http://www.firstchurchboston.org/eeuploads/sermons/And_the_Almond_Tree_Blossomed_4-27-08_SK.pdf
We’ve all known classic good news/bad news jokes. They always end with the bad news last, because that is always the punch line. This sermon is going to be in reverse of that. I am going to do the bad news first, very quickly, because you basically know the bad news.
There are three distinct phases of change. There is information, then there is insight, the way that information slowly percolates into wisdom, but even wisdom and insight is not enough, because then there is action and there is change. There is transformation. The classic good news/ bad news joke is:
The doctor tells his patient, “I’ve got some good news and some bad news.” The patient says to the doctor, “So what’s the good news?” and the doctor says, “Well the tests you took show that you have twenty-four hours to live.”
“That’s the good news? What’s the bad news?”
“Well the bad news is that I forgot to call you yesterday.”
We all know this earth of ours is in some serious trouble. The sermon title comes from the Greek writer, Nicholas Kasanzakis, who wrote Zorba the Greek and The Last Temptation of Christ. Since Divinity School, when I found it, this has haunted me and I have used it many times. A pilgrim comes up to a beautiful almond tree and says,
“ ‘Sister, speak to me of life.’ And the almond tree blossomed.” The second line, so simple, so pure, “and the almond tree blossomed”; that is the “word” that nature gives to us whenever we are dealing with the facts and images of the trouble of the earth, - it replies in action. It responds, it is motion. That is what we need to do when we learn to speak of life.
The words we use like ecology are very polarizing and sometimes politicians can use them against the forces of what the almond tree (and our own hearts) must do, which is to respond, to reply with action, which is to blossom – to renew. Genesis is not the first book of the Bible. Genesis is every day, and this generation must know genesis in a way that no other human generation has ever had to know it. Our larger life, our essential life, of all life to be. That is what I am talking about this morning. If you are wondering, this really isn’t a “poetic” conceit. It isn’t even an image, it is simple, baseline, root reality. It is the truth of our lives from here on in.
To be sure, it sounds ironic to begin the bad news part of our sermon with the fact that every single day the sun gives us thirteen times more energy that we human beings can possibly use. And yet, last year, we only spent $159 million dollars in this research.
And that $159 million dollars researching the future of this planet and our children’s and grandchildren’s lives paid for nine hours of the war in Iraq.
That’s the bad news. In the political campaign going on now, out of more than 2,700 questions asked of the major candidates on major media outlets, out of 19 debates, and well over 500 interviews, exactly 8 of the questions concerned ecology. That is part of the bad news. We probably have 7 to 10 years before we reach the tipping point. Things are moving much more quickly than the scientists’ most optimistic models showed. It’s happening. Things are melting. Things are heating up.
It is an emergency. You know that. We don’t have to just cap the carbon, we have to reduce it and reduce it dramatically. This is probably going to take us 30 or 40 years. Already we are looking at a degree or a degree and a half rise in mean temperature of the earth. It’s already in the pipeline, it’s already in the skies, it’s already soaked into the oceans (the catchment of the CO2). And so, for another 30 years the struggle must go forward. Time Magazine last week called it The Long War. We don’t need a Marshall Plan. What we need to do is to fight the equivalent of World War II times 10 and do it over a 30 or 40 year period.
Okay, that is the bad news. Now for the good news. Haltingly, perhaps grudgingly, at times in a subterranean fashion, but in real, demonstrable ways the tide has turned. There is no going back. There is no more denial, there is no more evasion. This is it. This is the way our lives will be. This will be the struggle of our generation. It is here, it is now, and we are at last accepting our way, our path. There is a Cap in Trace Emissions Bill in Congress right now. And it may come up for a vote next week, that could have a dramatic effect. It is following what is already in place in California. It still leads to that 2 degree rise in temperature and perhaps more, so it is not the silver bullet, but it is real and actually in Congress, and I encourage you to take your idealism, your faith, and your deep love of the beauty of this place and to help make it happen.
People are changing in myriad subtle ways. We are going to be giving out canvas bags today, just a small thing. All the conservation efforts in the world will only give us about half of what we need even under the most optimistic scenarios. That means that now that the tide has to turn in the Halls of Congress, and in the capitols of every country in the world. It has to turn in the headquarters of every energy producer. It has to turn in every church and every temple and every synagogue. It has to happen here. There is no evading it. There is no getting around it. You might say, “Well, if it only gets us maybe half way, what do my individual actions mean? What if I put in CFL lightbulbs instead of regular incandescent ones? What’s it mean if a take a canvas bag instead of plastic ones?” Because obviously, the bigwigs are going to make the big decisions. They are the ones that are going to turn this thing on a dime. But here’s the deal, and the reason that conservation matters and why each of you in the pews and you listening on the radio, the reason that what you do really matters, is that politicians will not take us seriously until we change first. Because they will not lift their fingers until you demand that they do.
