IF WE WILL HAVE THE WISDOM TO SURVIVE
September 14, 2003
The Reverend Anne Felton Hines
My daughter told me the other night that she was going to read The Giving Tree to my grandson, because it's one of her favorite stories. I told her it's one of my least favorite - though I realize that I'm probably the only person on Earth who feels this way! But Tiffany knew immediately why I'd find the story objectionable: "The tree is too co-dependent for you, right, Mom?" she said. "Right," I told her; "there's just a bit more martyrdom than I can tolerate."
You see, the first time I heard the story was in a class in Seminary; someone had offered it as a metaphor for mothering, which I found offensive. (I, of course, read something about motherhood as a patriarchal tool for the oppression of women! I have softened since then.)
However, if Silverstein's story is heard simply for what it is - the story of a human being's relationship to a tree, then it becomes merely a sad reflection of humanity's arrogant exploitation of Nature. And then it really does hold a very important message for us.
Alice Walker has her own story of a tree, which gives a slightly different slant on the situation. It seems that she and a friend were walking in the countryside one day, hoping to listen to what the Earth had to say to them. Alice lay down under a grove of trees, and suddenly she had the distinct feeling that these trees were speaking to her. Not only were they speaking; they were asking her to leave!
Rather startled by this, she opened her eyes and looked up into their "faces." They were all middle-aged or old conifers, and were covered with a light green fungus, indicating some kind of disease. The branches, or "arms," were bent and deformed. Alice wrote that the trees reminded her of badly rheumatoid elderly people. She was struck by how difficult it must be for these old trees to move their limbs freely in the breeze. No wonder they didn't want her lying on their "gnarled and no doubt aching feet," she thought.
In looking about her, Alice noticed that the ground in which the trees were planted was gray and dead-looking. So that was the reason for the diseased trees, she surmised; chemicals much have been dumped there. She quickly explained to the trees that their problems were not due to anything she had done; but the trees would hear none of it. "Get up," they told her. "Go away."
But Alice stayed, insisting on proving her innocence to them. "I love trees," she told them.
"Oh, p-leese," replied the trees.
"But I don't cut you down in the prime of life, "pleaded Alice. "I do not haul your mutilated and stripped bodies shamelessly down the highway. It is the lumber companies that do that."
"Just go away," said the trees again.
But Alice went on: "All my life you have meant so much to me. I love your grace, your dignity, your serenity, your generosity…."
"Well!" said the trees; "we find you without grace, without dignity, without serenity, and without generosity. You butcher us, you burn us, you grow us only to destroy us. Even when we grow ourselves, you kill us, or cut off our limbs. That we are alive and have feelings means nothing to you."
Alice remembered then that she did live in a wood house, eat on a wood table, and sleep on a wood bed. But still she pleaded innocence, pointing out to the trees that her uses of wood were modest, and always tailored to her needs. She didn't slash through whole forests, destroying hundreds of trees in the process of "harvesting" a few.
"But finally," she writes, "after much discourse, I understood what the trees were telling me: Being an individual doesn't matter. Just as human beings perceive all trees as one, all human beings - to the trees - are one. We are judged by our worst collective behavior, since it is so vast; not by our singular best. The Earth holds us responsible for our crimes against it, not as individuals, but as a species; this was the message of the trees.
"The Earth is wise," she writes. "It has given itself into the keeping of all, and all are therefore accountable."
This is a disturbing thought -- that we are all equally accountable. For most of us here are probably more aware of and feel more accountability for the destruction of the Earth than the average American. Yet what might the trees, the water, the air, the soil, the animals, the tiniest biological forms, say to us if they could speak? Might they not ask even us to leave this home we share with them - no matter how much we say we care about them; no matter how much we've tried to be responsible? Would they not lump good UUs in with every other human on this planet - especially Americans?
For several decades now, we have known - or at least, we have been warned - that the results of our consumer mentality and lifestyle are killing our planet. We see everywhere, in the words of Professor Paul Shepard, "a heedless occupancy of all earth habitats; the physical and chemical abuse of soil, air and water; the extinction or displacement of wild plants and animals; overcutting and overgrazing of forest and grasslands; and the expansion of human numbers at the expense of the biotic health of the world, turning everything into something human-made and human-used."
We might like to blame all this on corporate greed. It's certainly easy - and in many ways appropriate - to blame logging and oil companies, big developers, auto manufacturers, and the politicians - especially our current President, whose administration has probably done more to harm the environment than any previous administration. But the truth is that those entities could not - would not - do what they do without us, the consumer - and especially the American consumer.
The two main roots of the global environmental crisis -- population growth and consumption - are led by the United States. While our population is only 5% of the earth's total population, it is growing at an annual rate of 2.6 million - double the average growth in other industrial countries, and even greater than several of the developing countries.
But what makes our population growth so much more devastating is our pattern of consumption. We Americans consume and discard more than any other nation in the world; and the technology used to satisfy that consumption tends to be more damaging than that used in most other wealthy countries. As a result, a baby born and raised in the United States will create thirteen times as much environmental damage over the course of his or her lifetime as a baby born in Brazil, and 35 times as much damage as a baby in India.
If the non-human species of our planet were to even want to speak to us, they might first ask us to end our addiction to the accumulation of stuff; everything else follows from that.
They might ask us to resist using so much energy, for it is the burning of fossil fuel to provide that energy, and the resultant greenhouse emissions, that is causing the earth's temperatures to rise to dangerous levels.
While our country does claim only 5% of the world's total population, we are responsible for 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions that come from fossil fuels. An average American uses up to 100 times the energy that a citizen of a developing country uses.
