My Sermon on Climate Change and the Parable of the Lost Coin

This is a Sermon I gave at Seattle Mennonite Church on Sunday June 23rd.

In the Parable of the lost coin, Luke 15.8-10, the woman has lost one 10^th of the coins she has and yet exerts effort to find that which is lost and asks others to celebrate when she finds it.  For me this parable is about whether we value what is lost and whether we are willing to put forth effort to prevent its loss.

Humanity at this point, potentially faces the loss of a liveable planet, and yet for decades we have turned our attention from the potential loss, hoping it will not be true, disbelieving it is true, or even intentionally lying about whether it is true.  Sadly, while we have always had and do now have the knowledge of the actions needed to stop climate change, we have lacked the political will to make it happen.  Individually and collectively we have not made the changes.

To make this choice we must value even the loss of a small percentage of what we have.   We must stop having acceptable sacrifice zones (as the oil companies have called areas that have been decimated by strip mining) and treat everything that the Creator made as precious. 

One small example of this is the Monarch Butterfly.  At this time there are only 20% of the butterflies worldwide that existed in my childhood.  Because of an amazing experience I had in my teen years in a field with Monarch’s I have always considered them to be a sign of the presence of God.  So the threat to their existence is even more poignant to me.  We have known for decades that this is because of pesticides we use that kill them, but we have been unable to pass laws that would limit the use of those pesticides.  Bees also are threatened by these same pesticides.  Yet bees pollinate every third bite of food we eat, so as all life is bound up in the web of life, their fate is intimately connected to our own.

As a Quaker I share with you the distinction of belonging to historic peace churches, and churches that affirm a call for simplicity and social justice.  Climate change brings all of these precious values into the for front, because as it turns out the solutions to climate change are solutions that call us into right relationship with the earth, and require a more equitable society and in fact cannot be effected unless we adopt a new paradigm – one that you and I would recognize as the values of the Peaceable Kingdom.

As a Quaker I do not really believe in the concept of sin so the call to repent in the parable I struggle with.  However, if there is anything I could define as sin, it would be the destruction of the life on earth.  I cannot think of a more profound turning away from God.  When I heard that Exxon, and it turns out several other oil companies also, knew in the 70’s of climate change, predicted in fact the exact outcomes that we are now experiencing and deliberately spread misinformation and doubt rather than sounding the alarm and changing their business practicees…yes that to me is sin.

Mennonites chose many, many decades ago to forgo a focus on politics as belonging to the realm of Caesar and to focus instead on creating God’s kingdom.   In my more than a decade of climate activism I find that many people feel helpless in the face of climate change.  They feel the problem is too big and that only politicans can solve it.  I believe that mindset both disempowers us and also creates despair.   So I have taken a Mennonite position, in that I look for the answers outside of national politics and find that there are indeed things we can all do.

So back to the Monarchs & the bees – there has been a national campaign to boycott different places like Lowe’s and Home Depot till they stopped carrying Round up.  And it worked.  We have the power of the pocket book with corporations that despoil the earth.  Turns out that trees and certain regenerative agriculture practices have the ability to pull significant amounts of carbon out of the air.  The Plant for the Planet kids have calculated that each of us in WA need to plant a 150 trees in your life time (although ASAP would be best).  These are examples of actions people can take that ripple out and have a bigger impact than just individual action. 

People ask me how I find the hope to do this work, of fighting climate change?  I have felt called to fight for God’s creation, for all of life, and for a better society for our off spring.  In so doing I have been brought into a community of beautiful souls that gives reality to the song we will soon sing, “We shall be known by the company we keep.” I have seen that the way out is the way towards the Peaceable Kingdom which I was already striving for before climate change.  I also have become crystal clear that it is not knowing the outcome which must direct my action, because even on a sinking ship I would want to strive for treating each of us with love, with kindness, with justice and mercy.  This to me is what it means to live faithfully, and I invite you to join us in living our faith’s in the face of climate crisis.

