What is the Earth Becoming?
Preached 4/18/2021 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
In this month when we are contemplating the theme of Becoming, in this time when we are reeling from the pain of loss, as we draw nearer to Earth Day, does Earth Day become more and more a day of mourning each year? Or a day of celebration? What is our precious earth becoming?
Earth Day is this Thursday, and it will be the 51st Earth Day, because I’m sorry to tell you that 1970 was 51 years ago. Yeah, that’s hard to swallow, I know. The first Earth Day was instituted in 1970 as a response to several environmental disasters, including the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969. Did you live in this area at that time? Do you remember? And now we are in the midst of our present-day disaster, the COVID crisis, which is at least in part environmental in nature. Because when we get down to it, isn’t everything environmental in nature? What else is there, really?
Thich Nhat Han has said that we are not only children of our Mother Earth, but that we are all literally parts of nature itself. He says:
"You carry Mother Earth within you, She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment.
You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.
"So breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the earth.
In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.”
Let us sink into that highest form of prayer this morning, right now and breathe deeply as we realize what Thich Nhat Han teaches us, that we are one with the Earth. I’d like to read a beautiful prayer based on the Christian Lord’s Prayer. Remembering that the origin of the “Our Father” or the Lord’s Prayer is that it comes from a place in the Bible where Jesus’ followers asked him how to pray. Jesus answered with Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. If this is how we should pray, then taking this prayer and turning it toward Mother Earth feels to me to be exactly what would be the highest form of prayer. It begins,
Our Mother, who is here on Earth,
Timeless may you reign and may we never take your compassion for granted.
The time is now, your spirit be served, with our full intention and energy to create a Planet Earth as abundant
and blessed as Heaven.
Give each person today, their daily grain so no one goes hungry, and affirm our inherent goodness to care for
one another, as we give thanks for those who today in their actions put the collective good ahead of personal
self-interest and remind us to do the same.
And inspire us in all things to maximize our potential for the greatest good as we preserve and protect the legacy
we leave for future generations.
For this is our planet, with problems and possibilities,
to do with what we can in the time we have got.
Now is forever.
Aum, Peace, Amen
Breathing in, you recognize that you are one with all of nature, all of creation. Breathing out, you smile at Mother Earth. Breathing in, you recognize that the holy Gaia is fulfilled and whole within you. Breathing out, you smile at the holy within yourself.
And yet Earth Day is not always a day of relaxing and radiating peace. Greta Thundburg would remind you that this holy that dwells within you has been threatened by a culture of greed and an ideation of separation and individuality. This is why COVID numbers are skyrocketing: an inability on the part of humans to recognize how very connected we are, the ways that we all affect each other in something of a “butterfly effect.”
Here is a poem by UU minister Rev. Theresa Soto titled “Butterfly Effect” (Spilling the Light p. 61-63)
Quite a charge - we must not simply accept that we are small and our problems are large. We are the butterflies. And the thing about butterflies is that they understand faith in a way that we humans can admire and learn from.
When a caterpillar spins a cocoon and becomes a butterfly, it is not as magical a transition as we might imagine. Or at least not as fairy-tale-like. Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar does not sprout wings, but rather it melts. The whole being melts down into a sort of primordial goo or caterpillar soup. It releases its self-ness and becomes a pile of sticky atoms and molecules, which then reassemble into a butterfly. What an odd trick of nature! Does the caterpillar know that it will become a butterfly?
In its moments of decomposition within the cocoon, does it feel horror? Does it feel like death? The creature literally decomposes. It must take a lot of faith to enter that cocoon, even if the caterpillar is fully aware that he will emerge as a butterfly. This is a wonderful analogy for death and for faith and for the human experience.
This decomposition which leads to a new composition, a new self, a glorious self, well, I think many of us have experienced this in our own lifetimes. It’s a wonder that the cross is the popular symbol for Easter when the lowly caterpillar is such a stronger symbol of faith and resurrection!
Just so can we resurrect ourselves and the great Mother Earth within us. We do this through the work of holy gratitude and reciprocity. In her excellent book, Braiding Sweetgrass, author Robin Wall Kimmerer shares a story of a time when she had a public speaking engagement and spoke about an ancient indigenous story:
(Braiding Sweetgrass p. 187 “Then I told the story..” to p. 189 “cultures of reciprocity.”
Later in the book, she explains further about being a people of reciprocity through an ancient story: (p. 341 “All stories are connected…” to p. 343 “Relationship to Earth?”)
The author ends by encouraging all of us to write our own stories, not by appropriating, but by learning from and holding fast to the indigenous wisdom of the story of being the people of corn. Most of us have ancestors that are guilty of having ravaged this land or haven taken it unfairly and treated it poorly. But we stand here in this moment today, in the new understanding of time as a lake rather than a river. We have this moment now and these opportunities and we can turn with a new heart toward gratitude and a life of reciprocity with all that surrounds us.
