The Seventh Principal
The Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 11, 2022
by Sarah Swift
Several weeks ago Roxann Smith reminded me that she needed a title for my remarks this morning. Oh, right, hmmmmm. I’d been exploring a variety of ideas. Some of them related to this month’s theme of “Light”. I gave her “The Seventh Principle”, our Unitarian Universalist affirmation of the interconnected web of existence. I figured it was good enough, familiar enough to this congregation, to do the job while I worked out exactly what to stand up here and say to you. Then, over the ensuing several Sundays, I was amused to find the Seventh Principle referenced in sermons by both Barb Hale and Reverend Craig. Great minds, and all that, right? So here’s what I’ve been thinking about.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been seeking my clan. I was born into a reasonably loving family, raised with more freedom than most American children enjoy today. But for decades I’ve felt a yearning for a life I could not see, only feel. In 1987, when Bono sang that he still hadn’t found what he was looking for, it brought me to tears. By then I was happily married with two great kids and skills enough to resume whatever career awaited me after those early childhood years. I loved raising young humans, but yet…
Also for as long as I can remember, the natural world has felt alive in ways I cannot put into words. I was very young when I discovered sunlight streaming through a corner window of our small dining room, pooling onto the rug. I sat in that light so entranced by the experience that I can go there anytime and still feel the wonder and delight of being bathed by a star in a little house on Third Avenue.
We lived in an interesting town perched on the banks of the Hudson River. One spring all three of us children came down with some childhood illness that kept us indoors for what seemed like forever. I was the first to recover. My mother urged me to go outside for fresh air. I’ve always thought that a kindness but realize now she was cutting her nursing duties by a third. I must have been about four years old. Stepping into the spring sunshine felt like a rebirth, as if I even remembered my first birth. Everything I looked at and heard and felt seemed to quiver with life like never before. It was my first consciously spiritual experience, shared with trees, grass, birds and sky. It was the happiest moment of my young life, and I knew it. Roxann referred to experiences like these as “Awe Moments”, in her sermon last year. It was truly awe-some.
But the real deal in my growing awareness of oneness with nature was when my parents moved us 300 miles away, to the shores of Lake Ontario. My father had decided to teach and needed the degree.
Off we went, away from metropolitan New York and into the snow belt hinterlands. My mother was up for the adventure, her own freshly-minted certificate in hand, and a teaching job, ready to steer this enterprise to a safe harbor. Rather than live in town, they found a small farmhouse and barn set among rolling fields. This is where I learned the call of the red-winged blackbird, watched storms roll in right off the lake, crawled in old hayfields to observe how the plants grew, lay on my back to contemplate the infinite sky, dug cozy igloos into the deep, lake-effect snowbanks. I wasn’t able to articulate it, but I felt centered, part of a whole, and it was good. I even had the guts to dig up a long-dead hamster to see what he looked like after a year. My sister was grossed out; I was fascinated. Not much left of Brownie, I’ll tell you. The underground recyclers had done their work, bones, fur and all.
Then we moved again. Now Dad needed a job, my younger brother was on the way, and we children were learning that life could hold more surprises than we’d ever realized. Back we went to family in the lower Hudson Valley, this time into a larger house bordering a woods to explore, and a large open lot to entice neighborhood kids over to play. Smart move, Mom and Dad.
Suffice it to say, growing into young adulthood in the 1960s, not far from New York City, tamped down any yearning for something else. There was plenty on my teen plate besides a baby in the house, a war in the news, and great music on the radio—music that was fresh and new, decades before it became golden oldies.
Several years years later, when some semblance of maturity began developing, I started to realize that what I wanted underneath it all, aside from all I had—friends, an education, regular meals, an interesting series of jobs-- was actually to live in a small traditional community where everyone had a place. Looking for a template, I pictured a Native American community. From what I’d read, I knew such places honored people for the gifts they offered and made a place for people who did not fit into standard descriptions of how to be. Educated in New York, I’d learned of the Six Nations Confederation and saw the wisdom in intertribal cooperation, along with strong matriarchal hierarchies balanced by men’s councils. No war unless the women agreed. Something respectful for everyone. It was the closest understanding I had of a place I wanted. I imagined myself as part of a group living at ease with a variety of others and the seasons, each person contributing to the welfare of the whole. Pretty idyllic, but the feeling persisted beneath all the changes life brought.
