Defeating doubt with hope

 The Doubting Thomas of Climate Change

“Unless I see a mountainside burn from west to east and smolder for a month, unless I put my finger to the ashen ground where wildflowers once bloomed and put my hand into the dry hole where a spring once gushed forth, well, even then, I will not believe!”

I wonder. Do you think Thomas was a bit of an Eeyore? Bush pilot Dave Olesen, reminiscing on a 1977 conversation with climate activist Edward Abbey, wrote, "Big soft-spoken man--he seems almost depressed...." Then a quote from him to underscore this: "I'm an optimist. Things are a lot better now than they will be."

Ed, I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

If Thomas was at all like this, no wonder he was disbelieving of what the other disciples told him. 

And if we were the kind of “optimists” Edward Abbey claimed to be, we might decide the story ends right there. 

But we are children of the living God and so children of hope. 

As it says in the book of the prophet Jeremiah, "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."

Today’s Doubting Thomases close their minds to the actionable knowledge that forms the impetus for our response. And if we were the kind of “optimists” Edward Abbey claimed to be, we might decide the story ends right there. 

But the story of the Apostle Thomas does not end in desperation. It is a story of restoration. It is a story of renewal and, ultimately, it is a story of resurrection

Jesus came and stood among them and said, "Peace be with you." Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see the blackened soil. Reach out your hand and touch the ground. Feel the smoldering heat. Smell the ash. Do not doubt but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”

We are not Ed’s optimists, we are Christ’s people - and we know, even after he ceased appearing to those first followers of the gospel, his story continues. His challenge, and his promise. 

And becomes our own.

Almighty and everlasting God, you made the universe with

all its marvelous order, its atoms, worlds, and galaxies, and

the infinite complexity of living creatures: Grant that, as we

probe the mysteries of your creation, we may come to know

you more truly, and more surely fulfill our role in your

eternal purpose; in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. (BCP page 827)

Written for Climate Change Forum V as closing meditation and prayer. 4/30/22 JRL+

Published in the Arizona Daily Star, Sunday May 15, 2o22, page E3, as "Defeating doubt with hope". 

"Rev. John Leech. The Rev. John Leech is ordained in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement and has served as a pastor in Northern California and western Washington, and now in Southern Arizona."

The State of the Planet

"The state of the planet is: broken."--UN secretary general on December 2nd.

The planet is burning.

The planet is freezing.

The planet is drowning.

The planet is asphyxiating.

The planet is poisoned.

Humanity must turn away from its headlong course of environmental suicide.

What humanity has brought about, humanity can also help to heal.

The defining task of humanity for this century is to heal its relationship with the rest of nature. “There is no vaccine for the planet.”

That was the message in the 'state of the planet' address by the UN secretary general.

What can we as people of conscience, as people of faith, as citizens and human beings, do to bring healing to the planet?

We can begin by hands-on action such as community gardens, recycling, and careful use of resources, and work within our community organizations, civic associations, and religious congregations, not only to act locally, but to advocate policies that address the climate emergency: goals of carbon neutrality, food security, adaptation and resilience.

* * *

António Guterres (UN Secretary-General) on the State of the Planet

2 Dec 2020 -  Speech by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, on the State of the Planet at Columbia University (New York City).

http://webtv.un.org/live-now/watch/ant%C3%B3nio-guterres-un-secretary-general-on-the-state-of-the-planet/6213596409001/

As submitted as a letter to the editor of the Arizona Daily Star on Friday 4 December 2020. JRL+

State of the Planet

"The state of the planet is: broken."--UN secretary general this morning.

The planet is burning.

The planet is freezing.

The planet is drowning.

The planet is asphyxiating.

The planet is poisoned.

Humanity must turn away from its headlong course of environmental suicide.

What humanity has brought about, humanity can also help to heal.

The primary task of humanity for this century is to heal its relationship with the rest of nature.

That was the message this morning in the 'state of the planet' address by the UN secretary general.

