April 24, 2005

The Waters of Creation

by Julianne Stokstad

You've figured out by now that today we are celebrating our Earth. Each year, the UCC desk calendar designates one Sunday around Earth Day as Integrity of Creation Sunday and I like to raise up awareness of our incredible Earth home at least once a year. Friday was Earth Day and it was a very quiet day as far as I could tell. I didn't hear of any events, parades or demonstrations. The New York Times reported President Bush's trail maintenance project at Cade's Cove got rained out but he gave his Earth Day speech anyway.

Earth Day has always held special significance for me because I was there on that first Earth Day, April 22, 1970. Picture me, in your mind's eye if you can make this stretch, in my twenties, with long dark hair, 8 months pregnant, looking like a mother hen leading two classes of 9th grade school girls on a hike around the horribly polluted waters of New Haven harbor. As I recall it was an unseasonably hot day and the thick oil slime, trash, even dead birds and rats smelled awful. We were all horrified. Everyone was shocked back in those days. Shock inspired us into action, and since that time awareness has been raised, laws have been passed and waters and lots else have been cleaned up.

It was clearer in those days to know what to do. For example, at that time, it was considered environmentally sound to use cloth diapers and to hang them outside to dry - - that saved energy and trees. I did that and felt good about it, even though it took more of my time and energy. Later someone figured in the cost of the water pollution, the energy for the washing machine and it was not so simple and suddenly paper diapers were ok.

As each issue became so complex, it became hard to know what is the most important thing to do, whom to believe and even how to choose what we ought to do. We are overwhelmed with choices and unwilling, maybe even unable, to understand the consequences of our choices and our way of life. Most people want to do the right thing, but it's just not easy to figure out what that is. Most everyone wants to save the earth, but from what or whom? This I do know, everything we do affects everything else. We are interconnected in a complex web, including all living creatures and all creation. This I know.

I see a great deal of human hubris and also naiveté in attitudes around the environment - - - either in thinking our actions don't matter or have consequences (for example, my father used to say the ocean was big enough to absorb any amount of pollution) or on the other hand, thinking that we control everything on the earth (those who claim we humans will wipe out all life on earth). Arguably the greatest environmental change causing the greatest change and mass extinction ever was caused by the evolution of single cell green algae.

Christianity hasn't provided much moral leadership for earth care. Belief and attitudes matter because they affect culture and the social directions. We live in a time of dangerous polarization. I have never been aware of a time in my life when there are so many strong differences of opinions----about politics, about religion, about just about everything.

No one doubts we are in a time of great change. I believe it is a time of a paradigm shift, from the old attitudes of hierarchical patriarchy to a new interconnectedness. I believe this is a time of consciousness evolution. Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest, environmental ethicist and one of my heroes, says it is all a question of story. He says we're in trouble because we don't have a good story anymore. Twenty-five years ago he said that is why so many are turning to religious fundamentalism. We've seen that trend increase worldwide.

In our Western culture, Judaism and Christianity have provided the basic story for us for so long. Basically the focus has been on redemption. The traditional story goes that Adam and Eve messed up the original harmony God created and humans ever since have suffered because of our awful sinful nature-that original sin. For Christians, Jesus came and redeemed us with his death. Along with this view of human badness, Berry says that there has been a control of the environment especially with our increased science and technology to keep us safe from plagues, famines, and other fearful threats. Not only are humans bad, but also so is our earth, a fearful place full of dangers, a place to be dominated and subdued. We need a new story.

As I reflected on this first creation story we heard earlier from Genesis, several points stood out for me. First, it is a story telling us of creation. It was written 2500 years ago. It's not the oldest part of the Bible, but it's about the beginning so it is first. Joseph Campbell and other anthropologists tell us that every culture in every time has its story of creation. It is a deep human need to have a story to understand our place in the world and how the world began. Second, this story tells us something about God and about the creative process. God created everything with a word, with an idea first and then it was named. I love the idea of being a dream of God living in a world that God created. Third, each and every part of the creation is good and it is all blessed, even the monsters of the deep. Lastly what stood out is the importance of rest, even to God. We need desperately a day of rest to listen and wonder, to appreciate and enjoy our lives.

For me, science makes it obvious that this story cannot be taken literally. I've always loved that the order of this creation story follows the order of increasing complexity, like the evolutionary process going from simple to the complex. But this story could also be understood as a story, if we want to take it on a deeper level, about the stages of spiritual growth of the human soul.

What is clear is that we do need a new story that includes soul development and a clear understanding that we are all interdependent and inexorably interconnected. We need a story that validates the true blessedness of our bodies and our earth. Jesus speaks throughout the gospels in parable and story about the development of our souls. I've always understood that spiritual growth follows the patterns seen in our bodies and in the earth. In John, Jesus tells us he is the living water and that if we drink this living water, we will never be thirsty again. Water is a good metaphor to connect the spiritual life with our real life. We use it in baptism as a bridge between body and spirit, a visible sign of an invisible grace. Water is clearly one of the most essential requirements for life, because everywhere there is life, there is water.

From everything I know, as a female, as a person of faith, as a teacher and a mother and a minister, this new story must fit with how the world works. The earth is our home and we must recognize and celebrate our inter-connectedness, not only with water, the land, creatures, but also with each other. We must come to understand that how we treat the earth reveals what we think of ourselves, because what we do to the earth is what we are doing to ourselves. If we treat it negligently, indiscriminately poisoning it, do we also poison ourselves with what we put into our bodies? If we dominate it forcefully, are we rough and dominating over those in our lives? The earth has marvelous things to teach us about restorative power of the life force

We need a story that understands the original blessing of all creation, the sacredness of all things. Jesus tells us that however we treat the least among us, the poor, the children, the prisoners that is how we are treating him. I think of how in our increasingly polluted world we are beginning to see the effects of pollution in greatly increased childhood asthma, in increased brain tumors in children, in increased behavioral disorders.

We need to begin to think differently about our Earth and about God. Our earth, and our own bodies are wonderful amazing creations. And God is not just out there, but is present right here among and within us and in creation. As we like to say now in the UCC, God is still speaking. There is much more to be revealed about the nature and goodness of our God.

One ingredient we need for this new story is to recapture a sense of wonder. Bill Coffin, UCC elder considers one of the greatest tragedies of the last century the loss of our capacity to wonder. I hope this day or night each of us might take a moment quietly to look at the earth around us or look out at the starry sky or at the miracle of our own hands and just let the awe and wonder seep in. We must take care of what we have been given by God. We are blessed to have our lives and our earth. Let us rest and be very grateful. Amen.