Back in the real world I actually inhabited, the biggest change was sharing and negotiating a life partnership with Bob. Living closely with another human in life partnership is no easy task, as we all know. Social media is full of the joys and concerns of this enterprise. Happily for us, we found family in the friends and neighbors we cultivated here, away from our birth families, and became increasingly rooted to the place where we’ve lived a stunning 45 years. I thought we were buying a starter home!
As the seasons and years passed, and children arrived to change the dynamics, we developed an understanding of the cyclical rhythms of the nature around us. The first signs of spring, with my old friends the red-winged blackbirds, the fall migrations, the ways in which each coming season announces itself in the last third of the present one. We found pathways through the woods made by deer and rabbits, turkeys and even black bears. We learned that gardening is serious work, not for dabblers. Oops. We began charting the arrival of hummingbirds in 1992, and watching for Monarch butterflies not long after that. The privilege of living so close to the natural world while also having access to the cultural life of university towns and cities is a blessing we in this church all share. Our Last Green Valley is a bridge between natural and human worlds.
I am grateful for the many walking trails and kayaking opportunities in the communities around here. Slowly I began to make peace with living in the modern world.
Over the past several years I’ve been reading works by gifted writers who explore nature and the physical landscape in order to parse the inner landscapes of the human heart. I’m thinking Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, who shows us the intertwining of human life and native culture with nature. I’m thinking Robert Macfarlane, who wrote The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot, describing his walks along ancient footpaths through Britain and Europe, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others brimming with the wisdom of lives lived outdoors. Then of course, there’s Mary Oliver, successor to poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, whose plain language places us squarely within nature as she utters simple and profound truths. Consider her exquisite poem, “The Summer Day”:
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Most recently, I’ve discovered the work of David Abram, the ecologist and philosopher who thinks, reads, and writes about the cultural causes—and consequences—of ecological disarray.
He coined the term “the more-than-human-world”, a term that reminds us that it is only since Biblical times that humans have regarded themselves at the top of the heap of creation. Here it’s important to note that the Ancient Hebrews were among the first people to record their history in writing, as opposed to passing it along in oral stories. More on this distinction in a few minutes. Meanwhile, in his more recent writing, Abram refers to this “more-than-human-world” as “the Commonwealth of Breath”. The Commonwealth of Breath. Isn’t that great? So hum, indeed.
In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram explores his theme of human presence in, and impact upon, the natural world. Here he lays out intriguing arguments for the invention of writing—the invention of writing!?!--as the point where humans began to see themselves as separate and superior to the natural world. The book’s subtitle is “Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World”. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of writing as one of the most marvelous inventions.
I don’t remember learning to read, maybe you don’t either. A gifted teacher once told me that no one really knows how children learn to read, one reason why there are various methods and sometimes great difficulties for children and adults. For most of us, reading is magical, even if mainly done on a phone. We can learn from people long dead, travel to other cultures from the comfort of home, and take ourselves into imagined futures where we have maybe, possibly, found better ways to maintain our place together on this beautiful planet.
But to Abram, the invention of writing led to human disconnection from what humans had long understood to be a fundamental inter-relationship with equal species of animals, plants, even inanimate stone. He grounds his argument in personal experiences living among oral cultures, along with extensive reading on the subject. There are some 37 pages of notes and bibliography at the back of The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram cites examples of so-called primitive tribes studied by 20th century anthropologists to show how our own distant ancestors must well have lived together, and how they well may have viewed themselves within their world. I am fascinated by his examples of how these cultures used story to transmit knowledge down the generations. He explains, for example, that for the Apache, geography was key. Stories were grounded in place. Their stories would begin with something like, “It happened here,” a place known to the listeners, and end with, “this is where it happened”. Later, when people listening to the story, especially children and young adults, passed by those familiar places, they might easily recall the stories, remember the lessons. I suspect people today do this all the time in their minds, but not in a shared, communal way.
