climate change

Sermon for the Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 24A), October 18, 2014. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. James Episcopal Church, Greenfield, MA Exodus 33:12-23 Psalm 99 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15-22

Show me your glory

It is a pleasure to be with you this morning, and I’d like to thank Heather, your priest, for inviting me to preach and worship here at St. James. I serve the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, and, as you know, during October and November this year, our diocese is celebrating its first-ever Season of Creation. Across the diocese we are reflecting on the preciousness and sacredness of the natural world, and God’s urgent call to protect the Earth and its creatures. I’m delighted that the sequence of readings from Exodus gives us today’s passage about Moses, who turns to God and prays, “Show me your glory” (Exodus 33:18).

We know something about that glory, don’t we? This very week we have seen God’s glory shining in the sight of orange and yellow leaves standing out against a clear blue sky, and – if we’ve been lucky and the timing has been just right – we have felt God’s glory in the wind that makes the leaves whirl and tumble all around us. This week God’s glory was revealed to me in a vivid sunset that played out for a good half-hour with all the drama and details of a symphony. This happens from time to time around here. I live in Northampton, and in the late afternoon when I’m heading west on the Coolidge Bridge, there are times near sunset when I think that we should all just pull over, get out of our cars, and stop to gaze, praising God and rejoicing. I know this would create a traffic jam and so far I have resisted the impulse. But you know what I’m talking about – those moments when something like scales suddenly fall from our eyes, and we perceive the beauty and splendor of the living world around us. We stop in our tracks, overcome by a sense of wonder and awe. “Show me your glory,” Moses prayed to God, and God granted his request. Because seeing the divine presence in all its fullness would be more than mortal eyes could bear (Exodus 33:20), God sheltered Moses in the cleft of a rock and tenderly covered Moses with his hand, so that as God’s glory passed by, Moses could see only what Scripture calls God’s “back” (Exodus 33:23). It is only after death that we will see God’s glory directly – as Paul writes in his First Letter to the Corinthians, “Now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:12). Until the day comes when we see God face to face, here on earth God grants us glimpses of divine glory, brief and holy glimpses that come to us when our eyes are opened, when, as poet William Blake puts it, “the doors of perception” are cleansed, and “everything appears… as it is, Infinite.” Nature is one of the primary places we perceive God’s glory. In fact, Christian tradition speaks of two “books” that reveal God – the book of Scripture and the book of Nature. As Martin Luther so wonderfully puts it, “God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and the flowers and the clouds and stars.” The opening pages of the Bible tell us that God created the world, took a look around, and was filled with delight. “God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The web of life – what scientists call the biosphere – is radiant with God’s presence. The psalmist proclaims, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows [God’s] handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Meadows and rivers, seeds and soil, animals, air and sea ultimately belong to God, not to human beings, for, as we also hear in the psalms, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1). Moses is a fine companion to keep beside us during this Season of Creation, for he was a man of deep prayer who spent much of his life outdoors and experienced there what theologian Rudolf Otto calls the “awesome and rapturous mystery” of God (mysterium tremendum et fascinans). Just think of Moses walking repeatedly up the mountain to commune with God, or of his vision, early on, of the ever-burning bush that conveyed God’s voice and presence. Most of us don’t live like that. Most of us don’t spend much prayerful, conscious time outside. I’ve heard that the average North American spends 4% of a typical day outdoors, including time spent in a car. What’s more, many of us work and play in ways that are mental, and we get absorbed in the “virtual reality” of the TV or smart phone or computer screen. When we lose touch with nature, it is easy to think of nature as “out there” and distant, to be ignored and taken for granted, or to be dominated and used up. And when we lose touch with nature, we lose touch with God. I invite us, this Creation Season, to do what Moses did: to take time for solitary prayer and silence, and to look for God’s glory in the natural world. For a while now – and I hope to keep this up until the weather gets too cold – I’ve been going outside first thing in the morning to walk barefoot and to put my body in direct contact with the body of the Earth. We live in a noisy world, a world of bustle, frenzy, and haste. I know that only if I spend regular time alone and in silence, as Moses did, will I come to see a bush that is aflame with God – in fact, come to see that every bush is lit up with God’s radiance. A quiet mind is a spacious mind, a mind that begins to perceive what we might call the hidden vastness or hidden depths of things. The change of consciousness that Moses repeatedly experienced, that “cleansing of the doors of perception,” is available to everyone who takes time to pray in silence and who learns some practices for quieting the mind and paying attention. It seems to me that one of the most essential tasks of our time is to move from a spirituality of alienation from the natural world to one of intimacy with all creation. Being attentive in nature with eyes and ears of love is a practice that can open our eyes to God’s glory. I take Moses as a spiritual guide, and I take him as a guide to activism, too. For what happens when he sees the burning bush? What happens when he sees the divine Presence shining out toward him and hears God addressing him intimately by name? What happens next is that he hears God calling him to become not just a mystic, but also a prophet, a healer and liberator. God calls him to confront the Pharaoh and to set the slaves free. Moses discovers – as we do, too – that God invites us into an interior, intimate, and sometimes ecstatic encounter with God in prayer, and then God sends us out into the world to engage in the struggle for justice, healing, and liberation. God’s Spirit is like a flow of air that moves through our body as we breathe: we breathe God in, and we discover God in our depths; we breathe God out, and we are sent out to heal, repair, and restore the world. As one of the Desert Fathers used to say, “Always breathe Christ.” Contemplation and action become the rhythm of our lives, like breathing in and breathing out. God’s Creation has never needed our help and healing more than it does today. The web of life is unraveling around us. Climate change caused by human activity is already having drastic and far-reaching effects around the world. In only two centuries – just a blink in geologic time – human beings have pumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher today than they’ve been for millions of years. I heard a climate scientist remark, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.” Burning fossil fuels, such as coal, gas, and oil, at present rates could raise worldwide average temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century, which would make the world extremely difficult for humans and other creatures to inhabit. Already our planet is changing before our eyes: oceans are heating up and becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide that cars and power plants release; 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 are intensifying in others. Last spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” This week the Pentagon released a report asserting decisively that climate change poses “an immediate risk to national security” and is a so-called “threat multiplier,” increasing the likelihood of terrorism, infectious disease, global poverty and food shortages.” We live in an unprecedented time in human history, a time when our choices really matter and what we do, or don’t do, makes all the difference to what kind of world we leave our children and our children’s children. What can we do? Well, we can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and turn down the heat. I know that this parish includes ardent recyclers and composters, and that you’ve talked about planting a community garden. I salute you for that, and I’d be glad to support you in any way I can. If you are interested in joining a network of people in the diocese who care about Creation, I hope you will give me your name and contact information. As individuals we can and should do everything we can to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale, too. We need to join with other people and make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. Like Moses, we, too, need to stand up to the political and corporate powers-that-be and to push our country to make a swift transition to clean, safe, renewable sources of energy like sun and wind. We need to quit our addiction to fossil fuels and to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to a level that allows life as it has evolved to continue on this planet. We are blessed, right here in the Pioneer Valley, to have a strong, local, grassroots climate action group, which is called Climate Action Now. I hope you will sign up for weekly emails and read the news and connect. I am also happy to say that tomorrow night you can join me, Bishop Doug Fisher, and the Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Jim Munroe (whom many of you know), along with a crowd of other folks from the diocese who will be marching to Springfield’s City Hall to support a resolution proposing a climate action plan for the city. Springfield is the largest city in Massachusetts without a climate action plan, its residents suffer severely from asthma and other respiratory diseases caused by dirty air, and tomorrow faith communities from within and beyond Springfield will show their support for a resolution to develop a climate action plan that City Council members will be discussing that night. A range of folks in Springfield – including poor Hispanic, African-American and immigrant communities – is joining together in an extraordinary coalition to ask the city to prepare for and to slow down climate change. All the things they are asking for – such as more bike paths, better public transportation, better insulated buildings, and more trees and community gardens – will contribute to public health and safety as well as to a healthier and more stable environment. When climate justice meets social justice, I am truly thankful. If you come, please bring your church banner. This is a Jesus moment, a moment when God is making all things new. “Show me your glory,” Moses prays, and where do we see God’s glory? In the beauty and intricate complexity of nature, in every gesture of forgiveness and reconciliation, in every word of kindness, in every face that shines with love, in every mind and hand and heart that is devoted to creating a better world. The melting ice in West Antarctica may be unstoppable, but so, too, is the divine love that made us, that sustains us, and that calls us to stand up for life. Breathing in, we pray and give thanks. Breathing out, we serve.  Jesus is with us, offering us here at this table the nourishing gift of his presence and power, and then he will send us out to love and to serve in his name. I wish you a blessed Season of Creation through the end of November, and also in all the days to come.  

