Our Interdependence on the Earth

[00:00.000 --> 00:08.720]  Well, I originally had something else to share with you, a sort of congregational participation
[00:08.720 --> 00:14.000]  activity, but a week ago I had lunch with my daughter.
[00:14.000 --> 00:19.040]  Our conversation over a club sandwich and a veggie burger caused me to change my mind.
[00:19.040 --> 00:25.800]  Joy, my daughter, is the sustainability coordinator for Historic New England, an organization
[00:25.800 --> 00:30.840]  that maintains many properties of historic significance, such as the Sarah Oren Jewett
[00:30.840 --> 00:33.040]  House in South Berwick.
[00:33.040 --> 00:38.280]  She is responsible for outlining and implementing green energy strategies for Historic New
[00:38.280 --> 00:41.200]  England's 42 locations.
[00:41.200 --> 00:46.360]  These sites attract tens of thousands of visitors each year, and one of Joy's responsibilities
[00:46.360 --> 00:51.160]  is to bear witness to the organization's sustainability programs and to prompt an
[00:51.160 --> 00:56.120]  awareness of the need for action to alleviate climate change.
[00:56.120 --> 00:59.880]  She takes this very seriously in her personal life as well.
[00:59.880 --> 01:05.160]  For example, she travels by train wherever possible to work sites and meetings.
[01:05.160 --> 01:07.920]  She shops locally wherever possible.
[01:07.920 --> 01:11.120]  She even uses reusable paper towels.
[01:11.120 --> 01:12.120]  Can you believe it?
[01:12.120 --> 01:13.120]  There are such things.
[01:13.120 --> 01:20.320]  Her life as a witness to loving and seeking to heal the earth.
[01:20.320 --> 01:25.320]  Richard Feynman, the Nobel Laureate, was once asked by a reporter to summarize all of science
[01:25.320 --> 01:27.240]  in one sentence.
[01:27.240 --> 01:34.160]  Feynman replied as follows, the universe is made of interdependent atoms.
[01:34.160 --> 01:36.600]  We are made of atoms.
[01:36.600 --> 01:41.840]  We are dependent upon the universe for everything in our existence.
[01:41.840 --> 01:48.640]  Putting this into a cultural context, English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said that
[01:48.640 --> 01:52.960]  everything is constituted by relationship to everything else.
[01:52.960 --> 02:00.040]  What defines us individually is our relationship to the people and things in our lives.
[02:00.040 --> 02:05.480]  So I put these two together, and I came up with what I consider the first principle of
[02:05.480 --> 02:08.040]  the human universe.
[02:08.040 --> 02:15.720]  We are utterly dependent on the earth and on everything and everyone else in our lives.
[02:15.720 --> 02:17.380]  I repeat.
[02:17.380 --> 02:24.380]  We are utterly dependent on the earth and on everything and everyone else in our lives.
[02:24.380 --> 02:26.260]  We are not independent.
[02:26.260 --> 02:31.500]  We depend upon the sun to warm the earth without which there would be no life.
[02:31.500 --> 02:36.300]  We depend upon a clean atmosphere and clean water to nourish us.
[02:36.300 --> 02:42.340]  And while it is of no importance to brother's son at all what we do, he can get along quite
[02:42.340 --> 02:45.780]  well without us and did so for billions of years.
[02:45.780 --> 02:50.660]  So the atmosphere we breathe and to the water that constitutes the majority of the mass
[02:50.660 --> 02:55.300]  of our bodies, what we do matters a lot.
[02:55.300 --> 03:01.260]  We only have to look around or watch the news to realize that.
[03:01.260 --> 03:06.540]  The human tendency, however, and especially in this country, is to assume exactly the
[03:06.540 --> 03:09.980]  opposite of interdependence.
[03:09.980 --> 03:16.780]  We are told that the first principle of human existence is independence.
[03:16.780 --> 03:21.500]  When I was in ninth grade, Mrs. Sawyer, my English teacher, made me memorize a poem by
[03:21.500 --> 03:25.940]  Charles William Henley entitled Invictus.
[03:25.940 --> 03:31.140]  Invictus is a tribute to the view of total independence and ends with the following lines.
[03:31.140 --> 03:33.380]  I am the master of my fate.
[03:33.380 --> 03:36.820]  I am the captain of my soul.
[03:36.820 --> 03:39.100]  Take heed of those words.
[03:39.100 --> 03:41.740]  I am the master of my faith.
[03:41.740 --> 03:45.260]  I need not depend on anyone or anything.
[03:45.260 --> 03:48.380]  The only thing that counts is my self-interest.
[03:48.380 --> 03:51.980]  I live in total independence.
[03:51.980 --> 03:57.980]  We have terms to describe this principle, subscribe to by so many, self-reliance, the
[03:57.980 --> 04:05.660]  Protestant ethic, individualism, and in the sphere of economics, free enterprise.
[04:05.660 --> 04:14.380]  I believe it is a deadly sin to ignore dependence, to rely too much on individualism.
[04:14.380 --> 04:19.900]  I believe our culture and our humanity could ultimately fail otherwise.
[04:19.900 --> 04:27.140]  We could become extinct like the trilobites, like this one I am wearing around my neck.
[04:27.140 --> 04:31.900]  You won't find trilobites, which is a relative of the lobster in modern oceans, but for 300
[04:31.900 --> 04:38.240]  million years they thrived in the seas of the earth, and then they disappeared.
[04:38.240 --> 04:43.980]  No record has been found of trilobites in the last 250 million years of history.
[04:43.980 --> 04:50.060]  They have been dependent upon a certain set of conditions to survive, and when these disappeared,
[04:50.060 --> 04:53.100]  so did they.
[04:53.100 --> 04:56.780]  We can all cite other examples, such as the dinosaurs.
[04:56.780 --> 05:01.220]  Some of these disappearances are man-made, such as that of the great awk, which was a
[05:01.220 --> 05:06.540]  large flightless bird, important to Native American culture, and extirpated from the
[05:06.540 --> 05:09.500]  main coast in the 19th century.
[05:09.500 --> 05:17.340]  And I think that if we hold too long to independence as a principle by which we live, we could disappear.
[05:17.340 --> 05:22.580]  Perhaps some future intelligent species wiser than us will wear human bones around their
[05:22.580 --> 05:27.980]  necks as a reminder of their interdependence on everything.
[05:27.980 --> 05:30.700]  So what?
[05:30.700 --> 05:35.220]  Well for one thing, I think we all subscribe as Unitarian Universalists to that first principle
[05:35.220 --> 05:37.060]  I stated at the beginning.
[05:37.060 --> 05:43.380]  We are utterly dependent on the earth and on everything and everyone else in our lives.
[05:43.380 --> 05:48.380]  We come here to this church in part because we recognize our interdependence.
[05:48.380 --> 05:52.940]  We have a sense of obligation expressed as gratitude and obligation to others and to
[05:52.940 --> 05:54.980]  the earth.
[05:54.980 --> 05:58.140]  This results in two things as I see it.
[05:58.140 --> 06:01.380]  The first is that we work for a world that is just.
[06:01.380 --> 06:06.140]  The second is that we bear witness to this dependence on each other and with the earth.
[06:06.140 --> 06:09.580]  We bear witness.
[06:09.580 --> 06:15.420]  In the book God Revised, Reverend Galen Gengarich, who is the pastor of All Souls UU Church in
[06:15.420 --> 06:20.300]  New York City, has this to say about bearing witness.
[06:20.300 --> 06:26.340]  In the movie Shall We Dance, Richard Gere plays a bored middle-aged attorney who surreptitiously
[06:26.340 --> 06:28.900]  takes up ballroom dancing.
[06:28.900 --> 06:34.340]  His wife, played by Susan Sarandon, becomes suspicious at his renewed energy and vitality
[06:34.340 --> 06:41.700]  and she hires a private detective who discovers the dance studio and reports the news.
[06:41.700 --> 06:47.100]  She decides to let her husband continue dancing undisturbed.
[06:47.100 --> 06:51.700]  Well in the scene where she meets the private detective in a bar to pay his fee and end
[06:51.700 --> 06:56.780]  the investigation, they linger over a drink and discuss why people marry in the first
[06:56.780 --> 06:58.420]  place.
