Rescuing the Future

21 April 1991, Culver City Earth Day

(Culver-Palms United Methodist Church)

Genesis 7:1-17, 9:8-17; I Peter 4:8-10; Psalm 96

Rescuing the future—this is what we all must be about. The litany of concerns for our Planet, and the list of our abuse of Mother Earth continues to grow. In Australia, the continued ozone depletion has forced the government to warn the citizens to wear hats and sunscreen on a regular basis! You recall that it is the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere that prevents ultra-violet radiation from penetrating to the lower atmosphere. Such penetration can cause skin cancer among humans and other life forms.

In the Persian Gulf, the predictions of an ecological disaster are coming true. The biggest oil spill and oilwell fires in recorded history have resulted from this war. Much of the land, air, water, plants, animals and people in the area—as was the case with the nuclear reactor accident in Chernobyl—is being poisoned. Many people believe that the radius of immediate effect in and around Kuwait could reach as much as 620 miles. If I remember my junior high math correctly, the formula for the area of a circle is p x the radius squared. That means that the potential area affected by the oil spills and oil fires is over 1000,000 mi² or greater than the state of California. Further, John Horgan, in this month's Scientific American, says experts believe that if only 1% of the smoke from the oil fires reaches the stratosphere, "global changes in climate can result." Horgan concludes, "The world...can do little but watch, as [this] unprecedented [and I would add, destructive] experiment, unfolds!"

At the March meeting of the International Coordinating Committee on Religion and the Earth, to which I was invited to help write the North American religious input for the United Nations Earth Charter, two images were lifted up concerning the plight of God's Creation.

The first image was presented by Tim Weiskel of the Harvard Divinity School. Tim said that we, the human, plant, and animal population of the Earth, can best understand our situation as passengers flying on a jet airliner at 39,000 ft, when suddenly the engines stop! We have run out of fuel, etc.! It will take 10 min to crash. Our problem is to decide how we are going to spend those remaining minutes.

A second, and a little more helpful and hopeful metaphor proposed is that we are on a boat, an ark, or an oceanliner. It has developed a large hole and is sinking. On this vessel many buckets happen to be available, and if all the passengers decide to cooperate and work hard together, there is a chance the ship will reach land before it, we all sink!

I like the second image better. It brings us back in a sense to Noah, to an early Covenant with God, to the possibility that the future, like the past, can be rescued.

Noah, in obedience to God, rescued (at least metaphorically and perhaps literally) our past. The human sin, the human destructiveness, the human abuse that was tearing up Creation, was stopped and repented. A cleansing took place; a rainbow, a promise, was given. The human race, in partnership with plants and animals, with the land, water and air, with nature, with all of God's Creation, was given a second chance to begin afresh, to begin anew!

Somehow we have again lost touch with the divine-human-nature-creation partnership and covenant. The world, the future, our relationship with God as we understand it, are in jeopardy. The ark, Mother Earth, is sinking.

I wonder if we are all willing to bail together. I wonder if we in the religious community are not at least partly responsible for the crisis. I wonder if what we are doing to help is enough.

The answer to the first question—are we all starting to bail together, must include some yes'es. The Culver City Recycling and Conservation Task Force, of which I am a member, has completed its plan, along with Los Angeles and other cities, on how to reduce solid waste in the city and state by 25% by 1995, and 50% by the year 2000. It's a good start! This Church, too, has made a good start.

It is also satisfying to know that the mandatory water conservation measures going into effect soon have already been approximated by voluntary public efforts! Summer weather will no doubt bring us greater challenges.

Earth Day 1991 programs—the Eco-EXP, today's events, the Eco-Film Festival next week in Santa Monica, and the Eco-Village program we are co-sponsoring with the Eco-Home Saturday evening, 18^th of May, and the United Nations Earth Summit planned for Rio in June 1992—are all excellent projects and programs.

Margaret Lindgren pointed out to me an amazing story in the newsletter "Ecolution." It's a story about what one manufacturing company has done. American Etch and Manufacturing, a producer of toxic materials through the process of etching gauged metal parts—the article reports —has transformed its waste generation and toxic waste production. In brief, in 1988, American Etch generated 683 t [= ton(s)] of waste and this was decreased by about 20% to 548 t in 1989. Just one year! Through its own recycling and waste pre-treatment, this company went from shipping out 248 t of hazardous materials in 1986 to 22 t last year. A 91% reduction in toxic material while still remaining profitable! All this is good news. A trend-setting example for corporations around the world!

Unfortunately, there is also ongoing bad news for nature, for us, for Creation and for the Creator, in the area of hazardous material production and testing. During the height of the Gulf War this January, the US Government—along with Great Britain—refused to join in partnership with many of the other nations of the world in expanding the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to include underground testing. What a symbol it would have been for Iraq, Argentina, South Africa, Israel, Brazil, India, Pakistan, etc., if we had led the way, or at least not gotten in the way. Creation, God, Mother Earth, Noah, the land, animals, plants, have been waiting anxiously on tiptoes for more than 50 years for nations to reject this brutal and monstrously destructive attack on our Planet. Perhaps God's and the Universe's only abode for human life (for all we know).

Unfortunately, almost to the hour that Emma, Caroline, Matthew and I, and 100 other United Methodists from Southern California and Arizona, and at least 500 additional Christians from around the nation, arrived in Las Vegas to begin the 10^th Annual Nevada Desert Experience—Faith Based Resistance to Nuclear Weapons Testing, our Government detonated its 1^st nuclear weapon of the new year at the Nevada Test Site! At least two more underground nuclear weapons have been detonated in the Nevada desert since then!

