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Earth Day:  Lessons From Nature

A Sermon by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale
April 21, 2002

"For the beauty of the earth,
For the splendor of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies:
Source of all, to thee we raise this,
Our hymn of grateful praise."

(#21 Singing The Living Tradition)

Tomorrow is Earth Day. It is a day to celebrate the Earth which is our home, and to reflect upon our relationship with the life that surrounds us and is us. It is a day to praise with thanksgiving this beautiful planet, the splendorous skies, and the love which we feel surrounding us and holding us from day to day. And it is a day to consider what we can do to protect this beauty, this splendor, this love, with due respect to the Source of all whose many names grace and challenge humanity across this planet every day.

This planet really is an amazing place. Just thinking about it, about the mystery of it and our connections with other life, does lead us, as Schweitzer said, to a "reverence for life." One of the most exciting things I have seen developing through the discoveries of astronomy is the growing suspicion that our planet truly is unique, a precious occurrence in the universe. I cut out an article by George Will in late March in which he reviews a book called "Our Cosmic Habitat," by Martin Rees, Britain's Astronomer Royal. Will ponders the question of whether there could be other planets in the universe with life like Earth's. He paraphrases Rees as saying that "the chance of two similar ecologies is less than the chance of two randomly typing monkeys producing the same Shakespearean play." (Arizona Daily Star, 3/25/02) In other words, virtually nil. Although, some people do win the lottery!

When I first became aware of astronomy's search for life on other planets, I imagined they meant life like, say, a plant, or an animal. When I realized these scientists were getting ecstatic over the possibility of something on the nature of a single cell, I was astonished. How can people get excited over a single cell when we can hardly learn to cherish the multi-celled life all around us? Is there too much life on our own planet to care about the individual expressions, as unique as they are? Will we ever learn to be grateful for the beauty of this earth?

Through the explorations of astronomy we are beginning to suspect that the Earth is spinning in a extremely hostile universe. My children have been studying astronomy in school, and one of them said the other day that the earth has a sun that is just the right temperature, and our planet is circling it in just the right orbit for life to have come into existence as well as to have evolved. It's a miracle. It's a lottery win. We should be astounded and beyond grateful that we exist at all.

Theology and the sciences have been interrelated for centuries, science trying to describe the universe as it is and theology trying to derive meaning from it. They have informed each other and fought each other across those centuries, but they are still related. As science makes new discoveries, theology says what we should do about them. Unfortunately, the world's theologies are generally behind in accommodating the rapid discoveries we have made, and negligent in including them in a growing understanding of our world, our relationships, our purpose. Some, such as fundamentalist Christian religions, deny altogether what science discovers, if those discoveries conflict with their sacred texts. Other religions go on about their business worshipping in the same old ways without regard, positive or negative, for what Science is handing the world. And some of what Science is discovering is underscoring ancient religious teachings in a whole new way.

In honor of Earth Day, I want to share with you some lessons from Nature that I have been contemplating over the years, whether derived from science, religion, or my own experiences. First, of course, is that Nature, in the form of astronomy and geology, is teaching us to cherish this planet of ours. Curtiss, Katie and I went to the University of Arizona mall a few weeks ago to see the comet that has been traveling nearby. We could see it better with our own binoculars than with the telescopes they had set up, but it showed us where the comet was in the northwest sky, and over the next week, we would go out every night into our cul-de-sac and watch the comet just after sunset. You could see the tail pointing off to the northeast. I kept thinking about how we didn't know about this comet until it was almost upon us. I couldn't help picturing in my mind the crater in the Gulf of Mexico that supposedly was the result of a meteor that hit the earth and destroyed the dinosaurs. We have become aware that we are not safe from the random movements of astronomical bodies; that our time on the earth could be temporary in the way of the dinosaurs. I thought about that as I watched this comet travel the sky, missing us, this time.

What does that say about how we should be living our lives? It certainly makes me want to cherish every day. Knowing we can die at any time makes us see life differently. When people experience the death of someone close to them, or have near-death experiences themselves, they tend to wake up somehow and see life as a gift. They tend to cherish not just one kind of life, such as their family or friends, but the diversity of life: the green leaves of the palo verde trees, the singing pyrrhuloxia, the foraging ground squirrels. Even the sunlight, which is not considered life, but the source of life, is appreciated.

Diversity is another lesson from Nature, evident to anyone who looks around to notice. It is essential to our survival on this planet. I remember someone telling me once about how meadows are healthy ecosystems because they are diverse. The more diverse the flora and fauna, the healthier. The analogy, of course, was to be applied to human relations and the healthiness of diversity in societies.

When I first visited the ponderosa forests of Northern Arizona, I couldn't figure out what was wrong with them. There were the trees, and some grass beneath, with bare patches of ground covered with needles. It didn't look right. It wasn't until years later that I made the connection between cattle grazing and the state of the forests. Cattle ate all the little green growing things so that the forests there were barren except for just a few kinds of life. It wasn't a beautiful place.

