Reading:

Teach your children

what we have taught our children—

that the earth is our mother.

Whatever befalls the earth

befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.

If men spit upon the ground,

they spit upon themselves.

This we know.

The earth does not belong to us;
we belong to the earth.

All things are connected
like the blood which unites one family.

All things are connected.

Whatever befalls the earth
befalls the sons and daughters of the earth.

We did not weave the web of life;

we are merely a strand in it.

Whatever we do to the web,
we do to ourselves…

Attributed to Chief Seattle

Leader of the Suquamish Tribe

Our Beautiful Blue Ball

Sermon Delivered by

Trish Schwartzberg

July 1, 2007

On February 20, 1962, astronaut John Glenn became the first American to orbit the earth. When the astronauts first saw the earth from space, ours and the ones from the Soviet Union, they spoke of the beauty of earth as seen from space. Earth was often described as a beautiful blue ball.

Many people, myself included, love the beauty of nature. How many of you are awed by the beauty of the forests that surround us here? How many of us stand in wonder at the sight and sound of waves crashing on the beach? And yet, as a species, are we destroying the balance of nature that keeps this beauty alive?

Life today, especially in the US and in other so-called first world nations, is not designed to retain that beauty. We measure progress by the latest calculations of the gross national product. We rate other countries on their economy alone. We often forget to look at the cost of this type of an economy. And this cost includes an impact on our beautiful blue ball.

This summer, I will be focusing on the seven Unitarian Universalist Principles in relation to the earth. Do any, other than the seventh, honoring the interconnected web of life, have meaning when related to how we are living in balance with nature? I ask you now to open your hymnals to the very front, the page before hymn # 1, and take a look at these principles. Please read them aloud with me.

We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association, covenant to affirm and promote:

The inherent worth and dignity of every person;

Justice, equity, and compassion in human relations;

Acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth in our congregations;

A free and responsible search for truth and meaning;

The right of conscience and the use of the democratic process within our congregation and in society at large;

The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all;

Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

We are a member congregation of The Unitarian Universalist Association. We, as a congregation, have agreed to affirm and promote these principles. While we, as individuals, are not required by any external authority to join into this covenant, I believe it is the closest thing we have at this time to a definition of what our faith is all about. And I believe it is important to hold these principles in our individual, as well as institutional, awareness. So I will be looking at these principles, with the emphasis on how they affect our relationship with the rest of the world around us; with living creatures and plants, with the organic and inorganic parts of the planet we inhabit

We would have no existence without the earth. We have evolved as the earth has evolved. Even if we were dropped here from some other place, or, as some believe, were created here in seven days, ours is a very fragile existence that depends on the health of the earth. We can only live in a certain temperature range. We have to have a constant percentage of oxygen in the air we breathe and that air can contain no more than trace amounts of certain elements that are deadly toxins to our systems. The very cycles of nature provide us with food and shelter. It takes very little change or upset this cycle as we know it now.

In fact, I believe that we have lost touch with this balance in nature. We live and work in heated and air conditioned building. For many of us the only time we are out of doors is to walk to our cars to go to another building. A few of us garden. More take an occasional walk. But few of us are dependent directly to the cycles of nature for our livelihood. We are insulated from changes that have slowly taken place in the natural world around us. It has taken us many years and many voices to convince us, for example, that global warming is a reality and something we need to take action on. And even now, there are many, some sitting here today, that do not believe we have a problem, or that it is not nearly as severe as some are saying.

Many cultures have lived in closer relationship to the earth than our so called ‘modern western culture’ has done. Most of these have special rituals related to the earth. Some of these refer to the four elements of water, earth, air and fire, or similar combinations.

This passage by John Seed and Joanna Macy illustrates this as a metaphor of the human body paralleling the earth body:

“What are you? What am I? Intersecting cycles of water, earth, air and fire, that’s what I am, that’s what you are.

