climate change

Imagine there is a fire in your house. What do you do? What do you think about? You do whatever you can to try to put out the fire or exit the house. You make a plan about how you can put out the fire, or how you can best exit the house. Your senses are heightened, you are focused like a laser, and you put your entire self into your actions. You enter emergency mode.House on fire

These are the opening lines of a fascinating essay that every climate activist and every faith leader should read.

“Leading the Public into Emergency Mode: A New Strategy for the Climate Movement” recognizes that when we face an existential or moral crisis, we can pull back into paralyzed inaction or rush about in panicked, ineffective, chaotic action. But choosing between paralysis and panic is not our only option. Instead, we can enter a state of consciousness in which we become highly focused and purposeful, pour our resources into solving the crisis, and accomplish great feats.

Margaret Klein Salamon, author of the article and the Founding Director of The Climate Mobilization, calls this “emergency mode.” She considers emergency mode a particularly intense form of flow state, which has been described as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” She cites Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the psychologist who pioneered the study of flow and who described it as: “Being completely involved in an activity for its own sake. The ego falls away. Time flies. Every action, movement, and thought follows inevitably from the previous one… your whole being is involved, and you’re using your skills to the utmost.”

When we enter emergency mode, inertia or panic are replaced by focused, productive action toward a few critical goals. Non-essential functions are curtailed. Failure is not an option.We need WWII scale mobilization.rosie

In ordinary times, a country is governed in what Salamon wryly labels “normal political-paralysis mode.” We experience a lack of national leadership, and politics is “adversarial and incremental.” By contrast, when a country is in emergency mode, “bipartisanship and effective leadership are the norm.” People work together because they face a shared and urgent threat.

Salamon accurately calls the climate crisis “an unprecedented emergency.” She writes: “Humanity is careening towards the deaths of billions of people, millions of species, and the collapse of organized civilization.” Her article and her organization, The Climate Mobilization, are devoted to developing strategies to mobilize an emergency response. Although I don’t agree with all her policy recommendations, I believe that her basic framing of the challenge is just right.

Most faith communities do not recognize the climate crisis and are not in emergency mode. Yet when faith communities enter this heightened state of awareness about our planetary emergency, we have significant gifts to offer.

(To read the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change, visit this NASA site and this site from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.)

I. When faith communities understand the climate crisis and enter emergency mode, what roles do we play?  We…

• Address helplessness
People who are secretly worried about climate change often don’t take action because they feel helpless and overwhelmed (“The situation is dire. What difference can I possibly make?”). Faith communities address helplessness in multiple ways, both directly and indirectly. For instance, gathering for worship can be understood as turning toward a Higher Power (God, divine Mystery, Creator, Source) in whose presence we are uplifted, and feel our strength renewed. Entrusting ourselves to God can release within us unexpected power “to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Ephesians 3:20).

• Face facts
A person of faith is someone who is committed to the search for truth. A Zen Buddhist might speak of facing reality as it is. A Jew, Muslim, or Christian might speak of relating to an all-seeing, all-knowing God who is truth and who leads us into all truth. At their best, the Abrahamic faiths believe that God has given us the capacity to learn about the created world through the lens of science. Science is one important avenue to discovering what is true. People of faith try to see through self-deception and illusion in their quest to discover what is true and to live their lives in accordance with the truth.

Theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spokesman and martyr for the Confessing Church, which arose in 1930’s Germany to resist the lies of Nazism and to reject Hitler’s attempt to make the churches an instrument of Nazi propaganda
Theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, spokesman and martyr for the Confessing Church, which arose in 1930’s Germany to resist the lies of Nazism and to reject Hitler’s attempt to make the churches an instrument of Nazi propaganda

Truth includes both material and spiritual realities. By definition, facts are true until proven otherwise. We do not have any right to our own facts.

Science has established that climate change is real, largely caused by human activities, already inflicting widespread damage, and, unless humanity swiftly changes course, on track to make it difficult or impossible for civilization to continue to exist. We know that 80% of known fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground, lest we plunge past the point of no return. We know we must make a just and swift transition to a clean energy economy.

Such facts are difficult to face and absorb. But faith communities have the capacity to face facts, tell the truth, and dismiss denial. We trust, and are accountable to, a sacred reality that includes and transcends the material world. From this vantage point, faith communities are uniquely positioned to see through the lies of climate denial. Thanks to our commitment to the truth, we can let go the comfortable fibs and fantasies we may be tempted to tell ourselves (“I don’t need to change; I can continue with business as usual; climate change is someone else’s problem”). We also seek to uncover the confusion, misinformation, and lies about climate change that are deliberately spread by the fossil fuel industry and by the political leaders they fund. Not to do so is to participate in idolatry and to betray our own commitment to bear witness to the truth.

As a Christian, I believe that a religion that directs our gaze to a suffering, dying man on a cross is a religion that can face painful facts. As a Christian, I also believe that perceiving God’s presence in the very midst of suffering and death is a gateway to transformation and new life.

• Provide vision
“Where there is no vision, the people perish” (Proverbs 29:18, KJV).

Climate science has done its job, giving us essential facts about the potentially catastrophic consequences of continuing to burn fossil fuels. But facts alone are not sufficient to persuade people to take meaningful, concerted action. For that, we need vision – a shared goal, purpose, and values. This is what faith communities can do: lift up a vision of people living in just and loving relationships with each other and with the whole Creation, a vision energized by a deep desire for God’s love to be fully manifest in the world. Faith communities have a vital role to play in inspiring action to safeguard the world that God entrusted to our care.

As Antoine de Saint Exupery observed, “If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” Simon Sinek makes the same point in his terrific TED talk, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” when he says, “Martin Luther King, Jr. gave the ‘I have a dream’ speech, not the ‘I have a plan’ speech.”

Sam with Noah & Grace, 2008
Some of the beloved ones who motivate me: Noah, Sam, and Grace

• Offer hope
Human beings hope for so much: we want a good future for our kids; we want a livable world; we want the web of life to remain intact. The climate crisis challenges these cherished hopes. It renders uncertain the future of the whole human enterprise.

Faith communities offer a context in which to explore and take hold of the kind of hope that does not depend on outward circumstances but that emerges from a deep and irrepressible place in the human spirit. Animated by a radical, God-given hope, people of faith throw themselves into healing the Earth and its communities, human and other than human. Active hope – actively embodying ones deepest values and being ready at every moment to welcome and build the longed-for future – is a path to joy.

• Renew love
Climate change is a “threat multiplier” that exacerbates existing problems, such as poverty, hunger, terrorism, refugees on the move, and the spread of infectious diseases. Racism, militarism, and xenophobia – the fear of what is perceived to be foreign or strange – are likely to increase as the planet warms and as various groups battle over depleted resources, such as arable land and clean drinking water. Religious groups, like every other group, can be hijacked by fear and become sources of discord and violence.

Yet the deep message of all the world’s religions is that we are interconnected with each other and with the Earth on which all life depends. Faith communities can help to restore our capacity to love God and our neighbor. The climate crisis is already bringing together leaders and members of many faiths in a unified call to protect Earth and all its inhabitants, human and other than human. Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical on climate justice, Laudato Si’, generated an ardent and enthusiastic response from diverse faith communities around the world.

In a sermon, a D’var Torah, or a dharma talk, in prayer circles, worship services, and meditation groups, in pastoral care, outreach, and advocacy, faith communities can renew our intention and deepen our capacity to act in loving ways, to respect the dignity of every human being, and to cherish the sacredness of the natural world.

Faith communities speak to the heart of what it means to be human. When people are going mad with hatred and fear, only love can restore us to sanity.flower show 4

• Give moral guidance
The climate crisis raises existential questions about the meaning, purpose, and value of human life. What is our moral responsibility to future generations? What does it mean to be human, if human beings are destroying life as it has evolved on this planet? How do we address the anger, self-hatred and guilt that can arise with this awareness? How can we live a meaningful life when so much death surrounds us? How determined are we to radically amend our personal patterns of consumption and waste? What does living a “good” life look like today, given everything we know about the consequences of over-consumption, inequitable distribution of resources, and being part of (and probably benefiting from) an extractive economy that depends on fossil fuels and unlimited growth?

Faith communities provide a context for wrestling with these questions, for seeking moral grounding, and for being reminded of such old-fashioned values as compassion, generosity, self-control, selfless service, simple living, sacrifice, sharing, justice, forgiveness, and non-violent engagement in societal transformation.

Maybe we should think of the climate crisis as our doorway to enlightenment. The climate crisis challenges us, individually and collectively, to expand our consciousness and to live from our highest moral values. As Jayce Hafner points out in an article published in Sojourners, “I’m Ready to Evangelize…About Climate,” “The act of confronting climate change calls us to be better Christians in nearly every aspect of our lives.”

I expect that this is true not only for Christians, but for people of every faith.

• Encourage reconciliation and seek consensus
The coal miner who just lost his job… the CEO of a fossil fuel company who is making plans to drill for more oil… the woman whose home was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy… the farmer watching in despair as his crops wither from a massive drought… the construction worker laying down pipeline for fracked gas… the activist arrested for stopping construction of that pipeline… these are just some of the people who probably have wildly divergent views about the climate crisis and who may feel harmed by and angry with each other.

The climate crisis includes both victims and offenders. To some degree (though to quite different degrees) all of us bear some responsibility for the crisis. At the same time, all of us have a part to play in healing the damage and contributing to a better future. As we work to transition to a clean energy economy whose benefits are available to all communities, we need all hands on deck. Entering emergency mode requires that people work together toward a shared and deeply desired goal, and we need the participation and input of every sector of society as we try to protect our common home. As an African proverb puts it, “Two men in a burning house must not stop to argue.”

Faith communities can provide settings for difficult conversations, active listening, and “truth and reconciliation” groups modeled on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that was formed in South Africa in the 1990’s after apartheid was abolished. By expressing compassion while also holding groups and individuals morally accountable, faith communities can create possibilities for reconciliation and collaboration that would otherwise never exist. What’s more, because of their historic commitment to the oppressed, marginalized, and poor, faith communities can give voice to the needs of people and all creatures who are generally ignored or exploited by the people in power.

• Allow emotional response
IMG_0122The climate crisis can make us go numb. Why think about the enormous stretches of coral reefs in Australia that just died in less than two months? What can we possibly feel in response to the acidifying ocean, the children choking from asthma in our inner cities, the rising seas, the ever-increasing droughts and floods, and the cascade of species going extinct?

It is hard enough to face our own mortality or to mourn a loved one’s death. How do we begin to explore our fear and grief in response to the ecocide going on around us – much less express it? How do we move beyond despair?

Faith communities can give us practices, teachings, and rituals that allow us to feel, express, accept, and integrate the painful emotions evoked by climate change.

To ignite and sustain an emergency response, society needs to overcome what Salamon calls our “affect phobia,” our tendency to repress our feelings and to react to climate change only in terms of intellectual analysis and facts (How many heat records were broken last month? How many parts per million of CO2 are in the atmosphere now?). With the support of communities of faith, we can protect our human capacity to feel our emotional responses to the crisis without being overwhelmed by grief. Our emotions can also become a source of energy for constructive action to address the emergency.

(For a comprehensive overview of the psychological impacts of climate change, take a look at “Beyond Droughts and Storms,” prepared by ecoAmerica and the American Psychological Association.)

• Offer pastoral care
Faith communities can provide practical and spiritual assistance during climate-related disasters such as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires. Congregations can make “disaster preparedness plans,” prepare a response in collaboration with local agencies, and develop networks of communication. One leader involved in this kind of preparation comments that congregations can be “sanctuaries of hope in times of disasters.”

In some areas of the world, the need is already urgent: at least five Pacific islands have disappeared under rising seas since the Paris climate talks last December.  The Anglican Church in that area is developing “a clear resilience strategy.”

Faith communities can also provide comfort and solace day by day. We can develop networks of pastoral care and spiritual outreach to address the rising rates of depression, anxiety, and other psychological challenges that are associated with climate change, being mindful that low-income communities may be particularly vulnerable to climate-related stressors.