[06:58.420 --> 07:04.380]  The reason we married, she insists, is we need to witness to our lives.
[07:04.380 --> 07:06.020]  There's a billion people on the planet.
[07:06.020 --> 07:09.340]  I mean, what does anyone life really mean?
[07:09.340 --> 07:16.020]  But in a marriage, you promise to care about everything, the good things, the bad things,
[07:16.020 --> 07:23.060]  the terrible things, the mundane things, all of it, all of the time, every day.
[07:23.060 --> 07:27.580]  You're saying your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it.
[07:27.580 --> 07:33.620]  Your life will not go unwitnessed because I will be your witness.
[07:33.620 --> 07:39.340]  The bond that unites people in a marriage or a relationship or a congregation is a commitment.
[07:39.340 --> 07:44.260]  And as Reverend Galen says, it is a promise to bear witness to the lives of another, the
[07:44.260 --> 07:49.460]  good, the bad, the mundane, even the terrible.
[07:49.460 --> 07:54.380]  I believe that bearing witness to our dependence on the earth and our obligation to it is also
[07:54.380 --> 07:56.620]  such a commitment.
[07:56.620 --> 07:59.980]  Working to solve environmental problems and putting environmentally sound principles into
[07:59.980 --> 08:03.060]  practice, such as permaculture, are very important.
[08:03.060 --> 08:05.620]  In fact, they are critical.
[08:05.620 --> 08:12.020]  But I feel that as well as working to doing these things, we must bear witness to the
[08:12.020 --> 08:17.300]  earth and the environment as a sacred act.
[08:17.300 --> 08:22.540]  So I propose that as part of this congregation's commitment to the earth and our individual
[08:22.540 --> 08:26.940]  commitments to it as well, that we bear witness to her.
[08:26.940 --> 08:30.980]  Many UUs don't read the New Testament much these days, but one that they and a lot of
[08:30.980 --> 08:34.740]  Christians should read is the Epistle of St. James.
[08:34.740 --> 08:40.340]  In chapter two of this epistle, the writer says, Now what uses it, my brothers and sisters,
[08:40.340 --> 08:45.100]  for one to say they have faith if their actions do not correspond with it?
[08:45.100 --> 08:48.100]  Could that sort of faith save anyone?
[08:48.100 --> 08:54.220]  If a fellow man or woman has no clothes to wear and nothing to eat, and one of you says,
[08:54.220 --> 08:55.340]  Good luck to you.
[08:55.340 --> 09:00.540]  I hope you'll keel warm and find enough to eat, and yet give them nothing to meet their
[09:00.540 --> 09:02.180]  physical needs.
[09:02.180 --> 09:05.020]  What on earth is the good of that?
[09:05.020 --> 09:10.060]  Yet that is exactly what a bare faith without a corresponding life is like, useless and
[09:10.060 --> 09:13.340]  dead.
[09:13.340 --> 09:15.900]  We must take the world and its needs personally.
[09:15.900 --> 09:20.700]  I think that's all part of our faith, but it's important not only to talk to talk, but
[09:20.700 --> 09:23.700]  also to walk the walk.
[09:23.700 --> 09:29.020]  So I think it a good idea for us to bear witness to this first principle as a sacred act.
[09:29.020 --> 09:32.580]  The earth is our home, where we stand.
[09:32.580 --> 09:40.020]  It is the source of the resources by which we survive, including what we buy.
[09:40.020 --> 09:45.660]  And now, it should not be a big surprise that we Westerners, especially we white Westerners,
[09:45.660 --> 09:48.140]  use more resources than most.
[09:48.140 --> 09:55.140]  An interesting exercise and one I encourage you to try is to visit footprintnetwork.org,
[09:55.140 --> 10:01.300]  footprintnetwork.org, and answer a set of simple questions to figure out how big is your
[10:01.300 --> 10:03.740]  environmental footprint.
[10:03.740 --> 10:04.740]  I did it.
[10:04.740 --> 10:09.780]  I like to think that environmentally I'm pretty savvy, and I'm even somewhat smug about
[10:09.780 --> 10:11.460]  it frankly.