Possibly even more wondrous, David Abram tells us that Australia’s aboriginal people travelled vast distances across sun-burned lands, navigating their way along seemingly tract-less miles by recalling the twists and turns of geographical stories told and learned in community. In each of his examples Abrams demonstrates human identity with nature, the certainty of interconnection. All spiritual life emanates from this connection, he says. Thus it is natural that humans hold various animals, plants and places as sacred. Look at our coins, bearing eagles, and sheaves of wheat.
But with writing came a gradual disconnection from the natural world and a focus on the human world, which is understandable.
Many cultures added gods and goddesses of writing to their pantheons of deities controlling the natural world, as populations grew and human attention drew inward upon itself. Among these ancient deities of writing are the Chinese Zhu Yi, the Hindu Saraswati, the Celtic Brigid, the Greek Athena, the Egyptian Seshat and the Nigerian Yemaya. Writing was important enough, holy enough, to place it in the heavenly realm, to honor and perhaps propitiate. Even Moses came down from Mount Sinai bearing written tablets. I know I’ve inwardly prayed to some sort of goddess of inspiration when I’m stuck writing something that just won’t gel.
It would be simplistic to conclude that writing is the serpent in the garden, so to speak, but writing certainly made it easier to pass along ideas separate from the original tale-teller. We can’t look a book or newspaper (or digital device) in the eye and spot a twitchy falsehood. We need discernment, and that takes practice. Nature, on the other hand, does not lie.
Aristotle defines tragedy as an event a person brings upon him or herself through personal flaws. A fatal one-car accident is tragic if the driver is drunk. The driver chose to drink and drive, knowing the risks. A fatal one-car accident is a calamity, not a tragedy, If a deer suddenly runs into the road and the driver is killed (though I’d argue it is a tragedy for the impulsive deer). I believe Aristotle would call today’s climate crisis a tragedy for humans, with calamitous results for nature and societies that have contributed very little—if at all—to climate change.
So, where do we go from here? How do we find any sort of ease living in a world where our species is willingly killing our home and that of our fellow creatures? How do we “get ourselves back to the garden,” as Joni Mitchell wrote. There is much good work being done around the globe even now, even with things looking so stark. We hope we have enough time. But sometimes it doesn’t seem like one person can do enough, and while that’s true, we can start with ourselves. Here, there’s a lot we can do. We can do what Barb Hale urged in her sermon two weeks ago, reach out to others in as many ways as possible, great and small. We can continue to do all we can do personally, sensibly, to live and tread lightly on the earth. We take direct action as and where we can, and allow ourselves the grace to make mistakes—nobody’s perfect.
We must stand with Nature in the I-Thou relationship defined by philosopher Martin Buber in our Second Reading today by Kenneth R. Wilson. We need to transform our relationship with nature from Buber’s I-It description of otherness to the I-Thou relationship of mutuality if we are to survive. As Wilson said in the second reading, I think we can prepare ourselves.
For myself, and likely many of you, a closer attention to the nature around us is healing and informative. Mary Oliver says this in “The Wild Geese”, our first reading.
One late afternoon this past summer I discovered a glorious ring of sunlight burning the tops of all the trees surrounding the house. Each different specie, each color of green leaves, was bathed in its own shimmering gold. We were living in a halo of light I hadn’t noticed in 45 years of dwelling there. There, I knew I could work light into this sermon. But seriously, awareness is a beginning. So is working to heal ourselves for the work to come.