• Heighten reverence for nature
In a society that treats the natural world as an object to master, dominate, and exploit, faith communities can call us back to the sacredness of the Earth. Faith communities can support the efforts of land trusts to preserve farms, woods, wetlands, and open space (to locate your local land trust, visit Land Trust Alliance); can partner with organizations to bring inner-city children into natural settings; and can sponsor retreats and hikes that explore the wonders of Creation. Faith communities can learn, and help others to learn, what a stone or cloud or bird can teach (see, for instance, “Opening the Book of Nature,” developed by National Religious Coalition on Creation Care). They can help people from different religious background to become environmental leaders (see, for instance, the programs of GreenFaith and of The Center for Religion and the Environment at Sewanee). Some communities of faith gather for spiritual practice outside. For instance, Church of the Woods in Canterbury, NH, founded by the Rev. Steve Blackmer, is a new kind of “church”: “a place where the earth itself, rather than a building, is the bearer of sacredness.”

• Inspire bold action
Faith communities have a long history of leading movements for social and environmental justice, from child labor to women’s rights, peace, the abolition of slavery, and the civil rights movement. Faith communities tap into our capacity to dedicate ourselves to a cause that is greater than our personal comfort and self-interest. Faith in God (however we name that Higher Power) can inspire people to take bold actions that require courage, compassion, and creativity.

on any given dayFaith communities can model best practices for “going green,” such as to get an energy audit, increase energy conservation and efficiency, look into installing solar panels, put in bike racks, replace lawns with community gardens, and so on. But taking care of our immediate buildings and community is just a start. An adequate response to the scope and speed of the climate crisis requires collective action and political engagement.

Because of the current gridlock in Congress, it can be tempting either to quit participating in democracy entirely or to stay engaged but demonize our opponents. A recent blog post by my bishop, the Rt. Rev. Doug Fisher, persuasively contends that because Christianity is a “world-engaging faith,” people who follow Jesus must stay politically engaged and also encourage civil, non-partisan, political discourse that serves the common good.

The climate emergency is propelling people of different faiths to organize and to lobby for strong legislative action. See, for instance, the national work of Citizens Climate Lobby to put a fair and rising price on carbon, whose volunteers include clergy and members of congregations, and the national work of Interfaith Power & Light, which has an affiliate here in Massachusetts. MA Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, launched only months ago (full disclosure: I’m on the Leadership Team), is pressing for timely, high-impact changes in laws and systems in our Commonwealth.

16 religious leaders risk arrest at site of pipeline construction, May 25, 2016 (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
16 religious leaders risk arrest at site of pipeline construction, May 25, 2016 (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

In the footsteps of trailblazers such as Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., hundreds, maybe thousands, of people, including countless people of faith, have been arrested in recent years as non-violent resistance to fossil fuels continues to grow. With fifteen other religious leaders, I was arrested on May 25 at a prayerful protest against construction of Spectra’s West Roxbury Lateral pipeline in Boston. On June 29 twelve faith leaders – Buddhist, Jewish, Protestant, and Unitarian Universalist – were among 23 people arrested in another protest of the same pipeline. In solidarity with the hundreds of people who recently died from deadly heat waves in Pakistan and India and were buried in mass graves, the clergy led a climate ‘mass graves’ funeral, featuring eulogies, prayers, and mourning, with some of the resisters lying down in the grave/trench for nearly two hours.

By inspiring significant action, such as divesting from fossil fuels and engaging in civil disobedience, faith communities can challenge the deathly status quo of “business as usual” and rouse society out of its apathy and inaction.

For religious leaders who want to network with colleagues to engage in visionary and prayerful civil disobedience, sign up at ClergyClimateAction.org.

To join an epic march, July 14-18, against new gas pipelines that will go all the way to the Massachusetts State House, visit People Over Pipelines.

Boston Globe article: “Al Gore’s Daughter Arrested in Boston Pipeline Protest”
Tim DeChristopher’s powerful reflection in word and video: “Grief and Resistance: The Mass Grave Pipeline Action”
Democracy Now! interview: “Tim DeChristopher Arrested Again in the ‘Age of Anticipatory Mass Graves’ for Climate Victims” 
Democracy Now! interview: “Vice President’s Daughter Karenna Gore Arrested in the Trenches of a Climate Protest”
Press release: Symbolic Climate Mass Grave Funeral to #StopSpectra

II. When faith communities understand the climate crisis and enter emergency mode, what tools do we offer?

• Storytelling
The myths, tales, parables and stories of religious traditions give us powerful ways to re-imagine our selves and our situation, and to absorb deep (not necessarily literal) truths. Stories speak not just to our rational mind but also to our affections, will, and imagination. From the Judaeo-Christian tradition, stories of Moses confronting Pharaoh and of Jesus healing, teaching, suffering, dying, and rising again – all these and more can be brought to bear to address the climate crisis and to give us courage, guidance, and motivation to act. Recently I learned that activists fighting to stop construction of a trash-burning incinerator in a low-income neighborhood of Baltimore are using the story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21:1-21a) to illuminate their own experience of social and environmental injustice and to inspire their own acts of resistance.

• Prayer and silence
Every faith tradition offers practices that teach us how to move out our habitual narrow orbit of self-involvement and to connect with a larger, sacred reality. The climate crisis invites people who until now have felt immune from any desire to pray, to explore practices of prayer and meditation.

Expressive forms of prayer empower us to move beyond denial and numbness and to acknowledge the full range of our feelings. My article, “Feeling and pain and prayer,” originally published in Review for Religious, presents four ways that Christians can pray with difficult feelings. The article also describes how expressive prayer can change us over time, deepening our sense of intimacy with God, our experience of a peace that passes understanding, and our capacity to move from helplessness and hopelessness to effective action.

Yellow-throated warbler (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Yellow-throated warbler (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

Contemplative forms of prayer (such as Centering Prayer and mindfulness meditation) strengthen our capacity to sit in silence with the unknown, to accept impasse, and to keep listening and trusting even in the darkness. Practices that lead the mind into silent awareness offer more than a respite from thinking about the climate crisis. They can open us to an intuitive, non-verbal experience of communion, even union, with others, with the natural world, and with ultimate reality. Experiencing our unshakable union with a love that is stronger than death is the great gift of contemplative prayer. Rooted in that fierce and openhearted love, we are guided to actions commensurate with the emergency we’re in.

• Rituals
Faith traditions offer a range of ceremonies and rituals that seek to awaken our awareness and revive our relationship with a sacred presence or power beyond the limited world of “I, me, and mine.” In a time of climate crisis, people need rituals that address our fear of death and give us courage to trust in a life greater than death. We need rituals that ask us to name our guilt and regrets, that grant us forgiveness, and that give us strength to set a new course. We need rituals that remind us of our essential connection with each other, with the rest of the created world, and with the unseen Source of all that is. We need rituals that remind us of how loved we are, how precious the world is, and what a privilege it is to be born in a time when our choices and actions make such a difference.

Faith communities have a heritage of holy days, festivals, days of atonement, and liturgical seasons that gain fresh meaning in light of the climate crisis.

• Sermons
It takes courage to preach about climate change. If you’re a faith leader who speaks or preaches frequently about the climate emergency, then yours is a rare and much-needed voice. If you’re a member of a faith community whose leaders speak rarely, weakly, or never about climate justice, then please give them steady encouragement to say what needs to be said.

As my climate activist friend and colleague, Rev. Dr. Jim Antal (Conference Minister and President, Massachusetts Conference, United Church of Christ) often says, if clergy don’t preach about climate change every few weeks, then in ten or fifteen years every sermon will be about grief.

My own ongoing efforts to preach a Christian perspective on climate are here. Last year’s “A New Awakening,” an ecumenical initiative to promote climate preaching across New England, has a Webpage of preaching resources. I just received a copy of Creation-Crisis Preaching, by Leah D. Schade, which looks like indispensable reading.

• Public liturgies and outdoor prayer vigils
Over the years I’ve led or participated in many outdoor interfaith public liturgies about climate change. In the wake of environmental disasters such as the Gulf of Mexico oil spill or Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, or on the eve of significant environmental events, such as Pope Francis’ visit to Washington, D.C. or the U.N. climate talks in Paris, people of all faiths often feel a need to gather so that we can express our grief, name our hopes, and touch our deep longing for healing and reconciliation. Faith communities can lead the way in providing public contexts for renewing our spirits, both indoors and outside.

III. What does this add up to?
Faith communities can become agents of transformation.

Humanity stands at a crossroads. As individuals and as a species we face a decision of ultimate importance both to our souls and to the future of life. “I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

This is not a fire drill. This is an actual emergency. Martin Luther King, Jr. got it right: we face “the fierce urgency of now.” “See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Corinthians 6:2).Martin Luther King, Jr.

Armed with this knowledge, faith communities can enter emergency mode. Speaking as a Christian, I envision a church in which every aspect of its life, from its preaching and worship services to its adult education and Sunday School, from its prayers to its public advocacy, grasps the urgency of protecting life as it has evolved on this planet. That is the kind of Church that the world needs today.

I am thankful for all people who are willing to face squarely the most challenging, even devastating facts; who reach into their reserves of courage, faith, and hope; and who step out to bear witness in very tangible ways – even in the face of suffering and death – to the ongoing presence and power of a love that abides within us and that sustains the whole creation.

“The huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call ‘unstoppable.’ …If ever there were a time to bear witness to our faith that life and not death will have the last word, now would be the time. If ever there were a time to take hold of the vision of a Beloved Community in which human beings live in right relationship with each other and with all our fellow creatures, now would be the time. The collapse of the ice sheet in Antarctica may be ‘unstoppable,’ but so is the love that calls us to stand up for life.”
— Excerpt of my sermon, “Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Climate Movement,” January 18, 2015

You can download an article adapted from this blog post by clicking here: How can faith communities address the climate crisis?

NOTE: I was prompted to write this essay after serving on a panel of faith leaders at the 2016 conference of Citizens Climate Lobby in Washington, DC. The panel’s moderator, Peterson Toscano, asked two questions: What role(s) do you see faith communities take on in times of crisis? What tools does your faith tradition offer that can be used to address climate change?  The four panelists included Dr. Steven Colecchi (Director of the Office of International Justice and Peace, U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops), Rachel Lamb (National Organizer and Spokesperson, Young Evangelicals for Climate Action), Joelle Novey (Director, Greater Washington Interfaith Power and Light), and me. The hour was over well before we’d finished exploring the topic. This essay is a bid to extend the conversation.

Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after Pentecost, June 12, 2016. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Ashfield, MA. 1 Kings 21:1-21a Psalm 5:1-8 Galatians 2:15-21 Luke 7:36-8:3

Sacred earth, sacred trust

“Naboth said to Ahab, ‘The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance.’” (1 Kings 21:3)

What a blessing to be with you today! Thank you, Eliot, for welcoming me as preacher and celebrant for this special service that brings together the congregations of St. John’s Episcopal Church and First Congregational Church. As some of you know, I serve as Missioner for Creation Care in both the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Conference of the UCC. This is my first opportunity to speak to my Episcopal and my UCC brothers and sisters in Christ at the very same time. How cool is that?