They are not going to do it for you, they are not going to be ahead of the curve, they are not going to show leadership; you must be the leaders, and that is the simple truth. They take it seriously when we take it seriously, and that means conservation, that means changing our lives. But it isn’t the quality of making our lives bare and bedraggled and worn. No. This is actually a path that may be a much happier path for all of us. There is nothing wrong with frugality, there is nothing wrong
with conserving, there is nothing wrong with thinking through what we do. It is a mindful way of living and it can lead to great happiness. It is not being deprived. It is being ennobled.
I don’t know about you, but I look forward to that challenge. I am ready. In wind and solar the technology is moving fast, but we are still probably five years away from it making the real difference it can make, and so in the meantime, with rising oil costs going up so fast, these other technologies are very enticing, are really hopeful. The faster the gas prices rise, the quicker this new world comes into play. That is the truth of it. That is the way it is. Scientists are now starting to come to the table with intriguing proposals that offer hope. None of them, in and of themselves, are silver bullets. None of them will solve it. None of these suggestions will probably alter and cap emissions by more than about 5 to 10%, but if many ways are tried and if we are creative, then science may come to the fore (even as science got us into the trouble we are in!) The Industrial Revolution actually has to play a role in moving to a post-Industrial Revolution. It doesn’t solve the problem but it gives us time in that crucial 30 year period where the planet may sustain us and we may sustain ourselves.
Now, I am not talking about the destruction of the Earth. The Earth will be fine. The Earth will have a bad fever but the reality we are talking about is human civilization. If you care about human civilization you’d better get working on this. The Earth is regenerative and strong and powerful. What we need to do is to at last get with its strength and its rhythm and its powerful harmony. We may do this because we are not separate from the earth. We are bound and part and particle of every aspect of the Earth. Some scientists are saying is that we need to place in the deserts great mirrors and take sulphur and thread it through the upper atmosphere so that more of the sun’s heat is reflected back. There are lots of suggestions out there. One guy from Harvard, Curt House, says that we need to establish more than a hundred major facilities on the sea coast where we begin to remove acid from the ocean because it is the oceans that will be our salvation (if we do not destroy the oceans first). And all this is going to be a very tight run. You have no idea how suspenseful and how tight this is, but if we get serious, we do have time.
And there is hope. I wouldn’t be terribly optimistic, but I would be hopeful. Optimism is what gets us into trouble. Optimism is what allows our politicians and sometimes our spiritual leaders to lie to us because it is convenient and comfortable.
But you need to be people of hope that this can be done. It must be done. Even evangelicals are getting on board, and good for them. If you think about it, science can’t do it alone. The ecological movement, as wonderful as it’s been, has been a secular one. It is far past time that people of faith kick in. One rabbi, Julian Sinclair says, “If you think about it, religious people has been in the behavior modification business for three thousand years. It is time for us to come to the table. It is time for people to change their lives. Not because of arguments or scientific rationales, but because their hearts tell them. If I believe in beauty; if I truly love my neighbor; if I can anticipate that I’m borrowing this world from grandchildren yet unborn, they would get it.”
Every world religion has its message and place. Al Gore, as a young boy, remembers his mother reading to him from Rachel Carson’s, Silent Spring. I really hope some day Rachel Carson gets her place in the pantheon of great American heroes. He remembers hearing these words from his mother: “No witchcraft, no enemy action has silenced the rebirth of new life on this earth. People had done it themselves.” He heard these words as a young boy and it’s true. Nearly fifty years later people are waking up. If they have done it themselves, then they must solve it themselves, and they must solve it together. The massive and powerful forces of nature’s ability to regenerate and recover can not do it alone either. We must be the agents of movement, of change, of shift, of renewal. We must be that which blossoms anew. No aliens are going to come down and do it, and no angels from heaven are going to go do it. This is ours to do. It is a struggle unlike any that human beings have faced before. Perhaps that’s why it’s been so hard and taken so long to engage.
We Unitarian Universalists, so small in number, have much to say and much to do. We may help remind all of us of words from Henry David Thoreau: “The earth I tread on is not a dead, inert mass; it is a body, has a spirit, is organic and fluid to the influence of its spirit and to whatever particle of that spirit that is made.”
That is American to the core and can become, if we listen to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature”, nothing less than a declaration of interdependence.
We can do this; you can do this. We must move from comfort to accepting with grace and grit a very stern challenge. And we can learn to do this unbegrudgingly and boldly, because we are not apart from any aspect of this beautiful world and we never have been. Then we can be both heroic and newly humble servants in this eleventh hour. Lincoln said it well in the midst of chaos and maelstrom: “As our case is new, so must it be that we must think anew, and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country.” What must be saved now is more than a nation. The stakes are so much higher. For each of us to stand in a new place on this world that is alive, is spirit, and speaks to every piece and particle of your soul.
My friends, “Speak to me of life and what will you answer?”
Amen.