A spider is basking on the bathtub’s white porcelain. Once upon a time I might have considered the malicious fun of surprising it with a spray of hot water from the shower and watching it slide down the drain. Today I gently cup the spider in an empty glass and walk it outside for release in the yard. Be well, Spider. You are not so different from me: you, too, want to live. In your own way, you, too, want to be happy and at peace.

Protecting one tiny creature – a gesture that a while back might have seemed merely sentimental – takes on new meaning today. A report just released by the World Wildlife Fund reveals that more than half the world’s population of mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish has disappeared since 1970. Jon Hoekstra, chief scientist at WWF, summarizes the heart-breaking news: “39 percent of terrestrial wildlife gone, 39 percent of marine wildlife gone, 76 percent of freshwater wildlife gone — all in the past 40 years.”

Pileated woodpecker
Pileated woodpecker in Ashfield, MA, photo c) Robert A. Jonas

Much more than an occasional spider is vanishing. Because of humanity’s accidental or malicious impact on other creatures worldwide, great numbers of creatures are being lost, as are entire species. I imagine St. Francis of Assisi – the man who spoke of Brother Sun and Sister Moon – grieving the loss of kin, as members of his family disappear. I also imagine him looking around to see what he can do – what alliances he can forge, what actions he can take to heal the Earth community, human and non-human alike.

A place to begin is to save the individual creature that falls, hapless, into our hands. Then we look around to see what else we can do – maybe plant native landscapes and protect the habitats that shelter bees, birds, and butterflies; eat lower on the food chain; support organic agriculture; protect farmland and open space; and stringently reduce our use of fossil fuels.

This morning a friend who lives in Northampton and who, like me, routinely drives 8 miles to Amherst and back told me that the next time she heads over there, she plans to take the bus. She has never taken that bus before, but after the rousing People’s Climate March in New York City, she knows afresh that she wants to do her part. Using public transportation rather than driving a car is one way we can help. I wonder how much more quickly the climate movement would grow if we who have financial resources encouraged each other to break our habit of over-consumption and waste, and turned our minds and hearts to protecting the web of life that is unraveling around us. There is so much worth fighting for and so much left to save.

Pacific walrus looking for places to rest in the absence of sea ice are coming to shore in record numbers. Source: AP Photo/NOAA, Corey Accardo
Pacific walrus looking for places to rest in the absence of sea ice are coming to shore in record numbers. Source: AP Photo/NOAA, Corey Accardo

The Feast Day of St. Francis on October 4 marks the beginning of the first-ever Creation Season in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts. For the next 7 weeks, until the last Sunday of the church year (November 23), congregations will explore four ways to celebrate and safeguard the gift of God’s creation: Pray. Learn. Act. Advocate (a Web page offers suggestions and resources for each category). I hope to hear stories of breakthrough and experiment.

If you are lucky enough to read this post in time and to live near central Massachusetts, you can celebrate St. Francis Day on October 4 at Agape Community in Ware from 10am – 4pm, at a gathering entitled, “A Vital Conversation: Integrating Ecology, Justice, and Peace,” with two gifted leaders of the religious environmental movement, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim. For information about the event, visit here or email: peace@agapecommunity.org (phone: 413-967-9369).

To honor St. Francis, you can also study a free online resource, “The Alternative Way of Francis of Assisi,” courtesy of Fr. Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation, which writes: “Learn more about the Franciscan way of simplicity, compassion, and justice, from its historical roots to modern implications. Browse a wide variety of textual and media-rich perspectives at your own pace. Begin at any time and return as often as you like. No registration needed.” Visit here.

Are you looking for another way to celebrate St. Francis, who recognized that all creatures were members of one family? Here is a possibility: embrace the whole human family. Jesus loved not only the lilies of the field and the sparrows in the air; he also loved the outcast and the poor. Caring about the health and well-being of the natural environment involves caring about justice for the human poor. Stabilizing the climate and building a sustainable future is inextricably connected with working for social and economic justice.

I give thanks for the strong coalition just now springing up within and around Springfield, the hardscrabble city that is third largest in Massachusetts. Over the past year, Arise for Social Justice, supported by Climate Action NOW, has been working to develop a climate change action plan for the city, which is the biggest urban polluter in the Pioneer Valley. The neighborhoods most affected by climate change – poor, Black and Latino – are forming a new coalition, which includes NEON from the North End, to advance their need to decrease air pollution and thereby to prevent asthma, emphysema and heart disease. More than one of every five children in Springfield is afflicted with asthma, a rate that is twice the average across the state.

What do the under-served populations of Springfield want in a climate change action plan? They want more public transportation, more bicycle lanes and bicycle racks, more trees, parks, and community gardens, brighter and more efficient lights on public streets, more recycling, increased composting, and a stronger bottle bill, and “green” jobs for city residents. The people’s needs for good food, clean air and water, public health and public safety line up with what the Earth needs, too.

On Monday, October 20, the Springfield City Council will consider a resolution that demands a Springfield People’s Climate Action Plan, which includes a provision for a staff-person to implement it. That night we will hold a march that begins at 5:00 p.m. from two separate locations: Northgate Plaza (1985 Main Street, which has plenty of parking) and Arise for Social Justice (467 State Street). The two groups will start walking and will meet on Main Street in downtown Springfield. United, we will walk to the steps of City Hall for a speak-out at 6:00 p.m., and then pack the Council meeting to share our passion for a cleaner Springfield.

Will your organization become a sponsor of the march? To become a sponsor, you agree to publicize the march among your membership, to participate in the march, and to allow your name to be included in our publicity. To become a sponsor of the March for a People’s Climate Action Plan for Springfield, please give your name, email address, and organization’s name to Susan Theberge (susantheberge (at) comcast.net).

As I experience it, the Spirit of St. Francis – the Spirit of Jesus – is with us in our struggle to safeguard life as it as evolved on this planet. What shall we do with St. Francis? Pray, learn, act, and advocate. Save some wildlife, and hit the streets.

Sermon for the Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21A), September 28, 2014 Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at Christ Episcopal Church, Rochdale, MA Exodus 17:1-7 Psalm 78-1-4, 12-16 Philippians 2:1-13 Matthew 21:23-32

Speaking and living our “Yes”

It is a pleasure to be with you this morning, and I’d like to thank Molly, your rector, for inviting me. I serve the churches in this diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, and I am just back from last Sunday’s exhilarating experience of walking through New York City in the People’s Climate March alongside literally 10,000 people of faith. As you probably heard, the march drew a record 400,000 people from all over the country to express their concern about climate change.