Nothing for Granted

I feel very blessed to have had a lot of contact in the last year with Native Culture.  I also have had to fight through westernized ways of thinking and living on the earth to fully grasp what I see in Native Culture.  One of the profound lessons has been about gratitude.  I come from Swedish ancestors which as a culture, it is not big on “please and thank you”, so for me to observe at a Native event that every person who takes the stage thanks oh at least 3 other people, was at first hard for me to understand. They thank each other for things like arranging the chairs, making the food, a good speech, etc.   In short for things that white people rarely say thank you for and in a sort of class based way take for granted.  The task oriented part of me wanted to just get on with the event. However as I began to let it in, and when I reflected I realized how much more gracious, welcoming and relationship affirming this way of living is.

And this was for me the real ahah when I realized that nothing is taken for granted.   It occurred to me then that in original tribal culture if you were dependent upon nature for food and weather that supports abundance then you are both very attuned to what the weather, animals and plants around you are doing, but you also don’t take for granted that you will eat.  You are grateful for the abundance that you are part of the web of life and you understand that how you treat that will effect your future survival.   In other words, if you take it all, there will not be any to go to seed and provide for next years bounty, so you learn to live in caring relationship to that which is around you.  Also, when you are dependent upon the sensible and timely actions of the rest of your tribe for your mutual survival then again you are appreciative of the things they do that make your life better. Taking nothing for granted.

I watched a man come out of prison once after 30 years.  He could be brought to tears by being able to touch a tree or finding a pine cone on the sidewalk.  Even when someone addressed him unkindly or some snafu occurred he was still happy because he said “today was still a better day then any day in the joint.”  Little children also have this same awe at the world they find, and they also have a lot more joy than most adults.   Buddhist refer to this as “beginner’s mind” by which they mean that if we drop preconceptions, expectations and grasping behaviors we are able to be present to this moment, exactly as it is, in a way that enables much gratitude and awe and even joy.

I knew a woman that was going blind, and even as she did she invited everyone she knew to join her in what she called the “thanksgiving game” which she explained was finding as many things as we could to be grateful for.  I was thankful for the invitation but soon saw I sucked at this “game”.   Primarily because I was not thankful for obvious things.  I was not thankful for my health because it was good and it felt like it “should be”.  I was not thankful for my college degree because I got it a long time ago and worked hard to get it,   ETC ETC.  There was a lot of privilege and expectations that left me with big blind spots.   I felt in fact daunted by how I was going to learn to be better at being grateful.  

But this idea of taking nothing for granted….sort of tips that whole problem on its head. It makes very obvious how to notice what to be grateful for.

What if we were free?

Recently I have been contemplating the strange reality of people being obedient to laws or rules or policies that they believe are wrong or are not in their own best interest.   I think for example of the centuries of women who obeyed husbands who were controlling, violent or destructive to them.   Children similarly follow their parents directives even when they are harmful to them.  Police and military in dictatorial or fascist states have fired on their own people - on people who are their neighbors sometimes even their own family because they were following orders.  People have stayed in jobs they hate following orders or policies they hated or found immoral.  Slaves who were not always in chains stayed and did not run away even when raped and family members killed.

Granted threats of violence or economic controls often are insurmountable controls especially if acting without allies.   But really when you look at it deeply all these groups of people were socialized to believe that this was their lot in life.  In many cases religions or social beliefs taught them they were inferior or deserved to be treated this way - or that God wanted it that way or would punish them if they did not stay in situations that were bad for them.

I long for the day we will not think so badly of God.   When we could not imagine that a loving God would ever consign anyone to suffering or injustice.   I long for a day when religion would be a force for courage to stand up to injustice rather than to buckle to it and conform.   I long also for the day when religion enflames our heart with a sense of what an egalitarian and humanitarian society looks like and when our thirst for justice is so wrong that we cannot be still.   If societal norms can keep us in great suffering why can they not induce us to suffer for great good?

Call me a dreamer, but I have been thinking a lot recently what if all the women married off without a voice simply walked out?  What if all the government workers in any country who were asked to carry out an injust or oppressive law simply refused?   What if all the people in slavery walked off or refused to work?  What if each of us refused to do anything that we thought was morally wrong?  What if we each felt so much fidelity to our own soul that we would not take on bad karma?  What if we believed in ourselves enough to trust our own thinking and our own consciences?  Would we then be living in Heaven on Earth?  I'm not thinking this would be easy.   Some people would die (as they will now also).  But maybe it would be revolutionary. 

