OPENING WORDS

inspired by words of Dr. Harlow Shapley

Take a deep breath
Hold it and let it go.
That breath which is so necessary and natural unites us
Quietly -- with all of life on earth.
Most of it has now gone forth to join again the winds of the planet.
A year from now I shall breathe in and out
A good many thousands of the nitrogen molecules which a minute ago
Were in the Deep Breaths of all of you.
And you too will breathe in the molecules of other breaths.
We come to be aware of our connections to each other, to the world
To Life Itself.
May we remember, in this time together, how much we share
And how much we need to cherish one another.

READING

Ute Prayer

Earth teach me stillness, as the grasses are stilled with light.
Earth teach me suffering, as old stones suffer with memory.
Earth teach me humility, as blossoms are humble with beginning.
Earth teach me caring as the parents who secure their young.
Earth teach me courage, as the tree which stands all alone.
Earth teach me limitation, as the ant which crawls on the ground.
Earth teach me freedom as the eagle which soars in the sky.
Earth teach me resignation as the leaves which die in the fall.
Earth teach me regeneration, as the seed which rises in the spring.
Earth teach me to forget myself, as melted snow forgets its life.
Earth teach me to remember kindness as dry fields weep with rain.

We Are of the Earth

Four years ago, tomorrow, the most devastating terrorist attack in the history of the United States took place. On April 19th, 1995, at 9 am, a truck bomb exploded in front of the Alfred P. Murrah federal court building of Oklahoma City. A third of the building crumbled instantly, glass shattered miles away, people's lives were irreversibly changed: dreams were lost in the rubble, families fragmented, precious journeys just begun wrenched from their potential on earth.

The official count of those who died were well above 100, close to a quarter of the count were children. Among the many gruesome images imprinted on millions of minds is that of the rescue workers who, within a day, had to wear an extra layer of protective clothing as they diligently searched for survivors because decomposition of trapped bodies had begun to infect the air.

All this done with fertilizer and fuel, detonated by dynamite, a substance originally invented to create fireworks to delight the eye and paint the sky.

"The Universe responds." Alice Walker reminds us, "What you ask of it, it gives. The military-industrial complex and its leaders and scientists have shown more faith in this reality than have those of us....who want peace. They have asked the Earth for all its deadlier substances. They have been confident in their faith in hatred....The Universe, ever responsive, the Earth, ever giving, has opened itself fully to their desires."

Timothy McVeigh, then 27 years old, decided to exact his own justice as indicated on his forged driver's license -- the one used to rent the vehicle of destruction -- giving the date of issuance as April 19th, 1993, the day of the ill-fated raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. His need for vengeance, it would seem, gave him and others presumed permission -- a license to kill, to destroy, to strike out in hatred indiscriminately and irrevocably. The Earth, ever giving, opened itself fully to their desires with a simple application of fertilizer and fuel.

It is ironic that it happened around Earth Day, for Earth day is about recognizing the sanctity of life and preserving its gifts. If we take on the responsibility of recognizing the sanctity of life as a people connected to one another and to all life, then we will take on the responsibility to nurture a world that prevents such madness, to the best of our abilities. We would then have a world of peoples who would work to identify and disable destructive hatred and misguided cause, before devastation.

Some day, if Earth Day and its philosophy generated throughout the years is successful, the thought of taking life, destroying, life, contaminating life for the sake of human endeavor over and above survival will be repulsive to our way of life. That kind of humility and wisdom will be found in refocusing on the sacred nature of this Earth and the Universe which contains it.

The seeds of this response were sown since the beginning of human history. But we lost our way for awhile, at least in serving Earth Day's sensibility. Several centuries ago, when Western European philosophers and theologians became interested in, I would say even obsessed with, the workings of the mind and its capabilities. Soon it was believed by those in powerful, influential positions that the spirit was only of the mind. The body was then deemed merely a casing for the sacred within. Soon the body became identified with earthly nature and thought of as primitive, unspiritual, an impediment preventing the blessed life -- even an instrument for sin and evil. Emotions, sexual activity, some pleasures in natural beauty and physical rituals of life became thought of as pagan, heretical, dangerous and punishable.

In the Middle Ages, women, especially those who practiced their religious beliefs by honoring the earth and its innate powers were killed. In the 14th and 15th centuries, it is estimated that over 1 million women throughout Europe, deemed as witches or known merely as midwives, were slaughtered, burned, drowned and hanged. It is a genocide rarely spoken of and yet very real in our history.

With the Western European "Enlightenment" era, the glorification of mental capacity overshadowed the importance of bodily connectedness, emotionality and intuition. The ensuing Industrial Revolution helped increase our false sense of control over the physical world and our need to conquer its properties, to tame the wild and to claim its resources for our own purposes.

Because of the mind--body split, already given centuries of justification and sanction in major religious circles, we had generated a profound detachment from our bodily selves and from our physical origin: earth. This detachment engendered fear which manifested in tyrannies, abuse, denial, hopelessness, loneliness and loss of faith.

