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Red, White, Blue, & Green The ad that Britain's Sir Ernest Shackleton placed in a London newspaper seeking recruits for his infamous 1914 TransAntarctic expedition read: "Men wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, and safe return doubtful. Honor and recognition in case of success. Sir Ernest Shackleton." Shackleton could have been talking to Moses, who got the news that he was in danger straight from God. Moses was in good company: many set out on a journey without knowing where they are going. Many died without receiving either the titles or entitlements of the land. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witness, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with perseverance the race that is set before us… looking to Jesus the perfecter and pioneer of our faith." That is one packed passage.
Surrounded by witnesses Today I am picking just one sentence of the advocacy to the Hebrews: "Lay aside every weight." It is hard to run a race when you are weighted down. We have an environmental race to run. We have a lot on our plate. Surely other generations did as well, but I like to say, cynically, that the 21st century has a bigger and better catastrophe cooking. We face what I call a crisis cafeteria: you can choose global climate change, oil depletion, soil depletion, or water loss. Or species loss. Or you could worry about infants in the United States while watching mothers in grocery stores pick out the organic apple juice. In 2005 a study of the umbilical cord blood of ten randomly chosen newborns in the U.S. was tested for toxic chemicals. A total of 287 were found, with the average for each individual infant being 200. Nearly three-quarters of the chemicals were known carcinogens and the rest were identified as threatening the nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. Or you could forget about worrying about Americans at all, since we live in the penthouse on the Titanic. Nobel Peace Prize Winner 2004 Wangar Maathai describes the problem of water: "When I was growing up in Nyeri in central Kenya, there was no word for desert in my mother tongue, Kikuyu. Our land was fertile and forested." Now there is a significant water crisis and the land is dry. You don't need any more information about the cafeteria of crises we face. You got the memo. You also know that the physical description of the catastrophe is only the beginning. The new apocalypse has red, white, blue, and green dimensions: it is a spiritual problem as much as a physical problem, a transpartisan problem, a governmental and economic problem, and a problem of the imagination as much as a problem in umbilical cords. It is a problem that is so much of a problem that we are going to have to rethink how we think about problems. And that is where I want to go today with Moses and Hebrews and weight loss as my guide. The very way we think is in our way. Historian Lynn White, Jr., in his classic essay, written 30 years ago, "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," tells us that Judaism and Christianity introduced to Western culture not only a linear view of time - in stark contrast to the cyclical view prevalent in antiquity - but a mythology that placed human beings at the center of an elaborate creation story. According to the tradition, God creates methodically and for a purpose: first the light and darkness, then heavenly bodies, plants, birds, fishes, and animals. Then, as if putting a final signature on a work of art, God creates Adam and Eve. Of all creatures, God made these last two to be most like God. People who think they are at the center of the universe are weighted down by falsehood and self-aggrandizing deceit. To know where we think we are going, we have to name the story from which we think we come. Creation is, at a certain level, destination. It will take practice to imagine nature from an off-centered position. We really don't know how to do it. Our global positioning device - our spiritual GPS - is hard at work to keep us front and center. I travel a lot, and when I come back I always say to my partner, Warren, "Welcome home." I say it ironically, with a smile on my face. Where is home in a world where we can travel from time zone to time zone in an instant? Where is Galileo when we really need him? Of course I think wherever I am is home and the central position. Most people do. But to resolve the damage done to the earth, we have to start with a partnership and relational model of the creation story, and not a domination one. We have to put our own personal planet in motion with the rest of the cosmos - and learn to live with swirl as opposed to center. Swirl, not center. That is also the message of creation. Another weight we have to put aside is our anti-governmental imagination. If government and capitalism and technology do not come to the aid of the planet, it won't really matter in which personal orbit you or I are personally swirling. You may not like Wal-Marts and I may not like Wal-Marts, but the fact that they are creating markets for organic farmers, on a large scale level, is good news. When we think Red, White, Blue, and Green, at the same time, we realize that everyone is our partner in this mess. Even the SUV-driving-throwing-the-trash-out-the-window-of-the-car-on-the-highway person is our friend. Yup. Or needs to be befriended by us. Keeping enemies is the pattern of domination thinking. We need partnership with our enemies on behalf of our friends: earth, air, fire, and water. That is what I think is meant in the Hebrews text about Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. Jesus refused the domination story on behalf of the partnership story. He did so non-violently. If we do not perfect the pattern of non-violence and partnership with all, including those whom we imagine our enemies and the "cause" of the problem, we can be sure that the war in Iraq will be remembered as that little skirmish that came before the nuclear holocaust. If government cannot figure out how to tax gasoline another 50 cents a gallon, and that right early, carrying cloth bags to the supermarket will remain a pathetic, cynical, and finally absurd solution to the crisis. As it stands now, as we re-imagine a world of partnership instead of domination, a world off-centered, with ourselves randomly as opposed to centrally placed, cloth bags to the supermarket are a beautiful ritual that marks us as people who care and do our part. Without governmental and economic partnership with our ritual, cloth shopping bags are ridiculous. They exemplify the soft despotism of the individual solution to the group problem. They are a sneaky way to keep yourself in the wrong Genesis story, as center of the universe. Dear President Bush: Don't tell me again to drive less. I will drive less. But you need to authoritatively declare