[10:11.460 --> 10:18.060]  But according to footprintnetwork.org, it would take a planet 2.1 times the earth's current
[10:18.060 --> 10:23.260]  available resources to sustain my lifestyle indefinitely.
[10:23.260 --> 10:27.340]  For most Americans, it's four times.
[10:27.340 --> 10:31.300]  So how do we bear witness to the fact that each of us takes more than our fair share
[10:31.300 --> 10:33.380]  of resources?
[10:33.380 --> 10:37.880]  The church is doing it and its commitment to become a green sanctuary.
[10:37.880 --> 10:44.560]  But I think we also need to periodically, ourselves, through simple practices, remind
[10:44.560 --> 10:49.560]  us of our dependence on the earth and our covenant with her and to bear witness with
[10:49.560 --> 10:50.560]  her.
[10:50.560 --> 10:54.640]  So here are some examples.
[10:54.640 --> 11:01.040]  Spend no money at all one day starting once a month and building up to once a week.
[11:01.040 --> 11:06.200]  Go to a place where the earth is being ill treated and do small acts of restoration such
[11:06.200 --> 11:09.440]  as picking up trash.
[11:09.440 --> 11:15.840]  Walk or bicycle where we need to go once a week or stay off the road entirely.
[11:15.840 --> 11:21.360]  Live by the VB6 rule, vegan before 6 p.m.
[11:21.360 --> 11:24.000]  Buy locally wherever possible.
[11:24.000 --> 11:31.240]  Be cognizant of where the things we buy come from and how they are sourced.
[11:31.240 --> 11:39.640]  I recognize that for health and other reasons not all of us can do these suggestions, but
[11:39.640 --> 11:43.640]  those of us who can need to try.
[11:43.640 --> 11:48.400]  These little acts of discipline help make the earth healthier, but just as important
[11:48.400 --> 11:55.240]  they remind us of all the earth has given us and all that we owe.
[11:55.240 --> 11:59.760]  And remember that we are, as we move to using our fair share of resources, will never be
[11:59.760 --> 12:01.480]  perfect.
[12:01.480 --> 12:07.200]  Starhawk, the pagan writer whom Mary quoted, remarks in her book The Earth Path that she
[12:07.200 --> 12:12.520]  has gotten deep into the practice of permaculture and living off the grid, but to do so she
[12:12.520 --> 12:18.880]  has to buy solar panels and tools made by cheap labor in Asia.
[12:18.880 --> 12:23.640]  Until recently when she switched to remote teaching for her permaculture classes, Starhawk
[12:23.640 --> 12:28.640]  had to fly in jet aircraft whose emissions contribute to global warming and harm the
[12:28.640 --> 12:29.640]  ozone layer.
[12:29.640 --> 12:35.920]  None of us is perfect, but we need to try.
[12:35.920 --> 12:42.560]  So I'm hoping that some of you have already begun to contemplate one or two regularly
[12:42.560 --> 12:47.200]  performed small acts of witness to your commitment to the earth.
[12:47.200 --> 12:51.480]  I have a suspicion that most of us are probably doing it anyway.
[12:51.480 --> 12:57.000]  I'm going to offer you now a little bit of silence to think about it.
[12:57.000 --> 12:58.800]  If you've not already done so.
[12:58.800 --> 13:04.120]  So if you wish, close your eyes as I ring the chime and meditate on your witness to
[13:04.120 --> 13:05.120]  the earth.
[13:05.120 --> 13:07.440]  I'll ring you back when it's time.
[13:35.120 --> 13:53.400]  One further and final thought, you might want to share your act of witness with your partner
[13:53.400 --> 13:58.560]  or a friend and check in once in a while with them to see how you're doing.
[13:58.560 --> 14:04.000]  So in closing, remember this trilobite.
[14:04.000 --> 14:09.160]  We don't want to become one of those by bearing witness to our commitment to an utter dependence
[14:09.160 --> 14:10.840]  upon the earth.
[14:10.840 --> 14:15.600]  We can contribute to the evolution of a culture that shares this understanding and commitment.