I’d like to speak about why Christians care so much about protecting the world that God entrusted to our care, and we have a wonderful parable to guide our thoughts, the parable of the two sons, which is found only in the Gospel of Matthew. We just heard the story: a father with two sons asks the first son to go work in the vineyard, and the boy replies, “Nope, no thanks. Not interested.” But sometime later he changes his mind, heads to the vineyard and gets to work. The father asks the second son to work in the vineyard, and the boy says, “I go” (Matthew 21:30). But he doesn’t go; he stays put. The question is: which of the two sons did the will of his father? The answer, of course, is the first son, the one who, despite his initial no, actually carried out his father’s request, not the son who said yes, but did nothing. What counts in the end is what we do, not what we say we will do. I confess that I smiled when I realized that this was one of today’s readings, for this parable means something to me personally. My son is now 24, but when he was a kid, I remember asking him one day to turn off the TV and go clean his room. “Sure, Mom,” he said, “I’m on it.” But he kept sitting on the couch, absorbed in the TV, and didn’t move. I gave him a couple more minutes and asked him again. Again he said yes, just a sec, sure, he’d go, but he kept on staring at the screen. I waited a while longer until finally – exasperated – I decided to tell him the parable of the two sons. Which is better, I asked: to say no but then do what is right, or to say yes and do nothing? With a hangdog look my son went off to clean his room. I was pleased about that, though I can’t say that my irritated lecture deepened his appreciation of either the Bible or Christianity. Still, I think there is something here for all of us to consider: this story invites us to notice the places in our lives where we know what the right thing to do is, but we’re not doing it, the places in our lives where our lips say, “Yes, Lord, I love you, I’ll do what you ask,” but our actions express something else entirely. We all have places in our lives where what we believe and what we do don’t quite line up, places where what we intend to do and plan to do and know is right to do somehow never gets done. We say yes with our lips, but our actions say no. It is a powerful moment, a moment of healing and integration, when our actions finally line up with our values, when we start doing the things that we know are right, when we say yes to God’s will and desire for our lives and then actually follow through. That is one reason why last Sunday I found the People’s Climate March so exhilarating. Here we had people of all the world’s faith traditions – everything from A to Z, Agnostic to Zorastrian, and people of every religion in between – Episcopalians, for sure, but also pagans, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Greek Orthodox, indigenous people, Evangelicals, Buddhists – you name it, the world’s religions were represented – and all of us, with our different rituals and different doctrines and different ways of talking about the Holy, all of us were saying yes: yes, we recognize that the living world of which we are a part is sacred and precious, and we take action today to heal and protect it. As I imagine it, it was as if members of all the world’s religions had in their own way heard God the Father say, “I need you to work in my vineyard; I need you to play your part in the urgent work of healing the Earth that I entrusted to your care,” and last Sunday members of all the religions said yes, and went out to the vineyard and got to work. Values and actions lined up. It was a day for rejoicing. I’ve talked a bit with Molly, and I’ve heard many good things about how here at Christ Church you are already taking action to make care for Creation an important part of your mission and ministry. I’ve heard about your replacing throwaway, disposable cups at coffee hour with cups that can be washed and reused. I’ve heard about your community garden, which is a terrific way to build local resilience and food security. I’ve heard how several years ago you raised thousands of dollars to build a well in Liberia. I want to salute you for efforts like these, because doing our utmost to protect the ongoing web of life on this planet, and caring for the water and soil and air upon which our good health, and all life, depends is central to what it means to be a faithful Christian. In our Creation story at the beginning of Genesis, we meet a God who loves the Creation into being and who takes a look around at what he just made and is filled with delight. “God saw everything that [God] had made, and indeed, it was very good” (Genesis 1:31). The created world, the web of life that scientists call the biosphere, is created by God and reveals God’s glory. As the psalmist puts it, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament shows [God’s] handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). Land and rivers, animals, air and sea ultimately belong to God, not to human beings, for, as we also hear in the psalms, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it” (Psalm 24:1). As humans we are part of the created order, not above it or separated from it, and the Book of Genesis tells us that the very first task that God gave to human beings was to take good care of the earth (Genesis 2:4b-8, 15).  This is God’s Creation, not ours. We are here to shepherd and protect what is ultimately God’s possession, not ours. Well, we’ve got some hard work ahead of us in that department. Even a quick look at the news reveals how far humanity has fallen away from God’s vision of our species living in a loving relationship with each other, our non-human neighbors, and the rest of the natural world. Because of our burgeoning population, powerful technologies, and ever-expanding appetite for “more,” we’ve reached a point where human activities are unraveling the web of life. My particular concern is how humans have affected the global climate. As no doubt you’ve heard, climate change caused by human activity is already having far-reaching effects on the world’s continents and oceans, and the creatures that inhabit them. In only two centuries, we have pumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher today than they’ve been for millions of years. A while back I heard a climate scientist remark, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.” Burning fossil fuels, such as coal, gas, and oil, at present rates could raise worldwide average temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century, which would make the world extremely difficult for humans and other creatures to inhabit. Already our planet is changing before our eyes: oceans are heating up and becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide released by cars and power plants; 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 are intensifying in others. This past spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” As the environmentalist Bill McKibben has written, “Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.” 1 Given the many pressures on the planet’s web of life, we are now in the midst of Earth’s sixth major extinction event. Maybe half the world’s species could vanish before the century is out. Our planet is 4.5 billion years old and has endured other extinction events, but this is the very first time that an extinction event is being caused by one species: us. We live at an unprecedented moment in human history, a moment when our choices really matter and what we do, or don’t do, makes all the difference to what kind of world we leave our children and our children’s children. What can we do? Well, we can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. We can turn off lights when we leave a room. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation, turn down the heat, and cut back on AC. As individuals we can and should do everything we can to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale, too. We need to join with other people and make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. We need to push our political leaders to get this country and other countries on track to make a swift transition to clean, safe sources of energy like sun and wind. We need to quit our addiction to fossil fuels and bring down the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, which is the uppermost level that many scientists say is safe for life as we know it to continue on this planet. What is the level today? Nearly 400 parts per million – and climbing. So we have work to do. Hope springs up when we take hold of that work and move into action. So I hope you’ll form a “green team” or a Creation Care committee (whatever you want to call it) here at Christ Church, and start to explore what you can accomplish together. I hope that those of you interested in building a network of people in the diocese committed to Creation care will give me your names, so that we can work together and support each other. I hope you’ll read the blog posts on my new Website, Reviving Creation. I hope you’ll take full advantage of our diocese’s first-ever Season of Creation, which begins next Saturday and lasts through the end of November. We are fortunate to have a bishop who recognizes what we Christians must do. I hope you’ll be thoughtful and creative and have some fun as you find ways to line up actions that express your values. The news from scientists is grim. But the good news, as we saw last Sunday, is that people the world over are finally beginning to organize, strategize, and mobilize. And the Gospel good news is that God is with us. God is with us. “God so loved the world” – literally, in Greek, the “cosmos” – “God so loved that cosmos that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16). The melting ice in West Antarctica may be unstoppable, but so is the divine love that made us, that sustains us, and that calls us to stand up for life. Jesus is among us now, offering us here at this table the nourishing gift of his presence and power. There is so much left to save, so much good that we can do, so many ways that we can help to build a better world. Like the two sons in the parable, we have a chance not only to say yes, but also to embody that yes: to go to work in the vineyard and to learn to live more lightly on the earth.  As the poet Wallace Stephens once wrote: After the final no there comes a yes And on that yes the future world depends.   1. Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Book, 2010, p. xiii.
 

I have been speechless for the past three days.

OK, not exactly speechless. I have been immersed in email, so that counts as words.

Episcopal Diocese of WMA at People's Climate March
Some of the Episcopalians from the Diocese of WMA who came to NYC for the People’s Climate March (l. to r.): the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas (Missioner for Creation Care), Maria Dye, Mary McCarthy, Lucy Robinson, Mary Hocken, Jonathan Wright (partially hidden), Suzannah Fabing, Meg Kelsey Wright (partially hidden), Miriam Jenkins, Bob Hawley (partially hidden), Sandy Muspratt, Maryann Dipinto.

But after the weekend’s “Religions for the Earth” conference in New York City, which brought together more than 200 religious and spiritual leaders from around the world to voice our concerns and commitments regarding climate change; after the conference’s powerful multi-faith service at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine; after the People’s Climate March on Sunday, which surpassed all expectations when 400,000 people surged through the streets of Manhattan; and after Flood Wall Street the next day, in which perhaps 2,000 demonstrators poured into the financial district and more than 100 people were arrested in a peaceful, passionate uprising to protest carbon pollution and carbon profits – after participating in all these events, any one of which would be enough to change a life, something deep within me fell silent. At a soul level, I had nothing to say. I wanted only to marvel in silence.

Years ago someone told me that when Leo Tolstoy saw the ocean for the first time, all this man of words could say was: “It’s big.”

I’m no Leo Tolstoy, but I understand such reticence. When for the first time you see something as deep, wide, and alive as an ocean, words fail. You want to gaze in silence. You want to bow with amazement and respect.

Here’s what I can say, three days after coming home: I saw an ocean in New York.

It was deep: deep in prayer. Deep in grief, conviction, and resolve.

I heard an indigenous woman keen a lullaby to the children of the future who may never be born.

I heard an elder from Greenland tell a hushed crowd at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine that when he was a child, the ice was 5 kilometers thick. Sixty-seven years later, the ice is 2.5 kilometers thick. “I carry the wisdom of the ice,” he told us. “It is too late. The big ice is going away. Our only hope is that you begin to use your vast knowledge wisely. We must melt the ice in the heart of man.” It was time now, he said, to call upon the ancestors. He pulled out two thin circular drums, placed them against his cheeks like a megaphone, and began to wail. His long, deep call echoed through time and filled every space. From where I was sitting, his face was hidden. He was nameless, ego-less, as anonymous as the psalmist who cries, “Out of the depths have I called to you, O LORD” (Psalm 130). His ardent plea carried the universal prayer of every heart that longs for life as we know it to continue on this earth. “Lord, have mercy,” I prayed in union with his plea. “O God, make speed to save us. O Lord, make haste to help us.”

I heard the chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change appeal to the world’s religions to speak boldly about the most urgent moral issue of our time. “This power has to be a spiritual power. This has to be an ethical force.”