Earth Day is this Thursday. Let’s think about rewriting our whole lives into a single act of gratitude for the beauty of life, the gifts we constantly receive from Mother Earth. May we, too be a gift back to her, on her day.
I’d like to end with this Earth Day Prayer by Vern Barnet:
Infinite Spirit, sometimes called Grandfather, Grandmother --
Father Sky, Earth Mother, Creator: We gather to praise your creation,
to honor the swimmers and crawlers, the four-leggeds and the winged ones; we give thanks for the beauty and glory of creation and open our hearts to new ways to understand our place in the universe--
not the center or focus, but a humble and balanced place, where every step we take becomes a prayer, where every word we say makes harmony with the vast, vibrating cosmos, and where we know we are singing the song of life.
We pray to know more deeply that we are in the Garden where every plant and animal and speck of dust is a living prayer.
Without our brothers and sisters of the plant and animal and mineral kingdoms, the human family would end. So we want to bless them, as they bless us.
We pray for humility—not to humble ourselves before presidents or priests, but before the ants and trees- for if we cannot be in true relation to the ant, we shall be outcasts of the garden.
Let us cast the pollution from our eyes so we can see the glory and live with thanksgiving.
Great Spirit, let us remember it is not how we talk but how we walk.
When we say we love animals, let us protect them.
When we say we that we love the plant people, let us honor them by living lightly on the earth. When we say we love the minerals, let us use them only in necessity, and remember their rightful places.
Oil belongs in the ground, not in the air through our wasteful machines.
Wondrous trees, breathing life into the atmosphere: your gifts of fire and shelter, fruit, and sailing are precious to us.
And in many ways you offer us leaves of knowledge. May the vision of mutual interrelatedness, cosmic interdependence, the seamless process of generations, not end in cough-filled skies blotting the sun, but rather may clear air, healthy forests, wholesome water, expansive prairie, and pungent earth nourish paths for all creatures through mountain and valley, and the salt sea, and through a protective atmosphere,
as we rejoice in the inhabitants.
Hear and empower our mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle.
With thanks for the surprise and mystery of it all, we pray in the name of the Creator, the Processes and Presences, and all our relations.
Preached 4/18/2021 at SouthWest UU in N. Royalton OH
By Rev. Meg Mathieson
In this month when we are contemplating the theme of Becoming, in this time when we are reeling from the pain of loss, as we draw nearer to Earth Day, does Earth Day become more and more a day of mourning each year? Or a day of celebration? What is our precious earth becoming?
Earth Day is this Thursday, and it will be the 51st Earth Day, because I’m sorry to tell you that 1970 was 51 years ago. Yeah, that’s hard to swallow, I know. The first Earth Day was instituted in 1970 as a response to several environmental disasters, including the Cuyahoga River fire in 1969. Did you live in this area at that time? Do you remember? And now we are in the midst of our present-day disaster, the COVID crisis, which is at least in part environmental in nature. Because when we get down to it, isn’t everything environmental in nature? What else is there, really?
Thich Nhat Han has said that we are not only children of our Mother Earth, but that we are all literally parts of nature itself. He says:
"You carry Mother Earth within you, She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the earth are two separate entities, the Earth is only the environment.
You are in the centre and you want to do something for the Earth in order for you to survive. That is a dualistic way of seeing.
"So breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it and realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the earth.
In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer.”
Let us sink into that highest form of prayer this morning, right now and breathe deeply as we realize what Thich Nhat Han teaches us, that we are one with the Earth. I’d like to read a beautiful prayer based on the Christian Lord’s Prayer. Remembering that the origin of the “Our Father” or the Lord’s Prayer is that it comes from a place in the Bible where Jesus’ followers asked him how to pray. Jesus answered with Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. If this is how we should pray, then taking this prayer and turning it toward Mother Earth feels to me to be exactly what would be the highest form of prayer. It begins,
Our Mother, who is here on Earth,
Timeless may you reign and may we never take your compassion for granted.
The time is now, your spirit be served, with our full intention and energy to create a Planet Earth as abundant
and blessed as Heaven.
Give each person today, their daily grain so no one goes hungry, and affirm our inherent goodness to care for
one another, as we give thanks for those who today in their actions put the collective good ahead of personal
self-interest and remind us to do the same.
And inspire us in all things to maximize our potential for the greatest good as we preserve and protect the legacy
we leave for future generations.
For this is our planet, with problems and possibilities,
to do with what we can in the time we have got.
Now is forever.
Aum, Peace, Amen
Breathing in, you recognize that you are one with all of nature, all of creation. Breathing out, you smile at Mother Earth. Breathing in, you recognize that the holy Gaia is fulfilled and whole within you. Breathing out, you smile at the holy within yourself.
