A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
April 18, 2004
A sermon by F. Jay Deacon
Preached at the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence
April 18, 2004
The first fire. The web of all existence.
Never in human history has there been an era without anxiety, never a time with nothing to fear or hope; but there is something about this time that is more menacing than anything we have ever faced. In the words of Thomas Berry, the cultural historian and theologian, the planet as a whole is in a traumatized state. These are his words: "We are in a situation beyond anything ever experienced before in the course of human or earth history."
As you certainly know, throngs of people have been watching a sensationalized depiction of a crucifixion, stoking some fairly worrying religious fervors.
But where's the fervor about the real crucifixion — of a planet? It's being ignored by its perpetrators. But what if planetary life is going to be reduced to nothing more than grasses and insects, quietly, without a missile ever leaving a silo?
Thirty-two years after the first Earth Day, the news — if you get your news from the European press and not the American — the news is about a stunning Pentagon report issued last November and suppressed by the White House for four months until the Observer1 of London and, of all things, Fortune Magazine got ahold of it. A Pentagon report! And it calls climate change during the next twenty years a greater threat to national security than terrorism.
It says climate change will come abruptly, not gradually, inundating London, New York, Boston, Miami, Bombay, Calcutta, Sydney, Shanghai, Lagos and Tokyo, and submerging them under rising seas. While the rest of the planet warms, the death of the Gulf Stream would mean a Siberian climate for Europe — by 2020. And this report says it would leave six billion people on an overburdened planet in a state of perpetual war contending for vanishing supplies of energy, water, and food as catastrophic shortages would also mean mass migrations, famine, and disease. It's especially astounding because it was commissioned by the revered defense advisor who was the mastermind behind some of Donald Rumsfeld's favorite schemes.
And it wasn't the only warning. Similar reports have come from the German government, whose scientists came to almost exactly the same conclusions, and by British scientists, and by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and by many American scientists.
A quarter of all land species, maybe a lot more, will go extinct in the process.
I wonder if it means something to the Earth that it still has its own special day.
From long centuries and millennia of unchallenged religious certainties about the Universe, we are left with a legal system that recognizes no inherent rights for the rivers, the forests, the animals, the air; recognizes in them no sacred quality.
Our assault on Nature assaults our senses with the ugliness of devastation. We have lost our sense of the cosmos, and, as the great cultural and psychological thinker Otto Rank put it, when humanity lost the cosmos, lost the awareness of our integral part in it — when we lost the cosmos, we became lost.
You would think from the behaviour of the human race today that we still held the beliefs and cosmology of primitive religions, from a pre-scientific age. And — dear friends — it's brought us to the edge of a precipice. Here's how that primitive cosmology goes — so different from the universe we have discovered actually to stretch about us:
Above, the Shining Gods, and below, his obedient subjects, and under their feet, the earth, just a bunch of dead rocks and dirt with no life in it, no divinity about it.
And the human part of that hierarchy, you know, the part between the Gods above the the dead earth beneath — some of them were God's special chums, the specially chosen elect. All the other were just heathen.
Under that vision, the earth's human inhabitants have sectioned off the planet into 191 nation states, and these nations exist in an abiding sequence of conflicts that have grown more and more threatening as we have gained increasing control over the powers inherent in the physical structures of the earth.
Beyond the nationalist fervor and the greedy despoiling of the earth, we are gathered in quest of a larger, stronger religious vision of one family of life. There can be only one planetary citizenship: that is the only flag we can now afford to salute.
But even this larger human identity is not yet large enough. I was struck that Thomas Berry, who was once a priest, would say this:
My own view is that any effective response to these issues requires a religious context but that the existing religious traditions are too distant from our new sense of the universe to be adequate to the task that is before us. . . .The traditional religions . . . cannot presently do what needs to be done. We need a new type of religious orientation. This must . . . emerge from our new story of the universe.2
And Thomas Berry says this new religious orientation is really a new revelatory experience, one that we can understand as soon as we recognize that the evolutionary process is from the beginning not just a physical process but a spiritual one.
