So here's my "Earth Day" question: Is Wendell Berry's message the one we need to hear?
The earth is dying largely because of us, Berry says - because we are too submissive and not radical enough. We, the good guys and gals, the ones who get it, the ones who try to live green, contribute to the problems we are working to solve. Again, is this what we need hear? Is this the problem we should be wrestling with? Is this the core issue we need to address if the earth and we as a species are going to survive?
The short answer, of course, is "Yes," isn't it? Without a doubt, our submissiveness and failure to be radical constitute a problem that no person of good conscience can deny or avoid. Many of us are familiar with the famous quote, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men and women to do nothing." Surely none of us is guilty of doing nothing, but it seems just as clear that very few of us can say we are doing enough.
But why? That's the question I want us to think about this morning. And I'm not going for guilt here, but for understanding. Our worship theme this month is transformation. Today I think it's important for us to wrestle with not only the transformation that is happening to our earth, but also the transformation that is happening to us. If indeed the earth is suffering and dying because we are becoming passive creatures, then it is imperative that we figure out right away what is causing this passivity.
And church is an especially appropriate place to wrestle with this question, since the dominant answer comes from the spiritual neck of our cultural woods. Since the 1970's, theologians have pointed to Native American and so-called "primitive religion" to show that there once was a time when a connecting line rather than a dividing line existed between us and the earth. The most famous example of this connection comes from a letter that Chief Seattle wrote to the U.S. government in response to their request to buy Native American land:
This we know:
The earth does not belong to us,
we belong to the earth.
All things are connected,
like blood that unites one family.
We did not weave the web of life,
we are merely a strand in it.
Whatever befalls the earth,
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.
Whatever we do to the earth,
we do to ourselves.
Theologians say we have lost this wider spiritual consciousness, this broader understanding of the self. We've undergone, they suggest, a transformation from "large self beings" to "small self beings." The self for us now stops at the barriers of our own skin. Thus no wonder we are passive in the face of the earth's pain and devastation, they argue: the only pain that matters is our own, the only needs that matter are our needs, and the only world we are worried about keeping safe, protected and flourishing is the little world we've built for ourselves.
This theme of self-absorption and indifference is echoed by the secular social critics. They don't talk about spiritual smallness; they are much more blunt. We've become "a culture of narcissists," they say, dedicated to little more than our own personal happiness. Wendell Berry is one of these social critics. For him this narcissism is a twisted outgrowth of our long-standing commitment to rugged individualism. He writes,
"The career of rugged individualism in America has run mostly to absurdity and [tragedy]... this [new] tragic version of rugged individualism [involves only]...the presumptive right of individuals to do as they please, as if there were no God, no government, no community, no neighbors and no posterity. [This rugged individualism] believes we should be free to get as much as one can of whatever one wants."
So there you have it. We are passive in the face of the earth's predicament because indifference, disconnection and selfishness reign.
But here's the thing. I'm not sure which one of you to label selfish and indifferent!
Is it Jen? Ed? [Reverend Tayler continued at this point to name members of the congregation.]
Who here should I point to as the example? Who's the one with a miniaturized spiritual self? Who is the narcissistic being so cut off from and indifferent to the Earth and our great-great-grandkids that warnings about melting ice caps and holes in the ozone evoke little more than a yawn?! Who's the culprit? Who's the one in this room we need to fix?
My point: There's something about this picture that doesn't fit.
And let me be careful here. I'm not saying we're not selfish. Sure we're selfish. Sure we're not as spiritually attuned to our interconnectedness with the earth as the Native Americans. Sure we're influenced by the narcissism of our culture. But there's still something about "the selfishness storyline" that - by itself - simply doesn't ring true - at least in my experience of all of you, it simply doesn't ring true.
When the state of our planet comes up in church forums, small group meetings, my office or when out walking in our church gardens, what I experience coming from all of you is not indifference, not callousness, not selfishness, but despair. Maybe I'm biased or blind. Maybe I like you all too much. [Maybe I know the budget meeting is coming up and I know you all are voting on my salary.] Maybe I just don't want any of you calling me selfish. Maybe I just don't want to see it. But for the life of me, what I notice most when the problems of the earth come up is not the stench of an inordinate focus on self, but an immediate drop in energy - a type of brief shutting down and shift in emotion that mimics the mourning I see at funerals or the regret I see in pastoral counseling sessions. I see you struggling. I see you not empty of feeling but overwhelmed by many feelings.
