What Isn’t Said
You know what I find most fascinating about this week’s presidential debate? What they didn’t talk about. There was a lengthy back and forth about energy policy and who would drill where and who would get the most oil out of US public lands, but no mention whatsoever about climate change. There was some discussion of clean energy technologies in terms of jobs and economics, but never in terms of the urgent issue of climate.
How is it that what is perhaps that largest issue of our time and for generations to come, an issue that affects all beings of this planet, an issue that we could actually do something about if we had the collective will, never manages to even make it to the floor? I think the answer is pretty clear. It isn’t a winning topic. People don’t want to know that the earth is changing, and that we will have to change to deal with that rapidly altering world. Either they deny the reality so that they don’t have to deal with it, or they plug their ears and go “La la la la la” so as to avoid the topic.
When in doubt, our natural inclination is to step around the topics that we don’t want to deal with. For a certain period of time we can manage to pretend not to notice Dad’s drinking, the cracks forming in the roof, Aunt Ellen’s diminishing mental capacity. Of course, as with climate change, dealing early and effectively with major problems diminishes the damage. But that requires the courage to step forward and take away the car keys or call the long-term care facility or give up things that we want now in order to pay to fix the roof in the not-so-distant future. And those things are hard.
So we just let it slide for another day. Perhaps it is too much to expect our politicians to exhibit moral courage when they know the voters won’t reward it. Perhaps it is the role of leaders to, you know, lead—to use the bully pulpit to remind people of what needs to be done and to offer a plan on how to do it. I don’t know.
What I do know is this: the best chance that any of us will have rests in a nation of truth-tellers. I don’t have a problem with fantasy. Fantasy is good. Each of us should carry a dream of what exactly we would like our lives and our world to look like. But you can’t just dwell in the fantasy world. Reality will, inevitably bite you in the end. Far better to start with a clear-eyed look at the world as it is, dangers, flaws and all, and figure out what next step might tilt the real world in the direction of the dream.
Maybe one person turning to their neighbor to ask why the emperor isn’t wearing clothes won’t be enough to stop the parade. But if enough of us dare to speak enough of the time, telling the truth of our lives and the truth of our world, then there might just be hope for us after all.
The Connection of Church and State
I am a big fan of the separation of church and state. I do not believe that it is appropriate for the government to privilege any religion, or impose any set of religious beliefs on its citizens. I don’t think that anyone’s religious views should be allowed to determine who may or may not get married. I don’t think that anyone’s religious views should be allowed to determine laws around abortion or access to contraception. I don’t think that we need to set aside time in schools to pray, and I don’t think that “under God” should ever have been inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance. There is no reason at all to teach “creation science” in biology class, as if any science were involved in the religious stance that all the overwhelming evidence for evolution should be set aside because the Bible says something different. It is not the place of a free, democratic government to impose the religion of some set of people on other people who may not share those views.
On the other hand, I’m absolutely in favor of people making political choices based on their religious views. How would you not? If your religion matters to your life at all, surely it has to inform your decisions about what laws and which individuals will work for the things that matter to you. If you follow the one who said “ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me….Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me,” then surely you will vote for the candidate who seems the most likely to provide for the poor, care for the ill and have compassion for the immigrant and those in prison.
If you call yourself religious, it is your job not only to hold a core set of values that you understand to be at the heart of your religion, but also to go out and practice and advocate for those values in the world.
As a Unitarian Universalist, I would say that freedom is a central value among my religious peeps. But it’s not at the very center. At the core, the value we hold most dear is ever and always love. That’s why you see UUs in bright yellow t-shirts that read “Standing on the Side of Love” at rallies in favor of marriage equality and compassion for immigrant families. Love is where it’s at for us. When I vote, it’s on the basis of the practical application of the principle of love. Love for our neighbors, love for citizens of the wider world, love for the planet which we share with so many non-human beings. I am Voting on the Side of Love.
What values are at the very heart of your religious life? Where do you see those values taking shape in the political sphere? How will you vote for the heart of your religion?