that gas is too expensive for me to drive at all. We need a government to be in relationship and partnership with the earth. Set aside every weight. The ones that place you at the center of the universe. The ones that help you think other people are the environmental problem. The ones that keep you scared. The number one problem facing the environment today is the fear in people that there is no hope and that we are doomed. That fear keeps us in what Rabbi Michael Lerner calls surplus powerlessness. It is a kind of closet. Surplus powerlessness is our projection that other people have more power that we do and that they will punish us if we speak up. The concept of surplus powerlessness is so interesting. I don't know if you read the Ian McKellan piece about how he was convinced that his career would be over if he came out around Stonewall. He was willing to put his career on the line. Guess what? His surplus powerlessness was wrong. His career took off after Stonewall. A very good Jewish friend of mine writes about Israel and Palestine outside the party line. Instead of being murdered in the press, as he had projected, he is praised by other Jews. His surplus powerlessness was wrong. We give so much power to other people by projecting on to them our own fears. The weight of fear right now is absurd. Even Tony Soprano's psychiatrist, Dr. Melfi, says, "Most Americans feel that way, " which is to say scared that our time in the sun is over. Well, Hooray. Being an empire is tiring. Being powerful becomes the art of living so as to sustain the power you have. That is really tiring and weighs one down. Another weight that is quite heavy is the misinterpretation of the words denial and apocalypse. Denial is a guilt trip. "You are in denial about the gravity of the situation about the environment." Most of us say, "Oh my God, I am so sorry, I am so bad, I am so dirty to be in denial." We self-flagellate. Another response to "denial" is to say, "Wow, thanks so much for telling me that there is wonderful truth I am missing. Thank you so much. I like truth. I find deceit to be something that weighs me down." Consider Senator Larry Craig for a minute. Talk about denial getting us in trouble with the truth. I don't ordinarily feel compassion for Republicans, but this man is breaking my heart. Nina Burleigh in The Huffington Post carried an incredible story about Gay Republicans, most of whom didn't add Senator Craig's cell phone mishap to their resume of hidden-ness but resembled his self-deceit. "Prick any conservative, " the writer says, "and the Kink oozes out. The rockier the rib, the more likely you'll find pink lingerie under the trousers or a bull whip and machete in the beside table." We may find Senator Craig's self-deceit either pathetic or humorous or tragic - or all three. The message of the Haggards and the Foleys and now the Craigs, however, begs us to repent deceit. Why hide in bathrooms? Burleigh's argument is that conservatives are so afraid of their own sexual interests that they want the government to save them from themselves - thus the punishmentalist legislation. I am arguing a similar argument about the environment. Why not be the people who we are, out loud? We are people who have not noticed that the environment is in a lot of trouble. Now we notice. Now we are outed or out ourselves or just peek out the closet door. We see. We were blinded, self-blinded, culturally oppressed by others - who we thought wouldn't understand our concern or punish us for having it - we were in denial. But now, Hallelujah, we see. When I say we need the government to "punish/liberate" us from ourselves by raising gas prices, do I mean that we are not capable of self-discipline or self-disclosure? Are we in some kind of denial about just how weak and peer conscious we are? Yup. We appear to need help. We appear to be in trouble. Some of us are in so much trouble that we send out a self-promoting message to the wrong cell phone number in a loud cry for help. Won't somebody help us get to the truth about who we are and what's going on? Senator Craig's mishap reminds me ever so much of a twelve-year-old who is doing drugs and hides them in his mother's laundry basket. You and I are in denial about the environment. Yes, we are. Can we live in truth? Is there room for truth? Is there room for us in God's real apocalypse, a word that has now been totally stolen by Hollywood? Apocalypse means what God is finally going to do in the world and with the world. I don't, by the way, think God has written the last act of the play yet at all. But I do think that apocalypse is not all dark, that God has a bright future prepared, even for this earth, and coincidentally for the likes of you and me, the people who throw trash out the window and think littering is the biggest sin they have ever committed. Apocalypse, like denial, is misinterpreted as that large dark screen on which we project the sin, which clings so closely. Apocalypse is really quite different: it is what happens in the end, when it is all over. It's hard to think like a planet instead of like a person. It's hard to swirl instead of hunkering down into a self-centered foxhole. But we've got to try. Carl Jung described his repentance and turning with these words:
Descent is a journey only the bravest take... It's like a pilgrimage in Braille… it turns your knees into agony and your guts into your greatest ally and your heart into your inner guide. I had a descent of 1001 rungs into the land of the miserable clod of mud that I am… but finally… when I reached out and grabbed the hand of my inner self, the wonder baptized me. That wonder is the place where love begins. When the wonder of baptism and love root in us, the world will be fine again. How would we know if turning came to the government and economy? We would joyfully lay aside every weight and deceit that oppresses us and run the race set before us. We would toss aside the surplus powerlessness that protects us from action and partnership. We would repent not so much what we did but what we did not do. We would join Francis Moore Lappe's new book title and Get a Grip. We would join Paul Hawken in his new book, Blessed Unrest , which tells of nearly two million international organizations that are working on the environment. We would re-sacralize, re-enchant, re-imagine the environment. I know we are dealing with the roads already taken. I know that we sit here wondering how, in Grace Paley's wonderful words, we just didn't notice how big our thighs were getting. I know many of us think we foolishly signed up for Sir Shackleton's very cold, very chance-y expedition to the Antarctic. We sort of did. So let's make the best of it and lightly, without extra baggage or weights, carry on towards a true apocalypse, an end time that rivals creation in its beauty.
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