Ecumenical witness for climate justice in Ashfield, MA. Holding the sign: Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Rev. Eliot Moss (St. John's Episcopal Church), Rev. Kate Stevens (First Congregational Church)
Ecumenical witness for climate justice in Ashfield, MA. Holding the sign: Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Rev. Eliot Moss (St. John’s Episcopal Church), Rev. Kate Stevens (First Congregational Church)
It’s particularly meaningful that our two communities are united in worship this morning, because around the world people of many faiths are marking today, June 12, as a day to stand together and lift up the sacredness of the Earth, our common home. Prayers, blessings, songs, and sermons are being offered today from Alaska to Argentina, from New Jersey to New Zealand, as religious and spiritual groups far and wide mark a global day of prayer called Sacred Earth, Sacred Trust. Today we celebrate the six-month anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement and the first anniversary of the publication of Pope Francis’ landmark encyclical, Laudato Si. Today we join the chorus of voices announcing that the Earth is holy and that it deserves our protection and care. Whenever you and I re-awaken to God’s presence in Ashfield’s hills and woods, in the grasses and dirt beneath our feet and in the stars overhead, we discover again that we are connected not only to other human beings but also to everything else. We are part of the web of life: connected by our breath, blood, flesh, and bone to the whole creation. As our Protestant forebear, Martin Luther, pointed out: “God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and the flowers and the clouds and stars.” God’s love and presence are everywhere – not just in church, not just inside a sanctuary built by human hands, but also outside, in the sea and sky, in the humble tomato plant valiantly trying to grow in my shady garden. The crucified, risen and ascended Christ fills all things, sustains all things, and redeems all things.
Memorial garden beside St. John's Church, Ashfield
Memorial garden beside St. John’s Church, Ashfield
Whenever you and I come to our senses and realize that God is giving God’s self to us in every part of creation – in this breeze and bird and leaf, in this breath, in this heartbeat – then reverence springs up in us, and a deep desire to give thanks. We realize again that the Earth is sacred, and in the strength of that heartfelt wisdom we can fight the great battle of our time, which is to protect the integrity of God’s creation, to preserve a habitable planet, and to build a more just and sustainable society. A record 175 countries have already signed the Paris Climate Agreement, which is an historic first step toward limiting the ravages of climate change. But the Paris Agreement is only a start. It doesn’t go nearly far enough. Its provisions won’t cap the rise of the world’s average temperature at 1.5˚ Celsius above pre-Industrial times, which is the uppermost limit for ensuring a stable climate and livable planet. Unless we get to work in every community and every sector of society to reduce our carbon emissions, unless we push political and corporate powers to keep fossil fuels in the ground and make a swift transition to clean, renewable energy, then the average global temperature is going to shoot far past that critical threshold of 1.5˚ Celsius. Around the world, scientists and activists, vulnerable communities and communities of faith are fighting to avert runaway climate change. Their cry and our cry is “1.5 to stay alive.” I usually take the Gospel as my sermon text, but this week I must turn to the Old Testament passage, that hair-raising story from First Kings about a powerless citizen being framed and murdered by an unjust king and queen so that they can seize his land. Naboth has a vineyard beside the royal palace. When King Ahab makes what sounds on the face of it like a reasonable offer to buy the vineyard, Naboth turns him down: “The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance” (1 Kings 21:3). Calling the land “my ancestral inheritance” suggests that the land has been in his family for a long time and also that he holds the land in trust. To Naboth the land is not just a commodity, not just real estate, not just a source of profit and gain: it is a gift from God; it is sacred; it is entrusted to his care. King Ahab is frustrated. He goes home “resentful and sullen” (1 Kings 12:4), lies down on his bed like a pouting child, and refuses to eat. Enter, then, the strong negative character of the story, Queen Jezebel, who basically asks, “Hey, don’t you have power to do whatever you want?” She tells him to quit moping; she will take care of this. Using Ahab’s credentials, she arranges for “two scoundrels” (1 Kings 12:10) to make false charges against Naboth in front of the city council and to have him stoned him to death. And so the deed is done: through backroom dealings that include perjury, conspiracy, and theft, Naboth is framed and murdered, and the king claims the vineyard as his own. This is an almost archetypal story about dirty politics, about violence and the misuse of power. It resonates down through the centuries and up to the present moment. A few days ago, when I was visiting Union Theological Seminary in New York City to speak to an ecumenical group of clergy who had gathered from all over the country for an intensive, week-long training on climate change, I learned that activists fighting to stop construction of a trash-burning incinerator in a low-income neighborhood of Baltimore are using the story of Naboth’s vineyard to illuminate their own experience of social and environmental injustice. The mindset that allows Ahab and Jezebel to kill Naboth so that they can grab his land is the same mindset that allows governments and businesses to push aside low-income people and indigenous peoples and people of color to exploit, pollute, and take possession of their land, the same mindset that allows a nation to go to war against another nation so that it can seize control of another country’s natural resources, the same mindset that allows the fossil fuel industry to keep expanding its search for more oil and gas, despite the enormous human cost – especially to the poor – of burning fossil fuels. Injustice against human beings is intimately linked to desecration of the Earth. Because of that mindset, Naboth is killed, and for a while it seems that Ahab has triumphed. But then, the story tells us, God intervenes.  In the prophet Elijah’s heart a holy resistance rises up. A sacred protest fills him, a Spirit-filled energy to stand up against unjust power, a compelling need to protect the rights of the poor and to defend the sacredness of the land. “The word of the LORD came to Elijah” (1 Kings 21:17), says the text.  We don’t know how that word came to him, whether it came through a dream, a vision, or simply through the painful and gut-wrenching awareness that what Ahab had done was wrong. What we do know is that the word of God came to Elijah, and that he received courage to stand up to the king, to stop the injustice, and to change the course of history. The same Holy Spirit that spoke through Elijah and through the life and words and deeds of Jesus Christ is speaking through countless people the world over today. 1.5 to stay alive“1.5 to stay alive” – that is the cry of every God-inspired prophet who stands like Elijah beside the vulnerable Naboths of this world. We say “1.5 to stay alive” to stand with the low-income community of Baltimore that is fighting for the right to clean air. We say “1.5 to stay alive” to stand with Pacific Islanders forced to leave their homeland because rising waves are washing away their buildings and contaminating their water supply. We say “1.5 to stay alive” to stand with indigenous peoples in the Arctic whose cultures are disintegrating as the ice melts. We say “1.5 to stay alive” to stand with frightened pregnant women in the global South and the Southern U.S. who know that the Zika virus, which spreads in a warm, humid climate, could irreparably harm their unborn child. We say “1.5 to stay alive” to stand with every person and every community that wants to live in a just and peaceful world with recognizable seasons and moderate, predictable rains, in a world with enough clean, fresh water for all and an ocean teeming with life. And we say “1.5 to stay alive” to stand against the political and corporate powers that view the Earth as nothing more than a source of profit and who exploit the Earth and other people as if it’s every man for himself and the Devil take the hindmost. Thanks to Bob Parati, we have a sign that proclaims, “1.5 to stay alive.” After the service, I invite anyone who wishes, to join me outside so that we can take a group photo. I invite you to do some other things, too. If you haven’t done so already, I invite you to join Climate Action Now, our vibrant, local grassroots climate action network. I’ve put a sign-up sheet in the back, so you can receive Climate Action Now’s terrific weekly newsletter. I will also gladly share your name with a new interfaith climate group I’m helping to lead, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. Thanks to some of the people in this room, and to people like you, Kinder Morgan’s NED pipeline was stopped. Now the fight is on to stop another dangerous and unnecessary fracked gas pipeline, Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral pipeline. Two weeks ago I was arrested in Boston along with fifteen other religious leaders after we sat down on the edge of the trench that runs down the middle of the street where the pipeline is being constructed. Sitting at the edge of that trench was like sitting at the edge of an open grave, proclaiming the power of love and life as our legs dangled in the pit. We clergy came from a variety of denominations and traditions – American Baptist, Buddhist, Episcopal, Hindu, Jewish, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist. We represented a range of religions, yet all of us were drawing from a holy power greater than our selves. All of us were rooted in a reality that transcends the unjust structures of this world. And all of us were fired by the vision of a better world, by faith in the human spirit, and by faith that God would guide us to courageous and visionary action. We prayed and preached and sang until the cops handcuffed us and took us away. More resistance is ahead. I invite you to consider joining a group from western Massachusetts that will protest the West Roxbury pipeline on June 28, and I invite you to consider joining a march against new gas pipelines that Better Future Project will lead in mid-July. I’d be glad to speak with you about those events, after the service. Near and far a wave of religious protest and activism is rising up around the world as we respond to the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.  The first followers of Jesus tapped into a source of love and power that gave them strength to challenge injustice.  And we tap into that holy power, too. Here at this table, we followers of Jesus will share in the bread and wine of the Eucharist, knowing that God will give us strength for the journey and will nourish our hungry souls. The Church was made for a time like this – a time when God calls all people to recognize that we form one human family and that the Earth is sacred and entrusted to our care. Just as Naboth said to Ahab, so we, too, say to the powers-that-be, “The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance” (1 Kings 21:3). With the Spirit of Jesus to guide us, we head into the world to proclaim the good news of the reign of God. &nbsp

The day before I got arrested, I woke up singing.

“Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around, turn me around.
Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around.”

Arrested in W. Roxbury (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Arrested in W. Roxbury (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

Resolve filled me as I sang my way through the tasks of the day, preparing for the morrow. Do you want to gather your courage? Lift your spirits? Find your true north? Stay the course? You get there by singing.

On the day I was arrested, I sang.

We all sang.

On May 25, a crowd of nearly 100 people gathered under a blue sky in a neighborhood of Boston, near the West Roxbury site of the “metering and regulating” station for Spectra Energy’s West Roxbury Lateral gas pipeline. We came to pray about our commitment to keep fossil fuels in the ground. We came to put our bodies on the line: sixteen leaders of different faith traditions were readying for civil disobedience to stop the pipeline. And we came to sing.

DSC06916,Spectra pipeline protestors gather,5-25-'16
As the crowd gathers, we listen to Rabbi Shoshana and Rev. Marla Marcum (of Climate Disobedience Center) (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas

Shoshana Meira Friedman, Assistant Rabbi for Engagement at Temple Sinai in Brookline, took the lead in organizing our act of interfaith prayer and protest. In her strong soprano, accompanied by guitar, she launched the event with an anthem by Holly Near, “We are a gentle, angry people and we are singing, singing for our lives. We are all in this together, and we are singing, singing for our lives.”

Once you understand the urgency of avoiding climate chaos – once you grasp the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, including natural gas – once you realize that climate change is already starting to unravel the web of life and that it harms the poor first and hardest – then you know it’s no exaggeration to say that we are singing and fighting for our lives.

And sing we did, updating the words of various songs as we went along.

“Ain’t gonna let no pipeline turn me around, turn me around, turn me around…”
“Ain’t gonna let no coal mine turn me around…”
“Ain’t gonna let the folks at FERC turn me around…” – “FERC” being the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an agency notorious for rubberstamping pipeline industry requests for new pipelines, even if those pipelines cut through conservation areas, or leak methane (a greenhouse gas far more potent and deadly in the short term than carbon dioxide), or carry highly-pressurized, potentially explosive gas into an urban neighborhood like West Roxbury, alongside a quarry engaged in active blasting.

Left to right, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, and MBJ (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Left to right, Rev. Mariama White-Hammond, Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, and MBJ (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

“Ain’t gonna let no fear turn me around…”

When we reached this verse, I planted my feet more firmly on the ground and raised my head. Of all the verses, this one is the most far-reaching. Fear is what prevents us from stepping outside our comfort zone and taking part in the struggle for a more just and sustainable society – for starters, fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of loss, fear of ridicule, and fear of bodily harm. The power of ordinary people seems puny when compared with the power of the political and corporate behemoths that rule the world. Why stick your neck out?

Yet there is no message that runs more frequently through the Bible than the message: “Fear not.” We hear it in the Old Testament: “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield” (Genesis 15:1). “Do not be afraid, stand firm, and see the deliverance that the LORD will accomplish for you today” (Exodus 14:13). “The LORD is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear?” (Psalm 27:1). We hear it in the New Testament: “Do not be afraid: for see – I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people” (Luke 2:10). “Take heart, it is I: do not be afraid” (Mark 6:50). “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).

