Sermons
The Greening of Our Lives
Rev. Alex L. Richardson
December 4, 2005
Dave Foreman, founder of Earthfirst! and author of many books, two of the most recent being The Big Outside and Re-Wilding North America: A Vision for Conservation in the 21st Century, has said, “I hate the word environment. You can love a forest. You can love a mountain. You can love a plant. But how can you love an abstract concept? To talk about forest, mountains, meadows and rivers has much greater force.” This morning in the spirit of Dave Foreman’s comment, we worship at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Greensboro by thinking and feeling about the gift of our world’s sky, water, earth, plants and animals: all of which we collectively call our environment.
Our worship happens at a time in our existence when a tree, artificial in form though it may be, stands front and center. Our worship happens at a time when those of us in this congregation and this land know an abundance of material goods unlike at any time in prior human history. Our worship happens at a time when for an amount of money smaller than the remaining credit-line many of have on plastic cards we carry at this very moment we can purchase tickets that will take us to any place on our planet. Our worship happens at a time in our existence when we humans of our culture, and of much of the rest of the world, understand ourselves to be technological “masters of the universe”. If we can dream it, we can do it!
Our worship also happens at a time when week after week our newspapers, magazines, radio and television bring us disquieting reports of how it is that the sky, water, earth, plants and animals of our world are not thriving even as we humans do. And does our worship ever happen at a time when we humans are thriving. In this month in 1895, my grandmother was born in a two room cabin at the base of a mountain just a hundred or so miles due north of here and she shared her world with 1 billion other human souls. 58 years later as I came into existence, my grandmother and I in 1953 shared space with 3 billion. And now in 2005, my grandmother dead for not much over a decade, I continue my existence with you and 6 billion others. In just over one century, we humans, “masters of the universe”, have increased in number six-fold. We worship at time in our existence when we are possessed of great consciousness about how many of us humans there are.
Our worship also happens at a time where there is the promise of large shared understanding, across many political and geographical divides, that we humans need to improve our relationship with the air, water, earth, plants and animals of our world. Multiple voices from diverse perspectives tell us in many ways that this is our great new common ground.
This newly formed UUCG Green Sanctuary Committee (to whom you were introduced in our Chalice Lighting this morning) is source of inspiration, in-spirit-ation, for today’s worship. These women are volunteering to help guide and lead us in new ways towards our digging deeper into this great new common ground of concern for our environment. These women will encourage, challenge and undoubtedly bring our way some cognitive and emotional dissonance as they fulfill their call. It is “call” that each of them feels to this work. They are passionate and enthusiastic about shepherding us into a “greener” way of being as a community of faith.
Some of you here this morning will remember an old UUCG story of how it was in the mid-1990’s that our congregation struggled with the possibility of putting up a new building that we wanted to be as “green” as possible. We engaged an architectural firm from Raleigh noted for its “green” work to aid us in design. Much research, exchange of ideas, money and volunteer effort followed. A plan was proposed. I hold before you the sole surviving pictorial artifact from that work of which I am aware. I’ve been told that the building was to be un-air-conditioned with permeable parking surfaces and all natural building materials. Cost estimates for its construction were beyond the financing capability of our congregation at the time and so the idea was put away. New work followed, infused with some sadness for the green idea that did not get birthed, and this building in which we now worship was born.
Through all of this first year’s work by our new Green Sanctuary Committee, I have been mindful of what went before. I understand that our new Committee carries with it, whether conscious of it or not, all the good intention, ideas and energies of those members of a past Committee that generated an ideal which did not happen.
In pondering this UUCG work of a decade ago that had as its goal the greening of congregational life, I was reminded of old history form my former home congregation in Lancaster, PA. There in the early 1990’s, an Environmental Justice Committee came into being. Their charge was to study our congregation and make report about what we might do, should do, to minimize the environmental damage we did as a faith community. There were 6 or 7 folk on that committee. Without exception, all were well educated, well intended, articulate and capable. They studied. They observed. They researched and then they issued a first report with specific recommendations. I remember only one. The committee recommended that the congregation use Styrofoam rather than the old church china of which we had an ample supply. I’m betting as you hear this some 15 or so years later that you are registering some of the same shock that members and friends of UU-Lancaster felt back then upon hearing a recommendation to use Styrofoam. Many folk were not happy. Everyone knew that Styrofoam is an environmental challenge, polluting the air if burned, decomposing only partially if land-filled and releasing troubling by-product in the process. People became unkind to one another about the recommendation. Many were the voices of strong opposing opinion that denigrated the members of the Committee for making such a recommendation. And later, even after the Committee had explained how it was that the new trash-recycling-for-electrical-energy technology that Lancaster County was buying at great cost from Germany would include a recycling process for Styrofoam that addressed all of the concerns, some people still were out of sorts about the recommendation. For them, Styrofoam was Styrofoam and the only thing to do with Styrofoam was to not use it. These people became very unhappy as the congregation began to move, in its majority, towards adopting the recommendation. So much so that when the congregation did carry through with the Committee’s recommendation some pledges were stopped and some people left.