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That’s What Bearing Witness Is…
Let go of what you know
and honor what exists
Son, that’s what bearing witness is
Daughter, that’s what bearing witness is
~ David Shannon Bazan, Bearing Witness
Less than 15 miles away from the city of New Orleans as the crow flies – or 25 miles if you drive along the every curving Mississippi River – there is a parish (county) called Plaquemines. From the town of Braithwaite to White Ditch, water flowed in over top the river levee just over a month ago. Hurricane Isaac slowly swirled across southeastern Louisiana on the 7 year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the Flood of 2005. When the city of New Orleans stayed dry and the power was restored within a week, most of us breathed a sigh of relief and tried to pick up where we had left off – beginning new school years and new jobs, or simply a new season, transitioning from summer to autumn.
On the long stretch of road along the east bank of the Mississippi River, it was another week before the water drained away. Still today the houses, tombs, and trees washed over the road are being cleared away. You have to see it to believe it. And few people have seen it. It’s a rural commuter community downriver. New Orleans did not flood. Next news story.
Driving along highway 39 with Rev. Tyrone Edwards, I was reminded again of the importance of bearing witness. It restores us to our humanity, to our connection with all that is. It is certainly spiritual practice.
I knew from talking on the phone to partners in the area that the situation on the ground was intense. In addition to houses, cemeteries, and trees uprooted and washed around, dead animals and rotten fruit had to be cleared off of the roads before people could return home – or at least return to where their home had been. It was so hard to imagine that only a half hour outside of my (fairly) functional city, there was utter devastation for hundreds of families, homes, farms, and an ecosystem. I had to travel there, to bear witness to what exists.
So it is with many things, the importance of this journey to bear witness – white people doing the hard work of letting go of what white people “know” to acknowledge and begin to undo the racism that exists, men letting go of their conditioning of superiority to honor the truth of women’s long struggle within sexism, heterosexuals realizing that there are other ways to love, cis-gendered people recognizing that trans-gendered people are living their own truths…when we are willing to let go of what we know and honor what exists, we bear witness to some extraordinary truths.
On Thursday, I journeyed over a bridge, through a tunnel, and on a ferry to bear witness to a community bearing the consequences brought about by forces beyond their control – coastal erosion, chemical spills, underfunded engineering, climate change… As the ferry pulled away, taking me back to the city, a brilliant rainbow arced over the flooded gas station where I had met Rev. Tyrone Edwards earlier in the day. While there is no Genesis promise that Plaquemines Parish will not be flooded again, the rainbow is still a symbol of promise. We can offer the promise of bearing witness to each other – letting go of what we know and honoring what exists. This is what bearing witness is, beloveds. May we find the courage every day to make the journey.
All In This Together
Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh teaches about something he calls interbeing. “If you are a poet,” he writes about a sheet of paper, “you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, we cannot make paper.” In his worldview, the clouds, the rain, the trees, the paper, and the sunshine all are the same thing, and, in fact, are the same as all things.
As a former scientist, I know this to be true. All that we see today, everything that exists in our Universe, everything that ever has existed, and everything that ever will exist all trace their substance–their matter and their energy–to a single cosmic event, a single “big bang.” When I breathe out, I exhale carbon dioxide that is taken up by plants and turned into sugars. When I inhale, I take up oxygen given off by the grass and flowers, I breathe in moisture that once evaporated from a far-away ocean.
All that we know, all that we see, all that we experience, is of the same stuff. It is all interrelated. It is all connected.
In my Unitarian Universalist faith tradition, we speak of “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.” Usually, this phrase is used to refer to the natural world around us. Respect for this web leads us to environmental consciousness and an Earth-centered spirituality. I think we stop too soon in understanding the extent to which humanity is part of that interdependent web.
American society has long been centered on the individual. “Rugged individualism” is part of our national lore, in which people can “pull themselves up by their bootstraps” and make it on their own. As a nation, we venerate self-reliance and eschew any mention of collective action or collective responsibility. This leads us to be disdainful of people who don’t have enough, as if it is their fault entirely. This leads us to idolize those who have a lot, as if they earned their wealth through some great moral enterprise.