The first followers of Jesus clearly tapped into a source of love and power that gave them strength to challenge injustice. Apparently there were two basic ways of identifying Christians: you would know Christians by their love (John 13:35) and you would know them by their commitment to “turning the world upside down” (Acts 17:6). Not surprisingly, the first followers of Jesus seem to have spent a fair amount of time in jail. As my bishop, Douglas Fisher, recently put it, “When we follow Jesus, stuff is going to happen.” How would Christianity change today if it became normative for Christians to risk arrest in acts of peaceful resistance to fossil fuels?

The sixteen of us preparing to risk arrest came from a variety of denominations and traditions – American Baptist, Buddhist, Episcopal, Hindu, Jewish, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, and Unitarian Universalist. We represented a range of diverse religions, yet all of us were drawing upon a holy power greater than our selves. All of us were rooted in a reality that transcends the rules and structures of this world. All of us were fired by the vision of a better world, by faith in the human spirit, and by faith that God would guide us to courageous and visionary action.

Rabbi Shoshana and Cantor Roy Einhorn open the Torah to a passage from Deuteronomy 11 (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Rabbi Shoshana and Cantor Roy Einhorn open the Torah to a passage from Deuteronomy 11 (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

And all of us were willing to step past our fear and to put our bodies on the line.

Music helped us do that – so, after holding a worship service in front of the “metering and regulating” station, we made our way in procession up the street, following Rabbi Shoshana and singing all the way.

“The tide is rising, and so are we.
The tide is rising, and so are we.
The tide is rising, and so are we.
This is where we are called to be.
This is where we are called to be.”

(To watch a splendid videotape of this climate anthem written by Shoshana Meira Friedman and her husband Yotam Schachter, and performed at Washington National Cathedral by Rabbi Shoshana and Rev. Fred Small, visit here.)

When we reached the intersection of Grove and Washington Streets, we saw ahead of us the open trench where construction workers were installing the pipeline. The procession paused briefly on the sidewalk for a quick consultation and a quick in-breath of courage. Then we made a dash for the pit. I slid under the barrier and scrambled to a seated position, my legs dangling over the 12-foot trench.

16 religious leaders risk arrest at site of pipeline construction (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
16 religious leaders risk arrest at site of pipeline construction (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

There we stayed, the sixteen of us, sitting on the edge of the trench and taking turns calling out prayers and giving short, impassioned sermons about the moral call to stop climate change. Using prayers I’d drafted, we prayed for the construction workers, the police, and the neighborhood.

A Prayer for the Spectra Workers: Gracious God, we remember before you everyone who labors, and especially we pray for everyone working here at this construction site for Spectra Energy. We pray for their safety and well-being, and we pray for their families and loved ones. We thank you, God, for the dignity of work. We pray that, as our economy makes a swift transition from fossil fuels to clean, safe, renewable energy you will give us strength and resolve to ensure that workers everywhere share in a clean energy economy and enjoy fulfilling, safe, and well-paid jobs.

            Prayer for the Police: Almighty God, we commend to your gracious care and keeping all the men and women who serve in law enforcement. Thank you for their calling to public service. Watch over all police officers; protect them from harm in the performance of their duty; give them compassion, good judgment and wisdom, and fill their spirit with a balance of strength and love.

            Prayer for this Neighborhood: O God, you have bound us together in a common life. We pray for the neighborhood of West Roxbury: for its safety, beauty, and good health. We pray for all communities that are divided over whether and how to end our use of fossil fuels. Help us, in the midst of our struggles for a just and sustainable economy, to confront one another without hatred or bitterness, and to work together with mutual forbearance and respect.

John Bell (Buddhist), MBJ (Episcopal), Rabbi Shoshana Friedman (Jewish), Rev. Fred Small (Unitarian Universalist) (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
John Bell (Buddhist), MBJ (Episcopal), Rabbi Shoshana Friedman (Jewish), Rev. Fred Small (Unitarian Universalist), Cantor Roy Einhorn (Jewish) (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

When the police chief gave a five-minute warning that we would be arrested if we didn’t move, we stayed put. Instead, we read aloud together the words of Buddhist activist Joanna Macy (World as Lover, World As Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal, Parallax Press, 2007):

“When you make peace with uncertainty, you find a kind of liberation. You are freed from bracing yourselves 
against every piece of bad news, and from constantly having to work up 
a sense of hopefulness in order to act – which can be exhausting. There’s a certain equanimity and moral economy that comes when you are not constantly computing your chance of success.
 The enterprise is so vast,
 there is no way to judge the effects
 of this or that individual effort – or the extent to which it makes any difference at all.
 Once we acknowledge this,
 we can enjoy the challenge and the adventure.
 Then we can see that it is a privilege to be alive now in this Great Turning,
 when all the wisdom and courage ever harvested
 can be put to use.”

By the time the police came to put us in handcuffs and escort us to the vans, we were singing again.

“The tide is rising, and so are we.
The tide is rising, and so are we.
The tide is rising, and so are we.
This is where we are called to be.
This is where we are called to be.”

Getting into the police van, with Shoshana next in line (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Taken to the police van, with Shoshana next in line (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

Even as we sat, handcuffed, in the dark recesses of the van, waiting to be driven to the police station, we could hear our supporters singing outside, as well as snatches of the impassioned, impromptu sermon being delivered on the edge of the pit by our friend Rev. Mariama White-Hammond.

It’s no wonder that singing filled the lives of our ancestors in the faith (see Matthew 26:30, 1 Corinthians 14:26, Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16). Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). And where there is freedom or the longing to be free, you will find people singing.

As of today, there have been 85 arrests at the West Roxbury Lateral pipeline site. I am sure there will be more. Resist the Pipeline is organizing protests and providing training in civil disobedience. Better Future Project is planning a major march and action to stop new gas pipelines on July 14-18, which will include direct action at the pipeline construction in West Roxbury (for information and to register, visit here).

Meanwhile, fossil fuel resistance is growing worldwide. In recent weeks, thousands of people on six continents took coordinated, strategic action to stop fossil fuels. Through Clergy Climate Action, a new project of Climate Disobedience Center, clergy of many faiths have signed a pledge to participate in peaceful direct action to resist new fossil fuel development. I invite all religious leaders to endorse our statement. Here is the closing paragraph:

Police prepared to make arrests (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Police prepare to make arrests (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

“As religious leaders, we oppose further development of fossil fuel resources and infrastructure in our nation. We envision a livable climate for our communities, for the poor, for our children, and for all life.  We call for immediate and robust public investment in climate solutions, including large-scale renewable energy. We will resist new fossil fuel development through joyful, faithful, spirited, and nonviolent direct action.”

The day after I got arrested, I woke up singing.
“We will not give up the fight, we have only started, we have only started, we have only started.
We will not give up the fight. We have only started.”

Gathered outside Precinct 5 police station after our release (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)
Gathered outside Precinct 5 police station after our release (photo credit: Robert A. Jonas)

 

The 16 religious leaders arrested in West Roxbury on May 25, 2016:

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman, Assistant Rabbi, Temple Sinai, Brookline

Rev. Dr. Jim Antal, Conference Minister and President, Massachusetts Conference, United Church of Christ

Rev. Anne Bancroft, Minister, Theodore Parker Unitarian Universalist Church, West Roxbury

John Bell, Buddhist Dharma Teacher, Plum Village Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh, Belmont

Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Ph.D., Missioner for Creation Care, Episcopal Diocese of Western Mass. & Mass. Conference, United Church of Christ

Rev. Heather Concannon, Assistant Minister of Youth and Families, Unitarian Universalist Area Church at First Parish, Sherborn

Cantor Roy Einhorn, Temple Israel of Boston

Rev. Rebecca Froom, Minister, United First Parish Church (Unitarian), Quincy

Rev. John Gibbons, Minister, The First Parish in Bedford

Dr. Rajesh Kasturirangan, South Asian Center, Cambridge

Rev. Rob Mark, Pastor, Church of the Covenant, PCUSA & UCC, Boston

Rev. Dr. Ian Mevorach, Co-founder and Minister of Common Street Spiritual Center in Natick

Rev. Martha Niebanck, Minister Emerita, First Church of Brookline

Rev. Elizabeth Nguyen, Leadership Development Associate for Youth and Young Adults of Color, Unitarian Universalist Association

Rev. Fred Small, Minister for Climate Justice, Arlington Street Church, Boston

Rev. Rali Weaver, Minister, First Church and Parish in Dedham

Additional links:

If you read only one article this month about climate change, read Bill McKibben’s essay on the chemistry and politics of fracking, “Global Warming’s Terrifying New Chemistry.”  “Our leaders thought fracking would save our climate. They were wrong. Very wrong.”

For an eloquent essay on the West Roxbury protest and why people of faith – indeed, all people – need to interrupt business as usual, read Wen Stephenson’s essay, “A Prayer for West Roxbury – and the World”
Wen Stephenson writes for The Nation and is the author of What We’re Fighting for Now Is Each Other: Dispatches From the Front Lines of Climate Justice (Beacon)

The Boston Globe, “Police break up protest at pipeline construction site”

The Jewish Advocate, “Clerical activism, public safety, climate change”

Mass. Conference, United Church of Christ, “Antal among 16 clergy arrested at pipeline protest”

Metro, “Religious leaders arrested in protest of controversial natural gas pipeline”

Wicked Local, Natick, “16 clergy members arrested at West Roxbury Lateral gas pipeline protest”
[http://natick.wickedlocal.com/news/20160525/16-clergy-members-arrested-at-west-roxbury-lateral-gas-pipeline-protest

Universal Hub, “Clergy arrested at West Roxbury pipeline protest”   

Video:

Resist the Pipeline video clip (a short, powerful overview of the event)

YouTube video clips:

Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, May 1, 2016. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Pittsfield, MA. Acts 16:9-15 Psalm 67 Revelations 21:10, 22-22:5 John 5:1-9

Do you want to be made well?

I am blessed to worship with you this morning. Thank you, Cricket, for inviting me back to preach. The last time I was here, I served the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts as your Missioner for Creation Care, but since then my job has expanded: now I also serve as Missioner for Creation Care for the United Church of Christ in Massachusetts. As far as I know, I’m the only person who holds the same job in both the Episcopal and UCC Churches. To me, this joint position, is an emblem of good things to come. As we awaken to the climate crisis, Christians of every denomination – in fact, people of every faith – have a precious opportunity – even in the midst of our wonderful and colorful diversity – to pull together and to speak with one voice about the urgent need to safeguard the world that God entrusted to our care.