There is no issue on which UU's everywhere are more fully united. And it matters supremely that we who own the name Unitarian Universalist, we who are not accountable to the ancient mythic universe and its gods and scriptures, its bishops and ayatollahs and, I say, its corporate powers — that we hear the new story of the universe and take it to heart. It is true — and extremely fortunate — that many religious people in other faith-traditions have found in their traditions a basis on which to champion the cause of the Earth. But in a time still largely governed by outworn myth — we might now hold out a life-giving alternative.
Those who study the very structure of the universe are telling a new story, and even though there are still many variations, — for the first time in its history the human community has a single story of its origin:
It is the story of the great silent fire at the beginning of time, 12 to 20 billion years ago, that furnace out of which everything came forth. This fire that filled the universe — it was the universe. In extremes of heat and pressure it churned out the elements, and all that now exists was there at the beginning, in that great burning explosion of light. We can see the light from that first fire, because photons of light from it are reaching us only now. We can see it because it burned for nearly a million years. That great light is now spread through this universe. You can hear it on the radiotelescopes; and you can't look up into the night sky without looking back into our origin. I don't know what that sight evokes in you. It makes me tremble.
That means that every thing came from a common origin. The material of your body and the material of mine are intrinsically related. Our ancestry stretches back through countless life forms and into the stars — and life is a one great unfolding of energy, matter, mind, and intelligence. The essential energy of the universe runs through everything. There is a life and intelligence about everything, and about the universe as an intelligent organism.
And — the universe becomes aware of itself through the humanity it has created. When you set about your work you are not just exercising your private talents and rational capacities. In everything you do, the Universe is revealing itself and discovering itself.
For we are not merely descended from the first fire; —
We are that first fire after 13 billion years of creative work;
We are the universe aware of itself, reflecting on itself, communicating and reflecting on its own existence, its own possibilities, deciding for its future.
There is a song locked up inside us and it resounds, resonates from that first fire, and from the stars that churned out the elements we are made of, and from the implicate genius of this living and intelligent universe itself, and it is a part of us.
But that is not the song we sing much of the time, and if you listen carefully this Sunday morning you will not hear very many songs about the interdependent web of all existence. You will hear, "Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war," and you will hear frothing declamations about the saved and the damned. You will hear the hum of an economy so insensitive to the earth that this morning the seas, the air and the ground are still receiving fresh poisons.
There's something very persistent about the old myths.
When Giordano Bruno, a priest and philosopher who had studied with Copernicus, challenged the prevailing doctrines about the universe, his ideas got him shackled in an ecclesiastical prison for his last seven years and then burned at the stake in Rome in 1600. If today you speak on behalf of the Earth and the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part — you will have the whole government and popular consumer culture against you.
We've gained a kind of security, or illusion of security, from the idea that we are separate from nature and can control it.
Now the dominant forces in our society are desperately betting everything on the idea that the universe is just dead matter. How could an Alaskan wildlife reserve have a spiritual life? If a mountain has no inner reason, no sacredness unto itself, then to get coal out of the soil you just cut away half the face of the mountain. Never mind that the mountain begins to erode and chemicals enter the streams and trees die, and plants, fish, and animals.
It doesn't really matter how obvious the consequences of the madness are. The madness goes on because it is madness.
But the mind is made up of cells and atoms and they have a long memory. The cells and atoms that make up our minds and those that compose the earth have a kind of resonance. There is a unitive force, a love toward all existence. We know that we are nature, that we are the first fire.
And if there is a sound of weeping or of laughter anywhere, it reaches us as a song inside us, and still the singing in our minds and bodies returns us to a love of this earth.
And we ourselves: we happen to be living our lives just at a turning point for life on this threatened planet. We ourselves are becoming part of this change.
The equilibrium is disturbed.
The physicist Prigogine says that "we are at a moment of profound change. . . . We know that societies are immensely complex systems involving a potentially enormous number of bifurcations [or turning points]. We know that such systems are highly sensitive to fluctuations. . . . As a result, individual activity is not doomed to insignificance."3
We live not in a universe of eternal laws but of implicate intelligence and innovation, a roaring engine of creativity.