We Arizona Unitarian Universalists own about a hundred and forty acres in the Sierra Ancha Wilderness near Young that is completely surrounded by National forest. When we acquired it, the first thing we did was fix the fence so that the cattle would stop sneaking in. We wanted the old ranch, which was in a small canyon along an intermittent stream, to be a wilderness camp for our congregations, so we were anxious for it to be protected from the relentless cattle. Very quickly, we began to see how the property differed from the surrounding, constantly-grazed forest. You would drive through relatively barren forest, but as soon as you reached the gate to the property, lush green grass met the eye, with flowers everywhere. It became an oasis for the deer and other animals, humans included. Diversity is health.

The property did scare us in the first few years. After we'd fixed the fences, it seemed like the land went berserk. One year, the grasses grew waist-high along the road, and some of us wondered if keeping the cattle out would make the property an inaccessible wilderness, not to mention a fire-hazard when the grass died. But the next year, when we went back, the grasses had all fallen over, like a mat, along the road. And the year after that, the land seemed to find its own balance. Since then, SAWUURA, as we call it (the Sierra Ancha Wilderness Unitarian Universalist Religious Association), has become a beautiful, balanced eco-system, one which the Forest Service is analyzing with the help of members of SAWUURA as an example of what the land can revert to without the destruction of cattle-grazing. Nature works toward balance, and teaches us that balance is important to our health.

If we don't guard our natural resources, the earth will go out of balance and we may lose what is precious and essential for our lives and all of life. SAWUURA is a tiny example of stewardship, of how necessary it is for us to take responsibility to care for this planet and not let it get out of balance. There is an Indian proverb in the book The Earth Speaks, which says, "The frog does not drink up the pond in which he lives." (p. 67) Unfortunately, that seems to be just what we human frogs are trying to do. We are clear-cutting the rainforests, over-grazing and over-farming, populating the earth beyond its ability to support us. I was reading last Monday's "Earth Week: A Diary of the Planet" in the Arizona Daily Star about the record sandstorms that are whipping across Northern Asia, forcing the residents of Beijing to wear masks when they go outside. The paper said that the dust storms "have been made more severe by extensive deforestation and over use of farmland in China." (4/15/02) Just about every week, you can read about the effects human activities are having on the weather or the migrations of animals or on the health of the seas. Nature is warning us to be better stewards of the Earth if we want life to be healthy and beautiful.

Some of us are listening. This week, our senators voted to protect the Arctic Wilderness from drilling for oil. There is a constant struggle between our desire for resources that enable us to be independent, to be powerful, to be happy, and the need for us to steward the Earth so that we don't strip it bare, strip our lives of the diversity of life, destroying our balance and the last sanctuaries of the wild.

Nature has taught us that we are interdependent. As Chief Seattle said, "Whatever [we do] to the web, [we do] to [ourselves]." How ancient is that wisdom? How universal is that imagery of the web of life? Are we just now discovering it, or are we rediscovering what we once knew, before the advances in technology enabled us to practically harvest the earth toward extinction?

At least we Unitarian Universalists are among those who are embracing this lesson of interdependence. The Seventh Principle of our "Purposes and Principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association" says that we covenant to affirm and promote "respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part." This was Native American religious wisdom. It is wisdom in various religious traditions--I don't know which or how many--and it is wisdom we are embracing for our UU tradition. We are learning that it really is true that what we do in one part of the world can affect us all, and we must learn to change our behaviors and expectations toward keeping the web strong, in balance, diverse and healthy. We do this, first, by cherishing life, all of it, from the most complex life that we are to the single cell. I don't mean ignoring the reality of death, of killing life to live, which is a part of all life on earth. I do mean treating all life with respect, with care and consideration of the impact of all we do on this planet.

Finally, a lesson from Nature that is essential to our well-being is this: the appreciation of beauty. Kahlil Gibran says in The Prophet: "And forget not that the earth delights to feel your bare feet and the winds long to play with your hair." It is true, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, that "the earth laughs in flowers." Nature and beauty are intertwined. Health is beauty. We revel in the beautiful, the balance of things, the shape, the color, the scent, the touch, the song of the earth; beauty heals us, thrills us, connects us once again with the yearning that is life.

When we can learn to value beauty, we will find it harder to allow our planet to be polluted and destroyed in the name of progress. When we learn to value beauty, we will find it harder to ignore all those human beings living in poverty and destitution. We will yearn for and work for, and learn to be responsible stewards for, a healthy, balanced, diverse and interdependent planet, one which we will cherish with all our hearts, for we might never know how precious this Earth really is. In all the universe we might just be the most precious of all creation.

Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson