammock, and then coming inside to eat ice cream and write this essay and feel brave enough to share it with the world. We had three inches of rain last night, and today I'm seeing rainbows everywhere.

The Ten Plagues, Change, and Creative Adaptation

One thing I have come to love about Passover is the creative variety. Although the celebration is liturgical and involves telling a particular story that is observed through specific rituals, no two seders are alike. There are countless haggadahs available and many, many families have adapted their haggadah of choice over the years. I fondly remember the Aaronson family's wine-stained haggadahs, in which many of the masculine pronouns and nouns had been whited-out and changed to make the service more inclusive. Occasionally new material was inserted as well. Every year, we debate if we have accidentally skipped one of the glasses of wine, and argue over whether we read through all of this part or that.  The stains and the changes and the conversation are, to me, as much a part of the holiday as the matzo and the horseradish.

I am a lover of tradition, which is part of why I love Passover, but since I started hosting my own seders I have come to see the seder as an opportunity for change, to take the haggadah my family has traditionally used and continue the tradition of editing and adding to it. Not only is there a glass of water for Miriam, and an orange for inclusivity, but now there is liturgy and ritual to incorporate these modern feminist elements into the seder. In doing so, I make the seder more my own, while keeping with family tradition.

At some point in my youth someone introduced the modern plagues to our seder. In addition to spilling wine for the blood and the boils and the slaying of the first-born, we now add:

Each drop of wine we pour is hope and prayer
that people will cast out the plagues that threaten everyone
everywhere they are found, beginning in our own hearts:
    The making of war,
    the teaching of hate and violence,
    despoliation of the earth,
    perversion of justice and government,
    fomenting of vice and crime,
    neglect of human needs,
    oppression of nations and peoples,
    corruption of culture,
    subjugation of science, learning, and human discourse,
    the erosion of freedoms.

I have encountered this at other seders. At one, the recitation was followed by an opportunity for anyone present to share, and pour out a drop of wine for, any other plagues they recognize in our society.

It is good to name these things, and to have the opportunity to sanctify our opposition in ritual. But how many plagues will it take for change to occur?

I write out of sympathy for Pharaoh. We pour out wine for each plague because, to quote the haggadah, "our triumph is diminished by the slaughter of the foe." Nevertheless, Pharaoh is the bad guy. But for one moment, let us imagine ourselves in his shoes.

You have, in Egypt, an economy and social order built on slavery. Pharaoh, the guy in charge, did not create this system, though he certainly benefits from its privileges. Still, it is not his fault that he inherited such a system, and even less so that certain overseers are needlessly cruel to slaves, right? So when some dude, even if it's an adopted son, comes in and says, "Hey, you should free these people, and oh, if you don't, our God is going to make bad things happen to you," he's not really in a position to agree. Granted, he's the only person in a position to make that decision carte blanche, but it would be political suicide. The situation is so much bigger than him. He, and his entire society, would have to change their essential nature. That is not an easy decision or change to make. No wonder it took ten plagues. Egyptian society was better equipped to deal with frogs and flies than total economic upheaval. It took the slaying of the first-born, a loss that caused direct injury to the patriarchal economy and must have torn many hearts to pieces in the process, for the Pharaoh to make the otherwise politically catastrophic decision to free the Hebrew slaves.

The experience of the Egyptians, in suffering the plagues, reveals something of how systems of oppression hurt everyone, even those privileged by it. It was not just Pharaoh's heart that was hard, but a whole culture, numbed by the fact that their whole economy was built on slavery, because how else can you live with that knowledge? They felt their culture was threatened by a growing minority population, and turned to violence to subdue it. I cannot help but be reminded of modern parallels in American history - I'm not just talking about the Civil War and emancipation, but also the way we deal with racism and immigration in 2015. And rather than allowing our culture to be enriched by diversity, as the orange brings refreshing new flavor to the seder, we suppress it and exploit it. Like the Egyptians, we accept devastation again and again, whether it be in the form of murrain killing our cattle or the making of war, in order to maintain our position. But one cannot be stable standing on the backs of others who do not want to be stood on.

Which leads me to the question I've been thinking about for months. How many plagues does it take for us to make changes in our own lives? How much will we put up with before we say, enough is enough? Be it a frustrating job, an unhealthy relationship, a pursuit that is going nowhere, even acknowledging a truth about ourselves. Certainly there is value in resiliency, and in facing the challenges life throws at us. If we can stick through it, we will hopefully be stronger on the other side. But at a certain point, do we start inviting adversity upon ourselves, as Pharaoh did when he refused to free the Jews?