It is odd that so many seekers, throughout the ages, who claimed to honor God, ignored the glory and majesty of Creation. I find it ironic that those who felt they would find God in another life missed the evidence of Divinity in each waking day. It is a waste that in denying a connection with "earthly" wonders so many lost the touch of the sacred in each waking hour. I'm sure many of you are familiar with ee cummings sonnet: I thank You God...etc.

Why have the senses and the ability to embrace beauty if not to use them to praise and honor creation? Full consciousness of our lives includes body knowledge, earth knowledge, non-verbal connections. The body, its signals and sensuality and the earth, its enticing beauty and majesty are not tests against our spirituality (which was the traditional claim). The fact that we are capable of detachment, that we can be destructive, arrogant, unfeeling and irreverent is the test of our spirituality.

In the 19th century, a group of Unitarians followed this reasoning to begin the movement called Transcendentalism. The movement began because the people perceived a crisis of spirit in the nation. They were the next generation challenging the Unitarian culture out of its complacency, and the larger society away from materialism. Too much destructiveness. Too little reverence. Too much human arrogance.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was a spiritual influence for the group, and chief rebel, triggered by his book entitled Nature. He believed that nature gave testimony to the presence of God and that humans could tap into the universal Spirit by attuning themselves to the natural world, full of lessons and wisdom.

"All natural objects make a kindred impression," he wrote," when the mind is open to their influence." He believed the happiest person "is the one who learns from nature the lesson of worship."

We are connected to the earth. We will find our way if we embrace its lessons. That is no surprise to anyone, and yet it is a truth that is often denied, protested, avoided and violated.

"Let us learn the revelation of all nature and thought," Emerson admonished,"that the Highest dwells within us, that the sources of nature are in our minds...Within us is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related."

Lydia Maria Child, prominent 19th century abolitionist and author met a great many Unitarian Transcendentalists while residing with her brother Convers Francis, a Unitarian minister in Watertown, MA. The Transcendentalist movement was just getting started as she added her voice to the growing affirmation of intuitive religion. Self reliance. Ms. Child spoke often of an "indwelling joy" found in service to others and convinced the Rev. William Ellery Channing, known to many as the Father of American Unitarianism, to become more involved in racial justice. You could live without doing service, she acknowledged, but you would be missing a fullness of life beyond description. It is the fullness of heart, mind and body that heals brokenness. It in is applying our whole selves that we can glimpse the creative power in which all things dwell.

In the 19th century the thrust of Unitarianism was "salvation by character", the power of moral energy to bring about a better world. In Universalism, salvation was promised and modeled in life through the power of community and love for all beings. The common thread was the belief in ourselves as co-creators, making a healthier world in action, thought and works, and taking responsibility for claiming that health for ourselves.

"I wish to live deliberately," wrote Transcendalist Henry David Thoreau, "to front only the essential facts of life. I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived. I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear, nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary. I wish to live deep and suck out the marrow of life. If it proves to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give true account of it."

Service, expanding the mind, engaging the body, responding to emotion, has the quality of wholeness about it. It can give the sense of how things might all work together. This sense, this vision is what some Unitarians and Universalists have named the road to salvation. For the root translation of "Salvation" is "to make whole".

Salvation, then, becomes deliverance from our lost, unfocused selves into a sense of connection with the healing energies of the web of life. We find our wholeness, our own health, by doing the work of strengthening relationships with each other and with life itself.

In this modern age, with technologies that can further distance us from our earth connections, we suffer from blatant environmental crises, violence against the earth and against our own bodies by others and by ourselves. As a human family, we do not yet honor our bodies as sacred nor the earth as our sacred home.

But it can be said that our awareness is improving, and in some cases, so is the air and water. Smog is down 40 percent in Los Angeles. Cars in 1970 emitted 100 times more pollutants than cars in 1995. The great Lakes, Puget Sound, Chesapeake Bay, Long Island Sound, once depicted as facing biological death are showing steady improvement. (David Biedrzyck, USA Weekend, April 14-16) Recycling has become a way of life for some.

Attention to the earth as our home and reverence therein is the key to our survival. Saving the earth is not the issue. Saving our chance to live on the earth is.

One of the most profound messages inherent in Earth Day is that we humans are not the center of the universe. We are a part of an intricate miracle of life systems that we must mutually care for in order to thrive. We have been blessed with the ability to be aware of our existence and to interact and respond to this miracle. But the only way we will survive is through the power of connectedness: respect for the interdependent web of all existence.

It is detachment that causes fear, hatred, bigotry, and the ability to murder. It is disconnectedness that enables the audacity to willfully devastate others for the sake of an idea. If we learn, really learn from Earth Day, that we are all in this together, equally bound to this wondrous orb which nurtures and astounds us, then all life will be revered.

"I have come to realize that our capacity to praise creation hinges on our capacity to involve ourselves in creation." Dorothee Solle wrote, "No genuine affirmation can arise apart from participation. Only through participation in creation can we affirm it, cherish it and praise it."

That is much of the work that we do here in coming together as a community. We are here to teach each other justice and compassion. We are here to deepen our relationships and generate the vital understanding of connectedness. As one resident theologian said to me last week "this is how we change the world", by coming together and working it out. By participating in each other's lives. So may it be. Amen.

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