Individualism, however, is a myth. None of us can make it on our own. None of us. If you need proof, just imagine a baby dropped in a field somewhere; that human beings begin life completely dependent on others should give us a clue about the rest of our lives as well. We need one another–for survival, for inspiration, for challenge, for perspective. I need you, and you need me.
My faith teaches me that what happens to you is directly related to what happens to me, and vice-versa. You and I are inextricably bound together in what the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., called “a single garment of destiny.”
I am, therefore, called to be concerned about what happens to you. I am called to be concerned about what happens to each of my human siblings, and each of my non-human ones as well. Put plainly, your fate and your plight are my business.
I wish that our national story taught of interdependence rather than independence. I wish that instead of debating how we might enrich and ennoble a privileged few we would turn the national debate to how we might uplift each and every person in our midst.
I realize that such a wish comes with a very partisan slant these days, and for that I am truly sorry. Americans of all political stripes believe in a society in which all people can be successful–it just seems more and more that we differ on how that success comes about. I believe it comes about when we realize we’re all in this together.
Fantasy? Myth?
As a minister, I am constantly learning, and sometimes learning about completely unexpected things. At my congregation, my summer worship services have used movies that are currently in the theaters as the text. I chose the films by reading reviews and story lines online. I chose them before seeing them and sometimes before they were released. The movies have led me to new learning. This week, the text is the independent film, “Beasts of the Southern Wild.” Many critics have praised it as mythical and as fantasy, but my research has led me to believe that it is not fantasy. Indeed, filmmaker Benh Zeitlin said in an interview posted in a Patheos blog, “I don’t think of the film as a fantasy film, I think about it like what it’s like to be six. There’s no real separation between reality and fantasy a lot of the time.” (http://www.patheos.com/blogs/tinseltalk/2012/06/interview-benh-zeitlin-on-beasts-of-the-southern-wild-falling-in-love-with-louisiana-and-prehistoric-monsters/)
What my research showed me was that the film was made on Isle de Jean Charles, Louisiana. The people of the island are indigenous and Cajun, and their island home is literally disappearing. The story of this island and its people is not at all mythical. The people of this real and highly endangered community jokingly call the community “the Bathtub” which is the name Zeitlin chose for his fictional community. It is a very real, very troubling and very urgent tale of environmental racism, climate change and loss. It’s a true tale of loss of culture, loss of home, loss of livelihood and loss of community. It was once a rich and fertile ecosystem for farming and fishing. As we can see in the movie, it is still a beautiful place.
Before 1953, the only way to reach the island was by boat; in 1953, a road was built through marshland. Now, the marshland has turned into open water and the road is often flooded and inaccessible. The island was 11 miles long and 5 miles wide in the 1950s; now it is only 2 miles long and a quarter mile wide. Climate change has led to rising sea levels. Saltwater has killed the forests and made the land infertile. Saltwater flooding is due to the construction of levee systems to protect Louisiana and the canal dredging for the oil industry. State and Army Corps of Engineers decisions left Isle de Jean Charles outside of the levee system because of the cost. Fishing is decreased in part due to the BP oil spill. Once a thriving small community of 400 people, now about 70 people remain, and the tribal chief, Albert Naquin, has urged folks to leave the island. He is hoping that they could sustain their native culture on higher ground. They are probably the nation’s first climate change refugees.
Just like the fictional residents of “the bathtub,” many residents defend their right to stay in their homes. Edison Dardar, Jr. has posted a sign, “Island is not for sale. If you don’t like the island, stay off. Don’t give up. Fight for your rights. It’s worth saving.” Another resident, Delores Naquin, said, “You can’t just uproot – like this oak tree – you uproot it and it will die.” They’ve seen so many hurricanes that some the storms as an annual ordeal to endure in order to keep their connection to their home.
The people of the Isle de Jean Charles may be the first North American climate refugees but they are unlikely to be the last. It is troubling to witness people losing their homes and communities; all the more so because so much of the reason is due to human actions. They need help to find a new home and to sustain their community and culture.
