"Spirit of the Earth and Sky"

 

Good morning. I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. Did you do as Rev. Michael suggested during his Gluttony sermon—did you savor your dinner or simply gobble it down? I had a few gobblers at my house.

When I woke up to this gray, chilly day, I gratefully thanked the weather gods. Any day we wake up is a glorious day. Did you expect the leaves to be dull this year, because of the drought? Just look at the trees outside our windows—more for us to be thankful for.

I love nature, but I have to confess. I’m a nature kleptomaniac. I can’t leave nature where I found it! When my family and I vacation on Sanibel Island, Florida, I comb the beach, looking for seashell treasures. When I find a near-perfect shell, I thank the ocean spirits for their generous offering. Every year I tuck into my suitcase ocean bounty, shells carefully wrapped in Kleenex. My family is nodding, they know my obsession.

Last week Rev. Mary and I went to a minister’s study group in a West Virginia state park. While there I walked outdoors and again, I couldn’t help myself. At every step I picked up colorful leaves that had fallen to the ground. The leaves and shells below the pulpit attest to my nature obsession.

‘Collector’ is a much nicer word than kleptomaniac, but the end result is the same—a pile of nature objects cluttering my home. Are there fellow kleptomaniacs, I mean nature collectors here today? Tell me I’m not alone!

Perhaps we’re drawn to these treasures because they remind us of the beauty of the world and the miracle of their creation. Searching for interesting patterns or colors in shells, rocks and leaves, examining them, and putting them on display are acts of reverence. Maybe we’re seeking—and finding—evidence of the divine.

Reverencing nature was my first religious experience. As some of you know, I grew up a Unitarian and I was lucky enough to have parents who sent me to Rowe, a Unitarian summer camp in the Berkshire Mountains of western Massachusetts. Rowe was where I ‘got religion’; where my spirituality was awakened.

Every night, 30 or so campers and I would walk down a tree-lined country lane that led from the camp to the Unitarian Chapel out on the main road. We walked in silence to avoid disturbing the few neighbors living nearby. You might think keeping a gaggle of teens quiet for the 10-minute walk to chapel impossible. But we were mostly silent. We listened to our shoes pound the road and we listened to the trees whisper in the wind.

When we arrived at the chapel, our counselors, called Spirits, would present a worship service. Now you may think I got religion because of these worship services the college-aged Spirits put on.

But no, I got religion in the walking back and forth. I loved viewing the billions of twinkling stars in the mountain’s dark skies. I loved walking with close friends in comfortable silence, wrapped in night’s dark blanket. During these walking meditations, I felt mystery, awe, wonder, and especially humility—all basic religious feelings. In those walks the universe spoke; it revealed how small I was in relation to the infinite whole, and what a miracle it was that I could witness and participate in this glorious creation. The universe speaks to me still.

Does this ring true for you? How many of you experience your greatest spirituality in nature? If so, let me hear “Amen!” It’s no surprise that the nature writings of our Unitarian Transcendentalist forebears, like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, still carry significance for us.

This religious or spiritual response to nature leads some to call themselves neo-pagans; and some in our church to participate I in MoonFire, whose members helped with our chalice lighting. It led the affinity group known as the Covenant of UU Pagans to propose during the mid 90s that we add what became our Sixth Source of Unitarian Universalism. This source reads, “Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” The five other sources that inform and inspire our beliefs were adopted in the mid 80s.

Paganism is a catch-all term for earth-centered religious traditions. It comes from a Latin word meaning ‘from the country.’ City-dwellers in the ancient world referred to country bumpkins this way. When the Roman Empire shifted to Christianity, peasants in the country gave up their Roman gods and goddesses more slowly, thus pagan took on religious meaning. Today Paganism usually refers to a belief that every part of nature is connected and sacred, that god or the divine is present in all things—people, places, animals, and that the world is good, or blessed.

There are many earth-centered traditions encompassed by our Sixth Source, for people on every continent once practiced earth-centered religion. Pagan believers are fewer in number today due to the influence of eastern and western philosophy, the emergence of the three Biblically-based faiths, and the impact of enlightened reason and scientific discovery.

In pagan western and northern Europe, especially Celts in Britain and Ireland, natural places were sacred, hills and rivers were alive with spirits and sprites. Celts saw no separation between the sacred and secular. One powerful symbol of this unified world was the sacred tree, the Tree of Life. Its roots reached deep, down into the earth, into the underworld, while the tree’s branches spread out, reaching up into the sky, into the heavens. Occupying the human world in between, the tree’s sturdy trunk connected these upper and lower realms, providing access to each, as the tree spirit in our story illustrates.

We often speak of the wheel of the year turning when seasons change. This language comes from Celtic understanding that life is cyclical, that birth and death and birth are eternally connected just as summer turns to fall, and fall turns to winter. Many of our winter solstice and Christmas activities find their source in Celtic and other northern European pagan traditions.

West and Sub-Saharan African traditional religions share similarities to European paganism. In the African worldview, people and places also are alive with spirits, though evil spirits tend to make the world more dangerous.