Today’s Gospel text gives us a way to reflect on our call to protect and heal “this fragile Earth, our island home.” In a story from the Gospel of John, Jesus heals a paralyzed man whom he finds lying beside a pool. It is a quick little story – no more than nine sentences – so let’s pause to visualize the scene. The pool, called Beth-zatha, is located near one of the gates into Jerusalem. Years ago archaeologists actually located and excavated the pool.[1] Apparently it was quite large and had four sides. Stairways were built in the corners of the pool, so that people could descend into the water, which may have been fed by springs that welled up at intervals. The bubbling waters were thought to have healing powers, and sick people – the blind, the lame, the paralyzed – came to the pool, believing that whenever the waters were stirred up, the first person to enter the pool would be cured of whatever sickness he or she had. That’s the scene. Here’s the story. A man who has been ill for thirty-eight years is lying near the pool on his mat. The story doesn’t say how long he has been waiting to get into the water, but it does say that he has been there “a long time” (John 5:6). What do you imagine this man is going through, as he lies paralyzed for so long beside the pool? As I imagine it, he feels helpless. The waters that can heal him are close by, but out of reach. What can heal him is way over there, separated from him, at some distance away, and he can’t move toward it. He can’t reach it. He can’t get there. He is cut off from the source of healing, and he is utterly paralyzed. What’s more, he is cut off from the people around him, too, as he competes with the crowd to be the first to get into the pool when the waters bubble up. Who knows what he is feeling, but I would guess anxiety, frustration, desperation, even despair – all those painful, negative feelings that get stirred up when we feel helpless, vulnerable, and alone. Now of course we can take the story literally, as a story about physical illness, but in John’s Gospel every story has an imaginative or symbolic dimension, too. When I imagine my way into this story and hear it in the context of climate change, all kinds of connections start playing in my mind. I start thinking about the ways the world’s web of life needs healing – about the alarming levels of carbon dioxide now pouring into the global atmosphere as coal, gas, and oil continue to be burned, about the oceans heating up and becoming more acidic, about the rising seas that could flood, disrupt, and even take down our country’s coastal cities within the lifetime of our children. I think about the new report saying that continued burning of fossil fuels could cause great swaths of the Pacific Ocean to suffocate from lack of oxygen in only 15 years. I think about the 93% of coral reefs that just bleached in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia. March 2016 was the hottest month ever recorded, which crushed the record set in February, which crushed the record set in January, which crushed the record set in December. A recent article in the Washington Post bears the title, “Scientists Are Floored by What’s Happening in the Arctic Right Now.” When we hear news like this about our ailing planet, it’s easy to stop listening. It’s too much to take in, so we shut down. We may feel paralyzed by anxiety or paralyzed by grief. Like that man beside the Beth-zatha pool, we may feel immobilized and overwhelmed. How can this dire news be true, and how can we possibly respond? Where can we turn for help and healing when our planet is on track to catapult into climate chaos caused by an ever-expanding economic system that runs on fossil fuels? People the world over can become so gripped by fear, anger, and despair that they feel unable to imagine, much less create, a better future, so they just carry on with business as usual. It’s as if we can fall under a spell and make what U.N. Secretary General Ban-ki Moon calls a “global suicide pact.” So please turn with me again to our Gospel story. Jesus comes upon this scene of the blind, lame, and paralyzed beside the pool, and, the story tells us, “When Jesus saw [the man] lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, he said to him, ‘Do you want to be made well?’” (John 5:6). That single sentence says a lot. The first step in this miracle of healing is that Jesus saw the man and knew him. John’s Gospel underscores again and again that when Jesus sees us and knows us, he sees and knows us through and through, more widely and deeply than we know ourselves. He looks deeply into us with eyes of love, with eyes that see the whole truth of who we are, and that perceive everything in us, everything about us, with loving-kindness and compassion. When we open ourselves to Jesus or to our Creator God in prayer, we open ourselves to the One “unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid” (Collect for Purity).  In prayer, we turn toward the Holy Presence who searches for truth deep within and whose loving embrace encompasses everything we are, everything we feel. That is the first step in today’s healing miracle: Jesus sees and knows. The second step in healing is his question, “Do you want to be made well?” That is a surprising question. We might have expected Jesus to take one look at the situation, pick up the man without a word, carry him straight to the pool of healing water, and slide him in. Why waste time? Why bother asking such an obvious question? When someone is hungry, you offer food to eat; when someone is thirty, you offer drink. Why mess around asking questions? But Jesus’ question reveals something important. The God we meet in Jesus does not force or push, even when it comes to healing. The God we meet in Jesus is deeply respectful of our freedom and gives us space in which to choose. It seems that in order for real healing to take place and new life to spring forth, God’s desire to heal us must meet our own desire to be healed. Do you want to be made well? It is not just a rhetorical question with a pro forma answer. The question invites the man paralyzed beside the pool to explore his desires and to clarify what he truly wants. Regarding the climate crisis, do I really want to be made well?   Well, yes and no. Part of me prefers to stay blind, to close my eyes, duck my head, and turn my attention to more manageable things. Part of me prefers to come up with lame solutions: OK, I’ll change the light bulbs, but that’s it, I’ve done my part. Part of me feels paralyzed: I’m no expert; I’m too small to make a difference; surely someone else will take charge and figure this out. How does the man by the pool reply to Jesus? “‘Sir,’ [the man says,] ‘I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; and while I am making my way, someone else steps down ahead of me’” (John 5:7). Jesus’ response is powerful and short: “‘Stand up, take your mat and walk.’ And at once the man was made well, and he took up his mat and began to walk” (John 5:8-9). What just happened? How did the healing miracle take place? I can’t explain it. But as I imagine it, as Jesus gazed on the man with those piercing, loving eyes that saw and knew and loved him through and through, and when Jesus asked him the probing question, “Do you want to be made well?,” in a flash of insight the man could admit his own halfheartedness and mixed motives and the ways he’d been holding back. I imagine that he felt his deep-down desire to be whole and free, his longing to love and be loved, his longing to draw close to God and to serve God “with gladness and singleness of heart.” So I imagine him claiming his deepest desire and turning to Jesus to say, “Yes, I want be fully alive. I want to fall in love with life, to give myself in love to each moment without holding anything back. I want God’s healing power to flow through me, so that I heal others and so that I, too, am healed.” The Gospel does not record that conversation, but I imagine it happening non-verbally by glance and gesture, as the sick man looked up at Jesus and said, without words, “Yes, I want to be made well.” “Stand up,” Jesus said, “and walk.” And he did. And so can we. Amazing things happen when we join our deep desire for healing with God’s deep desire to heal. When I look around, I see a planet in peril, but – thanks be to God! – I also see people shaking off their paralysis, reaching deep into their souls, and accessing their deep, God-given desire to love and serve life. I see people standing up to join the struggle to maintain a habitable planet and to create a just and sustainable future. I see a wave of religious protest and activism rising up around the world, as people refuse to settle for a killing status quo and declare that climate change is a spiritual and moral issue that must be tackled boldly and without delay. Just think of all the signs we see of a growing movement that is pushing for a new social order. We see people blocking the path of new fracked gas pipelines and being arrested for civil disobedience as they read aloud from Pope Francis’ encyclical. We see people lobbying for a fair price on carbon, so that we can build a clean green economy that provides decent jobs and improves public health. We see our own Episcopal Church deciding to divest from fossil fuels, since it makes no financial or moral sense to invest in companies that are ruining the planet. We see new coalitions being formed and new alliances being forged, as people realize that the environmental crisis is closely connected with the social crises of poverty, income inequality, and racial injustice. Right here in Massachusetts we have a strong grassroots climate action network, 350Mass for a Better Future, which has a node right here in the Berkshires. I’ve left a clipboard at the back of the church, and if you sign up for the weekly newsletter or attend a node meeting, you’ll connect with a vibrant local effort. I’m also part of a new group, Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action, or “MAICCA” for short, which is bringing together people of different religious traditions to advocate on Beacon Hill for legislation that supports climate justice. I hope you’ll sign up for MAICCA’s newsletter, too, for we are fighting to keep fossil fuels in the ground and to accelerate a transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy, such as sun and wind, that are accessible to all communities, including those that are low-income or historically underserved. As climate activist Bill McKibben points out, “The fight for a just world is the same as the fight for a livable one.” The Church was made for a time like this – a time when God calls human beings to know that we belong to one Earth, that we form one human family, and that God entrusted the Earth and all its residents to our care. One last word about our Gospel story: notice that the man didn’t need to be immersed in the pool of Beth-zatha in order to be healed. In Jesus’ presence, the man discovered that the healing spring was not outside him – it was inside him, just as it is inside us. As Jesus told the woman at the well (John 4:1-26), Jesus gives us water that becomes in us a “spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14). Even in troubled and scary times, we have everything we need. The healing pool is within us; the spring of healing is already bubbling up; and Jesus will nourish us with his presence in the bread and wine of the Eucharist. In the strength of that bread and wine and through the power of the Spirit, we can be healed from paralysis and become healers and justice-makers in a world that is crying out for our care.
1. The Anchor Bible: The Gospel According to John (I-XII), introduction, translation, and notes by Raymond E. Brown, S.S., Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1966, pp. 206-207.

Photo by Robert A. Jonas
(Photo by Robert A. Jonas)

Sometimes I am perfectly capable of scanning large swathes of bad news with aplomb, keeping my feelings at bay. I know how to brace myself before I open the morning paper, turn on the TV, or scan the news online. OK, world, I’m ready! Bring it on! Give me the latest list of apocalyptic woes! I can take it! I can handle it without blinking an eye!

But then comes a story about one small bird.

Researchers have confirmed the first death from malaria of a loon in New Hampshire. As the global climate heats up, diseases of the south, including malaria, are marching north. Although human beings are not susceptible to avian malaria, this tropical disease could have “devastating impacts” on birds with no natural resistance. To find a bird killed by malaria in the northern reaches of New England is a foreboding discovery. As one researcher observed, “This might be a canary in a coal mine situation.”

The metaphor is apt. In the old days coal miners would bring a caged canary into the mine to provide advance warning if dangerous gases like methane or carbon monoxide were building up. A canary is sensitive. A sickened or dead canary warned miners to take action quickly lest they, too, breathe their last. Today the whole world is in “a coal mine situation,” for extracting dirty fuels like coal, gas, and oil is releasing dangerous amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, disrupting the delicate balance of the climate and threatening the web of life.

A loon is our canary today. News that a loon has died from malaria spread by climate change stops me in my tracks, appalled. I love loons. Summer by summer our family spends a week in New Hampshire beside a lake. Loons’ haunting cries erupt in the night, thrilling and wild. During the day we watch for loons as we paddle our canoes, and if we spot one – precious sight! – we pause to let the boat drift so as not to disturb these shy birds. I am not a scientist, and I can’t describe how loons contribute to the intricate balance of life in the lakes and woods of northern New England nor how their loss would affect the ecosystem, but I do know that losing the loons would somehow empty the lake, leave an aching muteness in the air, and tear a hole in my heart.

I weep for loons.

The first session of a 3-day retreat on spiritual resilience and climate change, for clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware
The first session of a 3-day retreat on spiritual resilience and climate change, for clergy of the Episcopal Diocese of Delaware (photo by Max Joseph Wolf)

Can we grieve the losses brought about by a changing climate? I raised that question last week with Episcopal clergy from the Diocese of Delaware when we gathered for a three-day retreat in Pennsylvania at Pendle Hill, a Quaker center for study and contemplation. We talked about how easy it is, in the face of the danger and loss brought on by climate change, to go numb, change the subject, minimize the threat, and find a way to distance and distract ourselves. Most of us don’t challenge outright the science of climate change – we know it’s real, we know that human activities account for most of it, we know it’s already having profound, damaging, and sometimes irreversible effects worldwide. But most of us do engage in a kind of everyday climate denial: we avoid thinking about it. We consider it someone else’s problem. As the Australian ethicist Clive Hamilton points out in Requiem for a Species, we resist the truth about climate change for all kinds of reasons:

“Sometimes facing up to the truth is just too hard. When the facts are distressing it is easier to reframe or ignore them. Around the world only a few have truly faced up to the facts about global warming… It’s the same with our own deaths; we all ‘accept’ that we will die, but it is only when our death is imminent that we confront the true meaning of our mortality.”

When the full truth of the climate crisis finally breaks through our defenses, we experience what one journalist has called the “Oh shit” moment we all must have.  Our denial breaks down. We realize that the people we want to ridicule as “alarmists” are conveying news that is both terrifying and true.

I remember exactly where I was when I had my “Oh shit” moment. It was a warm July night in 2002 and I was standing on the edge of Thompson Island, looking out over Boston Harbor. I was deep into an intensive weekend conference on the science and politics of climate change. I had spent the last couple of days jotting down facts about droughts and floods, sea levels and hurricanes, the connection between a warming world and a rise in infectious disease. I’d taken notes on the extreme social disruptions likely to be unleashed by global climate change, on the millions of refugees that would go in search of food and water, on the wars that could erupt over increasingly scarce natural resources.

I had taken in all the facts I could, I had fought valiantly against the temptation to daydream or space out, and now I was reeling. Deeply shaken, I stepped outside into the dark. I stood in silence for a while, breathing the night air. The whole planet seemed to be tilting under the stars, as if the ground were shifting beneath my feet. The old world I’d lived in was gone.

I tried that night to assimilate what I’d heard, to regain my balance, and to find my way back to God. That night I tried to sleep. The next morning I went looking for Paul Epstein, the doctor from Harvard Medical School whose presentation on climate had so overwhelmed me. I carried my breakfast tray to his table and asked if I could have a word with him. I told him how stunned I was by what he had told us.