“My tribal council and I have been traveling far and wide to meet with government officials to ask for help in finding a place for our community to live together again. They all want to listen to our cry, and then we never see or hear from them again. Yes, I get mad and frustrated but we will not give up the fight and ask for your prayers and support and ask that you spread the word about the plight of our community and hundreds of other communities just like us along the Gulf Coast that will soon lose our land, our home and sadly, our culture.” Albert Naquin, Chief Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw
This community is no fantasy. My theology says that we owe these people and their culture respect as all people have worth and deserve respect. They deserve to flourish as human beings. I believe that we are responsible to help each other. We need to listen to each other about how we can help. Climate change is no myth. We are also responsible to the earth. We must address climate change now. There is no time to wait.
(See http://www.isledejeancharles.com/island.php and http://www.pbs.org/newshour/multimedia/isle-de-jean-charles/ and Can’t Stop the Water on facebook)
More, More, More!
As a New Yorker, I should be accustomed to the fact that the annual Fourth of July hot-dog eating contest held in Brooklyn is local news. I should be, but I still cringe whenever I turn on my evening newscast only to see a line of people stuffing frankfurters and buns into their mouths at nauseating speed. Then I stop to think about why this is news (people actually enjoy watching it, it’s a “sport” we can all relate to, etc. etc.), and the minister in me reacts.
Of the many things I find objectionable about this yearly American ritual, the one that sticks with me the longest is how it celebrates quantity over quality. This is a disease that is rampant in the dominant cultures of our world. It is a disease that is poisoning our species, our relationships and our Earth.
“More, more, more,” we cry, never satisfied. Our national hunger for stuff–lots of stuff, any stuff, more stuff–is impossible to ignore. Like a person who needs only 2,000 calories a day consuming 19,000 calories of hot dogs in just a few minutes, we eagerly snap up the latest contraptions, gadgets and fashions with no concern about how our overconsumption affects others.
We decry the high cost of gasoline because we have built communities in which our individual vehicles are required to get us to our individual activities. We protest at the merest notion that our taxes should be used to support mass transportation, say, or renewable energy (much less fuel efficiency). Meanwhile, we’re spewing carbon into the atmosphere at an almost unfathomable rate. Our Secretary of State goes to China to talk about low-emission cookstoves in poor households while millions of Americans drive behemoth SUVs for neither sport nor utility.
We measure our economy by the number of new houses built, largely because building new houses means hiring tradespeople and buying appliances. Despite the fact that our national policies are designed to spur the construction of more and more houses, more and more people are, simultaneously, forced to live on the streets, in the woods and in their cars.
I’m part of the problem, too. I love my electronic toys (I’m typing this on my iPad), and yet I pay little attention to the pollution caused in China by the factories that make the screen I’m looking at, or the child labor in Africa used to mine the rare metals inside my phone.
And so I see myself in the face of the eating contest participant shoving processed meat and refined white bread into his mouth, trying to do nothing but eat more than the person standing next to him. I look into the mirror of truth, and see something I cannot live with. I need to go on a diet. A stuff diet. Maybe you’ll join me. We’ll be healthier together that way.
Looking Back to Look Forward
Last week, the Unitarian Universalist Association became only the second national religious body to repudiate the Doctrine of Discovery, the 15th century papal doctrine that declared that when Christian Europeans landed in a place inhabited by non-Christian people, the Europeans could claim to have “discovered” the land, and had the right to possess it and the people on it.
The Doctrine of Discovery became the theological justification for European colonialism, slavery, genocide and many atrocities of history. In 1823, it also, thanks to Chief Justice John Marshall and the US Supreme Court, became the legal justification for the United States’ treatment of the indigenous peoples of our continent. According to this doctrine, the native peoples who were here before the arrival of Europeans in North America have no right to own their traditional lands, to practice their traditional religion on those lands, or to self-determination.
If this were just a horrible chapter of history, however, there would be little need to engage entire denominations in the process of repudiating it. We could read about it in a book and move on. The Doctrine of Discovery, however, is living amongst us today.
The Supreme Court still refers to it, believe it or not, most recently in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Indian Nation (2005), in which the court ruled that the Oneida Nation was not entitled to the sovereignty granted it in treaties with New York State even if they purchased the land seized from them in violation of that treaty on the open real estate market. Writing for the 8-member majority, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the Doctrine of Discovery as legal basis for nullifying the Oneida’s treaty rights.