Cinderella - Modern Mythology and its' Lessons

Children's stories that have been told for over a 100 years take on the quality of mythology.  Like all myths they communicate information that is significant to the culture and underlies paradigms in the society.  So yes I am actually going to talk about Cinderella.   This ancient myth (the oldest variant apparently from 6 BC Greece and popular in Europe in the 1600s and incorporated into Grimm's fairy tales in 1812.   I believe this tale was popular for centuries because for centuries of class based society and female economic subordination - Cinderella represents the possibility of women being rescued from poverty by marriage to a "prince".   For the most part this is all we think of it - as a sort of sappy love story where true love overcomes evil step mothers.

However, I would like to bring out two aspects of this myth that I think are worth noting.   One is an important anti-dote to female co-dependence.   Cinderella takes matters into her own hands.   She does not settle for her step-mother's dictate that she cannot go to the ball.  She, granted with the help of magic, goes anyway.  As a psychotherapist for almost 25 years I have often had clients tell me while dealing with oppressive treatment that they are afraid of "hurting" the person oppressing them if they say no or refuse to do what they are told.   While finding a husband is not exactly a feminist mission, I would still say Cinderella, for her era, was way ahead of her time.  She was not co-dependently care taking her step mother or step sisters.   She was looking our for her own interests.

The other symbol I think noteworthy in this tale is the step sisters efforts to "stuff" their feet into a shoe to small for them.  (In fact in the Grimm's version they actually cut off their toes and stuff their bleeding feet in, so desperate are they to try to win over the prince if even fraudulently so.)  How often have we each done this?   Been so anxious to make something work, to see a certain outcome that we try to stuff ourselves into a situation or a time frame in which we really don't fit.  We try to force things to work.   And of course to no good outcome.  As the tale tells us, when it's right - the fit is effortless.  Many spiritual teaching are about the "way", the dao, the effortless path.

It is also worth noting the Prince's mission.  He sees what he wants and then with the only clue he has, a shoe, he goes about finding it.  What if we all held a clear picture of what we wanted and did not compromise for anything less than that?

Like Ants

Have you ever watched an ant colony?  Ants coming and going all seemingly very busy.  Occasionally you see two ants cooperating or apparently aware of each other but for the most part they all seem very focused on missions taking them in various directions and for purposes that are not clear to the observer.


Because of the school walk outs and Walk for our Lives I have had reason to see ariel shots of large crowds of people.   In some of marches people are moving in the same direction.   The DC march for our lives had so many more people than the Trump inauguration that people spilled out of the mall onto adjoining streets and from high up it looked like several rivers coming together at one outlet.   In one shot I watched of students who had marched to a cement square where they were waiting for others and no speaker was speaking: many were standing still but groups of two or three would move in a same direction but simultaneously people moved in all different random directions.

Recently I have been very aware of different groups of people moving with intend focus on tasks designed to try to improve our country.  I have been aware of gun control activists, DOCA activists, the renewed Poor People's campaign, climate activists, etc.  Like the ants sometimes they are aware of each other, occasionally collaborating but for the most part singularly focused on their own mission.

I have also been aware at the same time, usually from the media, of people singularly focused on things I regard to be utter nonsense: which movie stars are divorcing, some "innovation" in processed foods, attempts to collect obscure items from the past, the 5 hours a day most Americans spend watching tv, attempts to invent machinery which will be impossible to use in the climate future that scientist tell us we are on, time spent on hold on customer service lines for mistakes on our bills, hours and hours devoted to incremental gains in personal sports performance, hours spent balancing check books which years from now will be pointless, etc etc.  (I'm sure you have your own list of things you deem a waste of time)   In fact if on our death bed we could all trade back in the hours and hours of things we did that were a complete waste of time for more years of life we would all live decades longer!!!  Again I imagine some being very high up in the sky watching all that random and rather pointless activity and ....well seeing a bunch of ants wandering around.  Would it help any of us discern what is pointless activity if we viewed it from a distance, or asked ourselves will this matter in a year? In a decade? on my deathbed?