“How do you bear it?” I asked him. “What do you do with your feelings?”

“I don’t get into my feelings,” he told me. “I focus on what I can do.”

Thus Dr. Epstein taught me one of the options after our denial breaks down: we can get busy and focus on action. His comment reminded me of what labor organizer Joe Hill reportedly said before he died, “Don’t mourn. Organize.” Some of us definitely prefer not to mourn. Most of us, in fact, prefer to engage our painful emotions as little as possible. We lock them away or we leapfrog over them. After all, we don’t want to look morbid, weak, or sentimental. Or we may dodge our feelings for fear of being overcome by anxiety or despair, or of drowning in sorrow. We may fear that experiencing our emotions will become a substitute for action or even sabotage our capacity to act. And you can’t argue with the fact that taking action is essential. In the midst of the battle to protect life as it has evolved on this planet, we do need to act. We do need levelheaded leaders who can say, This is what we must do. Let’s go.

Yet I’m convinced that for the long haul we also need to notice and experience what we feel. Is not grief a way of expressing love? Is not anger a natural response to injustice? Doesn’t learning how to ride the energies of grief and anger in a skillful way bring forth actions more likely to be wise, compassionate, and effective?

By the time that long-ago weekend workshop was over and the ferry was carrying us back to shore, I realized that I had no wish – indeed, no ability – to take action regarding the climate crisis unless I gave myself permission along the way to notice what I was feeling. After all – I’m a recovering addict. Nearly 35 years of recovery have shown me the value of respecting my emotional life: listening inwardly and honoring, even befriending, what I feel prevents me from careening into compulsive and willful behavior.

I was beginning to clarify my own approach to living with what James Howard Kunstler has since called “the long emergency,” that extensive period we are now entering, in which human beings must deal with a host of coinciding global problems, from climate change to water scarcity and economic instability. Yes, we will need to master the facts and to understand what we’re facing as accurately as we can. Yes, we will need to take action, and to do it together, building community as we go. But I would add this, too: we will also need to stay in touch with our feelings, to give ourselves room to protest and to grieve, to mark what we have lost and to name what we hope to preserve. I, at least, need such a space as a creature needs air.

So, in the course of last week’s retreat with the clergy of Delaware, we spent an evening session talking about our heartbreak. We reflected on the crucifixion of the Earth and on where we hear the groaning of God’s Creation. Then each of us took a piece of paper and a handful of oil pastels and spread out around the room to draw whatever came to us – perhaps a prayer, a poem of protest or grief, a confession of guilt, a plea for forgiveness, or a cry for help. As soft music played, each of us confronted and gave form to our pain. When we had finished our drawings, we placed them on the floor around the altar and talked about what the prayer exercise had been like and where we find hope. Tomorrow morning we would go ahead and focus on what we could do, but tonight we would pause to honor our pain.

Photo by Robert A. Jonas
(Photo by Robert A. Jonas)

When Lazarus died, Jesus wept (John 11:35). After pausing to feel his love and sorrow, Jesus performed a mighty act. He brought forth life out of death. He prayed to God and called out to Lazarus, and Lazarus stepped out from the tomb.

I don’t know if we’ll be able to prevent catastrophic climate change, but I do know this: When we mourn the losses caused by a disrupted climate, even a loss apparently as small as the perishing of a loon, we immerse ourselves in the love that will never let us go. Besides, God seems to have a soft spot for birds. The Bible offers images of God resembling a dove (Matthew  (3:16), a hen (Matthew 23:37), and an eagle (Exodus 19:4), and, as the Gospel song puts it, “His eye is on the sparrow.” (To hear a wonderful performance by Lauryn Hill and Tanya Blount, turn up the volume and visit here.) Grieving can be a sacred act. By the grace of God, grief can reconnect us with the love that brings forth life, the imperishable love that creates, redeems, and sustains. With that love breathing through us, who knows what we’ll accomplish together?

Here is a poem by Elizabeth Cunningham that I shared at the retreat.

                      Heart Prayer

You can only pray what’s in your heart.
So if your heart is being ripped from your chest
Pray the tearing

if your heart is full of bitterness
pray it to the last dreg

if your heart is a river gone wild
pray the torrent

or a lava flow scorching the mountain
pray the fire

pray the scream in your heart
the fanning bellows

pray the rage, the murder
and the mourning

pray your heart into the great quiet hands that can hold it
like the small bird it is.

Licensed to Robert A. Jonas by DollarPhotoClub
(Photo licensed to Robert A. Jonas by DollarPhotoClub)

#0601,Pipeline march, Greenfield church,3-'16

On Day #3 of a four-day, 46-mile walk to stop the construction of the Kinder Morgan NED pipeline, scores of activists gathered in the sanctuary of St. James Episcopal Church in Greenfield, Massachusetts, for a spirited rally organized by Sugar Shack Alliance. St. James Church is a grand old beauty of a building, a neo-Gothic stone structure that was consecrated in 1849. The sanctuary buzzed with excitement as a diverse crowd took their seats, many of them walkers eager for encouragement after a long day of tracing the route of the proposed pipeline on foot.

#0600,Greenfield Episcopal,3-'16As a Christian climate activist, I found it stirring to realize that the rally was taking place on the eve of Palm Sunday, the day that Christians around the world step into Holy Week. Here were the stately altar and lectern arrayed in cloths of traditional red colors for tomorrow’s service, yet here, too, were banners draped across altar, pulpit and lectern, crying out in large letters: “No Prisons, No Pipeline. Shut It Down,” “Respect Existence, Expect Resistance,” and “Love Will Win.”

At first I was startled to see these messages spread out across the sacred space, but then I realized that their meaning was exactly right and resonated with Palm Sunday: we were here to celebrate non-violent confrontation with unjust power. On Palm Sunday, Christians remember Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem and the cheering crowds that cast palm branches on the ground to welcome him. Jesus was on a collision course with imperial Rome and all the powers of this world that rule by force and domination. He came to proclaim the power of God’s love. He came without armor or weapons, riding not a war-horse but a humble donkey, as the prophet Zechariah foretold: the king of peace would come on a donkey (Zechariah 9:9-10).

Margaret stands in the 10 x 15 foot cabin in Ashfield modeled by Will Elwell after Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond, photo by Robert A. Jonas
Margaret stands in the 10 x 15 foot cabin in Ashfield modeled by Will Elwell after Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond (photo by Robert A. Jonas)

I think that Jesus would rejoice in the wave of non-violent action against fossil fuels that is rising up around the country. Growing numbers of individuals and groups are confronting the unjust political and corporate powers that hold society – and the very Earth itself – in a deathly grip. Resistance to fracked gas is mounting, from Seattle to Seneca Lake, from Ashland, Oregon to Ashfield, Mass., where last week Will Elwell, a local resident, constructed with his friends a replica of Thoreau’s Walden Pond cabin, placing it directly in the path of the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline. On the eastern side of Massachusetts, in the West Roxbury neighborhood of metropolitan Boston, activists are fighting to stop the construction of the Spectra Energy pipeline project, which would bring highly pressurized fracked gas through a densely populated area and terminate at a station beside an active blast quarry.

Opening the rally with prayer
Opening the rally with prayer

 

Whatever our faith tradition, the resolve to stand up for life and to resist a deathly status quo springs from a deep place in the human spirit. So I was grateful to have a chance to offer a brief word of blessing as the rally began. Looking out at the faces of all these good people who long as ardently as I do for a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world, I invited the crowd into a spirit of prayer. I called upon the Spirit of love, the divine Mystery that we call by many names, and I prayed to God:

“Through our own experience and in the words of your prophet Isaiah, we know that:
Those who hope in you
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint (Isaiah 40:31).
“Thank you for the love that you pour into our hearts through the power of your Spirit (Romans 5:5).
“Thank you for your power working in us that can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine (Ephesians 3:20).”

I asked God’s blessing on each person present and on the great work that we’ve been called to do.

After that, speakers came forward to articulate a particular argument for keeping so-called “natural” gas in the ground. Why were we struggling to block this pipeline? Because of our right to clear air and clean water. Because of the risk to public health from leaks and explosions. Because of conservation areas – farms and forests, scenic trails, wetlands, and rivers – that must remain intact. Because in Article 97 the constitution of our Commonwealth protects conservation lands and open space (a provision that the Tennessee Gas Pipeline Company is challenging aggressively in court). Because forced surveys of land violate the Fourth Amendment and constitute “unreasonable search and seizure.” Because we are committed to a clean energy economy. Because it is reckless to invest another dime in new fossil fuel infrastructure. Because we are pushing hard to avert catastrophic climate change.

People encircle the sanctuary, holding signs that represent all the towns that have voted against the pipeline
People encircle the sanctuary, holding signs that represent all the towns that have voted against the pipeline

I was particularly touched by the remarks of cultural anthropologist Lisa McLaughlin of the Nolumbeka Project, who spoke about the ancient Native American burial grounds that must not be disturbed. She pointed out that in addition to the particular places that Native American tribes deem sacred, the whole landscape has its own “naturally sacred geography.” For Native Americans, she said, the struggle against the pipeline represents a clash of cultural values: one set of values considers the Earth to be profane and dead, with humanity entitled to dominate and exploit, and the other set of values views the Earth as sacred and alive, with humanity existing as part of nature.

The latter understanding is the perspective that Pope Francis lifted up in his encyclical Laudato Si, which in many ways draws from the best of the Judaeo-Christian tradition. A recent sermon by Br. Keith Nelson, SSJE, conveys beautifully this way of seeing the world. He writes: “We must become students of the air, the soil, the waters, the birds and beasts, whose simple being is prayer. From them, we must re-learn how to live well and live deeply in union with the Creator.”

People who protest gas pipelines, compressor stations, fracking wells, and other extreme forms of energy extraction are people who understand that human beings are connected to the larger web of life. We have a moral responsibility to bless the Earth and its inhabitants rather than to desecrate, destroy, and demean what has been entrusted to us.

The need to keep fossil fuels in the ground is urgent. February 2016 was the hottest of any month ever recorded, which crushed the record set in January, which crushed the record set in December. A recent climate report in the Washington Post bears the title, “Scientists Are Floored by What’s Happening in the Arctic Right Now.” Last year, 2015, was the hottest year on record.

In the face of the profound assault now being unleashed on our planet, what are we called to do? Once we know that “the heat accumulating in the Earth because of human emissions is roughly equal to the heat that would be released by 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs exploding across the planet every day,” what changes do you and I need to make in our work and witness?

Those who hope in the LORD.... (image by Robert A. Jonas)
Those who hope in the LORD….
               (image by Robert A. Jonas)

On Palm Sunday Jesus rode into Jerusalem with no army except a crowd of supporters and a handful of friends, most of whom soon melted away into the darkness, betraying him, denying him, or simply fleeing. He rode with no weapon but the weapon of truth, no power but the power of mercy, no strength but the strength of love. He entered the city with no weapon, and yet, the Gospel tells us, “the whole city was in turmoil” (Mathew 21:10) – it was shaken. The Greek word used here is one that describes an earthquake. The powers-that-be in this world are shaken up when the king of peace rides into town, when he rides into the boardrooms and back rooms of our country, when he rides into our hearts.   There is an upheaval in the center of reality.

This is the holy upheaval that I glimpse in the climate movement. Some of us may suffer as Jesus suffered – indeed, the environmental activist for human rights and indigenous rights, Berta Caceres, was martyred in Honduras on March 3, 2016. We don’t know if our own efforts will succeed any more than Jesus’ did. After all, Jesus’ life apparently ended in failure: just days after his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, he was arrested, tortured, and crucified.