We tell the truth about our history so that we can do better in the future, and our nation can and must do better.
What can we do?
First, the United States can fully implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Adopted in 2007, this declaration asks UN member nations to negotiate, in full faith and with honor and mutuality, right relationship with the indigenous peoples among them. It says something that the United States was one of only 4 nations in the world to vote no. Since then, President Obama has declared his intention to follow the declaration, but his promise has not been acted upon. We can ask him to.
Second, the US can act to restore the rights of indigenous peoples to their lands and their religions. Native Hawai’ian people are prevented from practicing their ancient faith because their sacred sites are “owned” by the Federal government. That can and should be changed.
And finally, we as people can seek right relationship with the indigenous people of this land and with our common mother, the Earth. Do you know whose ancient territory you sit upon as you read this article? If not, find out. Find out where those people are today. Seek healing with honor and openness.
We learn about the past so that we can do better in the future, and the United States was founded on the principle that when we learn a better way we can make it happen. Let’s work together to fulfill the promise of our nation instead of repeating its ugly past.
Paying Attention
“We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake. . . .Only that day dawns to which we are awake.” Henry David Thoreau
A couple of months ago, I took the Union of Concerned Scientists online quiz (http://www.coolersmarter.org/) designed to tell me how to reduce my carbon footprint. It was called 20 days, 20 ways, and 20% less carbon. I was surprised and pleased with what this quiz told me. It told me to buy a new more fuel efficient car! Really, it told me to buy a new car! I wanted a new car. My old car was pretty efficient, but it was nearly 10 years old with 180,000 miles on it. It was never a beauty and had become pretty ugly, but it was still reliable. I couldn’t believe that the concerned scientists were telling me to get a new car. It didn’t exactly seem like a “green” message to buy something new. But my wanting mind was aroused. Just at that same time, my daughter, who sells Hondas, sent me an e mail to say that she had a low mileage used Civic hybrid. Just what I wanted! So, I bought this new- to-me car, and it does get somewhat better gas mileage than my old car.
I did not expect the car would change me, but it has. The car has changed my driving behavior by making me pay attention. Between the top of the steering wheel and the bottom of the windshield is a big graphic that tells me how fast I am going and what my immediate – in that very moment- fuel consumption is. Most of my driving is on the Pennsylvania turnpike. In my old car, I was not paying much attention to how fast I was going. I kept up with the traffic which meant I was generally speeding. My speed wasn’t constantly visible to me. Every once in a while, I would look down and see that I was going much too fast. Or I would see a state police car ahead of me, look at my speed and slow down. I had heard that fuel economy was improved by going consistently slower, but that was not visible to me. Now, my car tells me. I cannot avoid seeing how fast I am driving and how much fuel I am using. I am paying attention, and because I am paying attention, I am driving more responsibly, generally close to the speed limit. I have reduced my carbon footprint more than I might have because I am not speeding. I have reduced my risk of having an accident or getting a speeding ticket. I may have become a little obsessive about trying to increase my fuel economy, but right now it seems like an amusing and useful game. I am paying better attention as I drive.
What, you may be asking, does this have to do with religion or with life? Quite a lot, I think. When we can pay attention to the moment, then we can be really alive. We can choose. When we speed through life on automatic, we are not really living our lives. Anything that helps us to pay attention helps us to awaken to life and thus to grow.
Buddha means “the awakened one.” Buddhist scholar, Robert Thurman, said that Buddhism means awakening and therefore he considered himself to be an evangelist for awakening. Awakening, he said, means “understanding what’s going on, being kind to others. The minute you awaken to the cause of suffering, which is your self-preoccupation and your self-misperception, you’ll begin to have a happier time. And the more you awaken to your interconnection with others, the more free of suffering you’ll become.” (www.beliefnet.com/story/141/story_14141.html)
I don’t think of driving as a spiritual practice, but it has become another reminder to pay attention, to be awake and to live in this very moment. Observing myself with this car reminds me that changes in our awareness change the way we live. May you be awake and alive in the moments of your life!