The times require a people who will commit in some profound way to take our place in this interdependent web, and to love this community of life, this first fire, of which we are a part. What we do on behalf of the Earth will not be the skin-deep effort on the part of those whose chief aim is to appear politically correct. Nor will it be a burden or a sacrifice anymore than the things we do for someone we love feel like a burden or sacrifice. Love does not worry about doing too much, being too extravagant. We must now speak and act out of devoted love and not less.
And the times require a people who know their place in this web of life, know they are bound by an everlasting covenant to a larger life, know they are come from that first fire and share as citizens in a vast community of life. Believe in the significance of their own words and deeds.
But our vision will be helplessly befogged as long as we insist on cheating on our fundamental covenant with life. For one thing, we will have to curb the thirst for oil that has bent our moral compass, a thirst that is always made more vivid for me when I return to the United Kingdom, with its tiny automobiles and abundant public transit. It may be as simple, in our own household, as figuring out how to replace more of these incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescent ones, or taking the Green Sanctuary Pledge, because that is something that lies within our power to do.
We must be a force and a factor, together, and each of us where we are. The changed consciousness and the gentle awareness that all of Life is one — will have to replace the cynicism, and the campaign rhetoric, and the official lies and the unofficial denial, soon.
The generation coming of age now — and all of us living — have the potential to bring a new vision to society. Like this, proposed by Andrew Harvey:
Any spiritual vision that does not ask us to calmly face the appalling facts is, I believe, whether consciously or unconsciously, conspiring in our infantilization and so in our destruction. . . .The only response that I find honorable in this potentially terminal situation is that of dedicated love.4
And this is the important part, and this is where the prophecy comes in. Andrew Harvey's words again:
If we do not awaken to our sacred, interdependent nature, we will not know that when we allow the rain forest to burn, it is as if we were burning our own lungs, that when we pollute the seas with nuclear waste, we are lacing our own veins with poison, and that when we refuse to stop the torture in prisons all over the world . . . we are torturing, killing and starving ourselves — not figuratively, not poetically, but literally.5
The times require moral leadership, and they require creativity, and above all things, they require the gentle force of love.
Let us make this place one where these gifts of leadership and creativity and love — the gifts this world needs — are discovered and supported. Let us assure that our young people learn not only from their classrooms downstairs but even more importantly from our deep commitment and passion for this magnificent Earth. Let us above all find ways to structure and focus our life as a congregation to that end.
And, says St. John of the Cross, when we "drink at the very sources of the science of love," we finally see what ordinary consciousness cannot.
Look and see the world radiant with the glory from which it flows.
See the radiant and majestic grace in this Spring day, in every leaf and tree; — in the air you breathe feel its life,
let it wash you through with music,
and let it penetrate to a core of you that can never, never
close to it again.
May we see beyond the rubble and turmoil
this great surging Mystery of Life
this Nature and the Life of the Cosmos
the Intelligence that made of the cosmic dust
stars and planets and rivers and people
and that is not finished its work.
Copyright © 2004 F. Jay Deacon. All rights reserved.
We gather as always we gather, with heartbreaks, anxieties and fears. And again today the sun has risen and shines on us.
We gather in a threatening time on a threatened planet to worship the Life that is made manifest in the extravagant profusion of life on Earth. We gather for love of this Earth, for the Life that lives in all.
We gather for courage and we gather for hope: to renew our covenant with the living world, to restore our balance, reëngage the rhythms of nature.
How easy it is to forget; how easy to be drawn into the delusion that now despoils nature. We confess that we are nature, part and parcel of it.
We sense that the Earth that gives us life now needs us: may we not betray it.
With humble joy we breathe the breath of life, we rest in the soft arms of the atmosphere, we drink in the beauty. Let the love of it be rekindled in us. Let our senses be open and alive to the splendor:
In the silence . . .
Hildegarde of Bingen, the 12th-century mystic, visionary, and composer
Now, in the people that were meant to be green there is no more life of any kind. There is only shrivelled barrenness. The winds are burdended by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples. The earth should not be injured! The earth must not be destroyed!