All of this has prompted me to wonder about human consciousness.  Buddhists speak about mindfulness as an antidote to a sort of mindless sleep walking - caught up in seeking pleasure, pride and vanity, carried away with strong emotion, and afraid of death or even change.  What would our world look like if we were not sleep walking?   What would it look like if more of us were in touch with our actual soul's purpose, if we were moving like the ants who know where they are going and why, rather than the ones who seem to aimlessly circle?  What would it look like if we were aware of all the other ants in our nest and our connection to them?  What would it look like if we shared a sense that our nest is threatened and our very survival depends upon our collective joint coordinated action?

Celebrating Holidays

This is the time of the year that the controversies break out about whether Christmas should not be publicly celebrated or whether "all holidays" should be celebrated.   I definitely understand that the way Christmas has been celebrated in the US for certainly hundreds of years has been an insensitive and oppressive way of treating a majority religion like it is everyone's religion and posing it as the "norm".    However, I think to go in the direction of celebrating no holidays is to deny the cultural richness of this nation and to impoverish us all.

I think there is something useful that can be done in the direction of celebrating all holidays - however as a friend pointed out to me today that also has to be done with cultural sensitivity and awareness.  I'm not suggesting we try to all celebrate rituals that are not ours - but I am suggesting we recognize they exist and show respect and appreciation for what they represent.  Christians often attempt to give Jewish people "equal airtime" by recognizing Hanukkah which in reality is a very minor Jewish holiday which happens to fall closest to the biggest Christian holiday.  At the same time Christians commonly schedule meetings and other important business events on what is the most important Jewish holiday which is in the fall in either Sept or Oct.   Rosh Hashanah is the first day of a 10 day period of repentant and atonement for personal and national sins.  Can you imagine how the US would be affected if we even for a moment considered what our "national sins" might be and were willing to be humble (let alone atone for them)?

Muslims have two different significant holidays (well Christians have Christmas and Easter).  Both are on Islamic Lunar calendars and so they shift around.  Eid Al-Fitr is celebrated at the end of Ramadan (a month of fasting during daylight hours in May or June), and Muslims usually give zakat (charity) on the occasion.  Ramadan is intended to deepen compassion and faith in God. Eid Al-Adha, the holiest of Muslim holidays, is celebrated on the tenth day of Dhu al-Hijjah and lasts for four days falling generally in Mid June through the end of Aug, during which Muslims usually sacrifice a sheep and distribute its meat in 3 parts: among family, friends, and the poor.  It is about the willingness to make sacrifices and be faithful even when what is asked of us may seem too much or too hard, and how God's purpose may surprise us.  Again what if US people considered the values of compassion, and faithfulness.   These are not values we generally focus on.

The Buddhists have many sacred days and they vary slightly in different Buddhist countries as well.  But Vesak, the birth of Buddha is the most important, also on a lunar calendar it falls in May.  Like the celebration of the birth of Jesus this celebration focuses on the story of his life and refocusing on the 8 precepts - that which Buddha taught. Follows are not to kill on this day (no eating of meat) and release animals and insects as part of a ceremonial focus on liberation.   Not to sound like a broken record but what if Americans reflected for a day on non-violence and on liberation of those who are not free?  It would seem a great improvement of our national character.

I could go on pointing out the holidays of various religions but you get the idea.  What if we had tv shows, symbols, talks about these holidays on the days they were celebrated?  What if we had flex time that allowed people of what ever faith to have their most important holiday off?  What if we actually had these on our calendars so we knew when they were? What if we considered these values in the cycle of our year - not in celebrating rituals that are not ours but in considering the values behind them?   
I have loved that our nation at least reflects on gratitude during Thanksgiving (but needs to lose the mythology as to why - which is a perverse rewrite of our oppression of the Native people who lived here before us).  It has led me to consider what values I wish our country celebrated and to consider creating traditions with friends and family that do uphold other values.  For example, I have long thought I should have a "cooperation day" celebration.  (In my head everyone would bring a soup ingredients and collectively make a soup and while it was stewing cooperate on some craft project which would be donated afterwords to the poor.  Since we have national holidays in Jan, Feb, April, May, July, Aug, Oct, Nov and Dec.  I have believed this holiday should be celebrated in June.