And yet Earth Day is not always a day of relaxing and radiating peace. Greta Thundburg would remind you that this holy that dwells within you has been threatened by a culture of greed and an ideation of separation and individuality. This is why COVID numbers are skyrocketing: an inability on the part of humans to recognize how very connected we are, the ways that we all affect each other in something of a “butterfly effect.”
Here is a poem by UU minister Rev. Theresa Soto titled “Butterfly Effect” (Spilling the Light p. 61-63)
Quite a charge - we must not simply accept that we are small and our problems are large. We are the butterflies. And the thing about butterflies is that they understand faith in a way that we humans can admire and learn from.
When a caterpillar spins a cocoon and becomes a butterfly, it is not as magical a transition as we might imagine. Or at least not as fairy-tale-like. Inside the cocoon, the caterpillar does not sprout wings, but rather it melts. The whole being melts down into a sort of primordial goo or caterpillar soup. It releases its self-ness and becomes a pile of sticky atoms and molecules, which then reassemble into a butterfly. What an odd trick of nature! Does the caterpillar know that it will become a butterfly?
In its moments of decomposition within the cocoon, does it feel horror? Does it feel like death? The creature literally decomposes. It must take a lot of faith to enter that cocoon, even if the caterpillar is fully aware that he will emerge as a butterfly. This is a wonderful analogy for death and for faith and for the human experience.
This decomposition which leads to a new composition, a new self, a glorious self, well, I think many of us have experienced this in our own lifetimes. It’s a wonder that the cross is the popular symbol for Easter when the lowly caterpillar is such a stronger symbol of faith and resurrection!
Just so can we resurrect ourselves and the great Mother Earth within us. We do this through the work of holy gratitude and reciprocity. In her excellent book, Braiding Sweetgrass, author Robin Wall Kimmerer shares a story of a time when she had a public speaking engagement and spoke about an ancient indigenous story:
(Braiding Sweetgrass p. 187 “Then I told the story..” to p. 189 “cultures of reciprocity.”
Later in the book, she explains further about being a people of reciprocity through an ancient story: (p. 341 “All stories are connected…” to p. 343 “Relationship to Earth?”)
The author ends by encouraging all of us to write our own stories, not by appropriating, but by learning from and holding fast to the indigenous wisdom of the story of being the people of corn. Most of us have ancestors that are guilty of having ravaged this land or haven taken it unfairly and treated it poorly. But we stand here in this moment today, in the new understanding of time as a lake rather than a river. We have this moment now and these opportunities and we can turn with a new heart toward gratitude and a life of reciprocity with all that surrounds us.
Earth Day is this Thursday. Let’s think about rewriting our whole lives into a single act of gratitude for the beauty of life, the gifts we constantly receive from Mother Earth. May we, too be a gift back to her, on her day.
I’d like to end with this Earth Day Prayer by Vern Barnet:
Infinite Spirit, sometimes called Grandfather, Grandmother --
Father Sky, Earth Mother, Creator: We gather to praise your creation,
to honor the swimmers and crawlers, the four-leggeds and the winged ones; we give thanks for the beauty and glory of creation and open our hearts to new ways to understand our place in the universe--
not the center or focus, but a humble and balanced place, where every step we take becomes a prayer, where every word we say makes harmony with the vast, vibrating cosmos, and where we know we are singing the song of life.
We pray to know more deeply that we are in the Garden where every plant and animal and speck of dust is a living prayer.
Without our brothers and sisters of the plant and animal and mineral kingdoms, the human family would end. So we want to bless them, as they bless us.
We pray for humility—not to humble ourselves before presidents or priests, but before the ants and trees- for if we cannot be in true relation to the ant, we shall be outcasts of the garden.
Let us cast the pollution from our eyes so we can see the glory and live with thanksgiving.
Great Spirit, let us remember it is not how we talk but how we walk.
When we say we love animals, let us protect them.
When we say we that we love the plant people, let us honor them by living lightly on the earth. When we say we love the minerals, let us use them only in necessity, and remember their rightful places.
Oil belongs in the ground, not in the air through our wasteful machines.
Wondrous trees, breathing life into the atmosphere: your gifts of fire and shelter, fruit, and sailing are precious to us.
And in many ways you offer us leaves of knowledge. May the vision of mutual interrelatedness, cosmic interdependence, the seamless process of generations, not end in cough-filled skies blotting the sun, but rather may clear air, healthy forests, wholesome water, expansive prairie, and pungent earth nourish paths for all creatures through mountain and valley, and the salt sea, and through a protective atmosphere,
as we rejoice in the inhabitants.
Hear and empower our mantra: reduce, reuse, recycle.
With thanks for the surprise and mystery of it all, we pray in the name of the Creator, the Processes and Presences, and all our relations.