Happy Earth Day to You

Note: This is an adaptation of the Earth Day sermon I did on April 23, 2017. I remember years ago, in those dark days following the 2016 election, I took part in a rally for science. One speaker talked of how he became interested in science after waking up with a colossal hangover and turning on the TV to the show Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by Neil deGrasse Tyson. He quoted Tyson saying the cool thing about science is that it’s true whether or not you believe in it. 

 It’s also the scary thing about science, and climate change, and about the effects of our excess on our planet. That’s also true, whether or not you believe it. 

I love Neil deGrasse Tyson. I heard him speak several years ago at a local university. His talk then was the future —or lack thereof— of space exploration. He spoke of the halcyon Apollo years in the late 1960s and early 1970s when space exploration was at its height here in the United States, when we landed on the moon, had some folks walk around and then come back. 

 But perhaps the greatest event happened on Christmas Eve, 1968 during the orbiting of the moon by the crew of Apollo 8. On that day, astronaut William Anders took a color photograph of the earth and called it, charmingly, Earthrise. It was perhaps the most important environmental photograph ever taken. In the five years following that earthrise photo, five important events happened: the Environmental Protection Agency was formed on Dec 2, 1970. 

The Clean Air Act Extension, written by Maine Sen. Edmund Muskie, was signed into law by President Nixon on Dec. 31, 1970; it was possibly the most significant air pollution control bill in American history. It required the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency to create and enforce regulations to protect people from airborne pollution known to be hazardous to our health. It specifically targeted sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, ozone, and lead. Because of this law, DDT was banned in 1971.

Another significant event was that Doctors without Borders was formed. It was as if having seen our planet from space we realized for the first time that color-coded borders of nations or states were only to be found on a map and did not actually exist; we realized that from a distance there really ARE no borders for doctors or anyone else. 

 In 1972, the Clean Water Act (CWA) was passed with the established goals of eliminating releases of high amounts of toxic substances into water, eliminating additional water pollution by 1985, and ensuring that surface waters would meet standards necessary for human sports and recreation by 1983. 

And before any of those things on April 22, 1970, Earth Day was founded. It was the idea of Gaylord Nelson, a U.S. Senator from Wisconsin, after witnessing the devastation of the 1969 massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. He reached across party lines and built a staff of 85 people around the nation and as a result, on the 22nd of April, 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to show support for a healthy, sustainable environment in massive coast-to-coast rallies. Thousands of colleges and universities organized protests against the deterioration of the environment. Groups that had been fighting against oil spills, polluting factories and power plants, raw sewage, toxic dumps, pesticides, freeways, the loss of wilderness, and the extinction of wildlife suddenly realized they shared common values. 

 Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “We went to the moon on the premise that we were there to explore the moon but in fact, we discovered Earth for the first time.” 

It occurs to me we need to re-discover earth again. We need to find within us not only our love of nature, as awe-inspiring as any Bach sonata or painting by Monet but to also remain vigilant of this great earth not in some patronizing way as Catherine Grandorff said in her speech at the rally for science, “as if we were coming to the aid of a damsel in distress.”  Mother Earth is no damsel in distress; she will outlast us all. We must remain vigilant with compassion and commitment toward our relatives: this earth, this wind, the fire in our core. 

Following the regime of the past four years where we had a man in the oval office claiming climate change is a hoax, who appointed Scott Pruitt--another climate change skeptic—to head the EPA; an agency he sued more than a dozen times, seeking to reduce restrictions on industries when he was the Attorney General of Oklahoma seeking to reduce restrictions on industries. Not to mention naming Rick Perry as the secretary of energy; you know, the agency he said he wanted to abolish. In that nightmarish time in which by Earth Day 2017 Trump had already signed legislation repealing the Stream Protection Rule, which protected streams from mining operations, and moved to eliminate the Clean Water Rule, which protects 2 million miles of streams and 20 million acres of wetlands and puts at risk the drinking water for nearly 120 million Americans and countless endangered species. He was also working to get rid of car emission and pollution standards. In that nightmarish time in which Trump had taken the word “Science” out of the mission statement for the EPA’s Office of Science and Technology, in which he ignored the peril of the Coronavirus because it wouldn’t play well for his re-election campaign, in which we lost over 569,000 people in the United States, in this brave new era of face masks and hand sanitizers, we are called to remember our love of nature, our love of this planet; we are called to heed the words of TS Eliot to marvel at the complexities of not only our planet, but how we are all connected, as Neil deGrasse Tyson says, "to each other, biologically, to the earth, chemically, and to the universe, atomically." 