I heard a man who marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960’s and who spent his long life dedicated to the struggle for justice tell a group of Christians that the time has come for everyone who cares about stabilizing the climate and building a livable future to “Organize. Strategize. Mobilize.” At the Cathedral service, I heard his resonant declaration: “The civil rights movement and the human rights movement have now joined the climate movement. We are the rock of this movement. We will never stand down.”

It was wide: brimming in size and wildly diverse.

Four hundred buses headed to New York from all over the country, including more than 50 buses from my home state, Massachusetts, and a bus of Episcopalians from western Massachusetts and Connecticut who celebrated Holy Communion along the way (thank you, the Rev. Stephanie Johnson, for helping me organize that bus!). Also arriving in New York were people from the world’s front-line communities, the regions suffering most from the initial effects of climate change, among them Micronesia, Guatemala, India, New Zealand, and the Philippines. So many people filled the streets of Manhattan that the preliminary count of 310,000 marchers had to be revised upward, to 400,000 – certainly the largest climate march ever. Over the same weekend, more than 2,800 solidarity events were held in over 160 countries around the world. (To view some of those beautiful march pictures, click here.)

It wasn’t just the numbers that took my breath away – it was also the diversity. There were scientists and students, anti-fracking and anti-war groups, indigenous people and urbanites, grandmothers and children, medical doctors and social justice activists, celebrities and people from historically under-served communities – waves of people from every walk of life, all of us united in the urgent call to governments and the U.N. to take strong action for climate justice and sustainability.

The signs that people carried were as diverse as the people carrying them: funny and poignant, angry, sad, and quirky. At least two writers created poetry from the signs’ messages, including Terry Tempest Williams (The Orion Blog: River Walkers) and a local friend, Nick Grabbe (Adventures in the Good Life: Climate Change Kills Kittens).

About 10,000 people marched in our interfaith contingent. So many different faith groups were represented that a thoughtful volunteer created 38 small flags for each group to carry, alphabetized from A-Z (Agnostic to Zoroastrian). All of us marched together: Greek Orthodox and Pagan, Jew and Muslim, Pentecostal and Sikh, Buddhist and Mennonite. A handmade Noah’s ark was stationed alongside an inflated replica of a mosque. (For a photographic essay about the Ark’s journey through the streets, visit “A priest, a rabbi, an imam, and a unicorn got on an Ark to save our planet”).

It was alive: filled with energy and generating new possibilities.

The march was timed to coincide with the U.N. climate summit in New York, and a host of significant events rose up alongside, like mighty ocean waves.

Flood Wall Street protesters gather at Battery Park
Flood Wall Street protesters gather at Battery Park before marching to the financial district

The protesters and the acts of non-violent civil disobedience on Wall Street gave voice this week to everyone who wants a fossil-free economy and an economic system that heals the chasm between rich and poor.

The Rockefeller family, whose legendary wealth flowed from oil, announced its decision to divest its $860 million philanthropic fund from fossil fuels.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu and more than 80 of the world’s leading theologians, ethicists and religious leaders released a statement supporting fossil fuel divestment and clean energy reinvestment by faith communities. “To serve as custodians of creation is not an empty title,” Tutu said in a video released this week. “It requires that we act, and with all the urgency this dire situation demands.”

A Pastoral Message on Climate Change was issued this week by the heads of the Anglican Church of Canada, The Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada. Worth reading carefully, the statement declares: “God, who made the creation and made it good, has not abandoned it. Daily the Spirit continues to renew the face of the earth. All who care for the earth and work for the restoration of its vitality can be confident that they are not pursuing a lost cause. We serve in concert with God’s own creative and renewing power.”

Meanwhile, there are things that all of us can do right away. I invite you to add your voice to a new initiative, OurVoices.net, by which millions of people around the world can register their commitment to pray for the success of the 2015 U.N. climate talks in Paris. The U.N. climate leader, Christiana Figueres, is asking for everyone’s spiritual and moral support of this initiative.

Those of us who live in western Massachusetts have an opportunity on Monday evening, October 20, to march to the steps of City Hall in downtown Springfield and to urge City Councilors to pass a resolution calling on the city to create a strong climate action plan (for updates, please check Climate Action Now).

Faced with a crisis that threatens all living beings, human and non-human alike, will humanity unite at last to create God’s dream of Shalom and to form the beloved Earth Community? Will we respond at last to the call to organize, strategize, and mobilize?

I take heart from the prophet Isaiah, who perceives God as coming to us from the future, making all things new. God speaks through Isaiah, saying: “Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old. I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?” (Isaiah 43:18-19).

The planet is rapidly warming. Species are going extinct. Sea levels are rising. But another kind of ocean is rising, too: an ocean of love and concern, an ocean of commitment and resolve that is bringing together all kinds of people who are willing to engage in the struggle for a just and habitable world.

Al Gore, one of the Cathedral speakers, quoted the Wallace Stevens poem that begins:

After the final no there comes a yes
And on that yes the future world depends.

I will remember September 21, 2014, as a day when humanity said Yes. In the days ahead we will have plenty of opportunities to repeat that Yes, again and again, with our lips and in our lives.

We have a long struggle ahead of us. I hope that all of us will discover what it’s like to rise up like an ocean, deep and wide and alive.

To view some of the plenary sessions and workshops from the conference “Religions for the Earth,”held at Union Theological Seminary from Sept. 19-21, 2014, and sponsored by Union Theological Seminary, the World Council of Churches, and several other major religious organizations, go here.

To view the multi-faith service held on Sept. 21, 2104, at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, which served as the finale of the “Religions for the Earth” conference, go here.

At the service, religious and spiritual leaders from around the world joined with activists, artists, scientists, community leaders, and government officials in a ritual of covenant and commission to protect and care for the Earth. Speakers included Former Vice President Al Gore, Rev. Jim Wallis, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Dr. Vandana Shiva, Rabbi Ellen Bernstein, and more.

The man who prayed to the ancestors is Uncle Angaangaq Angakhorsuaq, Founder, IceWisdom International/Eskimo-Kalaallit Elder. The man dedicated to civil and human rights is the Rev. Dr. Gerald Durley, Pastor Emeritus, Providence Missionary Baptist Church.

 

Divestment comes in many forms.

In the hectic last days before the People’s Climate March in New York City, I finally put everything down. I abandon email. I relinquish the phone and turn off the computer. I drop my tasks and leave behind the scribbled lists of Things To Do that are piling up on my desk.

I step outside. Ah! Fresh air!

I inhale a deep breath, let it go, and look around. On this late summer day, the field behind our home in the Berkshire foothills is aglow with asters and goldenrod. Jewelweed crowds the edges of the beaver pond. The blackberries are long gone, but I savor a last handful of blueberries. While exploring the edges of the pond, I spot the tracks of a blue heron on a flat stone beneath the water’s surface. Are those otter prints that are heading the other way?

Heron & Otter Tracks
Heron and otter tracks, Ashfield, 2014 c) Robert A Jonas

For a long time I stand barefoot on a cold patch of moss beneath a hemlock tree, noticing the rise and fall of my breath and listening attentively to the soft gurgle of a stream, the occasional chatter of a chickadee, and the sharp cry of a hawk overhead. Most of the songbirds have left by now, and the tender green ferns that I watched unfurl this spring have turned brown. The fields and woods of New England are divesting themselves of summer’s glory as the season turns toward fall.

Divestment is in the news these days. I rejoiced last week when the Trustees of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Massachusetts announced their decision to reduce investment in companies that produce fossil fuels and to redirect funds to companies that produce renewable energy. The Trustees’ decision was the result of a thoughtful, prayerful, and sometimes difficult 18-month process of research and discussion that was carried out with the full support of the bishop, the Rt. Rev. Douglas Fisher. The Diocese of Western Massachusetts now takes its place in the growing movement of religious groups that have declared their commitment to reduce or eliminate holdings in fossil fuel companies. Along with the World Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the Anglican Church in New Zealand and Polynesia, the Diocese of Massachusetts, and many other religious groups worldwide, the diocese has chosen to align its investments with its mission (for a list of religious and other groups that have announced plans to divest, visit GoFossilFree.org.

Hawk over big pond, Ashfield
Hawk over big pond, Ashfield c) Robert A. Jonas

Scientists report that this past August was the hottest month yet since record-keeping began. If we intend to avert climate catastrophe and to build a sustainable, just, and low-carbon future, now is the time to divest from fossil fuels and to re-invest those funds in clean, safe, renewable energy. As the resolution explains in its opening paragraph, “Scripture tells us that all the world is God’s precious creation, and our place within it is to respect and care for its health. We therefore have a spiritual and moral obligation not to profit from damage inflicted on God’s creation by the production and use of fuels that hurt the environment, and a corresponding obligation to seek out and invest in ways to promote its healing and health.” (Read the full text of the resolution here.)

