Falling in Love Again
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- Created on Sunday, 01 May 2011 01:00
- Written by Craig Nowak
Some years ago my husband and I walked into a restaurant in Albany, New York and while we waited for a table, I asked the host if there were any specials that night. He nodded, turned, and walked away. Several minutes passed…no host. Several more minutes passed…still no host. After still a few more minutes we decided to leave and go to a restaurant across the street. It was crowded, noisy, and had a long wait. We waited just a little while then decided to go back to the other restaurant. As soon as we walked in the host came over to us and said, “Ah, there you are. I have your espressos right here.”
So what does this story have to do with today’s sermon? One word: communication. (Oh, and just in case you’re wondering…we had a really great meal). Good communication is, of course, the foundation of a healthy relationship. I know this is not news to most of you, but bear with me for a moment. One part of good communication is effective expression, another is listening, or what some in the counseling professions call active listening.
Now I’m willing to admit I may not have clearly expressed my request at that restaurant in Albany, but there can be little doubt that when it comes to the earth, the earth is crystal clear in what it is saying to humankind, “You’re abusing me…stop!” While the earth has been abundantly clear in its expression, human beings have proven pretty poor listeners...we’re so busy after all… who has time to really listen to anyone or anything anymore let alone the very planet upon which we depend for our existence? It seems listening… active listening, is a rapidly disappearing art whose extinction may very well make certain our own.
You see active listening, part of the spiritual discipline of mindfulness, has been called the most basic form of love. When we fail to listen, we fail to be mindful or present in our communication and therefore our relationship with someone or something. When we fail to listen, we fail to love… and the consequences of that failure can be dire. As Daniel Martin, Director of International Communities for the Renewal of the Earth notes, “We are corrupting the Earth, poisoning the air, disrupting the fire, polluting the water. We are making life impossible for our fellow creatures and for ourselves…” We’re doing this because we’re not listening. We are in an unhealthy relationship with the earth.
I’m reminded now of a scene in the movie “The Great Outdoors.” (Movies, by the way, can be great resources for spiritual and theological reflection.) In the scene I’m remembering two men, Chet and Roman, are sitting on a deck at a cabin overlooking a pristine lake with trees and mountains in the distance. Roman, who has imposed himself on Chet’s family vacation, asks Chet, “Why the heck would you want to come up to this plant –infested no man’s land and live like a barbarian for a week?” Chet responds by recalling childhood memories of the place and points out the sheer beauty, “Look around”, he says, “this is beautiful country here, take a good look.”
Roman responds, “You want to know what I see? I see the underdeveloped resources of northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan…I see a syndicated development consortium exploiting a billion and a half dollars in forest products. I see paper mills and if the metals are there a mining operation. A green belt between condos on the lake and a waste management facility, focusing on the newest rage in toxic waste, medical refuse. Infected bandages, body parts, IV tubing, contaminated glassware, entrails, syringes, blood fluids, and low-grade radioactive waste. All safely contained and buried for centuries under the bottom of the lake.”
Now “The Great Outdoors” is a comedy, but Roman’s words highlight the sometimes mindless arrogance of human selfishness and narcissism. They are a poignant reminder that we, as a species, have fallen out of love with the earth, “steadily building”, as Frederick Turner, in today’s call to worship writes, “the illusion of independence from nature.” And from this broken relationship has emerged what Turner calls “the greatest of illusions: the omnipotence of man (humankind).” This illusion has allowed us to exploit, deface, and contaminate the earth upon which we depend for our own existence. Environmentalists tell us we are fast approaching a point of no return. Perhaps it is no small irony that our illusion of omnipotence has brought us to the brink of annihilation. Like Icarus, in the Greek myth, we have flown too far from the earth and too close to the sun with wings of feathers and wax. It is time for the age of anthropocentric hubris to end and for us to mend our relationship with the earth. It is time to fall, like old Gloucester in King Lear, on our face as it were and wake up…to discover hope…hope that we can fall in love again with this planet… and hope that it will have us back.
If we truly love the earth we will respect it, treat it with affection and admiration…we will accord it due reverence and marvel at its generosity…and we will listen to it.
In the front of your hymnal, after the preface is a page upon which is printed the seven principles which the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist Association covenant to affirm and promote. The seventh of these principles is “respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.”
I think a lot of people understand life as interdependent, but have little or no awareness of this reality in daily life. By this I mean their knowledge is purely intellectual, a truth, at times inconvenient, filed away in the storehouse of the brain. To be aware of the interdependence or interconnectedness of life however is to be attentive or present to it in our daily lives. This is how we listen to life and to the earth, by being engaged… by paying attention…listening with all our senses. If we are to fall in love and stay in love with the earth it is vital that we come to know…and I mean fully know- head and heart-, that life is interdependent. Only then can there truly be, as Scott Russell Sanders writes, “a knitting of self and world.” If we pay attention we will remember we are not separate from the earth, but a part of it.
So how do we begin to pay attention…how can be fall in love again with the earth? How about taking a cue from our children and young people in RE who will be planting seeds and help tend the community garden? What if we got our hands in some soil… if we touched and felt the earth that feeds us and thank it. And then there’s the First Parish Environmental Leadership Team’s Mindful Living Initiatives…you can read about them on the Social Action Community webpage or better yet ask the team members themselves, you met some of them today in the service.
Fall in love again with the earth…go on a date…get outside…take a walk, maybe along a river or lake, notice life from the most humble weed to the most fragrant flower or ancient tree…from the tiniest insect to the most majestic bird…marvel and wonder at the very “isness” of life…it is sacred. Let raindrops fall upon your flesh, feel if you can the variation of their size…hear birds sing of places far away and shout “encore!”…taste the salty kiss of ocean air as waves tap to the beat of life upon the shore… watch grass grow, especially when you’re sure there’s something better to do. Do this and encourage others to do the same and you will help mend humanity’s relationship with the earth…you will fall in love again with this planet.
A word of caution; this is not intended as a call to deny human need, nor a romantic musing ignorant of the very real concerns of people for whom contact with the natural world is sometimes less a source of wonder than of anxiety over infestation, disease, or other hardships. The call here is to love…to listen…to be mindful of our interdependence. It is a reminder that any salvation humankind might hope for lies as much on this side of the grave as the other. As Mary de La Valette, poet and activist at the Gaia institute writes, “I do not have to go to Sacred Places in Far-off lands. The ground I stand on is Holy. And I toil and sweat and watch and wonder and am full of love living in place, in this place. For truth and beauty dwell here.”
It is time for us recognize this earth, this place we call home…as Holy. There is much mending to be done in our relationship with the earth…good intentions will not do…nothing short of a miracle is needed…a miracle called love…the earth has thus far proven itself open to making amends…the question is are we?
Amen and Blessed Be
Sources
Life Prayers From Around the World: 365 Prayers, Blessings and Affirmations to Celebrate the Human Journey, Elizabeth Roberts & Elias Amidon
Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, Matthew Fox
“Staying Put”, Scott Russell Sanders, excerpt
“The Great Outdoors”, screenplay
© Craig M. Nowak 2011