Wiccans are a group of modern-day pagans. They revere the creative forces of Nature through the symbols of the goddess and god. Wiccans believe our physical and spiritual interconnectedness is so strong, that one can use magick, or intentions, to create change. That’s magick with a K at the end, to distinguish it from magicians and slight-of-hand. Wiccan rituals aim to expand one’s consciousness and assist in becoming one with all creation.

Native American spirituality is an earth-centered tradition Unitarian Universalists frequently cite. While there’s no single native religion, the tribal groups share common themes: they respect life and do not believe humans have dominion over other creatures. In contrast to Biblical tradition where only humans have souls, traditional Native Americans teach that all life has a spirit or soul, and that belief has significant implications for how life should be treated—with respect and dignity. You can hear these examples of pagan beliefs echoed in our Principles.

I believe these pagan traditions embraced by our Sixth Source are especially important, at this particular moment in time. As you know, we are in the midst of an environmental crisis. Global warming is threatening our land, our seas, and our air. Earth, water, and sky may soon be changed in ways that are not conducive to life as we know it. I believe following more closely the ideas in pagan traditions may help us out of the crisis.

By the hearty “Amen” responses I heard earlier, I know nature is important to you—for spirituality, for enjoyment and for work. We hike, we kayak, we tour the world’s natural wonders, we take photographs of nature, and we collect treasures from nature. Some of us are oceanographers, geologists, landscapers, and astronomers, to name a few professions based on the natural world. But what will we do if nature as we know it disappears? Will generations to come find solace, inspiration and vocation in nature, or only in the pictures we took?

In the 70s we began cleaning up our environmental messes. We stopped using DDT and the eagles returned. Our rivers and lakes are cleaner now than they were 20 years ago. When we began cleaning things up, we didn’t know much about the collective impact our activities would have on the global climate. We thought these baby environmental steps were good enough. We’ve since learned otherwise.

Scientists on the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate we have a window of at most ten years to change our behavior if we are to save the world from the worst effects of global warming. One decade. We need to act.

As evidence that the ecological spirits were working their magick, on Thanksgiving evening after dinner I turned on PBS to a Mystery show already in progress. The scene, set during WWII, included a man unscrewing light bulbs from ceiling fixtures. When another man entered the room, he explained he was removing bulbs to save energy. And in addition, hot meals would only be served three days a week. The other man grimaced, but accepted the new restrictions.

There’s a lesson for our environmental crisis in WWII behavior. During the war, people willingly made sacrifices because they believed what they were fighting for: freedom and the right of all people to live, no matter what their religion or ethnic background. Ideals worth sacrificing for then, and today. But also worth sacrificing for are the earth, the trees, the oceans, the skies—all that we are interconnected with, and dependent upon.

Can you imagine not cooking three days a week in order to save the environment? Can you imagine not using any form of energy three days, even one day a week, to save our world? Can you imagine not using any of our modern conveniences that consume resources and create greenhouse gasses to save the world from global warming? Can you stop imagining and make the same sacrifices an earlier generation made during WWII? I think we must say, “Yes.”

But if we say yes, then how? How do we give up our modern comforts? Like Mikku in our story, how do we resist magic wands disguised as techno- gadgets and other consumer goods? How can we UUs do what is so hard to do?

I think we look to our religious beliefs and values. Our UU Principles are our compass, pointing us toward values and standards that are not easy or comfortable to realize, but serve to remind us what is truly important in life—and it’s not accumulating wealth and possessions or going places fast. Instead, what matters is our relationships with people, animals, water, air, earth—the very web of existence. Lifting up our ideals, especially when it is most difficult, that is what religion is for and that is what will help us out of this crisis.

Our Sixth Source, earth-centered traditional wisdom, is especially valuable. If we embrace teachings from Native Americans, Wiccans, Africans and others, in tandem with our 7^th Principle, “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part,” we can change our ways. I don’t believe we have to all become theological pagans, though that wouldn’t hurt. Whichever of our sources most sustains you, hang on to it. But don’t ignore Mother Earth.

‘Mother Earth’ is a valuable metaphor that comes from several earth-centered traditions. A mother lovingly takes care of her young, she nourishes and protects. Similarly, Mother Earth cares for us by growing our crops, providing us with water and materials for shelter. Like Mikku’s trees, if we take care of Mother Earth, she will take care of us. This more personal way of looking at our relationship with earth as our Mother may help us prevent this crisis from worsening. We also need to value earth as divine, for it truly is.

Now, I’d like you to get even more connected to Mother Earth. I invite you to take your shoes off and get in touch with the floor. If your shoes can’t come off or your feet don’t touch the floor, that’s okay. Your rear is connected to a seat, which is connected to the floor. Try to feel or imagine the earth beneath you, however tenuous the connection at the moment is. Press your feet or body down, visualize roots growing from your feet or seat down into the earth. Let your roots feel the heartbeat of Mother Earth. Send her your thanks. Receive her blessings. Make your connection strong enough to sustain your sacrifices. May it be so.