Cabin raising -- no, cabin risen. Photo by Robert A. Jonas
Cabin raising — no, cabin risen                                (photo by Robert A. Jonas)

Yet faith beckons us to stand with Jesus against the power of Empire. And faith tells us that if we live in the spirit of Jesus, we, too, will be raised to new life in him. I grinned when I saw the “Cabin Raising” sign on the corner of Beldingville Road, pointing the way to the Thoreau-inspired cabin to protest the pipeline.  On the sign, someone had crossed out “raising” and scribbled “raised.” Yes, that cabin has gotten raised, all right, and so have our spirits. A week after Palm Sunday, Christians will proclaim on Easter morning that Christ has risen. That is why we join the Jesus Movement: because we believe that love, not death, will have the last word. Because we know that those who hope in God will renew their strength; they will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.

A presentation to clergy and lay leaders in the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts that was given on Parish Leadership Day, March 5, 2016. A handout of suggested action steps is available for download here.

Friends, I’d like to take a page from writer Anne Lamott, who wrote a book a few years ago called Help, Thanks, Wow. She calls these our three most basic prayers, and they make a good framework for these remarks about caring for God’s creation, though I’m going to shuffle the deck a bit and take them in this order: Thanks, Wow, and Help.

“Thanks” comes first.

Thank you to every congregation that is exploring how to live more lightly and sustainably on the Earth.

Thank you to you churches that have joined Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light and gotten an energy audit, maybe even looked into solar panels. I look forward to seeing which church in our diocese will be the first to go solar.

Thank you to you folks who have switched your homes to clean renewable energy from local sources – a step that is easy and inexpensive to take, thanks to an outfit called Mass Energy.

Thank you to everyone who is reining in your own consumption of fossil fuels by walking more and driving less, by turning out lights and turning down the heat.

Thank you to all who are “fasting” from wasteful over-consumption and from actions that pollute.

Thank you to everyone who is looking for ways large and small to “go green,” so that in our individual lives and in our communities we truly bear witness to the God who loves every inch of Creation and who entrusted the Earth to our care.Flower show, 2015

A special thank you to you clergy who are preaching about the climate crisis. I know that some fine preaching is going on, for some of you have sent me copies of your sermons. I also want to thank you lay leaders who encourage your clergy to preach about climate and who assure them of your support. Because it’s not easy to preach about climate. All kinds of voices tell us that the topic is too controversial, too political, and, besides, who are we to speak about climate – we’re not experts on the subject, we’re not scientists.

So thank you to everyone who sees through that fear and who understands that preaching and teaching and acting boldly on climate is not a political issue – we don’t care about the climate crisis because we’re Democrats or Republicans or members of any particular party.

We care about the climate crisis because we’re human beings, because we want to pass on to our children a habitable and healthy world, a world with clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.

We care about the climate crisis because we refuse to wipe out life as it has evolved on this planet and because we know the situation is grave – record heat, record levels of atmospheric CO2, record melting in the Arctic, a precious web of life on the brink of – or already – unraveling.

We care about the climate crisis because we’re Christian – because God’s love is being poured into our hearts through the power of the Holy Spirit and because we have chosen to follow Jesus’ way of love, justice, and truth. So thank you to all you good folks who in so many ways are expressing God’s love for our precious blue planet and for all its inhabitants, human and other-than-human.

That was Thanks. Here comes Wow. Wow is my response to what happened last year as a surge of religious energy rose up all over the world to safeguard life. How many of you have read or heard of the Pope’s encyclical Laudato Si: On Care for Our Common Home? Released last June, it was greeted with admiration by religious leaders around the world and elicited statements on climate action by Anglicans and Evangelicals, Muslims and Jews, Hindus and Buddhists. Never before have so many faith groups spoken out so strongly and so unequivocally about our moral responsibility to the poor, who bear the brunt of a changing climate, and about our spiritual responsibility to honor the sacredness of “this planet Earth, our island home.”

Kingbird, photo by Robert A. Jonas
Kingbird, photo by Robert A. Jonas

By the end of last year, faith groups of all kinds – including our own diocese and the Episcopal Church, at last summer’s General Convention – helped build the fossil fuel divestment movement to reach a combined total of $3.4 trillion in assets committed to divestment. Wow. And faith groups helped generate the momentum that brought us to the landmark climate agreement in Paris last December, when 196 countries came together through the U.N. and pledged to change the course of the global economy and to cap global temperature increases at 2º or ideally 1.5º degrees Celsius.

To all of this, I say: Wow. The wind of the Holy Spirit is blowing.

Here comes my last word to you: Help. I need your help. The Earth needs your help. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment, for the only way to avoid shooting past that 1.5º or 2º degree Celsius cap that protects us from runaway climate change is to keep 80% of known fossil fuel reserves in the ground. We simply cannot burn all that oil, coal and gas. We must transition quickly to clean sources of energy like wind and sunshine. This is a struggle, and we need your help.

I hope you’ll connect with the grassroots climate movement, either through 350Mass for a Better Future, which has nodes across the state, or through Climate Action Now, which is centered in the Pioneer Valley. Important campaigns are going on right now in Massachusetts to stop new pipelines, to divest our pension fund, and to make solar energy accessible and affordable to all. The campaign to put a fair price on carbon is asking for interfaith support, and I’m happy to say that the bishop of this diocese and the bishops of the “other” diocese in Massachusetts have all signed on.

People of faith are deeply engaged in the climate struggle, and some of us are getting together to make the faith basis of our work very explicit: I’ve been helping to launch a new group called Mass. Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. If you’d like to help grow that interfaith coalition here in western Massachusetts, please sign up (send an email to: interfaithclimatecoalition@gmail.com). My clergy friends: I hope you sign up for Interfaith Power & Light’s Faith Climate Action Week and preach on climate at least once this April.

I am grateful for your help, and glad to offer you mine: all are welcome to sign up for blog posts at my Website, RevivingCreation.org, and I’d be glad to come to your parish to preach or teach or lead a retreat about caring for God’s creation.

So to God we say:

Thank you. Thank you for your marvelous Creation and for giving us ears to hear the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.

Gracious God, we say “Wow” when we see your awesome power transforming people’s lives and inspiring us to stand up for life.

And please help us, God – help us to stay grounded in your purpose for us and to become the people you created us to be, people who are a blessing to the Earth.

All this we pray in the presence and power of Christ Jesus, whose way we follow and whose guidance we trust. Amen.

Sermon for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 21, 2016. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Grace-St. Paul’s Church, Tucson, AZ. Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18 Psalm 27 Philippians 3:17-41 Luke 13:31-35

Fasting from carbon

I am blessed to be with you this morning. My husband and I now come to Grace-St. Paul’s whenever we visit Tucson, and I am grateful to be with you again. This is a special place: I feel the Holy Spirit here. Thank you, Steve, for inviting me back to this pulpit.

To say just a word about myself: after 25 years of parish ministry, I now serve as Missioner for Creation Care in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. My dream is to help create a wave of religious activism to protect the web of life that God entrusted to our care. So I travel around, preaching and teaching and leading retreats about God’s love for this precious planet and its inhabitants, human and other-than-human, and the need to take action to express our faith. My particular concern is the climate crisis, so you can probably imagine my delight when I learned a few weeks ago that the couple who funded the first two years of my ministry raised the money by selling off their oil stocks. This is happy news to someone who believes, as I do, that divesting from fossil fuels is an expression of our moral values and will help propel a shift to clean energy. So here we are in the second Sunday in Lent, a season for renewing our lives in response to the love of God. Thanks to the passage from Genesis, today we have Abram standing at our side, an old man who, along with his wife, was landless, childless, without an heir. The door to his future was completely closed, shut tight, locked, and throw away the key. Nothing good lay ahead. Then God spoke to Abram in a vision and made a promise, the kind of promise that God made to a whole line of prophets, one after another: the door to the future was open. Through the grace of God, Abram’s life would bear fruit; he would bring forth life; he would convey blessings that would reach far into the future, blessings as countless as the stars. And Abram responded with faith. He trusted in God’s promise. He stepped out into an unknown and open future, trusting that God would guide him and that God would make him a vehicle or channel for new life. Today is a good day to stand with our faithful brother Abram and to reaffirm our trust in God’s promise that even when the future looks bleak or chaotic, even when we see no way forward, God is with us. God will open a path where there was no path, provide a way where there was no way, and pour divine hope into our hearts when our own hope is gone. Heaven knows there are reasons to fear for the future. The web of life is unraveling before our eyes. In just 200 years – a blink in geologic time – human beings have burned so much coal, gas, and oil and released so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher than our species has ever experienced before. So far that extra CO2 has forced the average global temperature to rise about one degree. That may not sound like much, but what’s so worrisome to scientists is that this process is happening so fast. Already oceans are heating and becoming more acidic; tundra is thawing; ice caps are melting; sea levels are rising; coral reefs are dying; massive droughts are spreading in some places and heavy rains intensifying in others. We’re on the edge, or in the midst, of what some experts call the sixth major extinction event on this planet. 2015 was the hottest year on record, shattering the record set just the year before. We know that the situation is urgent. We know we have only a short time in which to avert a level of climate disruption that would render the world ungovernable and possibly uninhabitable within the lifetimes of our children and our children’s children. The World Bank – hardly a leftist organization – recently warned that unless we quickly rein in greenhouse gas emissions, climate change will drive 100 million people into extreme poverty – extreme poverty – in the next 15 years. Just imagine for a moment the human suffering and social upheaval that this would engender worldwide. We know we can do better than that. And as people of faith we refuse to stand idly by and to let business as usual destroy human communities and destroy life as it has evolved on the planet. As Pope Francis so beautifully explained in his landmark encyclical, Laudato Si – in a message that was picked up and amplified by Anglican, Jewish, Muslim, and many other religious voices the world over – we bear a moral and spiritual responsibility to respond boldly to the climate crisis. Lent invites us to come back into balance, to align our lives with our deepest intention, and to make the changes we need to make in order for God’s love to be manifest more fully in our lives. Today, in the presence and power of God, and with Abram at our side, we dare to ask some big questions: Through the grace of God, how can my life bring forth new life? How can I contribute to a better future? How can I live so that my life becomes a blessing to those who come after me? As Ella Fitzgerald once put it, “It isn’t where you came from, it’s where you’re going that counts.” You know, there are many ways to be healers in the world, many ways to help our neighbors. But regarding climate change, here come three suggestions. One: sign up online for the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast. During Lent, we seek to restore the limits that give life. Let’s you and I learn how to fast from carbon. Let’s you and I learn together how to make choices that cut back dramatically on our use of fossil fuels. This is an honorable, and I would argue, a necessary, Lenten practice. When you sign up for the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast, you receive a daily email with inspirational reflection and a specific action step to reduce your personal consumption of dirty energy. Right now the fast is being carried out by thousands of Christians who care for God’s Creation. Two: write a postcard to your members of Congress. After the service, stop at the table for Citizens Climate Lobby and pick up some postcards. You might think that writing a letter or postcard to your member of Congress is a waste of time, but it’s not: your representatives probably have no idea that you care about climate change and that you’re tracking what they’re doing. And Citizens Climate Lobby is pushing for a way to price carbon that will get us off fossil fuels, create new jobs, and accelerate a transition to a new economy based on clean, renewable sources of energy, like sun and wind. Last summer I joined scores of other faith leaders to lobby on behalf of Citizens Climate Lobby in Washington, D.C. We didn’t push for carbon pricing because we were Democrats, or because we were Republicans, or because we were socialists or members of the Green Party. It wasn’t politics that propelled us to support carbon pricing. It was faith: faith in a God who utterly loves us and all Creation, faith in a God who envisions a healthy, just, and sustainable society, faith in a God who wants our lives to be a blessing to the vulnerable poor and to those who come after us. Three: go to the Website 350.org, sign up to receive emails, and build the global climate movement. 350.org is the grassroots non-profit that is helping to create a wave of global resistance to keep coal, gas, and oil in the ground, where they belong. This coming May, actions will be held in places all over the world to “shut down the world’s most dangerous fossil fuel projects and support the most ambitious climate solutions.” Already the movement to keep fossil fuels in the ground is gaining momentum. People are blockading oil trains and protesting the construction of new pipelines; thousands of so-called “kayaktivists” took to the water in Seattle to block an oil-drilling rig; and two men in a lobster boat near Cape Cod disrupted the delivery of 40,000 tons of coal. Just this week, beloved writer Terry Tempest Williams took part in an auction in Salt Lake City that was selling off leases for oil and gas drilling on public lands. As a climate protester, she bought up land rights on a parcel near Arches National Park in Utah in an effort to prevent any drilling. Later she commented, “It has deeply shaken my core as an American citizen to watch these beautiful, powerful public lands that are all of ours, and our inheritance, being sold for $2 an acre, $3 an acre… I’m both heartsick and heartbroken and outraged.” Yes, it can be heartbreaking to take part in the struggle to stabilize the climate and to heal our relationship with the Earth. But the pain we feel is an expression of love, and love is what sustains us, and guides us, and will see us through. So I invite you to take up my three suggestions: to join the Ecumenical Lenten Carbon Fast; to sign postcards to your legislators on behalf of Citizens Climate Lobby; and to join 350.org and the global climate movement. As people of faith, we’re here for the long haul. We’re not going away. We’re going to keep fighting for a future that runs on clean energy like sun and wind. We’re going to keep fighting for a society and an economy that leave no one out. As Pope Francis reminded us, the cry of the Earth is intimately connected with the cry of the poor. We hear that cry. We share that cry. And we intend to answer it, by divestment and direct action, by voting and lobbying, by making personal changes in our lifestyle and, perhaps, by engaging in peaceful civil disobedience. A new world is on the horizon, and we hope to act like midwives, helping that new world to be born. We hope to act like Abram, trusting in God’s promise of new life. And we hope to act like Jesus, who when Herod threatened to kill him, refused to be intimidated or deterred. Despite all the forces arrayed against him, Jesus continued to heal and to set free. He refused to be stopped. “Today,” he said, “tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way” (Luke 31:33 ). And so it is for us. We, too, must be on our way — on Jesus’s way — today, tomorrow, and the next day. Who knows what God in Christ will be able to do through us, now and in the days ahead?    

