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.
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