Miriam Greenspan is a social psychologist. In her book Healing Through Dark Emotions she tells the story of one of her major research projects. She was studying how cultures deal with crisis and the dark emotions of fear, grief and despair. As part of her research she developed a daily ritual. At breakfast she sat down with the paper and a pair of scissors. She cut out every article she could find that referred to large scale crises and to how the nation or community reacted to those crises. She accumulated hundreds of articles and organized them into folders: child abduction, war, hate crimes, job loss, environmental destruction. She expected, even hoped, to be surprised by her research, but the surprise came from a source she didn't expect. It didn't come from the data; it came from her body. Within a few months of starting the project, she experienced a pervasive physical breakdown. It started slowly with a progressive loss of energy. Her daily two-mile walk around a beloved nearby pond became a strain and then impossible to complete without resting. A pain in her stomach then appeared, which she ignored at first, attributing it to stress, but eventually she found herself on the floor in intractable agony. A series of tests showed that she had acute inflammation throughout her gastro-intestinal tract. It took her more than a year to recover from this intestinal problem and the accompanying chronic fatigue syndrome. A central part of that recovery involved the abandonment of her breakfast ritual with the paper and scissors. Commenting on this experience, Greenspan writes,
In the laboratory of my own body, I learned what happens to a carrier who ingests the globe's bad news with breakfast....Grief devolved into chronic anxiety and a leaden, physical depression. Fear got lodged in my guts. Despair for the world sank me, body and soul... So I am more aware now of the merciful nature of emotional numbing and denial. I can see the compelling appeal of the fantasy of innocence. Numbing yourself can make a lot of sense when you are overwhelmed and not sure what to do with all the grief."
Greenspan's story reminds me of another. I live above Powder Mill Park in Bushnell's Basin. As many of you know, that part of the park is famous for its Daffodil Meadow. Every year at this time, a gorgeous sea of daffodils appears. It's remarkable. People from all over flock to it day after day. I ran into my neighbor in the yard last week and we got to talking about my sermon. She mentioned the Daffodil Meadow and how she had recently taken her children down to see it. She sat on the bench and watched as her kids and a number of other children just stood there. There they were, she said, a normally hyper-active, rough-housing, Tag-You're-It, Can't-Keep-My-Hands-to-Myself herd of kids. And not a single one of them was moving. They all just stood - mesmerized by this amazing "Other," this spectacular field of yellow.
And my neighbor said she almost cried, not simply because it was so beautiful, but because this sudden and unexpected sadness rose up in her. She said, "For a brief moment, it occurred to me that someday all this won't be here." Then after a pause and an uncomfortable smile, she said, "Of course I didn't know what to do with that, so I just tucked it away."
It's stories like these that explain why I'm not sold on the "experts'" theories about selfishness,. Such stories tell me that we are not as cut off from nature and the destruction of nature as our academic and theoretical discussions lead us to imagine. Not only that, these stories convince me that it is simply not possible for us to be cut off!
My alma mater, the University of Chicago, sent me its monthly magazine a couple of weeks back. The cover story was about a bio-chemical study of empathy. Scientists in campus labs are mapping what happens in the brain when people are exposed to the pain of others. Two findings particularly struck me. The first was that when we are exposed to the pain of others, the section in our brain that lights up is the same section that lights up when we ourselves experience direct pain. The conclusion from this: Empathy is hard wired. As one of the researchers put it, "We were built to feel pain beyond our own in some mysterious way as our own." The second finding was that these so-called "empathy sections" of our brain light up regardless of how people try to feel or how they appear to be feeling. In other words, empathy is not a choice. Even when we look detached or claim to be detached from pain and problems beyond our own, we're not!