Photo by Joel Wool
Photo by Joel Wool

On December 12, 2015, the same day that nearly 200 nations adopted a historic pledge to lower their carbon emissions, more than two thousand people from across New England marched and rallied in Boston in the biggest climate justice demonstration that the city has ever seen. A wide range of groups were represented, including, among others, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Maine’s Penobscot Tribe, National Nurses United, New Bedford Worker Center, 350 Massachusetts, Mothers Out Front, and Climate Action NOW. I spoke on behalf of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts and the newly formed MA Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. The crowd cheered when I mentioned that faith groups are involved in the climate justice movement.

Climate crisis gives rise to migration crises
Climate crisis gives rise to migration crises

Whatever mood you were in, there was a banner or a sign to express it: sarcastic (Billionaires for Fossil Fuels) and mournful (Where have all the icebergs gone?), winsome (Save the Earth: It’s the only planet with music) and worried (It’s December and I’m wearing a T-shirt), urgent (Climate delay = global collapse) and resolute (System change, not climate change).

We started with a rally at the Parkman Bandstand on the Boston Common, but we didn’t just stand around, listening to speeches: accompanied by a marching band, we also chanted and sang our way through the streets of Boston. After marching for a mile and half, we held a closing rally in front of the State House.  (For Michael Horan’s brief video montage of the march, visit here.)

The U.N. climate deal is an historic first: countries have pledged to rein in their carbon emissions and have expressed an aspiration to limit global warming to no more than 2 degrees and maybe even 1.5 degrees Celsius above average temperatures at the start of the Industrial Revolution. Yet the pledges are voluntary, and, even if carried out, insufficient to avert catastrophe. As Bill McKibben quickly observed in the New York Times, “we need to build the movement even bigger in the coming years, so that the Paris agreement turns into a floor and not a ceiling for action.” In a separate article for Grist, McKibben commented that although the international climate pact gives us reasons to be cynical, we still have reasons to hope: we must build a movement to hold countries to their promises (“What, you want to build a pipeline? I thought you were going to go for 1.5 degrees. You want to frack? Are you fracking kidding me? You said you were going for 2 degrees at the absolute worst.”)

Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman leads singing with rally MC, Mariama White Hammond
Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman leads singing with rally MC, Mariama White Hammond (photo by Lise Olney)

Meeting the 1.5 or even 2-degree target will not be easy, McKibben writes in yet another article (boy, he is fast), “given that we’re currently on track for between 4C and 5C. Our only hope is to decisively pick up the pace. In fact, pace is now the key word for climate. Not where we’re going, but how fast we’re going there. Pace – velocity, speed, rate, momentum, tempo. That’s what matters from here on in.”

One of my favorite placards at the Boston rally proclaimed:

3500-2500 B.C. Bronze Age
1800-2015 A.D. Fossil Fuel Age

Do we believe that 2015 marks the end of the Fossil Fuel Age? That’s what the U.N. climate deal in Paris has promised. But that promise won’t come true all by itself. If we want it to come true and are serious about wanting to preserve a habitable world, we’ll have to work for it – to organize, lobby, vote, pray, invent, create, protest, and push – to do it together and do it fast.

We’ll do it because we’re committed to the message proclaimed by another sign:

Love will win.

Here is the speech I gave at the rally in front of the State House:

Photo by Joel Wool
Photo by Joel Wool

Friends, I am thrilled to be with you today as we express our shared commitment to a world that works for everyone.

We walked a fair distance to get here, and I invite you to take a moment to feel the sensation of your feet making contact with the ground. Feel the support of the earth under your feet, and let’s notice for a moment that whoever we are – wherever we come from, whatever we do for a living, whatever the color of our skin, whatever our religion or political party, we all stand on one earth. We have just one home, this home, this beloved planet on which all life depends.

I invite you to take a couple of deep breaths and to notice that wherever you’re standing, whether you’re up front or in the middle or the edge of the crowd, we’re all breathing the same air. We’re all immersed in the one atmosphere that we share, taking into our lungs the one flowing mix of gases that encircles the globe and sustains life in every creature that breathes.

Warmer water brings invasive species! No new fossil fuel infrastructure!
Warmer water brings invasive species! No new fossil fuel infrastructure!

We stand on one world and we breathe the one air. That may seem completely obvious, but we’re living in a time when all kinds of forces want to tear us apart – to separate us from each other and to pit us against each other us on the basis of race or class or religion, gender, nationality, or the status of our citizenship. We’re living in a time when all kinds of forces want to make us suspicious or contemptuous or afraid of each other. Some of these forces come from within us, and some from outside us; and it is our great challenge to stand strong and to say No to hatred, and Yes to love and compassion.

So we have gathered in our glorious diversity – people from all walks of life, people of different ages, backgrounds, and experiences – to stand together, shoulder to shoulder. We need each other. We belong to each other. The only way to create a just and sustainable world is to create that world together.

Each of us may bring to the table a particular concern, such as labor or health or poverty or racism or immigration or human rights or the environment, but we know that these supposedly separate issues are in fact deeply connected. We will only find a path forward if we walk that path together – if we reach out to each other, and show up for each other, and work together to heal our shared planet from the threat of climate chaos and social chaos.

Love will win
Love will win

I’m glad we’re standing in front of the State House, for we have many legislative battles ahead of us as we fight to keep fossil fuels in the ground. I’m especially glad to be standing with other founding members of the brand-new Massachusetts Interfaith Coalition for Climate Action. We are committed to an energy future based on clean, safe renewable energy such as sun and wind. Just as important, we are committed to a human future based on justice and compassion. In a society that too often treats people like objects, and corporations like people, we intend to lift up the deep wisdom found at the heart of every religion: the Earth and all its residents are sacred.

We call upon the power of love, the sacred power that created all things and that holds all things together. With that love in our hearts, we stand strong on this good earth. We breathe deep of this sweet air. And we commit ourselves to walk this walk together.

Photo c) Robert A. Jonas
Photo c) Robert A. Jonas

On the eve of the U.N. climate talks in Paris, hundreds of thousands of people worldwide took to the streets to join the Global Climate March. Here in western Massachusetts, 200 people gathered in Amherst and an even larger group assembled nearby in Northampton, all of us calling for decisive international action to keep 80% of current fossil fuel reserves in the ground.

 

 

With Philip and Betsy Mathews on the Amherst Common, in front of Grace Church; photo c) Robert A. Jonas
With Philip and Betsy Mathews on the Amherst Common, in front of Grace Church; photo c) Robert A. Jonas

I was the opening speaker at the November 29 rally on the Amherst Common. The crowd included young and old, families, college students and retirees, an 8-foot tall Polar Bear puppet and a little boy in a brown bear suit. We shivered in the cold night air, but our energy was high and our resolve was strong.

A much bigger, regional rally is planned for the day after the conclusion of the U.N. talks. Please join me on the Boston Common on Saturday December 12, 1:00-3:00 p.m. for a Jobs, Justice, and Climate Rally that will bring together a wide range of interests – labor, immigrant rights, faith, racial justice, economic justice, and climate justice groups – as we build an unstoppable grassroots movement to stabilize the climate and create a more just and sustainable society.

Below is what I said last night at the Amherst rally.

Photo c) Robert A. Jonas
Photo c) Robert A. Jonas

I am filled with gratitude as I look into your faces. We stand together tonight in the center of town, under the stars, to express our longing for a safe, just, and sustainable future. All eyes are on Paris tonight. West of here, across the river, another group has assembled in Northampton. South of here, down the road, other people gathered this afternoon in Springfield. East of here, across the state, a group is gathering in Boston. Around the world, in every direction, from Beirut to Barcelona, from Ottawa to Melbourne, thousands of events are in progress, as people from every walk of life turn their hearts and hopes to the U.N. climate negotiations that begin tomorrow in Paris.

Photo c) Robert A. Jonas
Photo c) Robert A. Jonas

We know that the situation is urgent. We have only a short amount of time in which to avert a level of climate disruption that would render the world ungovernable and possibly uninhabitable within the lifetimes of our children and our children’s children. To cite just one example of where we’re headed if we don’t change course, a few weeks ago the World Bank – hardly a leftist organization – warned that unless we rein in greenhouse gas emissions quickly, climate change will drive 100 million people into extreme poverty – extreme poverty – within the next 15 years. Just think about the human suffering and social upheaval that this would engender worldwide.

We know we can do better than that. And we refuse to stand idly by and to let business as usual continue to destroy human communities and unravel the web of life.

Photo c) Robert A. Jonas
Photo c) Robert A. Jonas

So tonight we join with people around the world to pray for a climate deal in Paris that is ambitious, one that finally gets the world on track to stabilize and lower its carbon emissions.

We also hope for a deal that is fair, one that protects the most vulnerable and low-income populations from the most devastating effects of climate change.

But you know what? This is not just about Paris and it’s not just about tonight. The agreement that comes out of Paris is not going to be enough, by itself, to keep the world below a 2 degree centigrade rise in temperature above preindustrial levels, which we need in order to avert catastrophe.

That’s where you and I come in. Whatever happens in Paris, we’re here for the long haul. We’re not going away. We’re going to keep fighting for a future that runs on clean energy like sun and wind. We’re going to keep fighting for a society and an economy that leave no one out. We’re going to keep building political will and moral pressure until we get this right. As Pope Francis reminded us in his encyclical, the cry of the Earth is intimately connected with the cry of the poor. We hear that cry. We share that cry. And we intend to answer it, by divestment and direct action, by voting and lobbying, by making personal changes in our lifestyle and, perhaps, by engaging in civil disobedience.

A new world is on the horizon, a world that is safe, just and sustainable. We intend to act like midwives, helping that new world to be born. We pray tonight for the climate talks, but those talks are just the beginning. Those talks are just the start.

Photo c) Robert A. Jonas
Photo c) Robert A. Jonas