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Back to Sermon Index Nature's Delicate Balance A Sermon by the Rev. Susan Manker-Seale In Joseph Cornell’s book Listening to Nature, he quotes Mary Austin:
This is both a spiritual understanding of our relationship with nature, and a scientific one. Religiously speaking, we say that God is one, and that god lives in us and in all things; we are all interconnected. Scientifically speaking, we say that we are all made of the same substance, breathing the same air, transforming plants and animals that we eat into ourselves, taking in sound waves and light waves, taking in and giving off water all the time. We are not a separate thing; we are a process of constant change and interchange that we call life on earth. Over the centuries of written history and commentary, religious observers have called this experience of oneness with nature a “mystical” experience. A mystical experience is defined as a direct experience of god or ultimate reality. That sense that all is one and we are one with all is a common description of mystical experience that people have. Black Elk describes his mystical experience with these words, which are in our hymnal (614):
The mystical and scientific truth of Black Elk’s words is not whether we can live together like one being, but that we must live together like one being. And one being, when it’s healthy mentally, physically, and spiritually, does not mutilate itself, nor do such harm that its body sickens. Because we have begun to do so much harm to the earth in the last couple centuries, humanity has been described by some as a cancer on the earth. We have discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, the interdependence of the life on earth and realized that many of our nineteenth and twentieth century actions are threatening the delicate balance that nature maintains on this spinning ball in space. We are the only species of life on earth, with perhaps the exception of the viruses, that has the power to destroy the only home we have ever known. As a species, it seems we are engaged in a “self-destruct” that is very difficult to stop. It was thirty-three years ago that the first Earth Day was held. I was in eighth grade, and my Science teacher taught us about ecology and the effects human societies were having on nature. I was shocked, I remember, to learn the ways companies and cities were polluting the water--rivers, lakes, and oceans. It wasn’t just my Junior High class, but all of American society, that was beginning to learn about the impact human development was having on our home. On the thirtieth anniversary of Earth Day, Environmental Defense, an organization to protect the environment, created a series of charts showing how the Earth’s environment has changed over that time. From 1970 to 2000, the global temperature went up almost one degree, a rate of change that is faster than any recorded in the past thousand years. Some might say that we are entering a hotter age, like the ice ages on the other extreme, but when you compare the other charts, it seems more likely that our own actions are creating global warming: carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased from about 330 parts per million to about 370; methane has also increased dramatically; our energy consumption in the United States has increased by about twenty-five percent; and our population has, of course, increased substantially, from about 200 million in 1970 to close to 300 million. Global warming has been identified as one the biggest indicators that nature is out of balance. According to climatehotmap.org, “global temperature in 1998 was the hottest in the historical record,” and “the ten warmest years on record have occurred since 1987, seven of them since 1994.” A climate hot map was created by such organizations as Environmental Defense, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The map shows what they call “fingerprints,” or those events around the globe which are direct manifestations of global warming, and “harbingers,” or those events which might be occurring because of global warming, but not proven to be linked. The four fingerprints start with heat waves and unusually warm weather. I’m not going to list the places in the world where these are evident, as you can go to climatehotmap.org to see for yourself. Ocean warming and the sea level rise and flooding along the coasts is the second listed fingerprint. The sea level has already risen four to ten inches in the past 100 years, which is three times faster than over the last 3,000 years, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists. If the warming trend continues, the rise is expected to range from half a foot to three feet over the next 100 years. Melting glaciers is the third fingerprint. The majority of mountain glaciers have been shrinking over the past 150 years, and scientists think that in a hundred more, if the projected warming continues, most will be gone. The fourth fingerprint I want to quote: “Parts of Canada, Alaska, Siberia, and the Antarctic have been experiencing warming well above the global average for the past few decades. This trend fits climate model predictions for a world with increasing levels of greenhouse gases.” This has resulted in melting permafrost, reduced sea ice, changes in snowfall and infestations of pests. The Union of Concerned Scientists state that “the Arctic ice pack has lost about 40% of its thickness over the past four decades.” The six harbingers of global warming are, one, that mosquitoes whose territories are expanding due to warmer weather are spreading disease. Two, spring is arriving earlier in many places in the world, which can disrupt migrations and species balance. Three, some animal and plant species are shifting their ranges in possible response to global warming, and if the warming happens faster than they can respond or if migration is barred due to human development, it may result in many deaths or even extinction of the species. Four, coral reefs are experiencing dramatic bleaching which can be a result of warmer waters killing off the microscopic algae that color and nourish corals. Five, extreme rainfall can be due to climate change, and the United States and other countries have experienced an increase in precipitation. And six, droughts and wildfires are expected to increase with global warming, as has been happening. In spite of this information, the environment continues to come under attack by corporations and governments with private interests that don’t include the health of the world as a whole. For example, new rules proposed by the Bush administration to the Clean Air Act would exempt thousands of polluting industries from having to comply with the controls. Environmental Defense, along with other environmental organizations, is working to defend the Clean Air Act. On a positive note, by a mere four votes the Senate recently struck down a proposal to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling. On the other hand, the House is now working on a proposal for this spring that would include Arctic drilling in a broader energy package. Even as people fight for more energy sources, automakers and oil industry representatives have shot down efforts to improve the fuel efficiency of cars, light trucks and SUVs. In a report I read a couple years ago, the Union of Concerned Scientists recommended that the single thing people could do to help our environment was to stop driving SUV’s. I’ve been trying to think of the reasons we continue to destroy the earth, and I’ve come up with four: ignorance, greed, power and disassociation. I think people who are clear-cutting the rain forests are probably ignorant of the danger they’re presenting to the balance of nature. As long as people don’t have good access to education, we will continue to confront actions which threaten nature’s delicate balance. But greed and power are also largely to blame, as giant corporations respond to stock-holders’ demands for profits without regard to how those profits are being achieved. Ethics in business decisions is an area that environmental organizations seem to be just beginning to understand and work with. Disassociation, though, is an area which, as religious folks, I think we need to address, even as we fight in other ways to save the environment. As Rodney Romney put it so clearly in his book Wilderness Spirituality:
To rebuild our association with nature, our identification with nature, our love for nature, it is important to get out into nature, to experience the beauty and balance that is our home, that is, in reality, ourselves. Many people express the joy and sense of connection and renewal that being out in nature provides them. I, too, feel that connection, that depth, that wonder when I am in wilderness. I can only hope that if people were to get out into nature, their sense of oneness with all life would emerge and develop so that they would not want to see their home destroyed, nor injure this spinning body that is our collective own. If we are to save this earth, we will have to do it together, as one Being, protecting our beloved own. Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Northwest Tucson |