What can we as churches, as people of God, do to bring healing to the planet?

* * *

António Guterres (UN Secretary-General) on the State of the Planet

2 Dec 2020 -  Speech by António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, on the State of the Planet at Columbia University (New York City).

http://webtv.un.org/live-now/watch/ant%C3%B3nio-guterres-un-secretary-general-on-the-state-of-the-planet/6213596409001/

Climate Justice

 

Let me sing for my beloved
 my love-song
 concerning his vineyard:
My beloved had a vineyard
 on a very fertile hill.
 He dug it and cleared it of stones,
   and planted it with choice vines;
   he built a watchtower
   in the midst of it,
 and hewed out a wine vat in it...

        -Isaiah 5:1-2a

 

 In the name of God, Source of all Being, eternal Word, and holy Spirit: Amen.

What do justice and righteousness look like to us? How are we to let justice roll down like waters and righteousness flow like a mighty stream? 

We are inheritors of the original inhabitants of the land, caretakers, stewards, and, when the time comes, harvest helpers and celebrators of its providence. Among us are those descended from the earliest days, and those who have come from the four directions, from north, east, south, and west, to this place inhabited for countless millenia and cultivated for now over four thousand years. But change is coming.

Change we have ourselves instigated, and inherited, from the well-meaning and the obtuse, the greedy and the generous, as they in their best lights (and worst) built the city we know today as Tucson.

And in it, even as the power company tears down its coal barn, are the effects being felt of all those generations, over the past 250 years particularly, that have led us to a point near the point of no return.

There is a pretty silly movie called the river of no return. A small group of people shoot the rapids in a cumbersome raft. Not something you want to do twice. And in our case not something you can repeat.

Because the climate is at a tipping point. In 50 years we might not recognized the landscape, for the changes in weather pattern, vegetation, growth or decay of civilization. There are some things we can do, non-exclusive responses.

Here are three we will be discussing at this year's convention, one you can watch if you have internet access.

1 : We can sharply reduce carbon emissions. We can reduce carbon emissions that cause the Greenhouse Effect and combat climate change. We can employ efficiency and conservation and move toward a low-carbon economy (and yes burning less coal and oil helps).

We can tackle climate change at its source by taking coordinated, aggressive action to reduce the CO2 we put into the atmosphere.

2 : We can prepare and protect our communities, assessing the risks ad taking care of the most vulnerable. 

We can work together now to secure our communities and strengthen our resilience in the face of climate-related impacts.

3 : We can accelerate innovation, promoting clean energy and creating new technologies.

While climate change represents a serious long-term challenge, it also presents unique opportunities for ingenuity and innovation.

How shall we meet the challenges of a warming planet?

The challenge of climate change is daunting. 

But this is the challenge we face, us and our generation, and we are called to face it. 

 

Remember then that a loving God is behind us, a God who is sovereign over all Creation, and that in his Spirit we find guidance and strength. As we have been promised, in the words of the prophets, he has a plan for us, a plan for good and not for harm, a future with hope.

 

To all earth's creatures God has given the broad earth, the springs, the rivers and the forests, giving the air to the birds, and the waters to those who live in water, giving abundantly to all the basic needs of life, not as a private possession, not restricted by law, not divided by boundaries, but as common to all, amply and in rich measure.
- Gregory of Nazianzus c.329-c.389 (quoted in http://edgeofenclosure.org/proper22a.html)

 

Options and suggestions from  

Climate Choices: How Should We Meet the Challenges of a Warming Planet?  National Issues Forums Institute. 2016. ISBN: 978-1-943028-03-0 (www.nifi.org)

 

 

 

yesterday

Yesterday for the first time since June 5th we put the dogs in the car and drove up to the top of Mount Lemmon. The last time we drove up Mount Lemmon was the day before we watched lightning strike the western slopes of Pusch Ridge. That was the beginning of the Bighorn Fire, which burned 120,000 acres before the first big monsoon rain finally put it completely out. As the fire began to ebb into embers and ashes, and the many crews of firefighters, weather service, deputy sheriffs, and game and fish officers, could pack up, the conversation began around how to recover, or what is next. The forest service has something in place: a Burned Area Emergency Response plan. 