Stories of Faithfulness

What are the stories we tell about our own lives?  I have just been through a 4 day run of going to various different story telling events from hearing several Native American story telling styles to just a story jam where people told their stories.  I was asked why I as a therapist who spends many, many hours of the week listening to people why I would during free time listen to more stories of people?  The answer is that I am interested in how we tell our own stories…the meaning we put on events and whether or how we notice the presence of the spirit in our lives.  I am also fascinated by the ways in which our lives are interconnected, woven into a web even when we don’t know it.  

This weekend I heard three stories that were told in very different settings by people who did not know each other that speak to the amazing way the Divine connects us to each other for the purpose of healing.   The first story was simply one of how a woman was reached out to over the internet by someone who had been the Goddaughter of her Father.  This was significant to her since she never knew her father who left her mother right after she was born.   The woman told her she had some family pictures and mailed to her photos of her parent’s engagement and honeymoon.  It was surprising and yet healing to look at these pictures and discover that her parents had clearly been in love.  (A thought that had not occurred to her since she had only known her divorced and embittered mother.)

The next story came from a doctor told about a time when he was in residency and during his rotation in the emergency room.   He woke up on a Monday morning at 2am from a nightmare in which a young woman had come in having an asthma attack and despite everything they did to try to help her she had died unable to breath.   He was so upset by this dream that he went to the Pulmonologist asking to be instructed on all emergency steps he could take if someone in ER could not breathe. He told the Sr Doctor that he felt certain he would be faced with this situation.  The doctor felt busy and did not see the point of this and put him off till “tomorrow”.   He put him off every day for 3 days.  Finally on the 4^th day the Resident insisted the doctor make the time to tell him stating that we have used up all the waiting time.   As he began explaining the doctor did sort of get into it and the Resident was able to make a careful step by step list of options to try which ended with “and if none of that works you will have to call me, we will have to operate immediately and put her on an artificial lung”.

Within the next 16 hours a young 21 year old woman was brought into ER by her parents, unable to breathe.  The young resident followed carefully the step by step instructions that he had and nothing worked.   She was down to only 4% oxygenation level.  People die at 3%.   He called the Pulmonologist who indeed had to operate quickly and put her on an artificial lung.  Only because the resident had known exactly what to do and had tried everything quickly was there enough time to get the Pulmonologist in there and they saved her life.   Her parents were extremely grateful and then said: “It is the strangest thing our daughter actually had a dream Monday night where she dreamt that she had an asthma attack so severe that she could not breath at all.”   The resident asked what time she has this dream and was told at 2am in the morning.

  

It strikes me that only God can make an intervention like this.  Both parties, who did not know each other, were armed with the knowledge to save the young womans’ life.  What an act of faith it was for this non-religious resident doctor to believe his own dream.  It strikes me that our very lives may depend upon the faithfulness of strangers.

In a remarkably similar vein another story I heard this weekend was from a Native American man in his 50’s.   He told that in his twenties he was so ruined and desolate from his experience in the Residential Schools that he wandered for a decade drunk and homeless till a powerful native healer had come to him.   She had gone on a vision quest and when emerging from a sweatlodge an image of a small 5 year old boy who had grown up with straight water on one side and curved water on the other side (an accurate description of his Washington birthplace).   She also got that he had been damaged and that he needed her to find and heal him in order that he could do a great work for his people.  She searched for 3 years.  Finally one day she found him on the street hung over and dirty.   She sent him to shower in her hotel room and gave him clean clothes to put on.   They talked about his life and she spent two years on his healing.  He has been sober ever since. He also has worked to support other native youth and now to help Native people to stop the fossil fuel projects that threaten our future.

Again in this story I am amazed by the faithfulness of this native medicine woman to believe she could find grown up, a man who she had seen only as a vision of as a boy. She had the faith that the vision was real and that she could find him with virtually no clues or directions.   I am awed that she had the dedication to persisted for three years till she found him and two more years through his healing.   I am again struck that only God can plant such visions.   And from the small act of making sure someone gets some photos, to the medium act of being a pest till you get the expert answers you need, to dedicating of years and years to the healing of another.  It is so clear how deeply we are all connected to each other and how critical a difference our faithfulness makes in the lives of others.

What have you heard? Have you been faithful to it?  How has God used you for the healing of others?