Pharaoh, like many of us, having finally made the decision to change is immediately plagued by doubt. He tries to take it back, to stop what he has put in motion, but it is too late. In his attempt to hold back the currents of change, he perishes. Who cannot relate to this doubt, which in its tragedy reveals the Pharaoh's humanity? In resisting change sometimes we, too, kill pieces of ourselves.

Change is hard. Sometimes every ounce of our being seems to resist it, if only because we don't know who we are on the other side. Liberating slaves brought down the entire system they supported, and liberating ourselves can have the same effect. It is easy to fall into similar patterns, as our American history illustrates in the shift from slavery to sharecropping, much easier and more palatable than building a truly egalitarian society. In our own lives, at least, it is only ourselves that we destroy and try to rebuild, and there, perhaps, true liberation might be possible.

Exodus is ultimately a very human story. It is commanded: "In every generation, each Jew must look upon himself as though he, personally, was among those who went forth from Egypt." We tell this story year after year to remember the suffering and the liberation. But we are not just the Jews, the victims-turned-heroes. In every character there is something we can relate to. May that be a warning, that in our liberation, let us take care not to become despots, over others or over our own souls.

Which brings us back to the modern plagues quoted above, and the question of what it will take for us, as a society, to finally say, "Enough is enough." Words alone do not bring about liberation and an end to environmental and human exploitation. Can we change our own lives for the better? Are we willing to pay the price to change the world?

I approach Pesach with these heavy questions on my mind. In some ways, perhaps the haggadah can serve as a guide, not so much for being a history lesson but rather as an example of creative adaptation. The evolution of the seder reveals a path to liberation at a lower price, less violent and more celebratory. The recipe for my seder is one part ancient Hebrew prayer, one part Midrashic commentary, one part modern feminist adaptation, one part family tradition, one part wine, one part food, and one part the gathered community.  Combine and simmer, and in consuming, perhaps come to know God.

Why I Cry Over the Buffalo

Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day

I spent my first week in Kansas crying, about many things, but among them the slaughter of the buffalo. I was struggling to adjust to this new and open landscape, so flat and dry, and this time of year mostly brown and gray - straight out of the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. I couldn't understand why people would live in such a place, land that used to be free and open prairie, now subdivided into monocropped acreage dotted with oil wells. "We weren't meant to settle here," I thought, through images of dust bowl farmers and folks who didn't have whatever it took to make it further along the Santa Fe Trail. Then, at the top of Pawnee Rock, looking out for miles in all directions, I read a quote on a plaque describing the view of buffalo, so thick the prairie was black with them as far as the eye could see.

And where are they now?

I cry over the buffalo because they are a symbol, to me, of all the violence we have done to this vast and magnificent prairie, to the regenerative biodiversity, to the people who made their homes here, moving across the land, migrating like the birds, and the buffalo. I could cry about the people, but that pain is too great for my struggling, aching, heavy heart. So instead I cry about the buffalo.

The buffalo are an apt symbol of my sorrow for more reasons, too. Because I know why we killed the buffalo. I've played more than my fair share of Oregon Trail. A large, slow-moving, easy target, when you're hungry, and stressed for time. If you can shoot a buffalo, you do it, even if you can only carry 200 lbs back to the wagon and the rest goes to waste. (And is it really waste if the vultures and bugs get to east, and eventually it all goes back to the soil? It is only that we humans are not maximizing the benefit of the buffalo to ourselves...) So there's that perspective. But then there's a scene in Lonesome Dove, where a character on horseback spots a herd of buffalo and goes charging into it, because he can, because it's fun. A few months ago, out on Lake DeGray, we spotted a bald eagle flying ahead of our boat and chased after it, because we could, and because it was beautiful, and endangered, and we may never get another experience like that again. It was thrilling, and exhilarating, and I could understand why one might shoot a buffalo, even once they were endangered, even if you knew better.

So in truth, my tears are guilty tears, for I would have been complicit if not an active party in the slaughter of the buffalo, and I am currently complicit in more destruction than I can even imagine. But we keep living and so we keep killing and I am feeling that guilt on my heart.

But I know why people live here, too. The beauties the Native Americans saw on their migrations, and that can still be found in pockets, and in the sky. The sunrises, and the sunsets, and the stars. And because children love playing in the prairie. They always have. They always will.

And so we chase after joy, and take what money we can to survive and allow those simple pleasures to perpetuate, in whatever form the current age dictates. And we grieve the cost, but there is always some cost. And we learn to live with ourselves.