We can celebrate nature ceremonially. We can make stuff up. Surely that’s how all rituals started. Some years ago the Women’s Alliance held a winter solstice event in the parlor. I brought along a friend. The defining activity was an invitation to jot down on small pieces of paper something from the year just ending that each of us was ready to relinquish. I don’t recall what we did with the slips of baggage we collected. I hope we burned them. I do know that the event inspired my friend to hold a solstice celebration of her own the following year with a collection of family and friends. We gathered around an outdoor fire and threw our papers into the flames, joyfully watching sorrow, regret, or unfinished business go up in smoke. My friend has celebrated solstice this way ever since, most years with drumming around the fire and a pot luck dinner after. I have attended nearly all of them. For us, it’s more meaningful than Christmas, in tune with the rhythms of sun and earth, honoring the darkness, anticipating new life ahead.
Living with animals we bring into our homes is, of course, a daily reminder of our inter-relationship with the non-human world. I have learned profound lessons in stoicism and courage from my cat. Plants are nice, too, though that’s a different relationship.
Each week we gather here to nourish our connections to each other and something larger. I love this sanctuary as much for the open-minded community as for the space itself. The vaulted ceilings evoke the heavens, the wooden pews, the wood of forests. The plaster walls and exterior stones come from the earth. Sunlight often streams through brilliant windows, falling on flowers at the back table, with flowers on the alter offering a focal point for quiet contemplation. We raise our voices in song, and have the privilege of hearing beautiful live music every week. Today we are blessed with Roxann, Linda and Katie playing hammered dulcimer. It always reminds me of flowing water. Lila’s beautiful organ playing often reminds me that Fats Waller called the pipe organ The God Box. Indeed!
The practice of participating in the Commonwealth of Breath, of holding an I-Thou relationship with the natural world has a centering effect. I find it eases my I-It relationships with difficult situations and people. By moving toward a sense of intimacy with life, seeing myself as part of a larger whole, it is easier to be philosophical and accepting of the difficult things that come along. There is a deeper pleasure in the good. I’m finding answers to Mary Oliver’s question:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
May it be so.
11 December 2022
The Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
December 11, 2022
by Sarah Swift
Several weeks ago Roxann Smith reminded me that she needed a title for my remarks this morning. Oh, right, hmmmmm. I’d been exploring a variety of ideas. Some of them related to this month’s theme of “Light”. I gave her “The Seventh Principle”, our Unitarian Universalist affirmation of the interconnected web of existence. I figured it was good enough, familiar enough to this congregation, to do the job while I worked out exactly what to stand up here and say to you. Then, over the ensuing several Sundays, I was amused to find the Seventh Principle referenced in sermons by both Barb Hale and Reverend Craig. Great minds, and all that, right? So here’s what I’ve been thinking about.
For as long as I can remember I’ve been seeking my clan. I was born into a reasonably loving family, raised with more freedom than most American children enjoy today. But for decades I’ve felt a yearning for a life I could not see, only feel. In 1987, when Bono sang that he still hadn’t found what he was looking for, it brought me to tears. By then I was happily married with two great kids and skills enough to resume whatever career awaited me after those early childhood years. I loved raising young humans, but yet…
Also for as long as I can remember, the natural world has felt alive in ways I cannot put into words. I was very young when I discovered sunlight streaming through a corner window of our small dining room, pooling onto the rug. I sat in that light so entranced by the experience that I can go there anytime and still feel the wonder and delight of being bathed by a star in a little house on Third Avenue.
We lived in an interesting town perched on the banks of the Hudson River. One spring all three of us children came down with some childhood illness that kept us indoors for what seemed like forever. I was the first to recover. My mother urged me to go outside for fresh air. I’ve always thought that a kindness but realize now she was cutting her nursing duties by a third. I must have been about four years old. Stepping into the spring sunshine felt like a rebirth, as if I even remembered my first birth. Everything I looked at and heard and felt seemed to quiver with life like never before. It was my first consciously spiritual experience, shared with trees, grass, birds and sky. It was the happiest moment of my young life, and I knew it. Roxann referred to experiences like these as “Awe Moments”, in her sermon last year. It was truly awe-some.