What we saw yesterday was much the same, for awhile, until we got up to where we had picknicked two months before and saw from the edge of the road the whole mountainside to the north down to the next valley scorched and covered with ashes. As we descended from the ski area above Summerhaven we could see how close the fires had come to the mountaintop telescopes and the edge of the road. And we could see the first small green sprouts as new growth began on the ashen slopes of the mountain faces.

And so this local disaster, which occupied our minds and feelings for over a month, as the smoke, the helicopters and airplanes, and on many days the flames, occupied our senses, began to release its hold on us. In the middle of the fire month of June I had listed our common anxieties in order of longevity - and perhaps in reverse order of attention. 

1. The Bighorn Fire

2. The Coronavirus Pandemic

3. The Presidency

4. Climate Change

The Bighorn Fire began June 5th in the Catalina Mountains and ended a little over a month later. (Fire season is far from over in the Southwest, but see below under #4.) 

The Coronavirus Pandemic began sometime last December in southern China and has far from peaked, though there is hope that with proper precautions at the individual, social, national, and global levels, and the efforts to develop and distribute a vaccine, it can become another endemic disease, like the flu or the common cold, rather than the fourth scourge alongside tuberculosis, malaria, and HIV/AIDS. 

I'm skipping one. 

Climate Change began 250 years ago and will have its effects for the next millenia. It causes things like our wretched summer of excessive heat as well as the more extreme weather events and the more frequent droughts, fires, rainstorms, floods, and mudslides that are piling on top of each other.

The Presidency will, according to The Economist, nine chances out of ten be handed over to the opposite party in January. 

After the Bighorn Fire the Burn Area Emergency Response plan goes into effect. Shall we re-seed as we did after the Aspen Fire? After the fire in the Big Bear area some years ago, Giant Sequoia were planted. Will we see planting of indigenous species? After the Oakland Hills fire of 1989 people built back, better one hopes. After the second Great Earthquake and Fire of San Francisco, the one in 1909, the City came back, different but greater.

We talk about the new normal. We talk about before, during, and after. We talk about building back better. 

But I can tell you, since the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November four years ago, an obsession has gripped many minds. And so we when we begin to talk about what is next what we talk about is the disaster continuing. But nine chances out of ten less than ninety days from now there will be an election that begins to overturn the current situation, political but not climate or health, and people have NO IDEA what that will look like. I hope the prospective next president has some people on board who do see a future with hope. Too many are too obsessed with the present to look ahead.

And yet the future is where we will live. At least the next generation, and many of us, will live in it.

We will not see again what we had before. But we can begin to build what we can become, indeed what we are called to become, as individuals, as citizens of this nation, and as creatures on this planet. 

We have to. For we will survive, and it is our duty.

Redeeming the Time

https://www.nga.gov/collection/highlights/fragonard-young-girl-reading.html

What are you reading? A good question, these days. One of my answers is, the complete Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler detective stories. Another is War and Peace.

War and Peace tells the story of people - a people - facing a period of unprecedented catastrophe.

What is the American equivalent of that epic period - though not that novel?

The Second World War would be my guess, as well as the Revolution and the Civil War.

The Civil War particularly has lodged in our consciousness - and our movie theaters. Even more so, the Second World War. It is still within living memory, just barely, and there is plenty of literature, film, and biography about it.

For the British public perhaps the Napoleonic Wars and the World Wars serve a similar function.

For us though in our generation as Americans (north Americans)  the Great Depression and World War II are the ones.

Leo Tolstoy wrote of his grandparents’ time. He wrote after his own experience as a soldier, and indeed at the time of writing the newspapers were filled with accounts of a contemporary crisis: the American Civil War. You can almost tell which battles he was reading about as he wrote.