I just discovered a Website that provides both the rationale and the resources for individuals and foundations to divest from fossil fuels and invest in climate solutions. Divest-Invest provides a strategy by which both individual donors and philanthropic foundations can break the grip of the fossil fuel industry on public policy and model the energy transition that societies worldwide need to make.

Divesting and re-investing create a rhythm that sustains life. In all kinds of ways, we let go and we take hold. We release and we welcome. We breathe out and we breathe in. The question is when and in what to divest, and when and in what to re-invest. What do we need to relinquish in order to step into fullness of life? What do we need to take hold of, to take up or re-claim, in order for life to flourish?

As I envision it, the People’s Climate March that so many of us will join on September 21, will not only be the largest and most diverse climate march ever held – it will also be a shared act of divestment and re-investment.

We will divest from the routine of an ordinary day, divest from inertia, divest from sitting on the sidelines and waiting for someone else to speak up.

We will divest from helplessness and isolation, from cynicism, resignation, and solitary hand-wringing.

We will invest in the possibility that a strong, diverse grassroots movement can build moral, political, and spiritual momentum for a strong U.N. treaty that actually reduces fossil fuel emissions and protects the poor and the most vulnerable.

We will invest in the possibility that we can safeguard life as it has evolved on this planet.

We will invest in our renewed commitment, as individuals and as a society, to make the changes that are necessary to sustain the integrity of the biosphere.

We will invest in our future and our planet’s future.

We will invest in hope.

To watch the newly released film, Disruption, which takes a look at the consequences of inaction on climate and makes a compelling call for bold collective action, click here.

Ultimately, the only clean, safe, renewable energy that can sustain human beings is the power of love. This weekend I will travel to New York and join the People’s Climate March for all kinds of personal reasons – because I love my son, because I love my grandchildren, because I love the holy Mystery that creates and sustains life. As I walk through the streets of New York, I will carry in my heart all the creatures whose presence bless my life on this late-summer day: jewelweed and hemlock tree; otter, hawk, and blue heron. I will give thanks for the divine Breath that breathes us out and breathes us in, and bids us to take a stand for life.

To change everything we need everyone

 

On a sunny, late summer morning, a brisk wind blew across the waters of Mount Hope Bay. It blew against the two broad towers of the Brayton Point power plant, which squat on the bay’s west side. It blew through the streets of Fall River, an old mill city on the east side of the bay. Like the creative, Spirit-filled wind that swept over the face of the deep at the beginning of time, like the breath that God blew into the nostrils of the first human beings to give them life, like the healing and liberating spirit that Jesus breathed into his startled, grateful friends – on a sunny, late summer morning in 2014, a wind blew across Mount Hope Bay and made its secret way into Fall River’s Bristol County Courthouse. It breezed past the security guards, swept up the stairs, and slipped soundlessly into a fifth-floor courtroom.

I didn’t notice that wind at first. After all, I was packed tightly into a seat at the back, squashed hip-to-hip, thigh-to-thigh with an overflow crowd of clergy and other people of faith. We had come to support Jay O’Hara and Ken Ward as they stood trial for using a small lobster boat to block the shipment of 40,000 tons of coal to the Brayton Point power plant, the largest coal plant in the state. There wasn’t any breeze to speak of in the courtroom, for the air was thick with suspense and uncertainty.

We stood when the judge entered the room; we listened as the district attorney and the defense attorney took turns speaking; we watched the backs of Jay and Ken, willing them strength, praying for their protection and freedom. And then the air began to move. An instruction from the judge was being repeated in whispers around the room: No clapping or cheering. No clapping or cheering.

“How about booing and hissing?” I murmured wryly in the ear of my friend Fred Small, who was sitting beside me. I hardly dared to hope.

But to our amazement, the district attorney was explaining that they had reached an agreement: the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was reducing the criminal charges against the two defendants to civil infractions, and the two men would simply pay restitution of $2,000 apiece to the City of Somerset. That was it.

“This ends the matter, as far as Bristol County is concerned.”

Outside the Fall River Justice Center
The defense attorney speaks after the trial, with (l. to r.) Jay O’Hara, Fred Small (partially blocked), Tim DeChristopher, Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, Jim Antal (partially blocked), Marla Marcum (partially blocked), and Ken Ward. Jay and Ken hold a photo of their lobster boat blocking the Energy Enterprise. c) Peter Bowden

As directed, we refrained from cheering or applause, but a lively wind blew through the room and drew us outside. We gathered as a crowd in front of the courthouse, exultant and marveling. Jay, who is a Quaker, explained to the TV cameras and radio crew that the climate crisis demands action, and that we must immediately stop burning coal. He described the moment as “bittersweet,” for he had wanted Bill McKibben and NASA’s James Hansen to mount their “necessity defense” and to put climate change on trial. A reporter asked: Are you satisfied that your action reached enough people? Sometimes, Jay quietly replied, there are actions we need to take, even if no one is looking. What will you do next? Another reporter asked. Sail down the Atlantic coast, he replied, to join the People’s Climate March in New York City.

Ken added a few fierce words of his own: the West Antarctic ice sheet is melting irreversibly. We need not just a handful of people blockading the delivery of coal, but everyone’s action, everyone’s help.

I felt the Spirit in their moral conviction and clarity: there comes a time when business as usual must give way to a more life-giving path. If business as usual is taking down life on this planet, then business as usual must be stopped. Business as usual must be challenged and transformed, even if doing so violates the law of the land. Protests and acts of non-violent civil disobedience may be essential to creating a path forward.

But the Spirit was not done with us yet. For here was District Attorney Sam Sutter, standing with us on the plaza, beginning to speak.  Climate change, he told the reporters and the crowd, was “one of the greatest crises our planet has ever faced. In my humble opinion, the political leadership on this issue has been sorely lacking.”

District Attorney Sam Sutter holds up Bill McKibben's article in Rolling Stone after dropping criminal charges for Ken Ward and Jay O'Hara, who used a little white lobster boat to blockade 40,000 tons of coal last spring.
District Attorney Sam Sutter holds up Bill McKibben’s article in Rolling Stone after dropping criminal charges for Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara, who used a little white lobster boat to blockade 40,000 tons of coal last spring.

The DA understood the position of the defendants.  To emphasize his point, he waved in the air a copy of Bill McKibben’s recent article in Rolling Stone, “A Call to Arms”.  He announced that he agreed with McKibben and that he was answering the call; he, too, was coming to the march in Manhattan on September 21.

I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who felt it: the wind was blowing. And everyone clapped and cheered.

The reporters were quick to pepper him with questions: Was the District Attorney inviting other people to blockade shipments of coal? Was he encouraging other acts of civil disobedience to protest climate change? No, the DA replied; every case had to be taken separately and addressed one by one. But in this case, he said, the decision was just. This is what Bristol County stood for.

I don’t know what historians or legal scholars will make of this moment, but on that sunny, late summer morning at Fall River Justice Center, it seemed to me that, when even the people who enforce the law recognize the justice of breaking the law, then surely it’s time to change our laws. If burning fossil fuels is laying waste to the land, causing flooding, drought, and severe storms, then we must challenge the law of the land. We can no longer allow fossil fuels to be relentlessly and ceaselessly extracted, mined, and burned, even if the law allows it. The DA of Bristol County took a brave step in making that clear. In his own way, he seemed to be following in the footsteps of Jay O’Hara and Ken Ward. I wonder how many other ordinary citizens will be inspired to join them, breaking laws that perpetuate injustice and lobbying for laws that create a sustainable, just, and low-carbon future.

When I left Fall River, I drove over the bridge that rises beside Mount Hope Bay. Glancing across that vast expanse of water, I could see that the wind was blowing.

 

NOTE: The Boston Globe wrote a front-page article about the decision, “DA drops charges in case of blocked coal shipment,” on September, 8, 2014.

 

The People’s Climate March is only a few weeks away, and conference calls to organize the event are coming thick and fast. In New York City at 11:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 21, tens of thousands of people – projected estimates run as high as 250,000 – will step out in the largest, most diverse climate march in history. I am told that over 850 businesses and labor unions, faith groups, schools and seminaries, and social justice, environmental and civic organizations have been working together to create this historic event. No single celebrity or entity is behind it – this will be a movement made of many movements, a collective call to action. As far as I can tell, it’s an unprecedented collaboration. I missed the 1963 March on Washington, but I don’t intend to miss this one.

The purpose of the People’s Climate March? To build momentum for a strong international climate treaty. To stand with front-line communities being hit hard by the impacts of climate change. To show world leaders gathered in New York City at a U.N. climate summit that we’re not willing to settle for more inaction.

In short, we hope to create a pivot toward justice and healing.

Speaking by phone with a range of religious leaders has generated a lot of creative thinking. People of different faiths will be marching together, and we’re looking for ways to keep our part of the march prayerful and focused. What shall we sing? How shall we express our deep conviction that Creation is sacred? How shall we particularly honor indigenous peoples whose religious traditions have always been connected with Earth? How shall we call upon Spirit as we walk together in all our diversity to protect life on this planet? What symbols might we carry?

Someone proposed making an Ark. We brainstormed possibilities. Maybe the Ark could be hauled on a flatbed truck that runs on biodiesel. Maybe it could be made of papier-mâché and pulled by volunteers. Maybe Sunday School children could walk alongside, wearing homemade masks of animals. But how would we frame the meaning of the Ark? What would we want it to represent? Rabbi Arthur Waskow, the indomitable prophet and the founder and director of The Shalom Center, offered to give an invocation and to develop something along these lines: “The Ark as an island of safety in a world of danger; the Ark as an act of creativity in a world that is stuck in old habits; the Ark as a community modeling Eco-system Earth.”

The Ark is an ancient symbol of hope: here is where human beings and the rest of the natural world learn to co-exist in harmony. Here is where we find refuge. Here is where bio-diversity is saved for generations to come. In times like these, when climate emissions are sky-rocketing and political will is flagging, when the draft of a major U.N. report warns of “severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts” of climate change in the decades ahead, and when you can sit in stunned silence at your computer and watch a Greenland glacier melt before your eyes, it is good to tap into our inner Noah: to discover the self that is willing to rise up in response to God’s call to preserve life on Earth.

Channeling your inner Noah does not even require an Ark – sometimes a lobster boat will do. On May 15, 2013, Ken Ward and Jay O’Hara used a little white lobster boat to blockade the delivery of 40,000 tons of West Virginia coal to the Brayton Point Power Station, the largest coal plant in New England.  Their action fired up a summer of protests and actions at the Brayton Point plant, and the owners announced last fall that the plant will shut down in 2017.

Ken Ward (left) and Jay O’Hara on the boat they used to block the delivery of 40,000 tons of coal to a power plant in Somerset. Photo © Ben Thompson
Ken Ward (left) and Jay O’Hara on the boat they used to block the delivery of 40,000 tons of coal to a power plant in Somerset. Photo © Ben Thompson

Meanwhile, Ken and Jay are about to stand trial on September 8 and 9 on charges of disturbing the peace, conspiracy, and motorboat violations. If convicted, they face up to nine months in jail. At the Fall River courthouse they will use a groundbreaking legal approach: they will admit to all the charges, but they will bring to the stand expert witnesses such as Bill McKibben and NASA scientist Jim Hansen.  Ken and Jay will argue that their actions were necessary to defend their lives from the imminent threat of climate change.  The Boston Globe recently featured an article (fancifully entitled, “The Climate Made Me Do It!”) about this historic case, which would be the first time that a climate necessity defense is used in American court.

People of faith will gather at the Fall River courthouse to express their solidarity with these two brave men. Will you join me there on Monday, September 8? For more information and to RSVP, please visit Lobster Boat Blockade.

As for joining the Climate March in New York City on September 21, here comes a last call to buy seats on our bus reserved for Episcopalians in western Massachusetts. More than half the seats have already been sold, so please reserve your seat today.

The bus will leave Springfield, MA at 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, September 21, stop in New Haven to pick up seminary students at Berkeley Divinity School/Yale Divinity School, and arrive in New York in plenty of time for the march. Holy Communion will be celebrated on the bus, so get ready for your first Eucharist on wheels! The Presiding Bishop is recording a homily for the occasion that will be broadcast on the bus. After the march, everyone is invited to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine for a vibrant interfaith service at 6 p.m. The bus will arrive back in Springfield on Sunday night.

The bus trip is being subsidized by the bishops of Province 1 (the Episcopal dioceses of New England), so a round-trip ticket costs only $15, plus a service charge. The Rev. Stephanie M. Johnson, Environmental Missioner for Province 1, will be the celebrant aboard the bus, and I will greet everyone when you arrive in New York.

Please bring a church banner. Clergy, please wear a collar.

Register for the People’s Climate March here.

Reserve a seat on the Episcopal bus and review FAQ here.

(For more transportation options, see below.)

Request a free pass to the 6 p.m. service at St. John the Divine (which will be crowded) here.

Even if you can’t make it to the march, your congregation can support the march in other ways. I know of two Episcopal churches – Church of the Holy Trinity (NY, NY) and Grace Church (Amherst, MA) – whose vestries passed a strong resolution endorsing the March. And congregations everywhere can register to be a Climate March Faith Community. To register as a Climate March Faith Community, go to GreenFaith here, and commit to carrying out four or more of the eight suggested actions. Suggested actions are straightforward: for instance, a congregation can encourage members of the community to join the climate march.  It can offer a sermon about climate change, lift up prayers, or invite march participants to report back on their experience.

The most unusual suggested action is the last one: at 1:00 p.m. on Sunday, September 21, a congregation can “sound off” outdoors in support of climate action for 5 minutes and 50 seconds. Why 5 minutes 50 seconds? Because that’s 350 seconds. In the global atmosphere, the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide, the chief greenhouse gas that causes global warming, is 350 parts per million. Currently we are close to 400.

How do we “sound off”? Churches will ring bells; synagogues will publicly sound a shofar; mosques will offer a public call to prayer; sanghas will ring a meditation gong or bell; Hindu temples will chant a mantra – or your community can carry out an outdoor walking prayer/meditation or design its own outdoor observance. “Sounding off” events will take place at 1 p.m. in a great rolling wave of sound around the world – from Europe and Africa to the U.S. and Asia.

The best part of the story of Noah’s Ark comes at the end. God makes a decisive promise to all of creation, human and non-human alike: “I have set my bow in the clouds,” God says (Genesis 9:13). From now on the rainbow will mark “the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth” (Genesis 9:16). Looking ahead to the climate march, I hold on to that promise.  If there is going to be any kind of flood, let it be a flood of people filling the streets of New York. God has promised to stand with every living creature, and so will we.

In honor of Noah, and just in time for the Climate March, here’s a song to sing to the tune of “Jacob’s Ladder” — with lyrics by the Rev. Fred Small, Senior Minister of First Parish in Cambridge UU, and Co-Chair of Religious Witness for the Earth:

We are saving Noah’s cargo…. (sing 3x, closing with the refrain: Children of the Earth.)

Every creature has its purpose…

Wolves and whales and owls and otters…

Send a dove to find safe harbor…

In the rainbow, see God’s promise….

See you in New York!

 

If you are looking for other ways to get to NYC on Sept. 21 (train, light rail, carpool), stay tuned here, the Pioneer-Valley-focused site for getting to the March.

Also, 350MA.org has organized both September 20 and September 21 buses from cities across Massachusetts, including Amherst and Worcester. To order tickets, visit here.  Sales end Sept. 10.

If you are traveling from Cape Cod, you can find bus seats here.

Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 13A), August 3, 2014. Delivered by the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas at St. John’s Episcopal Church, Williamstown, MA Genesis 32:22-31 Psalm 17:1-7, 16 Romans 9:1-5 Matthew 14:13-21

Feasting on hope

It is a pleasure to be with you on this green, summer morning, and I’d like to thank your rector Peter Elvin for inviting me. I serve the diocese as your Missioner for Creation Care, and today’s Gospel passage provides a wonderful story for us to consider as we reflect on our call to protect the Earth.

Most of us have heard the story before – in fact, many times before – and evidently it was a significant story for the early Church: it’s told more often than any other story in the Gospels. A story of Jesus feeding a crowd of thousands shows up in every one of the four Gospels, and the Gospels of Mark and Matthew even tell the story twice (Mark 6:30-44, Mark 8:1-9; Matthew 14:13-21, Matthew 15:32-39; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-13)! That’s how important this story was to the first Christian communities. The stories vary in their details, but the basic plot-line is the same: a crowd gathers around Jesus in a deserted place. Jesus teaches them and heals them. Hours pass, evening approaches, and by now everyone is very hungry, but there are only a few scraps of food to be found and no grocery store in sight. The disciples are baffled – maybe even desperate. What can they do? All they have rustled up are five loaves and two fish. Yet when these small offerings are placed in Jesus’ hands, he takes them, blesses and shares them, and behold – everyone eats and is satisfied, with baskets of leftovers to spare. This is a story of hopelessness shifting to hope, of scarcity transformed into abundance, of empty places filled to overflowing. Generations of Christians facing hard times – times of poverty or war, of personal loss or societal breakdown – Christians in times like these have clung to this story, for it assured them, as it assures us still, that even if we feel depleted, tired, or afraid, even if our stomachs are growling or our hearts are yearning, even if we’re sitting in a great crowd of people and feeling anxious, helpless, and alone, there is Someone – capital S, a holy Someone – within us and beside us who will meet us where we are and in whose presence we will be filled with hope and new life, even in the midst of suffering and grief. Now is a very good time to find our selves in this story, for the crisis of climate change is leading many of us to feel as if we’re sitting among those hungry, late-afternoon crowds in the Gospel story, out in the middle of nowhere with night coming on; and the hour is late. Just to say the words “climate change” and most of us tighten up; we duck and draw back; we feel a weight on our chest. The reports from scientists are increasingly urgent and grim, and it’s no wonder, when we allow ourselves to pay attention, that we react with a mix of disbelief, sorrow, and fear. Strictly speaking, most of us are probably not climate skeptics: we believe what the scientists are saying. It’s just that the situation is too much to take in – we can’t deal with it, we don’t know how to respond to it or what we can possibly do about it. How do you respond when you hear from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations group, that climate change is already having far-reaching effects on the world’s continents and oceans? In only two centuries, human beings have pumped so much heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air that atmospheric levels of CO2 are higher today than they’ve been for millions of years. Recently I heard a climate scientist remark, “We are breathing from an atmosphere that none of our ancestors would recognize.” Burning fossil fuels, such as coal, oil, and gas, at present rates could raise worldwide average temperatures between 5 and 11 degrees Fahrenheit in this century, which would make the world extremely difficult to inhabit. Already our planet is changing before our eyes: oceans are heating up and becoming more acidic as they absorb some of the carbon dioxide released by cars and power plants; 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 are intensifying in others. You know about that – you’ve been through Hurricane Irene. This spring we learned that the huge West Antarctic ice sheet is starting to collapse and slide into the sea in a way that scientists call “unstoppable.” As the environmentalist Bill McKibben has written, “Our old familiar globe is suddenly melting, drying, acidifying, flooding, and burning in ways that no human has ever seen.”1 Given the many pressures on the planet’s web of life, we are now in the midst of Earth’s sixth major extinction event. Maybe half the world’s species could vanish before the century is out. When we hear things like this, most of us freeze. We shut down. We stop listening. We go into shock, into denial, or into despair. We get paralyzed. Either we tell ourselves that it can’t be that bad, surely this is not going to affect me or my children, surely climate scientists are exaggerating and this is just some awful mistake. Or we slide into hopelessness: it’s too late, we tell ourselves; we’re not experts; we don’t have the skills or knowledge or leverage to turn this around; we can’t make a difference; we’re goners; we’re cooked. Either way, like the crowds in the Gospel story, we sit on the grassy hillside as the hours tick by, unable to move, feeling increasingly anxious and empty. And unlike the crowds in the story, we don’t have any nearby villages to which we can go look for food. We’re out here by ourselves, facing an unprecedented historical situation, in which the whole human enterprise on this planet is at stake. Where will we find the inner food, the inner nourishment to meet this crisis with courage and hope? Today’s Gospel story suggests three ways that Jesus’ presence nourishes and empowers the crowds. First, he loves them. He has, as the Gospel says, “compassion” (Matthew 14:14) for them. Jesus knew in his very bones that he was deeply loved by God. He knew that he was cherished to the core, and he came among us to us to show us what we, too, are cherished. We, too, are the children of God. We, too, are beloved. Whenever we know ourselves as precious – whenever we take in the divine love that is streaming through us in every moment, in the gift of this breath and this heartbeat – whenever a person we care about turns and looks at us with eyes of love – whenever we gather together as a community and tell the sacred stories and share the sacred meal that remind us that God is with us – we touch the divine love that will never let us go. Hope comes back to us when we know that we are loved, for whether or not our efforts are successful, we know they are worthwhile – because we are worthwhile, and because God’s Creation is worthwhile. Jesus’ first gift to the crowds is the gift of love. His second gift is empathy. He shares in our suffering, in our brokenness and fear. At the end of the day in our Gospel story, Jesus was just as hungry as the crowds were – just as tired, just as thirsty. Jesus was fully human and he shared fully in the human condition. When it was hot, he sweated. When he was hungry, he needed to eat. Not only that – in this version of the story, Jesus was also feeling an immediate and very personal sorrow. Right before Jesus fed the five thousand, Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Jesus heard the news that his dear friend John the Baptist had been brutally executed. Out of that well of shock and grief, Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself, presumably to grieve and pray. Only then could he come out of prayer to share the Good News. The God we meet in Jesus is a God who shares our grief. I know that many of us can’t even begin to feel the cascade of losses that has already been initiated by climate change. We may be afraid that sorrow will overwhelm us, and that we will drown in the grief. But unfelt emotions can keep us immobilized, so it is good to know that Jesus is with us in our grief, that Jesus shares it and understands it and can give us a heart to hold it without being overcome by pain. It is good to feel our sorrow about climate change, because tears can water the soul. It is good to feel our anger and protest, because anger can be an energy for life. It is good to invite Jesus into our hopelessness, because in that place of emptiness, impasse, and waiting, God’s hope, not ours, can be born. So Jesus offers us, just as he offered the crowds, the gift of his love and the gift of his empathy. He offers a third gift, too: the capacity to act, the power to make a difference. What we have to contribute may seem very small. I mean, come on – all I’ve got here are five loaves and two fish! I’m not a climate scientist or a politician! I’m just an ordinary citizen with a pile of other responsibilities on my plate! What can one person possibly do? But of course there is plenty that we can do. We can recycle more, drive less, and be sparing in our use of water. Maybe we can eat local, organic foods and support our local farms and land trusts. We can install insulation and cut back on AC. As individuals we can and should do everything we can to reduce our use of fossil fuels, but the scope and speed of the climate crisis require action on a much broader scale, too. We need to join with other people and make it politically possible to do what is scientifically necessary. We need to push our political leaders to get this country and other countries on track to bring down the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million, the uppermost level that many scientists say is safe for life as we know it to continue on this planet. What is the level today? 400 parts per million, and climbing. So we have work to do. Hope arises when we move into action. I like to say that hope is love in action. So if you don’t already have a “green team” or a Creation Care committee (whatever you want to call it) here at St. John’s, I hope you’ll form one and will start to explore what you can accomplish together. I hope that those of you interested in building a network of people in the diocese committed to Creation care will give me your names, so that we can work together and support each other. I hope you’ll read the blog posts on my new Website, Reviving Creation. And I hope that some of you will join me on Sunday, September 21st, when the largest rally in the history of the climate movement will be held in New York City, the People’s Climate March. As Bill McKibben puts it, “If you’re wondering how to react to the devastating news that the Antarctic is melting out of control: New York. If you’re scared like I am by the pictures of the fire and drought across the West: New York. If you’re feeling like it’s time to change the trajectory of this planet: we’ll see you in New York.” The melting ice in West Antarctica may be unstoppable, but so is the love that made us, that sustains us, and that calls us to stand up for life. Jesus is among us now, just as he was among those hungry crowds, offering us here at this table the nourishing gift of his presence and power. There is so much left to save, so much good that we can do, so many ways that we can help to build a better world. I’ll close with the words of Edward Everett Hale: “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do something I can do.” What is Jesus inviting you to do?
  1. Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet, New York: Henry Holt and Company, Times Book, 2010, p. xiii.

“I want to sink back into a certain innocence.”

My friend Ruth is describing what leads her to visit a place of natural beauty and to walk among trees. For the first time in her life she has been doing the kinds of things that social activists do: gather information about an issue, make phone calls, organize meetings, distribute leaflets, hire a lawyer, talk to reporters, voice opposition, articulate a vision. Never before has she been so acutely aware of the need for ordinary citizens to band together and to work for a better future, and never before has she participated in that effort with so much vigor.

Yet she also notices that the more active she becomes, the more she needs the solace of prayer. The more she moves forward to engage with other people in the effort to heal the world, the more she needs to draw back into periods of silence and solitude, of gazing and reflection. What Ruth so wonderfully calls “sinking back into a certain innocence” means being willing to relinquish for a while the impulse to figure out, plan, and analyze, to assess, define, and control. When we sink back into a certain innocence, we invite our hearts to be unguarded. We let go our agenda, drop our defenses, and open in childlike trust to the present moment. We allow ourselves to gaze, to rest, to be encountered, and to be changed.

I know that spending time alone doing nothing is anathema to most Americans. In unstructured moments, many of us whip out our cell phones, snag a cigarette, grab a snack, or get busy with the next task. A remarkable article published last month in the journal Science reports that, in one study, when participants were left alone in a room for a while, most of them chose to administer painful electric shocks to themselves rather than to sit silently, in solitude. Clearly it goes against the cultural grain if we recognize and honor our deep need for solitude, stillness, and contemplation.

This week I spent a couple of days on retreat with my husband Robert Jonas at our old farmhouse in Ashfield, in the hills of western Massachusetts. For two days it rained heavily. Clouds rolled and churned across the sky. Wind tossed the branches of the trees and blew wild patterns across the pond. Torrents of rain kept falling. For a long time my husband and I stood on the back porch, taking it all in. We weren’t alone, but we were quiet together, absorbed in watching and listening as rain pounded on the roof overhead and as it poured in sheets over the field and pond and woods beyond.

Standing on the porch, I noticed two ways of paying attention to the rain. One was to think about it. For instance, I could reflect on the fact that intense deluges seem to have become more frequent in my corner of the world. I could think about climate change, and how some places are flooding while other places are going dry. I could think about the fact that because of carbon dioxide emissions, the atmosphere now holds 5% more moisture than it used to, and that extreme downpours are another sign of a warming world. Thoughts typically generate more thoughts: I could then start thinking about the condition of the gutters or the roof; I could look to the past and reflect on my memories of rain; I could look to the future and start making plans for the next climate rally.

Thank God for thoughts and for the capacity to think. It is good, even essential, to know such things and to think such thoughts. Having a basic grasp of facts is a prerequisite to knowing what actions we need to take. But on that rainy day in Ashfield I didn’t want to think about the rain, to analyze or strategize – I wanted to perceive it with imagination and intuition and with all five senses, to encounter it in the present with the innocence of a child. What are you saying? Speak, Rain – I am listening.

Standing on the porch with my husband, I remembered the words of Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and social activist, who wrote:

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows! Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.

In the midst of the storm, Jonas and I listened to the rain’s “wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech,” and watched as rain splashed all over the deck. The rain’s song was wild and wordless, an insistent oratorio. Patiently we listened. Eventually I grinned at my husband and pointed out how the water was dropping on the horizontal wooden boards, landing quickly like notes upon a staff. “It’s like reading a piece of music.”

Jonas took up the idea and before long he’d created a short video. I don’t know what he plans to name it, but I’m calling it Sonata for Deluge and Porch.

When it comes to addressing climate change, I want to speak up for the need for concerted, smart, and effective action. But I also want to speak up for the need for prayer and contemplation. Creativity, playfulness, and a fresh perspective arise in the space beyond thought. Wisdom emerges as we learn to sit quietly with ourselves and with the world around us, open to reality, just as it is.

I grew up dividing the world into two camps: “spiritual” people and “activists,” people who pray, and people who actively pursue social and environmental justice. Of course that is a bogus split. Contemplation and action are both necessary if humans are to flourish on this planet. Moving gracefully between them is as essential for life as breathing in and breathing out.

Back in the 14th century, the Christian mystic John Ruysbroeck described God as “absolute repose and fecundity reconciled.” Rusbroeck goes on to say: “The Spirit of God breathes us out that we may love, and do good works; and draws us into [God’s] self, that we may rest in fruition, and this is Eternal Life… Action and fruition never hinder, but strengthen one another… They are the double wings… that take us home.”

Let’s say you step into an elevator, push the button for the 10th floor, watch the doors slide shut, and cast a quick glance at the other passengers in the car. Lo and behold, you spot one of the Koch brothers! No, it’s the CEO of ExxonMobil! Or the CEO of TransCanada, the outfit behind the Keystone XL pipeline! Or maybe it’s President Obama himself! You swallow hard. This is your one and only chance to say in 30 seconds why you care about tackling climate change. What would you say?

Perfecting your elevator pitch is considered a key element in landing a job or making a sale. No doubt it’s also a basic skill behind speed dating, though personally I wouldn’t know about that. But even shorter than an elevator pitch, and sometimes as challenging to craft, are slogans, those pithy messages that you see on banners at a march or rally.

Here is a question that beset me this spring: if the Diocese of Western Massachusetts were to create a banner to bring to climate rallies, what should the banner say? I came up with several possibilities and ran them by focus groups that consisted of 1) my husband; 2) the Bishop; 3) the Communications Director; 4) the Social Justice Commission; and 5) the diocese’s new Creation Care group on Facebook. Although my research was neither systematic nor extensive, it was great fun to carry out and it generated vigorous debate. Before long a winning slogan emerged. Our diocese’s new banner will say: Love God, Love your neighbor: Stop climate change.

Climate Banner, Episcopal Diocese of Western MA
Climate Banner, Episcopal Diocese of Western MA

To me it makes perfect sense to link stabilizing the climate with loving God and neighbor. We express love for the Creator when we tend and safeguard the living world that God entrusted to our care. We express love for our neighbor when we work to stop climate disruption, which would devastate food supplies, cause flooding, intensify drought, spread disease, create refugees, and trigger violence and social upheaval.

The “neighbors” we love when we work to stop climate change include everyone already suffering from the effects of climate change, such as rising seas and extreme storms. Those neighbors include our non-human kin that share the planet with us, and they include our children and our children’s children. As theologian Jim Wallis, the founder of Sojourners, comments in a recent blog about climate change, “We should not and cannot leave our children’s children with a fundamentally different planet. Perhaps we should replace the classic image of a polar bear on a small floating piece of ice, with an image of our great grandchild standing in line for his or her water ration.”

We have our marching orders: love God and neighbor. We have our banner. We’re all dressed up and we have a place to go: to New York City, on Sunday, September 21, when people from across the country will participate in what promises to be the biggest climate march in American history. Ban Ki Moon, United Nations Secretary-General, has summoned international leaders in government, business, finance, and civil society to New York that week for the 2014 U.N. Climate Summit, as part of a global effort “to mobilize action and ambition on climate change.” The People’s Climate March intends to amplify the urgency of that message, as tens of thousands of people who care about our planet’s future take to the streets of New York in a dignified, family-friendly, high-energy and historic march.

People's Climate March
People’s Climate March

According to organizers’ current plans, people of faith will march together. I like to imagine that lively crowd and its colorful tapestry of diverse religious symbols, vestments, and banners. I like to imagine the sight of banners held aloft from various churches in our diocese. I like to imagine the joy of walking alongside countless Episcopalians and other Christians, and alongside countless Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist and Hindu men, women, and children as together we bear witness to our shared faith in the goodness of life as it has evolved on this planet.

Yes, this event takes place on a Sunday afternoon. What shall we who are Christians as well as those who may pray in other ways do about Sunday morning worship? Maybe clergy and members of your congregation can share prayers and a simple Eucharist as you ride the bus to New York City. Maybe your church can hold a special send-off worship service the night before. Maybe you can ask your church to pray for you on Sunday morning as you and other members of your congregation head out to the march.

As I imagine us walking through the streets of Manhattan, I can already sense our common commitment to protect and heal the global atmosphere upon which all life depends. And let’s face it: along the way we’ll have plenty of time to perfect our elevator speeches.

Here’s the last thing to say about our banner: like Jesus’ mission of mercy, justice, and compassion, and like the climate movement itself, the banner is too big for one person to carry. Close to eight feet long, our banner needs at least two or three people, maybe more, who can hold it high. Will you join me in taking a turn at carrying our banner? Love God, love your neighbor. Let’s stop climate change and head to New York.

 

• To sign up for the People’s Climate March, click here. You will receive updates as plans for the march come together. You can also follow People’s Climate March on Facebook.
• To ride one of the buses heading from your area of Massachusetts to New York City, sign up here.
• If you would like your church to follow the example of other churches by asking your Vestry to endorse the People’s Climate March, and if you would like me to send you a sample Vestry statement, please drop me an email (mbj@revivingcreation.org).
• If you are a member of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts and would like to join our Creation Care group on Facebook (which is by invitation only), please drop me an email (mbj@revivingcreation.org).