But the real deal in my growing awareness of oneness with nature was when my parents moved us 300 miles away, to the shores of Lake Ontario. My father had decided to teach and needed the degree.
Off we went, away from metropolitan New York and into the snow belt hinterlands. My mother was up for the adventure, her own freshly-minted certificate in hand, and a teaching job, ready to steer this enterprise to a safe harbor. Rather than live in town, they found a small farmhouse and barn set among rolling fields. This is where I learned the call of the red-winged blackbird, watched storms roll in right off the lake, crawled in old hayfields to observe how the plants grew, lay on my back to contemplate the infinite sky, dug cozy igloos into the deep, lake-effect snowbanks. I wasn’t able to articulate it, but I felt centered, part of a whole, and it was good. I even had the guts to dig up a long-dead hamster to see what he looked like after a year. My sister was grossed out; I was fascinated. Not much left of Brownie, I’ll tell you. The underground recyclers had done their work, bones, fur and all.
Then we moved again. Now Dad needed a job, my younger brother was on the way, and we children were learning that life could hold more surprises than we’d ever realized. Back we went to family in the lower Hudson Valley, this time into a larger house bordering a woods to explore, and a large open lot to entice neighborhood kids over to play. Smart move, Mom and Dad.
Suffice it to say, growing into young adulthood in the 1960s, not far from New York City, tamped down any yearning for something else. There was plenty on my teen plate besides a baby in the house, a war in the news, and great music on the radio—music that was fresh and new, decades before it became golden oldies.
Several years years later, when some semblance of maturity began developing, I started to realize that what I wanted underneath it all, aside from all I had—friends, an education, regular meals, an interesting series of jobs-- was actually to live in a small traditional community where everyone had a place. Looking for a template, I pictured a Native American community. From what I’d read, I knew such places honored people for the gifts they offered and made a place for people who did not fit into standard descriptions of how to be. Educated in New York, I’d learned of the Six Nations Confederation and saw the wisdom in intertribal cooperation, along with strong matriarchal hierarchies balanced by men’s councils. No war unless the women agreed. Something respectful for everyone. It was the closest understanding I had of a place I wanted. I imagined myself as part of a group living at ease with a variety of others and the seasons, each person contributing to the welfare of the whole. Pretty idyllic, but the feeling persisted beneath all the changes life brought.
Back in the real world I actually inhabited, the biggest change was sharing and negotiating a life partnership with Bob. Living closely with another human in life partnership is no easy task, as we all know. Social media is full of the joys and concerns of this enterprise. Happily for us, we found family in the friends and neighbors we cultivated here, away from our birth families, and became increasingly rooted to the place where we’ve lived a stunning 45 years. I thought we were buying a starter home!
As the seasons and years passed, and children arrived to change the dynamics, we developed an understanding of the cyclical rhythms of the nature around us. The first signs of spring, with my old friends the red-winged blackbirds, the fall migrations, the ways in which each coming season announces itself in the last third of the present one. We found pathways through the woods made by deer and rabbits, turkeys and even black bears. We learned that gardening is serious work, not for dabblers. Oops. We began charting the arrival of hummingbirds in 1992, and watching for Monarch butterflies not long after that. The privilege of living so close to the natural world while also having access to the cultural life of university towns and cities is a blessing we in this church all share. Our Last Green Valley is a bridge between natural and human worlds.
I am grateful for the many walking trails and kayaking opportunities in the communities around here. Slowly I began to make peace with living in the modern world.
Over the past several years I’ve been reading works by gifted writers who explore nature and the physical landscape in order to parse the inner landscapes of the human heart. I’m thinking Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, who shows us the intertwining of human life and native culture with nature. I’m thinking Robert Macfarlane, who wrote The Old Ways: a Journey on Foot, describing his walks along ancient footpaths through Britain and Europe, sometimes alone, sometimes in the company of others brimming with the wisdom of lives lived outdoors. Then of course, there’s Mary Oliver, successor to poets like Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson, whose plain language places us squarely within nature as she utters simple and profound truths. Consider her exquisite poem, “The Summer Day”:
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean--
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down--
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
Most recently, I’ve discovered the work of David Abram, the ecologist and philosopher who thinks, reads, and writes about the cultural causes—and consequences—of ecological disarray.