And from the Nobel prize-winning physicist
Ilya Prigogine:
It is quite remarkable that we are at a moment both of profound change in the scientific concept of nature and of the structure of human society . . . As a result, there is a need for new relations between [human] and nature and between [human] and [human]. . . . We know that societies are immensely complex systems involving a potentially enormous number of bifurcations [that is, turning points, like forks in the road] . . . . We know that such systems are highly sensitive to fluctuations. This leads both to hope and a threat: hope, since even small fluctuations may grow and change the overall structure. As a result, individual activity is not doomed to insignificance. On the other hand, this is also a threat, since in our universe the security of stable, permanent rules seem gone forever. We are living in a dangerous and uncertain world that inspires no blind confidence. . . .
· Secret report warns of rioting and nuclear war
· Britain will be `Siberian' in less than 20 years
· Threat to the world is greater than terrorism
Mark Townsend and Paul Harris in New York
Sunday February 22, 2004
The Observer
Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters..
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a `Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.
`Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. `Once again, warfare would define human life.'
The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.
The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Climate change `should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.
An imminent scenario of catastrophic climate change is `plausible and would challenge United States national security in ways that should be considered immediately', they conclude. As early as next year widespread flooding by a rise in sea levels will create major upheaval for millions.
Last week the Bush administration came under heavy fire from a large body of respected scientists who claimed that it cherry-picked science to suit its policy agenda and suppressed studies that it did not like. Jeremy Symons, a former whistleblower at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), said that suppression of the report for four months was a further example of the White House trying to bury the threat of climate change.
Senior climatologists, however, believe that their verdicts could prove the catalyst in forcing Bush to accept climate change as a real and happening phenomenon. They also hope it will convince the United States to sign up to global treaties to reduce the rate of climatic change.
A group of eminent UK scientists recently visited the White House to voice their fears over global warming, part of an intensifying drive to get the US to treat the issue seriously. Sources have told The Observer that American officials appeared extremely sensitive about the issue when faced with complaints that America's public stance appeared increasingly out of touch.
One even alleged that the White House had written to complain about some of the comments attributed to Professor Sir David King, Tony Blair's chief scientific adviser, after he branded the President's position on the issue as indefensible.
Among those scientists present at the White House talks were Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief environmental adviser to the German government and head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. He said that the Pentagon's internal fears should prove the `tipping point' in persuading Bush to accept climatic change.
Sir John Houghton, former chief executive of the Meteorological Office - and the first senior figure to liken the threat of climate change to that of terrorism - said: `If the Pentagon is sending out that sort of message, then this is an important document indeed.'
Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.
`Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.
`You've got a President who says global warming is a hoax, and across the Potomac river you've got a Pentagon preparing for climate wars. It's pretty scary when Bush starts to ignore his own government on this issue,' said Rob Gueterbock of Greenpeace.
Already, according to Randall and Schwartz, the planet is carrying a higher population than it can sustain. By 2020 `catastrophic' shortages of water and energy supply will become increasingly harder to overcome, plunging the planet into war. They warn that 8,200 years ago climatic conditions brought widespread crop failure, famine, disease and mass migration of populations that could soon be repeated.
Randall told The Observer that the potential ramifications of rapid climate change would create global chaos. `This is depressing stuff,' he said. `It is a national security threat that is unique because there is no enemy to point your guns at and we have no control over the threat.'
Randall added that it was already possibly too late to prevent a disaster happening. `We don't know exactly where we are in the process. It could start tomorrow and we would not know for another five years,' he said.
`The consequences for some nations of the climate change are unbelievable. It seems obvious that cutting the use of fossil fuels would be worthwhile.'
So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign.
The fact that Marshall is behind its scathing findings will aid Kerry's cause. Marshall, 82, is a Pentagon legend who heads a secretive think-tank dedicated to weighing risks to national security called the Office of Net Assessment. Dubbed `Yoda' by Pentagon insiders who respect his vast experience, he is credited with being behind the Department of Defence's push on ballistic-missile defence.
Symons, who left the EPA in protest at political interference, said that the suppression of the report was a further instance of the White House trying to bury evidence of climate change. `It is yet another example of why this government should stop burying its head in the sand on this issue.'
Symons said the Bush administration's close links to high-powered energy and oil companies was vital in understanding why climate change was received sceptically in the Oval Office. `This administration is ignoring the evidence in order to placate a handful of large energy and oil companies,' he added.
You can get the report at:
http://www.ems.org/climate/pentagon_climate_change.html