I’ve thought about that old history of mine a good bit over the last several weeks of preparing to preach this sermon. I cannot for the life of me remember a single mention during any of the Styrofoam challenge in Lancaster of that last of our Unitarian Universalist principles: Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. This stands out in my mind now as being very odd given that our 7th principle was birthed by a UU minister while serving the Lancaster congregation. If I’m not mistaken, it was in 1986 that the Rev. Paul Howell proposed the adoption of our 7th principle in our UUA’s general assembly of that year. Many were the long-time members of UU-Lancaster who would, with relish, recount the story of how Paul used to preach about it all the time. But evidently when scrapping with one another about Styrofoam, the big idea of our 7th principle was lost in the passion for the particular.
Two noted environmentalists, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, published a monograph this past year entitled “The Death of Environmentalism”. (Full text can be seen at www. thebreakthrough.org) They begin the paper with these words: “Over the last fifteen years, environmental foundations and organizations have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in combating global warming. We have strikingly little to show for it.” The paper gets much edgier. It has kicked up dissonance, both emotional and cognitive, within much of the environmental community. Shellenberger and Nordhaus suggest that the huge scale of the challenge around the environmental degradation of our time can only begin to be addressed adequately when many, many people come to share in a primary focus on what they call “core values” about our environment. Shellenberger and Nordhaus say that what we do now that isn’t working well for us is to focus on lists of what should and shouldn’t be done; policies and procedures. They argue that these lists, policies and procedures turn people off. What they say is needed is something to inspire people towards a fundamental change of perspective on what each of them can do to help the environment while helping themselves and by so doing aid others. They propose the weaving together of selfish personal interest with that of special interest groups. They understand there is great new common ground that can hold environmentalists, factory workers, developing third world cultures, members of the National Rifle Association, Democrats, Libertarians and Republicans. Shellenberger and Nordhaus yearn to see investment of time, energy and money in moving people to shared core value understandings from which will sprout by instinct much right action particularity.
In thinking back on Styrofoam in Lancaster and the people who were lost from the community as we argued with one another about right action, I wish someone would have, could have, inspired us to touch some great core value that would have held us all together despite the differences and would have also moved everyone to much right action particularity. I’m betting we could have used both old church china and Styrofoam.
Over the months and years ahead, our UUCG Green Sanctuary Committee will be engaging us in many ways. They are sure to make recommendation to us about specific things we can do to be more green. They will also strive to inspire us to hold more close our own 7th principle. With good fortune, we may come to better understand what it might truly mean for each of us to have as core value, down at the center of our hearts, respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. Our Green Sanctuary Committee will want, because they are people of spirit, to inspire us. Work with them towards cultivating inspiration in this place of religion. Help them build in you, me and our community deep spirit for helping our sky, water, earth, plants and animals even as we help ourselves.
Our journey ahead as Green Sanctuary Committee and Congregation working in collaboration will need to be long. Much needs doing. I am sure our journey together will have its challenging places. My hope in this season of gifting is that each of us will always remember the gift of the other and our need for core value that inspires. May we have the wisdom to look at one another with respect in all we do. May we ever remember the possibility that you, and you, and maybe even me, may be the messiah. May we strive to deepen our understanding of how better to love not only ourselves but also our sky, water, earth, plants and animals.
This past Thursday I drove up to Rocky Knob on the Blue Ridge Parkway, just north of Floyd, VA – about 80 miles north of here. The Rev. Karen Day, a UU ministerial colleague of mine, and her husband, have just relocated there. They live in a 2 bedroom, 1 bath, wood-siding and stone 600 square foot cabin set in the midst of a stand of tall green spruce trees. The cabin was built in the 1950’s by a German man from Greensboro. From its back deck, you can see far off to the northwest the Appalachians. I went to spend time with Karen because she has the gift to help me sort through all the stuff of my work that can at times keep me from touching the core values of my call. Our conversation before the flame of the fireplace that afternoon was rich and deep. I felt renewed of spirit as I got up to leave at about 6. Karen and I walked out into falling snow that had begun earlier in the afternoon. With warm thoughts and feelings for Karen, the place, my call, myself, the cabin and the tall green Spruce trees, I drove away. Out on the Parkway, I felt unsafe driving much more than 20 miles an hour. I was captivated by the oncoming waves of large wet snow flakes that swirled down at me and pelted the car windshield. I could feel the deep excitement within me as I experienced my first snowfall of the winter. I felt joy for being there. And then off to the side, pleasuring me even as I was also frightened, bolted three large deer out onto the Parkway in front of me. I braked and then looked them in the eye as they, off to the side again now, stared at the headlights of my car. I felt what others(Foreman) have referred to as my “wilderness gene” kick in. It was so right and appropriate for the deer, the snow, the forest, the mountains to be. Mine was the great gift of having the privilege to see. May each of us ever stay conscious of the great gift to see and know all that is of our sky, water, earth, plants and animals. May we stay inspired in our love for them. May our love grow. AMEN.