The answer to addressing global warming and the destruction of forests and wetlands and rain forests and the near extinction of polar bears is to come back to the core of what matters: the 7th principle of Unitarian Universalism which is respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are a part.

Contrary to how we live our lives, our 7th principle does NOT say respect for the world wide web of the internet of which we are a part, but rather the living world of plants and trees and animals and skies and clouds. Tyson pointed out that until that earthrise photograph, artists routinely painted the world without clouds as if the clouds weren’t a part of the earth. But now clouds are included in most paintings of the sky; we now know better. 

Our 7th principle does NOT say the co-dependent web of ideologies which we bleat like sheep– deflating the three-dimensional technicolor glory of humanity and creating only paper dolls of us and them, of enemies and friends, of right religious beliefs and wrong. 

 And our 7th principle also does NOT say respect for the interdependent web of existence which we get to use up and manipulate and destroy. 

What the 7th principle tells us is that WE are a part of this intricate, marvelous web of existence. 

When we celebrate Earth Day and when we call on ourselves to save the planet, we are calling on us to save ourselves as well. 

In the picture of earthrise, indistinguishable from space is a little 6-year-old girl named Nori peering up in the sky to see if she can see Apollo 8. Also in that picture, beyond the blue of the oceans and the green of the earth and the clouds drifting are many of you, right? We are part of this Earth. 

Maybe if we remembered that, we’d treat the rest of nature and each other with more care. Maybe what we need is to be inspired again, to remember what a marvelous world and universe we belong to, how precious this gift of life is, how — even in this vast bio-diversity we are the same. We are all made of star-stuff. 

 I was talking with a friend about Earth Day and she said she didn’t think we’d ever get it right, that we’ll destroy the earth. I said I don’t think so. That we are destroying parts of it is beyond debate, but that I think we’ll go the way of the dinosaurs before the earth is destroyed. We need the earth; the earth does not need us. 

I said that ultimately, yes, our planet will die out, but that it is good for us spiritually, ethically, morally to take care of our planet now, to learn how to walk more lightly on it, to learn how to embrace each other, to eliminate the words stranger and enemy from our lexicon. We are all just specks, after all, on a speck in the vast universe, galaxies upon galaxies. And yet, we are all connected to one another; to the grass we mow and the flowers we grow and the stars we wish upon. 

On this Earth Day, 2021, it feels like we’re all waking up with a massive hangover; Cosmos is a good place to turn to. Maybe if we could see earthrise again, we would make different choices in how we lived out our lives on this planet; maybe then we could step out of our delusion of isolation and recognize we are all atoms in a single living organism, and that we find our beauty in how we are put together. 

Let us vow to remain vigilant with our mother earth and all our relatives here, not just politically but in our own actions, in how we treat the earth, how we seek to eliminate our own carbon footprint, how we put ourselves back into nature so that we never forget our place in this web of beautiful, glorious, diverse, existence of which we are a part. For more information on climate change and ideas on how you can do your part in environmental justice, check out these links:

United Nations Environmental Programme

National Geographic Environmental Action

Green Faith

Climate Change and Racism

Seven Simple Ways to Save the World From Home

The Beginning of Justice

I remember living in Long Beach, CA in March 1991, when four Los Angeles white police officers brutally attacked an unarmed black man after apprehending him following a police chase. That police routinely used excessive force on black and brown people, regardless of why they were being stopped; sometimes being stopped for frivolous reasons is nothing new.

Remember, the first police forces were organized to capture runaway Africans who had been enslaved by wealthy white landowners in the South, well before the organization in Boston that history books falsely claim was the first police department. Many of the lynchings of black men in the South were given tacit approval and support by police, if not actual involvement in planning them. 

Indeed, it should be no surprise to discover how many police officers from different departments were part of the coup in January of this year,  the largest display of white supremacist muscle-flexing in decades. 

But that March in 1991, something was different. As four white cops brutally beat King, someone filmed it. George Holliday filmed the beating and sent it to local news station KTLA.

When I saw the coverage and the ensuing outrage felt around the world I felt a sort of vicious victoriousness. That’s it! I thought fiercely. Finally, there’s evidence! They’ll have to convict now. Even LAPD Chief Daryl Gates said his officers had used excessive force. 

I should have known better, and I would have known better if my skin were darker-hued. The defense had the trial moved to pre-dominantly Simi Valley, a city that was a gated community. There three officers were acquitted, and the charges dropped against the 4^th.

Living so close to where this brutal crime of injustice took place, I felt the rage and despair being channeled through protests, riots, and fiery demands for police reform. Buildings were burning, people were in the street. Martin Luther King’s words rang true: A riot is the language of the unheard.

Evidence, it appears, has nothing to do in convicting white police officers or self-appointed vigilantes 

In fact, according to an organization called Mapping PoliceViolence, in 2015 police killed 104 unarmed Black people. Of those, only 13 of those cases resulted in charges being filed. Four of those cases ended in a mistrial or dropped charges.

In four of the cases in which there were convictions, none of the sentences exceeded four years, and some served as little as three months or were allowed to serve their time in jail just on the weekends. 

Today, after 10 hours in deliberation, the jury delivered their decision: guilty on all three counts of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter; the most serious charge carries up to 40 years in prison. When I heard the news, I spontaneously burst into tears. 

I can’t even imagine how it feels to be someone from the BIPOC communities, how it feels for George Floyd’s family, for the families of all who have had loved ones murdered at the hands of the police who did not receive justice.

Thirty years after Rodney King was denied justice, despite concrete evidence of abuse, justice for George Floyd has, at least,  been initiated; it has not yet been served. Chauviin won’t be sentenced until June; he will remain in police custody until then. The severity of his sentence will be an indication of how seriously our country is willing to take such egegregious acts of violence on unarmed members of our communities.

Beyond this specific case, justice still waits to be served. Since the murder of George Floyd last May, Mapping Police Violence has cited 181 deaths ofAfrican Americans at the hands of police, including unarmed 20-year-old Daunte Wright shot and killed in Minneapolis while Chauvin’s trial was ongoing.  

There is cause to celebrate today’s verdict; over 400 hundred years after Africans were stolen from their homes and enslaved by white colonists, justice has been initiated. Yet the fact that there will be global celebrations for a single verdict tells us the problem remains; there is still so much more work to do.

There need to be sweeping police reforms across the nation, police oversight committees established to independently investigate incidences of police brutality; there needs to be a federal commission that addresses the cumulative crimes about the BIPOC communities and establishes ways to seek conciliation. For more information, I invite you to check out Truth and Conciliation, sign the pledge, decide to be a part of the solution rather than the problem.

 

 

Feast of Epiphany, Part II: The Losers

 Yesterday dawned bright, full of hope, historic moments, forward movement. After I left the inspiring edifices to freedom and social justice, I went to visit a friend (outside, socially distanced) whom I had not seen in several years. While we were talking on her balcony, my phone buzzed insistently several times, alerting to me to incoming text messages. Of course, they were messages from friends and family, congregants asking where I was and had I seen the madness?

And then I opened the news app on my phone and saw the horror with my own eyes. Fresh from the possibilities of justice, of Beloved Community seen in the Martin Luther King, Jr National Historic Park, and the Martin Luther King, Jr Center for Non-Violent Social Change, gladdened by comments on my video and photos of those places by others who had been there and had been equally inspired, I now saw the center of our government, the seat of the sacred trust of democracy breached by domestic terrorists, white supremacists, QAnon kool aid drinkers who had the audacity to literally break into the Capitol of our nation in a dangerous, adult-sized imitation of schoolyard bullies who didn’t get the lunch money this time they were used to shaking down other kids for.

Many others more eloquent and with better social analysis than I have already written on this, but I could not ignore what is happening in our nation, what happened yesterday, and what we can do to move on.

You have seen the footage: the speech by Trump at the white supremacist rally where he sounded like a football coach at half-time telling his team they need to get out there and show them who’s boss. Encouraging the brainwashed minions of his narcissistic ego to march to the Capitol, spewing forth the worn out lies about how the election was stolen.

You saw the footage of the illegally armed domestic terrorists literally breaching the Capitol, a feat that has only happened once before in the history of our nation, in 1814, by the British who then sacked and burned the place down. The photos of armed white terrorists breaking into offices, desecrating the chambers of Congress with their filthy confederate flags, many wearing t-shirts that boldly proclaimed: Civil War January 6, 2021. This was not an impulsive moment, a crowd who was taken over by their own rhetoric; this was a clearly planned, methodical event that had been openly discussed in hate group online forums for weeks.

Equally plain was the scion of white privilege rearing its ugly head; asserting its right to commit acts of

treason without being tear-gassed, sprayed with rubber bullets, or shot in the back. The demeanor of the police was appalling videos showing capitol officers literally opening the barriers to let the terrorists in, taking selfies with seditionists, helping a white supremacist navigate the stairs. This in stark contrast to the aggressive, violent approach taken during the peaceful protests in the summer against citizens who had gathered to denounce the murder of George Floyd and proclaim this truth, which should be self-evident but is lost in the haze of white supremacy: that Black Lives Matter. If the protesters at the BLM events had tried to storm the capitol, there would be a bloodbath and a sea of black and brown bodies shot down.

And when finally, the white domestic terrorists had been escorted out of the Capitol building, after incendiary devices had been found and safely detonated, Congress reconvened with determination to complete the task on the agenda of the day: to certify the electoral votes for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Many Republicans who had said in advance they were going to challenge the votes, changed their minds, but not all. Oh no. Even with such stark evidence of what happens when you fuel the outrageous lies of a narcissistic bully for political gain, when they bottle-feed conspiracy theories, they themselves don’t really believe in, Republicans still stood to challenge the legality of the votes, still vomited forth the already debunked narrative that the election was rigged.
For what gain? There was no chance in hell even before the carnage that they would approve these challenges. It was only more self-serving, self-aggrandizing posturing by political leaders who have become so drunk on the power they had in the trump regime that they can no longer think rationally or act truthfully.

For the past four years, Trump has lied, bullied, cheated, blackmailed, and harangued to get his way. He has never once acted with a shred of dignity, grace, nor has he ever risen to the solemnity of the office he lost by popular vote four years ago. And his simpering sycophants have been right there with him, like the Emperor’s tailors, whispering flattery into his ears, publicly proclaiming what a grand and glorious new set of clothes he wore, denying the flaccid nakedness of his depravity.

That this act of treason happened is appalling, but not surprising. It has been building to this inevitable outcome for the past four years.

And what I find sad is that Trump, even after all the misuses of his office and the 26,000 plus documented lies he told, and the shameful ways he has behaved, could have still left with a little dignity. He could have conceded, shook Joe Biden’s hand, and helped create a peaceful, orderly transition. He could have done that. Except for the fact that his narcissism is too deeply entrenched into his personality.
Instead, he ordered his sycophant-in-chief- Rudy Giuliani to hold a press conference alleging fraud. He himself called a press conference to allege fraud. He tried to get his Vice President to illegally change the election results. He incited treason.

So, this is how he leaves: his lawyer, with hair dye running down his face, and himself sitting behind a tiny desk, as if trying to look bigger than he is and all we see is the facade of the past four years running down the face of our nation, and a tiny man behind a tiny desk; a pathetic, soul less loser.

It’s interesting, I thought, that this happened on the Feast of Epiphany. In the Christian story, it incensed Herod when the magi didn't vote the way he wanted them to, they didn't give him Divine Love on a platter for him to destroy, so he murders innocent children. Fitting.

At the end of this day, we have beauty and the best of democracy in action and we have destruction and the worst of human behavior on display.

