|
Its So Easy Being Green
A serVice Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark and the Green Sanctuary Committee
Sunday, October 22, 2006 • Unitarian Universalist Church of Reading
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There is more than one way
To kneel and kiss the earth.
—Rumi
Introduction To Our Special Worship Service
Today’s special intergenerational worship service was created by The Green Sanctuary Committee and Rev. Tim Kutzmark to kick off our church’s Green Sanctuary Endeavor.
Green Sanctuary is a process created by Unitarian Universalists across the nation to help us as individuals and a congregation better live within the fragile interdependent web of all creation that holds and sustains us. The journey we are beginning will be guided by an energetic and committed Green Sanctuary Committee, made up of members and friends of our congregation. According to the Green Sanctuary Handbook, “a Green Sanctuary is a congregation that lives out its commitment to the Earth by creating a sustainable life style for its members as individuals and as a faith community.
The Green Sanctuary has Five Goals:
- To build awareness of societal environmental issues among Unitarian Universalists.
- To generate commitment for personal lifestyle changes.
- To motivate Unitarian Universalists to community action on environmental issues.
- To build a connection between spiritual practice and environmental consciousness.
- To build awareness of and rectify environmental injustices.
May it be so.
Chalice Lighting Words
Wendell Berry: The Wisdom to Survive
If we will make our seasons welcome here,
Asking not too much of earth or heaven,
Then a long time after we are dead,
The lives our lives prepare will live here.
Responsive Reading
“A Children’s Haiku Garden in View of Our 7th Principle”
Created by Ann Mottl
Adult: Our responsive reading is made up of haikus, short poems.
Child: They were written by children ages 5-11 years old, from different parts of the country.
Adult: Their theme is the Seventh Principle of our Unitarian Universalist Faith. The Seventh Principle is: “Respect for the interdependent web of all existence, of which we are a part.”
Child: This is another way of saying the Seventh Principle: We believe in caring for our planet Earth, because everything—the soil, the plants, the animals, the water, the air and the people are all connected.
Adult: Our response for the reading is:
Child:
We believe in caring for our planet earth /
We are all connected to the web of life.
ADULT:
One shiny black rock /
glowing from a big star,/
from the sky
Congregation: We believe in caring for our planet earth, /
We are all connected to the web of life.
CHILD:
Bent bamboo /
a kingfisher bird drinks /
its reflection
Congregation: We believe in caring for our planet earth, /
We are all connected to the web of life.
ADULT:
When the rain falls hard /
birds scamper under the trees /
frogs hide under rocks
Congregation: We believe in caring for our planet earth, /
We are all connected to the web of life.
CHILD:
Smelling /
the sweet flowers, /
a deer's brown eyes
Congregation: We believe in caring for our planet earth, /
We are all connected to the web of life.
ADULT:
Fall foliage peaks /
Up and down the mountains /
Geese fly overhead
Congregation: We believe in caring for our planet earth, /
We are all connected to the web of life.
CHILD:
An orca whale jumps /
Sending a cry in the air, /
Splashing water high.
Congregation: We believe in caring for our planet earth, /
We are all connected to the web of life.
REFLECTION – The Blurry Distinction
By Tracy Sopchak, Chair, UUCR Green Sanctuary Committee
When I am invited to imagine a place where I feel a strong connection to the earth, I often think of the small island in Cape Cod where my family owns a modest cottage. I’ve been going there all my life. The island is so small that there are no roads on it, or cars and when I was a child, before the advent of cell phones, there were no telephones either. It is a simple, serene and safe place. I loved being there as a child because my sisters and I were allowed to wander about on our own. We would spend whole days barefoot and sunburned on the beach and in the water. On the island, the distinction between indoors and outdoors was blurred because inside the cottage you could see all the way across the bay and hear the rain on the roof as if it were right on your head. The distinction between myself and the outdoors was blurred too. When I lay in bed for sleep I could still feel the sun on my burned skin and the motion of the waves through my body, not to mention the sand in my sheets. As I grew older I took to the habit of sitting on the sea wall every year, staring out onto the shimmering water and listening to the seagulls distant call or the tugboats melancholy song. I would reflect on past years and compare my life to previous years and myself to previous mes whom I imagined all sitting alongside me on the wall. In the other direction, I would imaging future years and future mes. What would I be when I grew up? Would I find my true love and have children? Today I still sit on the sea wall and imagine, but now I sit with my true love and my son. As I look to one side, I remember my father being here and his father beyond him who bought the cottage and whose ashes are scattered nearby. To the other side, I imagine my son and his children beyond him. What will their lives be like? What would I pass on of this place to them if I could? I would pass on the freedom and safety to wander; the serenity to reflect and imagine; the memories of family so that they might know who they are; and the blurry distinction between themselves and the earth so that they might know what they are.
Earth Was Given As A Garden
A Homily Offered by Rev. Tim Kutzmark
October 22, 2006
What happens when you tell a lie? What happens when you believe a lie? What happens to our world?
We’ve all heard the story of Adam and Eve. Eve and Adam were hanging out in the Garden of Eden, a totally awesome place with lots of friendly animals, pure flowing water, clean air, fresh fruits and vegetables at every meal, a Starbucks on every corner, bright sun to guarantee a great tan, and plenty of free time for fun and frolicking. Adam and Eve lived at peace—at one—with the breathtaking, beautiful, natural world around them. But, according to the Judeo-Christian myth that shapes our Western consciousness—Adam and Eve messed things up. Something went wrong—and a really angry God picked them up and tossed them out of the garden. He threw them out—and in an angry voice told Eve that nature itself was going to strike at her and try to destroy her and her family. And this angry God told Adam that from now on he was going to have to work real hard to tame the land that would no longer support him. Nature was going to divide and conquer them both—and the generations that followed.
The entire Western myth of creation is about division—dividing human beings from the soil, from the plants, from the animals, from the natural world.
Cuban-born Anthropologist Dr. Alberto Villoldo suggests that this founding creation story of the Western world is the only major world myth that has human beings thrown out of the garden. Ours is the only world story that has human beings divided, separated from nature. (Lecture at Omega Institute, September 1, 2006)
What happens when the stories you tell lead people to believe they are not one with the world? What happens to the human spirit when we believe we are no longer part of an interdependent way of life? What happens when we believe our mission is to subdue and dominate?
Dr. Alberto Villoldo has studied how this Western view of the world has clashed with more holistic understandings of the earth. He writes:
“The scraggly band of . . . [European explorers] that arrived on the . . . American continent brought a set of beliefs that were incomprehensible to the Indios, [the Native Peoples already living here]. The first was that all the food of the world belonged by divine right to humans—specifically the Europeans—who were masters over the animals and plants of the earth . . . Nothing could have seemed more absurd to the Native Americans. While the Europeans believed they had been cast out of the mythical Garden of Eden, the Indios understood they were stewards and caretakers of the Garden. They still spoke with the thundering rivers and the whispering mountains and still heard the voice of God in the wind.”
The Native Peoples understood that the earth wasn’t meant to be trampeled underfoot and mindlessly devoured. In the dense jungles of the Amazon or the wide-open plains of the Dakotas, the First Peoples walked lightly on the earth. They lived in relationship with the earth. Many tribes and villages had adult initiation rites that included a ritual re-connection to the true mother of us all, the mother earth, from which all living things have grown. In fact, many of the native people’s creation myths have the first humans emerging from sipapus, mythic openings and passages that reach deep into the body of mother earth.
Alberto Villoldo writes: “The conquistadors brought with them a mythology that intimidated the Native American feminine traditions . . . The Native Americans were confounded by [the] gender . . . of the European God . . . Before the arrival of the Spanish [and the English], Mother Earth and her feminine forms—the caves, lagoons, and other openings into the earth, represented the divine principles. The Europeans imposed the masculine divine principle—the phallus, or tree of life. Church steeples rose to heaven. The feminine Earth was no longer worshipped or respected. The trees, animals, and forests were available for plunder.” Villoldo concludes by saying: “ Today we still live in the grip of this disconnected worldview.” Today we still live in the grip of this disconnected worldview.
The Green Sanctuary program, a multi-year endeavor that our church begins today, is about finding our way back to the garden. We’re not being called to worship the earth, but we are being challenged to live lightly upon it.
The Green Sanctuary Program is about re-visioning and re-dreaming creation. It is about re-writing the stories we live and tell. It is about cultivating a consciousness that cries: “We are of the earth; we are one with the earth.” The Green Sanctuary Program is about learning more. It is about making personal and environmental choices that will shape the world we live in. It is about taking no more than we need. It is about stewardship and sharing. It is about making wise and considered choices so that those who come after us will have a world to inherit. It is a profoundly religious endeavor.
The Green Sanctuary Program is about stopping the lie of separation and disconnection. It is about reweaving ourselves back into the interdependent web of all creation.
It is about daring to sing to the earth, to the water, to the plants, to the animals, to the heavens, to each other, to all of creation:
From you I receive
To you I give
Together we share
And by this we live.
From you I receive
To you I give
Together we share
And by this we live.
May it be so. Blessed Be. Amen.
Closing Words
Terry Tempest Williams
as quoted in Artic National Wildlife Refuge by Subhankar Banerjee
The eyes of the future are looking back at us
and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time.
They are kneeling with clasped hands that we might act with restraint,
leaving room for the life that is destined to come.
© Copyright 2006 Rev. Tim Kutzmark
|