The article never explicitly addressed the pain and problems of the earth. Nor did it talk about our ability to empathize with our great-great-grandkids who will suffer the consequences of our current choices. But I don't think that matters. I think the conclusions can still be applied to today's topic. Whether we look like it or not, whether we admit it or not, whether we are even aware of it or not, we carry the suffering of the planet and the potential suffering our great, great grandkids in our brains, our bodies and our hearts. The link between our state of mind and the state of the planet is simply inescapable. We can squelch it, drown it out, forget about it for a time or even pretend it's not there, but it is, and will be, no matter what.
And that means something very significant. It means that while we all may look passive, submissive, detached or indifferent when it comes to the problems of the planet, we are most likely feeling something else. And it seems that something else is overwhelmed. What did my neighbor say? She said, "I didn't know what to do with the sadness, so I tucked it away." Those are clearly not the words of someone who has selfishly lost the ability to feel; those are the words of someone who doesn't know what to do with everything she is feeling!
Recognizing this feeling is significant, because it means not only that we don't understand folks as well as we think we do, but also that we're not giving folks what they need - or giving ourselves what we need. If we are fundamentally and selfishly detached from the pain, responsibility and guilt related to the state of the earth, then what we need is a good kick in the pants; we need to be MADE to feel that pain, responsibility and guilt. But if our passivity and avoidance are the result of being overwhelmed by the pain, responsibility and guilt of it all, then what we need is not a good kick in the pants, but help - not someone to tell us what we should be feeling as much as someone to go to with what we are feeling, or maybe what we need most is to just find someone who is feeling the same way we are.
Miriam Greenspan tells another story that gets at this. A number of years ago when the hole in the ozone layer over North America first became front page news, she was in a yoga class. Each session began with quiet meditation in the Quaker tradition, where all were invited to break the silence with a prayerful expression when so moved. Usually the prayers were for good health, well-being, personal growth and inner peace. Just after Miriam read about the hole in the ozone and the threat it posed, she found herself uttering a prayer for the health of the planet and the courage to do something about it.
To Miriam's surprise, the yoga teacher broke the usual decorum of silence to reassure her, saying, "Just meditate and pray, Miriam, and you'll be okay." Miriam says this response left her more overwhelmed than when she arrived. As she points out, she wasn't worried about herself being okay; she was worried about the fate of the planet and the earth being okay. And not just that, she realized she was also looking for someone who felt the same. Here's how she puts it: "My teacher just didn't get it: I wasn't looking for healing, I was looking not to be alone."
Greenspan never uses the word friendship, but I suspect if she were here, she'd say that fits what she was after. And when it comes to this complicated mess of being overwhelmed by the planet's problems, that's ultimately what I think we're after too.
I think back to when I was a kid growing up on our 80-acre farm. There was a time when the woods scared me to death. The idea of going into them or through them overwhelmed me; I'd do anything to avoid it unless I had someone to go with me. And they didn't have to be brave or know the way; they just had to be with me. Indeed, it was almost better if they didn't know the way and were just as scared as I was. There was something about being in it together that transformed the situation from an overwhelming obstacle into an incredible adventure.
That's the same kind of transformation we should be aiming for when it comes to the problem of being overwhelmed by the planet's problems. Maybe our question isn't, "How can we make this situation seem less overwhelming?" Maybe it's, "How can we turn this overwhelming challenge into one of the most demanding communal adventures of our lives?" Or, to put it another way, maybe the goal isn't to find someone who can help us feel less overwhelmed, but to find someone who is willing to go on this overwhelming adventure with us.
And so, odd as it sounds, on this Earth Day I refuse to say, "We can do this!" Instead, I think what we need to hear is, "We've got to do this together!" Alone, it won't matter how much research you do; it won't matter how many "25 steps to a greener planet" you hang on your refrigerator. Alone, all the information, good intentions and motivation in the world simply won't matter. Alone, the feelings of being overwhelmed are impossible to hold at bay. But with others beside you, with others in it with you, with others making the same "pointless" or "hippy" or "tree-hugging" sacrifices you are, suddenly things change, suddenly the feeling we have is not being overwhelmed by dark woods surrounding us but being in the midst of the greatest challenge of our lives, with our friends.
So on this Earth Day, maybe the thing we need to hear most is "I'm in it with you."
May this be what we offer to each other, and the world.
AMEN.
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