From Your Minister
Podcast: Download (Duration: 5:46 — 5.3MB)
Subscribe: More
I’ve been thinking about renewable sources of energy versus sources of energy that deplete. Like many others, I have grown alarmed at the world we are creating for the young ones to inherit, and convinced that my own consumption of energy must change.
I’ve been watching videos and listening to people who know a lot more than I do about this. And one message that comes through over and over is that, if we stop hurting the earth, the earth knows how to heal itself from the damage we have done. The earth is a fountain of renewal.
It’s an amazing thing to think about the inexhaustible energy sources that the earth offers us: wind, and sun, and the power of oceans, to name just three. And heartbreaking to think that instead of harnessing these renewable sources, greed and expediency cause us instead to take what is not freely offered, what must be taken forcibly, at great cost to humans and other living beings, thus putting the entire planet’s life at risk.
It’s easy to point fingers at other people—oil executives, politicians, consumers greedier than I am—and blame them. But if we’re honest and look at ourselves, most of us see that our own energy consumption is not sustainable. I’ve taken the survey at Footprintcalculator.org and learned that if everyone lived as I do, it would take 5.4 earths to support us. (Flying is what makes this number so particularly high.) So how do we—how do I—realign my values so that I am supporting the earth, and future life? And, more cynically, does it really matter, what I do? When governments and corporations are creating mass global destruction, does my own modest change of behavior really make any difference?
When I start to go down that road, I think about the difference every new baby’s birth makes in the world. Right now, a dear friend has just given birth, and I am about to meet a whole new human being. A beloved relative will have given birth by the time you read this newsletter. I know that when I hold these tiny ones, all will seem possible. Their small lives will tell me that the world is renewed over and over again. Their squalling little bodies, fragile and helpless, make all things new.
It is easy to look at the large patterns of cruelty and oppression in the world, and sink into despair. When that happens, hope and renewal are to be found in the particular: the particular ways I connect to the earth, the way the particular baby is cherished, the particular action of particular people in particular situations. For me, renewal is not found in abstractions, and especially is not found in detachment. Rather, it comes from embodiment, inhabiting my cells, recommitting myself to life. Choosing relationships with other embodied people that open me to the widest swath of humanity, listening to the voices of people who know and see what I can’t or don’t. Leaning into discomfort and learning that I am stronger than I thought.
Renewal can be as simple as remembering to breathe, or to just say, Today has been hard enough, I’m going to sleep and I’ll try again tomorrow. It can also come after extreme pain, or in the midst of extreme pain. I learn a lot about renewal from CLF members who live in chronic physical pain. You share about the tiny acts which make a big difference in your days, and you model the acknowledgment of real human limits which make another day a tiny bit easier.
In this spring season of flowering trees and bushes (in the northern hemisphere), evidence of the earth’s renewal comes in yells, not whispers. Vibrant color and longer days sing of new life. But even in the darkest days of winter, even in the hardest times of our lives, new life is available. It’s in our curiosity and our willingness to start again, even after yet another colossal disappointment or failure, just as the earth comes back to life after a fire or volcano or hurricane. Inhabiting my particular cells; my particular, imperfect, body and life; my own aches and pains; my particular dreams and demons, connects me to everything and everyone I am willing to view in their common humanity.
The miracle, says Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, is not that we are in the universe, but that the universe is in us.
- From Your Minister - July 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - June 1, 2020
- From Your Minister - May 1, 2020