He coined the term “the more-than-human-world”, a term that reminds us that it is only since Biblical times that humans have regarded themselves at the top of the heap of creation. Here it’s important to note that the Ancient Hebrews were among the first people to record their history in writing, as opposed to passing it along in oral stories. More on this distinction in a few minutes. Meanwhile, in his more recent writing, Abram refers to this “more-than-human-world” as “the Commonwealth of Breath”. The Commonwealth of Breath. Isn’t that great? So hum, indeed.
In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, Abram explores his theme of human presence in, and impact upon, the natural world. Here he lays out intriguing arguments for the invention of writing—the invention of writing!?!--as the point where humans began to see themselves as separate and superior to the natural world. The book’s subtitle is “Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World”. Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve always thought of writing as one of the most marvelous inventions.
I don’t remember learning to read, maybe you don’t either. A gifted teacher once told me that no one really knows how children learn to read, one reason why there are various methods and sometimes great difficulties for children and adults. For most of us, reading is magical, even if mainly done on a phone. We can learn from people long dead, travel to other cultures from the comfort of home, and take ourselves into imagined futures where we have maybe, possibly, found better ways to maintain our place together on this beautiful planet.
But to Abram, the invention of writing led to human disconnection from what humans had long understood to be a fundamental inter-relationship with equal species of animals, plants, even inanimate stone. He grounds his argument in personal experiences living among oral cultures, along with extensive reading on the subject. There are some 37 pages of notes and bibliography at the back of The Spell of the Sensuous. Abram cites examples of so-called primitive tribes studied by 20th century anthropologists to show how our own distant ancestors must well have lived together, and how they well may have viewed themselves within their world. I am fascinated by his examples of how these cultures used story to transmit knowledge down the generations. He explains, for example, that for the Apache, geography was key. Stories were grounded in place. Their stories would begin with something like, “It happened here,” a place known to the listeners, and end with, “this is where it happened”. Later, when people listening to the story, especially children and young adults, passed by those familiar places, they might easily recall the stories, remember the lessons. I suspect people today do this all the time in their minds, but not in a shared, communal way.
Possibly even more wondrous, David Abram tells us that Australia’s aboriginal people travelled vast distances across sun-burned lands, navigating their way along seemingly tract-less miles by recalling the twists and turns of geographical stories told and learned in community. In each of his examples Abrams demonstrates human identity with nature, the certainty of interconnection. All spiritual life emanates from this connection, he says. Thus it is natural that humans hold various animals, plants and places as sacred. Look at our coins, bearing eagles, and sheaves of wheat.
But with writing came a gradual disconnection from the natural world and a focus on the human world, which is understandable.
Many cultures added gods and goddesses of writing to their pantheons of deities controlling the natural world, as populations grew and human attention drew inward upon itself. Among these ancient deities of writing are the Chinese Zhu Yi, the Hindu Saraswati, the Celtic Brigid, the Greek Athena, the Egyptian Seshat and the Nigerian Yemaya. Writing was important enough, holy enough, to place it in the heavenly realm, to honor and perhaps propitiate. Even Moses came down from Mount Sinai bearing written tablets. I know I’ve inwardly prayed to some sort of goddess of inspiration when I’m stuck writing something that just won’t gel.
It would be simplistic to conclude that writing is the serpent in the garden, so to speak, but writing certainly made it easier to pass along ideas separate from the original tale-teller. We can’t look a book or newspaper (or digital device) in the eye and spot a twitchy falsehood. We need discernment, and that takes practice. Nature, on the other hand, does not lie.