And so it takes a while to understand what you, or your grandparents, went through. Great grandparents may be too far back; hence the loss of interest in the Spanish American War or the Great War, even though people like me have met veterans of those conflicts … in our youth.

Someday soon the Vietnam War era may be equally remote, as its survivors take the stage as grandparents, great uncles, and strangers with a story to tell. 

But what are you reading, or have you read, about the Great Depression and the second war?

I’d recommend two I have read recently: 

Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945, by David M. Kennedy, published in the Oxford History of the United States. (Oxford, 1999).

And more remarkably perhaps an older work, in the narrative history mode,

Redeeming The Time: A People's History Of The 1920s And The New Deal, by Page Smith, Volume 8 of A People's History of the United States. (McGraw-Hill, 1986)

Why these two? There’s always Churchill, by and about. And later works, by newer historians.

And why Page Smith? Because, for one thing, his was the only narrative history of the United States published in a drought of some decades. 

(Jill Lepore deplores the lack of a one-volume narrative history produced during that period, and a lack of awareness of the great “city on a hill” sermon by John Winthrop given aboard ship on the way to the new Massachusetts Bay Colony. As a student at Cowell College, where Page Smith was founding provost, and our campus newspaper was the City on a Hill Press, I can assure you that lack was not palpable.)

Page Smith taught us about the adversity the American people imbibed during the economic disaster that befell them during the period following the Great Crash of 1929 and lasting until the war machinery, war economy, and War Production Board revved up in 1940-1945.

Revved up - but did not revive - the previous economy. Some things changed forever, some for good.

But what people endured and many survived may have made the nation stronger, more unified, to confront a later challenge. In their case that was the menace of totalitarianism, Fascism and Nazism, and the military adventurism of the Japanese regime of the time.

Collapsing empires and economies after the 1914-1018 war, along with flu pandemic and other causes, had left the societies of the world exposed to the threat of extreme chaos and government by the ‘strong’ - read, ‘the extreme’.

In their time - the Great Depression was followed by the Second World War. In our time waiting in the wings behind the challenge of the coronavirus-19 pandemic crisis is the ongoing reality of the climate crisis. 

(See The Economist cartoon, April 23, 2020).
https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2020/04/23/kals-cartoon

Prof. Katharine Hayhoe (Texas Tech) calls climate change a threat multiplier: behind every other crisis and challenge of our time lies this one big fact: the world is changing irrevocably, our atmosphere becoming carbon-dioxide soaked and our lands parched, frozen, or flooded.

We cannot go back to pre-industrial populations and consumption patterns. There are nearly eight billion of us now, as she points out, and we need sustainable energy to replace the carbon-dependent fossil fuels on which our industrial civilization was built. 

Maybe we can work on that. And may in time we can find some insight as well as comfort in looking at what people have gone through before.

For me personally I first read War and Peace during a time when I was not sure how to finish college (though I did, returning to the course I was pursuing in History, Religious Studies, and Literature) : I read it in a cold room at night in a club chair in my parents’ living room. Later I read it again, in another room, in another translation. (Constance Garnett the first time, later Maude, now Pevear/Volokhonsky and Anthony Briggs). 

And I’ve read the Iliad and the Odyssey the same way, during several times of transition, in multiple translations. And even the Aeneid, though the soul-searching and travelogue give way to first a jilted queen and then a lot of slaughter. Sheesh.

Pepys’ diaries, as read by Kenneth Brannagh, also tell of a time of plague and fire: the 1660s in London. Perhaps Robin Hood, read aright, is a source of comfort in the right time and culture. 

If another King John comes along.

Creation Care

There was a landowner who put his top employees in charge of his holdings. He said to them, “Take charge of it – and take care of the place. Bring your families to live on the land, and enjoy its produce. Serve it faithfully, and from its care you will live abundantly.”