The earth, Mother Earth, the land, the desert plants and animals, the underground water, all cry out in pain, in anger, in outrage, and in fear. They cry out for justice and mercy.

There have been well over 900 underground tests, and many more are planned. The land, below ground, at ground level, and above ground, has been destroyed, radiated for many 1000s of years. It is dead, but its poison are thought to be moving. No Super Fund could begin to clean up and transform this poison, this dead desert land. How can we continue such madness, how can we repent of this madness, how can we rescue the future from this and many other kinds of madness?

After much family discussion on 8 & 9 March, I decided to stand up for the land, to stand with the Native Americans —The Western Shoshones—to whom the land for the Nevada Test Site by treaty actually belongs, and to stand with God and all of Creation. So I and 40 to 50 other United Methodists and friends "trespassed" onto the Nuclear Test Site to protest the madness and to stand with Creation. We were arrested. The arrest citation reads, "The said suspect did then and there willfully and unlawfully enter Federal land after being advised not to."

As I crossed over to the Nevada Test Site I carried with me the following document, "Permit for exempt non-Western Shoshone to gather, go and come by issue from the Western Shoshone National Council No. 3820."

As I waited and prayed in the holding pen to be cited and released, I had a profound religious experience. I experienced in my being the pain of the Earth, the rape of the Earth, the crucifixion of the Earth. Overwhelmed by remorse as I stood silently, facing the desert, I wondered what good my temporary incarceration in this cage was doing for God, for the land, for Creation, for my Church, for my family. How could I undo the 900 plus stab wounds to our Earth's soul? What possible act of contrition, of repentance could I offer that would be acceptable for such wanton destruction? How could I even pray—for prayers, offerings, sacrifices seemed like a cruel hoax—too little, too late.

Incomprehensibly God, the land, the plants and animals seemed to hear and receive my meager offering of a broken, anguished, and remorseful heart. Incredibly and unexpectedly, the hills and mountains began to sing, echoing the voices, songs, and hymns of 60 or so persons waiting for our release.

In that deeply spiritual moment I felt at one with God, the Land, all of nature, and the Universe. A deep peace came over me. I was embraced and surrounded by God, the desert, and all of Creation.

A familiar song came to mind—what I am saying, what many are saying—give nature a chance, give Creation a chance, give the plants and animals a chance, give God a chance, give yourselves a chance, give peace a chance.

To do this we need to continue thinking globally and acting locally. We need to continue to reduce, reuse, and recycle, to care, to be compassionate, to compost, and even, at least in Culver City, to tie green ribbons around our yard waste trash cans.

We must continue to conserve water and energy; work to make our homes, our businesses, and our planet as toxic free as possible.

We will, however, also need to change our thinking, our belief system. So much of our thinking, including our religious thinking, is anthropocentric, self-centered.

We believe human beings are the center of the universe, not just the world. Father Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic priest and Jesuit, has a very radical suggestion (even for me) to make, to help us get beyond our species, our human centeredness.

Berry believes that we should focus in on a new cosmic story. A story which puts humans in their proper place in creation—in God's cosmic story. Listen to the cosmic story:

Some 15 billion years ago...the Universe came into being; 5 billion years ago...our Earth and solar system emerged; 3½ billion years ago...the Earth reproduced life sexually; 520 million years ago...the first fish emerged; 420 million years ago...the first land plants appeared; 360 million years ago...the first insects came to be; 220 million years ago...the first mammals emerged; 180 million years ago...the first birds took flight; 130 million years ago...the first flower plants bloomed; 80 million years ago...dinosaurs became extinct; 5 million years ago...the great Ice Age of the Earth blanketed large areas; 100,000 years ago...Homo sapiens emerged.

In this version of God's cosmic time line, we humans were figuratively born but a second ago. Our moment of consciousness is so fresh that our notion of human pride, self-centered, and human first can only be seen as absurd.

The only appropriate response to God's cosmic story is awe, reverence—fear in its Biblical sense—wonder and true respect for the entirety of life.

Father Berry hopes that, along with an espousal of this new cosmic story, the major religions of the world will set aside for at least 30 years the anthropocentric, self-centered, me and God first and to heck with the rest of nature, interpretations of all sacred religious works.

Too often, like the secular society, we read the sacred texts as underrating plants, animals, land, air and water. The unintended result is that we see all the rest of Creation as ours to mine, exploit and use as we see fit. Tragically, what we use gets used up!

The Psalmist writes, "O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the Earth. Sing to the Lord, bless His name; tell of God's work (love, healing, and transformation) from day to day." Loose your human selfishness!

If we can transform our thinking in a way that moves us away from self-centeredness; if we can value all of Creation as special; if we can come to believe that God's call for us today is to join in a democratic alliance with land, air, water, plants and animals, then there is hope for Creation, for nature, for the planet—and for ourselves. If we can do these things, then the future can be rescued.

As the International Conference on Religion and the Earth drew to a close in Rye, NY, on 24 March, the rain clouds began to disperse. What followed was truly wonderful. The preceding several days had been cold, overcast, and drizzly. The sun had been kept at bay.

But now, amidst the intermittent rain, bright beams of afternoon sunlight broke through. The air warmed. Suddenly one, then another, then several of us noticed. Soon the entire room of 300 people left their seats and went joyously outside, as if seeing a rainbow for the first time! What a sight, what a blessing! Though somewhat faint, the rainbow was still a rainbow, God's rainbow, Planet Earth's rainbow!

I've taken that rainbow to be a sign from God, from nature, urging us at that conference, urging us here, urging all of us everywhere forward to help save God's Creation. Forward to help rescue the future. Forward to the belief that if we work and bail together, there still may be time to save the planet, for the whole of Creation. Amen.