Aristotle defines tragedy as an event a person brings upon him or herself through personal flaws. A fatal one-car accident is tragic if the driver is drunk. The driver chose to drink and drive, knowing the risks. A fatal one-car accident is a calamity, not a tragedy, If a deer suddenly runs into the road and the driver is killed (though I’d argue it is a tragedy for the impulsive deer). I believe Aristotle would call today’s climate crisis a tragedy for humans, with calamitous results for nature and societies that have contributed very little—if at all—to climate change.
So, where do we go from here? How do we find any sort of ease living in a world where our species is willingly killing our home and that of our fellow creatures? How do we “get ourselves back to the garden,” as Joni Mitchell wrote. There is much good work being done around the globe even now, even with things looking so stark. We hope we have enough time. But sometimes it doesn’t seem like one person can do enough, and while that’s true, we can start with ourselves. Here, there’s a lot we can do. We can do what Barb Hale urged in her sermon two weeks ago, reach out to others in as many ways as possible, great and small. We can continue to do all we can do personally, sensibly, to live and tread lightly on the earth. We take direct action as and where we can, and allow ourselves the grace to make mistakes—nobody’s perfect.
We must stand with Nature in the I-Thou relationship defined by philosopher Martin Buber in our Second Reading today by Kenneth R. Wilson. We need to transform our relationship with nature from Buber’s I-It description of otherness to the I-Thou relationship of mutuality if we are to survive. As Wilson said in the second reading, I think we can prepare ourselves.
For myself, and likely many of you, a closer attention to the nature around us is healing and informative. Mary Oliver says this in “The Wild Geese”, our first reading.
One late afternoon this past summer I discovered a glorious ring of sunlight burning the tops of all the trees surrounding the house. Each different specie, each color of green leaves, was bathed in its own shimmering gold. We were living in a halo of light I hadn’t noticed in 45 years of dwelling there. There, I knew I could work light into this sermon. But seriously, awareness is a beginning. So is working to heal ourselves for the work to come.
We can celebrate nature ceremonially. We can make stuff up. Surely that’s how all rituals started. Some years ago the Women’s Alliance held a winter solstice event in the parlor. I brought along a friend. The defining activity was an invitation to jot down on small pieces of paper something from the year just ending that each of us was ready to relinquish. I don’t recall what we did with the slips of baggage we collected. I hope we burned them. I do know that the event inspired my friend to hold a solstice celebration of her own the following year with a collection of family and friends. We gathered around an outdoor fire and threw our papers into the flames, joyfully watching sorrow, regret, or unfinished business go up in smoke. My friend has celebrated solstice this way ever since, most years with drumming around the fire and a pot luck dinner after. I have attended nearly all of them. For us, it’s more meaningful than Christmas, in tune with the rhythms of sun and earth, honoring the darkness, anticipating new life ahead.
Living with animals we bring into our homes is, of course, a daily reminder of our inter-relationship with the non-human world. I have learned profound lessons in stoicism and courage from my cat. Plants are nice, too, though that’s a different relationship.
Each week we gather here to nourish our connections to each other and something larger. I love this sanctuary as much for the open-minded community as for the space itself. The vaulted ceilings evoke the heavens, the wooden pews, the wood of forests. The plaster walls and exterior stones come from the earth. Sunlight often streams through brilliant windows, falling on flowers at the back table, with flowers on the alter offering a focal point for quiet contemplation. We raise our voices in song, and have the privilege of hearing beautiful live music every week. Today we are blessed with Roxann, Linda and Katie playing hammered dulcimer. It always reminds me of flowing water. Lila’s beautiful organ playing often reminds me that Fats Waller called the pipe organ The God Box. Indeed!
The practice of participating in the Commonwealth of Breath, of holding an I-Thou relationship with the natural world has a centering effect. I find it eases my I-It relationships with difficult situations and people. By moving toward a sense of intimacy with life, seeing myself as part of a larger whole, it is easier to be philosophical and accepting of the difficult things that come along. There is a deeper pleasure in the good. I’m finding answers to Mary Oliver’s question:
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?”
May it be so.
11 December 2022