So the servants came on board. They lived on the land, and raised families there. They were as fertile as the land itself and they grew in numbers. And it was theirs for the taking – to take charge of, to take care of, or to take advantage of – and with the land they served as their home they would live in hope and abundance, or in fear and scarcity – it was up to them.

What will they say when the landlord comes? How will they be with him? As servants entering into joy, or as sad stewards with empty fields, exhausted resources, and mistreated fellow creatures, to show for their stewardship?

 

Let us remember our special mandate as human creatures to care for the earth: not just to multiply and fill it – but to tend it. We are the stewards, the workers in the garden, of this green and gold, and glorious, blue white planet. It is our home, but not as owners – not as exploiters – but as chief tenants. We are the live-in caretaker of the apartment house, so to speak, not the landlord.

We look forward to the return of our landlord, with joyful expectation but also some anxiety. Our anticipation is mixed with feelings of loss and grief – and even guilt. In our Christian hope we turn to that landlord and yearn for his presence.

We are deluding ourselves if we think our self-assumed pose of superiority to the rest of creation is something mandated in the Bible.

So what is in the book?  

 

Genesis 2:15 (CEB): The Lord God took the human being and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it.

 

Take care of it - not wreck it! We are chosen, yes, and special, because we are called to self-understanding, to knowledge (as partial as it may be) of our place in the cosmos, and our role as stewards of the earth.

Genesis 2:15 (CEB): The Lord God took the human being and settled him in the garden of Eden to farm it and to take care of it.

In other words, we are both to cultivate the land and to take custody of it as servants of the Lord. We are stewards of the earth, caretakers and custodians.

We are God’s representatives, or images, in creation, so exercising that stewardship is a servant role, subservient to the true land Lord of the universe. We have power to alter the world but we depend on the earth and its life for survival.

Our “rule” is subordinate – submissive to God and God’s will for creation – God’s will, not our own.

Take care, take charge. Fill the earth, be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth. And delight in it.

Sunday May 26th 2019. Creation Care Pledge Workshop. Grace St Paul’s, Tucson.

In Genesis 1:26-28, God says, “Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth.” God created humanity in God’s own image, in the divine image God created them, male and female God created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground.”

As the notes to the Common English Bible inform us, to take charge – to rule as a master over servants, or a king over subjects – is a way of characterizing human power and authority over the rest of the animal world. But that in itself does not say anything one way or another about how that power is exercised, whether in caring for creation or ruling harshly over it.

Climate Change Forum 2018: Prayers

Invocation

May this day be holy, good, and peaceful.

May the creative spirit of the universe

enliven us with hope.

May the nurturing spirit of the universe

compel us to care for creation - and each other.

May the valiant spirit of the universe

imbue us with the fortitude

to see the truth,

and the wisdom

to act upon it.

Followed by Song of the Three Young Men, Introduction and Part 1, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, 88-89.

Closing Prayer

Creator of science and of creativity itself,
we praise you and thank you for the insights of science.
Guide us into all truth and lead us in compassionate action.
Challenge us when we need to change our way of thinking - and of living.

For the sake of those facing rising temperatures, drought, and water shortages,

Creator, in your mercy,

restore and renew the world.

For the sake of those facing extreme weather events, disrupted seasons, and failed crops,

Creator, in your mercy,

restore and renew the world.

For the sake of those facing flooding, land loss, and salination of vital water supplies,

Creator, in your mercy,

restore and renew the world.

For the sake of all those who fear the changing climate,

Creator, in your mercy,

restore and renew the world.

For the poor, the vulnerable, and the refugee,

Creator, in your mercy,

restore and renew the world.

For the sake of us all, Creator, in your mercy,

re-create our hearts, that we might work together - to

restore and renew the world.

(Closing Prayer adapted from http://thesanctuarycentre.org/resources/written-prayers-prayers-in-response-to-climate-change.pdf)

Climate-Change Forum IV – Credibility, Urgency & Caution

a continuation of “A Religious Response to Climate Change”

St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church, Tucson, Arizona

Smith Parish Center, 13 January 2018