And every day, we get to be the magi. We get to choose. Will we continue down the path of privilege and power, of blissful ignorance to the peril of our kin of color and other disenfranchised folx? Or will we, transformed by possibility, choose to go another way, a harder way to be sure, a way that demands the same accountability of ourselves that we are now demanding of our leaders, a way in which we will surely stub our toes and stumble? Yes, we will stumble, but we can be confident that on this path companions will surround us, all of us seeking Beloved Community, each of us pledging to help one another up and to keep on going.

This is the path Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. chose. This is the path I choose, remembering that in the furthest depths of despair, the eternal flame of freedom and justice shines brightly; we are its keepers, now. Let it burn.

Feast of Epiphany, Part I: The Winners

 I’ve been awake since 215 AM ET, unable to keep from checking the news, reading what others are already saying about the seditious act of rebellion instigated by the outgoing president, egged on by House and Senate Republicans who were threatening to contest the results of the Electoral College—a mere formality, attesting to the greatness of democracy in past elections—and put into action by clueless but faithful citizens turned traitors, inspired by Trump’s rambling address to the rally which included calling on them to advance on the Capitol, implying he would be by their side.

Tuesday afternoon, I drove into the city of Atlanta, GA.  On the third leg of my car Camino, I was eager to be once again in the “room where it happened.” The runoff race for the two Georgia senate seats would be a historic event. If the two Democratic contenders won, it would be the first time in 20 years Georgians has sent a Democrat to the Senate and the first time they had voted in a Black senator. Georgia is one of the original colonies, entering the Union in 1788 and they have taken part in every presidential election except for 1864; they had seceded from the Union, joining their ranks with the confederacy. Could it be that, finally, over 155 years after that seditious war, would they make history?

I went to bed on Tuesday night still unsure of how the race would go; it was awfully close. I awoke yesterday to the news that Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock had claimed victory, and it was only a matter of time before Jon Ossoff joined him in the winner’s circle. Elated, I drove to Auburn Avenue, the historic center of African American life, social justice activism, and education from the 1920s through the

1970s. It is the home to Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King, Sr. was the third pastor of that grand church, founded in 1886. He served that church from 1931 to 1975, Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up there. In 1960, he became the co-pastor with his father, until his assassination in 1968.

And of course, now Rev. Dr. Raphael Warnock presides as the senior pastor.

I wanted to be in that sacred place where history and hope now join hands in the wake of the historic vote
where the Dreamer and this most recent iteration of the Dream Come True mingles in the very air.

As I walked around, admiring the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church where both Rev. Kings served and marveling at the newer building across the street where Rev. Warnock holds forth, tears sprung to my eyes. I was so moved by the dedication of the Georgians, by Stacey Abrams who single-handedly, I believe, flipped the state to progress, by the countless volunteers, including from my congregation in Colorado Springs, who wrote postcards, sent texts, and made phone calls to Georgian voters encouraging them to vote.

Ironically, while I was there, both a Japanese media company and Telemundo interviewed me on what my hopes were with this election result. I said that with a Democrat-controlled House, Senate, and Presidency, we can begin the work of repairing the breaches, of undoing the four years of madness that has been the Trump regime. I said we can rejoin the Paris Accord, regulate industries, and save our public lands. I said, “A ‘triple blue’ is not a win for the Democrats; it’s a win for us all. We want to give the best health care available to Republicans, we want to ensure equal rights for the Republicans. With Democrats in power, everyone wins, because it’s not about power to the party, it’s about truly living into a government of the people, by the people, for the people.”

I met two volunteers who had come from California and from Massachusetts to do canvassing and election day oversight. And I met a couple from Atlanta who had also wanted to be in the sacred space to celebrate this great day.

And I left after a couple of hours, happy, hopeful, grateful for how democracy works. It’s fitting, I thought, that today is January 6^th, the Feast of the Epiphany in the Christian tradition. Commemorating when the magi, traditionally three men of color finally found their way to the toddler Jesus, after a long and arduous journey, bringing gifts to this manifestation of Love being the path, rather than power.