Water – blood, lymph, mucus, sweat, tears, inner oceans tugged by the moon, tides within and tides without. Streaming fluids floating our cells, washing and nourishing through endless riverways of gut and vein and capillary. Moisture pouring in and through and out of you, of me, in the vast poem of the hydrological cycle. You are that. I am that.

Earth – matter made from rock and soil. It, too, is pulled by the moon as the magma circulates through the planet heart and roots suck molecules into biology. Earth pours through us, replacing each cell in the body every seven years. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, we ingest, incorporate and excrete the earth, are made from the earth. I am that. You are that.

Air – the gaseous realm, the atmosphere, the planet’s membrane. The inhale and the exhale. Breathing out carbon dioxide to the trees and breathing in their fresh exudations. Oxygen kissing each cell awake, atoms dancing in orderly metabolism, interpenetrating. That dance of the air cycle, breathing the universe in and out again, is what you are, is what I am.

Fire – fire from our sun that fuels all life, drawing up plants and raising the waters to the sky to fall again replenishing. The inner furnace of your metabolism burns with the fire of the Big Bang that first sent matter-energy spinning through space and time. And the same fire as the lightning that flashed into the primordial soup catalyzing the birth of organic life.

You were there, I was there, for each cell of our bodies is descended in an unbroken chain from that event.”

There have been vast periods of time when the conditions present on earth would not have supported human life. It is very recently, relative to the age of the earth, that mankind, as we know it, has developed. The earliest remains that have been found that can be related to our earliest development date to about 150,000 BCE. During this long period of history, the number of humanoids has grown and been decimated and grown again due to mini ice ages and other climatic changes. Tools began to be used less than 15,000 years ago. Agriculture has only been in existence for somewhere between 8000 and 10,000 years. The technology and industrialization that we take for granted today began to develop just in the last few hundred years. We are a young species compared to the age of the earth.

When we step back and look at humanity in this perspective it becomes very apparent just how fragile, how tenuous, our hold on existence is. A new ice age could come and destroy much of humanity. The earth’s crust could shift again and totally turn topsy-turvy the temperature zones we know. And a change like this would trigger earthquakes and volcanoes, storms and tsunamis that would make anything we have experienced appear like a breeze on a summer’s day. A giant asteroid could hit, as others have in the past, and cause devastation in a part of the world. So why, if we are this vulnerable to changes caused by natural phenomena, should we worry so much about any possible damage that we, as humans, might do?

To me it seems that there are two very different ways to look at this. The first is that the end of humanity as we know it is inevitable, so don’t worry about it. Enjoy it for as long as we can. Although perhaps this is based on the acceptance of scientific knowledge as far as it goes now, this reminds me too much of the outlook of those who believe in Armageddon. And who knows, maybe the stories were passed down from times of climate change that caused devastation in prehistoric eras, and became entrenched as predictions of it happening. Some of the holy writings that we still have today might be attributable to these legends.

On the other hand, a second way to look at our existence is to realize that we have no idea if or when something that would end our species might happen. It then becomes important that we, as humans, not do those things that will affect, if not our very existence, then at least the quality of it. It is these events then that are of concern to all of us. It is this quality of life that we consider when we look at pollution of our air and our land and our water. It is this that we consider when we look at the depletion of our natural resources and the energy that we produce from them.

When I walk on the beaches of the eastern coast of Florida and have to clean my feet with paint thinner or gasoline to remove the coal tar from them, I am concerned. When I have to buy bottled water to drink because the taste of the water from the local water supply is unbearable, I am concerned. When I hear of globalized multi-national corporations growing only one crop where once there was grown the variety needed to sustain families living in small villages, I am concerned.

Like Holly Near’s words in the song Helene sang earlier, maybe now it is the time -

“To step outside of our egos and our bodies
To know for once that we truly are one.
….

This magical story of hope and [of] wonder nvites [us] all to wake up and pretend to be

Fabulous creatures sent from the power
Souls that have come with one purpose in mind
To do one thing that will alter the outcome
And maybe together we can do it in time.”

Blessed be and amen.