Re-Imagining the World

 

Sermon by Allison Farnum

Unitarian Universalist Church of Fort Myers

April 13, 2008

 

 

Gardening is a tough job.  You have to plan ahead, and every year there is a chance that things wonÕt go your way. 

 

I have never had a real garden.  A couple years I tried to grow some herbs, some hardy greens, some lettuce.  But I only had a 4 by 5 foot space.  I did not know what I was doing.   I have long been searching for a place to plant, to root, to grow.  It is true that gardening here is Florida will be a whole new experience, but I have already fallen in love with the land, the foliage, the sandy earth.

 

This week I have had the opportunity to get to know you- your garden- the things you are growing, the overgrown patches where you have not had the time or energy to tend, and the mighty trees that have withstood many a storm.

 

You have been on your knees, working the soil, and now you have invited me to work with you.

 

Imagine the feeling, when you dig into the earth and feel it in your hands, rub it between your fingers, and inhale the earthy scent of promise.

 

This congregation is full of promise, energy, and excitement!  One of your great strengths is your commitment to stewardship of the earth. 

 

Earth stewarship doesnÕt just mean recycling-

 

 it means the strong humanist programming that focuses on our responsibility in the here and now,

 

It means focusing on the Holton eco-preserveÕs possibility for education in this learning community as well as its reach into surrounding communities who lack green space

 

It means listening to the wisdom of earth-centered traditions in which the human is another creature accountable to the earth

 

It means exploring interfaith work around earth issues like conservation and a reduced carbon footprint----

 

The truth as I see it is that we have an opportunity to have a presence in the community that is centered around justice.  But first I need some time on my knees in the dirt, planting seeds with you, deciding how we can focus ourselves. 

 

You on your knees

Tapped silver seed into the living black dirt,

Culling stones, dim glass, cracked shard of bone.[1]

 

While we make our plans, we will simply have to face stones of conflict, the dim glass of scattered directions and the cracked shards of past hurts.

 

What will nourish must be tended.

 

The tending is where I come in- a stable presence who is here to love you, to witness the great passages of your lives, to encourage you to tend to your own inner garden so that we might plant the seeds of justice together.

 

And we will plan and plot together, and the beauty of working with Life, just as in gardening, is that you never really know what you will end up with.   But we can imagine together what we might like to create.

 

The scripture of Isaiah 61 was written to minister to the exiled Hebrews who longed to return to the land of Israel, where they worked the soil, where they kept the faith of Yahweh.  The scripture tells the Hebrews that they are the ministers of justice themselves, extending a promise that should they take up the mantle to minister to the earth and her people, they shall see justice for their people.

 

Now is the time to sow the seeds of justice by focusing less on what divides us

 

and more on what we can do together.

 

As Unitarian Universalists we have a history of wanting to be set apart.  It goes all the way back to the time when the Pilgrims came over here in 1620 to separate themselves from the Anglican church and the more moderate Puritans.

 

We Unitarian Universalists like to think of ourselves as special. We set ourselves apart, picturing ourselves as heretics out on the margin protesting the mainstream.  And we are different and special.  We provide spiritual development in a pluralistic setting that affirms individual and collective human responsibility. 

 

But we lose an opportunity to not place ourselves at the center of this culture.  We lose the opportunity to name our own imaginings of what life should be.  We lose the opportunity to re-imagine a new world: the earth community.

 

Connie Barlow and Michael Dowd are itinerant UU preachers and evangelists of what they call the Great Story.  The Great Story is the story of the evolving and emergent Universe- a story which places us in a larger context that extends beyond one personÕs experience.  In this story, we, as human beings, are, as far as we know, the first instance of the universe finally becoming conscious of itself.  With that consciousness comes great responsibility.

 

Barlow and Dowd often refer to the work of mathematical cosmologist, and mystic Brian Swimme.  Swimme believes that now is the time to "reinvent the human as a dimension of the emergent universe."[2]  He sees us as conscious part of evolution, and this consciousness gives us a responsibility in how the Universe unfolds. Evolution has equipped us already with the ability to fulfill this responsibility: our capacity to care.

 

Brian Swimme calls this responsibility comprehensive compassion.  As our earth tumbles towards mass extinction, comprehensive compassion is the manifestation of our 7^th Principle.  Swimme identifies caring as an impulse that has evolved over time.  He even sees gravitational pull as the frist act of caring, the pull that gathered together the cosmos into galaxies and planets.  Then, 220 million years later there is the mammal mother who cares for her young, enjoying a higher rate of survival because of her caring.  Swimme names for us that this caring, now made conscious with us as humans, must be taken to the next level----    caring for all of life.

 

For years, this natural mysticism has attracted me.  But it has failed our society when we open our eyes to the wonders of nature and ignore the suffering of people.  To wholly embrace a comprehensive compassion paradigm is to embrace a radical shift in our lifestyles and the way we view one another. 

 

Currently, the green movement, a movement based in caring for the earth, has been taken up by celebrities and turned into a marketing strategy.

 

Van Jones, a green activist, names the loophole in our current eco-blitz.  As we nod our heads to Al Gore and drive our PriusÕ to Whole Foods, and listen to Leonardo DiCaprio speak for the polar bears, we are potentially missing the mark of true comprehensive compassion. Van Jones critiques the green movement for its inaccessibility to the common working American.  He calls the current trend Òeco-apartheid,Ó the phenomena in which green living has become only a lifestyle of the rich and famous.    Even as we work towards stewardship of the earth, we must be mindful of our role in the larger systems of injustice that still degrade the earth and her people.

 

Jones reminds us that working class Americans are given no incentive whatsoever to Ògo greenÓ when the day-to-day life necessitates survival.  The luxury of contemplating that we are part of the evolving and emergent Universe is not appealing or helpful in getting food on the table.

 

Compassion means to suffer with. Our compassion is not comprehensive until we address the segregation in our schools and neighborhoods and church hours with the same vigor of fighting motor boats in Tarpon Bay.

 

By affirming our 7^th principle, we cannot pick and choose what is a part of the web.

 

We could be selective about who we decide is saved and who will go without water and food supply in the coming years. 

 

We could continue the current trends of Òan electÓ who will survive the coming storms.

 

Or we could do something different, imagining a world of comprehensive compassion in which loving the earth was a part of everyday life for all people,

 

------so that in all hearts this hope could take root: that we are an earth community ÉÉÉÉÉ

 

where there are solar panels in mixed income neighborhoods,

where Spanish and English fill the air,

where organic foods are used in school lunches,

where cities are planned around pedestrians and bicycles,

where the health of our earth is in the nighttime prayers of all of our children

 

I am here to hold a vision that is larger than this gathered body.  I am beholden to this emergent and evolving Universe.  My job as a minister is to hold up that vision in its completeness and remind of the places that are missing.  I have grown up in this faith, a faith that instilled in my heart a belief that the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice.  To truly work towards that justice will take creativity and a commitment to a different life beyond our imaginings. And here lies the function of the church: to re-imagine the world.[3]

 

As W.E. Dubois puts it, now is the time.  You are ready for stability, you are ready to come together as a congregation and seed your good work into the community- not as a concerned group of individuals, but as the Unitarian Universalist Church of Ft Myers.

 

Now is the time for a vision in which the mission of the church and the work we need to do here in this life are lifted over the desires of the individual and our differences.  To steward the earth, we must learn first how to steward ourselves: our energy and our resources.

 

We are a people so bold, who might minister to this earth and her people, on our knees, digging and planting seeds of compassion and growing hope in our hearts.  The harvest may transcend even our wildest imaginings. 

 

What will nourish must be tended. 

 

We can, AND WILL, tend to this great work together.