Global warming - still unacknowledged by our President - is already causing severe weather changes in various areas of the world, including the U.S. If this continues, wetlands will be destroyed, along with the habitats of plants, animals, forests, and insects. Indeed, the spread of the West Nile virus into this country is probably a direct result of Global Warming, as insects carrying the disease have been forced by rising temperatures to migrate from their original habitat elsewhere.
If non-human species were able to speak to us, they might beg us to quit our addiction to the automobile - particularly the large, gas-guzzling kind. The gasoline which fuels our cars is responsible -- along with the power plants which provide us with so much electricity - for most of the air pollution around the world. Perhaps the birds would quote Emerson, who said, "The sky is the daily bread of our eyes;" they'd beg us to try bicycling for a change, or riding the buses, and to pressure auto manufacturers to stop producing cars that are so detrimental and unnecessary. (I find it ironic that the people who recently vandalized and destroyed some SUVs are being called "domestic terrorists," when the auto industry and politicians have been "terrorizing" our planet for years.)
Other species might ask us to curb our meat-eating habits, which necessitate large factory farms with thousands of animals living in close quarters, producing more waste than the surrounding environment can absorb. This waste, along with the pesticides used on our fruits and vegetables, are polluting the water and killing fish and other life forms, including probably humans.
And non-human species, especially animals and insects, might plead with us to immediately stop destroying them and their habitats. The current thought is that between 17,000 and 30,000 species are becoming extinct every year! What's called "normal background extinction" is three per year. According to David Cockrell, editor of the UUA's "Green Sanctuary" manual, it is nothing more than human activity that is responsible for these mass extinctions, the likes of which have not been seen since the dinosaurs disappeared.
Human activity has also significantly changed - for the worse - one-third to one-half of all the habitats on earth. 1% of the world's rainforests are destroyed each year - that's equal to an area the size of New York City every day. These forests are sometimes replanted, but it is impossible to recreate the ecosystems that are destroyed along with them.
As I was gathering some of this information, I was reminded of something I read once about poverty: "Behind every statistic is a human being crying." Perhaps behind the statistics I've given you this morning, can be heard the crying of Earth and all her creatures. And perhaps we need to cry with them.
In his book, Earth in the Balance, Al Gore defined "ecology" as the "study of balance." "In the end," he wrote, "we must restore the balance within ourselves - between who we are and what we do, and between ourselves as individuals and the civilization we wish to create and sustain." We must take a deeper look, he suggested, at "what habits of mind and action have led us to this crisis?"
I know that many of you have taken that "deeper look," and changed your life to reflect your values. And I like to think that I, too, have lived more consciously and conscientiously. But there is probably always more we could do to help save our planet; probably always one more step we can take to restore balance.
Recently, when Greg Buesing asked me where I'd moved to and I said Topanga Canyon Blvd., he exclaimed, "Oh! You can take the bus to work!" "Well, I guess I could," I said hesitantly. I then explained that I've always felt I needed my car nearby in case there were an emergency somewhere requiring my presence. "Well, there are always cabs," he suggested. "Or someone would probably drive you wherever you needed to go." Oh yeah, I said; I forgot about taxis. As I recall, I gave a couple more reasons why abandoning my car might cause a problem, and each time, Greg had a solution. So I know he's going to be disappointed to hear that I haven't yet even checked out bus schedules; I so love the convenience of my car! But I know I can't ignore his suggestion; it's simply a new step for me to consider toward that "balancing" between who I am and what I do.
And it is important that I, and all of us, wrestle with that balance, for it is not only a practical issue - this saving our Earth; it is a spiritual issue as well.
We Unitarian Universalists say that we "covenant to affirm and promote respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part." We truly believe that Divinity - the Breath of Life - is manifested in every part of Creation. To live in such a way as to upset the balance - to care more about material comforts and ease than about the "Web of Existence" - is to turn our back on whatever concept of God we might hold. And so we are called to stop - to look deeply at ourselves and our institutions, and to see what steps we might take to heal our precious home.
A few months ago, Rhod Zimmerman delivered a fine presentation here about environment justice, and some of the things we might do here, as a church, to become what our denomination calls a "Green Sanctuary."
We now have containers at the back of the Sanctuary, provided by Rhonda Plank-Richard, in which we can throw our Orders of Service at the end of worship to be recycled.
Thanks to Rhod, we have containers in the Pavillion that can be used to recycle our ink jet and/or toner cartridges; he's even encouraging us to give some to our friends and co-workers!
And Kirsten Rosselot helped our teens conduct an "energy audit" at the church, and has produced a report suggesting numerous ways in which this church could become more energy-efficient, thereby saving our environment and our budget!
Healing our planet is an effort that needs all of us - as individuals and as a religious community. Therefore I am encouraging you to join Rhod after today's service - be sure to get some refreshments first - back here in the Sanctuary, to continue the conversation about how we can find that balance between the values we cherish and the life we lead.
When I was putting together my Order of Service for this morning, I caught myself writing the title as, "If We Will Have the 'Will' to Survive," as opposed to the "Wisdom" to survive. But in fact, both are needed: our wisdom must be infused with a will to live differently - in some cases, drastically differently. And that "will" must be informed by an ancient wisdom which reminds us that we do not own this home called Earth, but are simply residents here, alongside all the other species who inhabit it with us; and that when something happens to one, it happens to us all.
Perhaps if we can begin living that wisdom, the trees, the air, the water, the soil, the animals, and the tiniest biological forms, will welcome us home again.
© 2003 Anne Felton Hines. All rights reserved.
