Earth Day: The Ark

A service titled ‘Earth Day: The Ark', led by Rev. Dr. Jane Blackall, with readings given by David Brewerton and Juliet Edwards, and music from Jess Collins, Tara McCarthy, and Iona Reid.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 3:56

We gather here to worship, to seek the truth, to grow in love, to join in service, to celebrate life's beauty and find healing for its pain. To honour our kinship with each other and with this earth. To create a more compassionate world beginning with ourselves, to wonder at the mystery that gave us birth, to find courage for the journey's end. And to listen for the wisdom that guides us in the choir of each and every moment. Welcome to those who are here in person at Essex Church. Welcome to everyone gathered from far and wide via Zoom online, and indeed anyone tuning in at a later date on YouTube. For anyone who doesn't know me, my name's Jane Blackell, and I'm minister with Kensington Unitarian. This morning our service is marking Earth Day. Well, technically it's on Wednesday, the 22nd. But this is a day intended to raise awareness and understanding of environmental issues and to galvanize people into taking positive action for the sake of our planet and all the precious creatures that we share it with. This morning we're going to be focusing on biodiversity in particular. So I've titled our service The Ark. Through readings and hymns, music and prayers, we'll focus on the interdependent web of life. And the title of our service today was actually inspired by this little book, We Are the Ark by Mary Reynolds. I've not ended up choosing a full-length reading from it today because I couldn't find a standalone bit to pull out, but I wanted to share a paragraph from this book to set the scene. She writes biodiversity is defined as the variety of all living things and the systems that connect them. This includes all the planet's different plants, animals, and microorganisms, plus the genetic information they contain and the ecosystems of which they are a part. The web of life is being pushed to the edge and we are unquestionably and indivisibly, if often unknowingly, tethered to that web. All creatures play a vital role in the circle of life. And when a gap appears in that circle or a strand of that web disappears, the system gets weaker and closer to collapse. We rely on every creature's presence for our clean air and water, healthy food and beautiful environments. And each moment of our lives is dependent on this web of life remaining intact. Just a little bit of context about that book. Mary Reynolds describes herself as a reformed landscape designer. She won a gold award for her Celtic Sanctuary Garden at the Chelsea Flower Show back in 2002, and at the time she was the youngest person ever to do so. But since then she's radically changed her focus to environmental concerns. She was inspired to begin a grassroots movement called We Are the Ark, where Ark A R K stands for Acts of Restorative Kindness to the Earth. It's a kind of a rewilding campaign which asks people to give as much land back to nature as they can possibly spare. She follows the eminent biologist E. O. Wilson, and we'll hear a bit more from him later, who whose half earth project proposes that we give half the earth back to our wild kin and return it to its true nature. So all that thought is in the background of our service this morning. Of course, not all of us are lucky enough to have stewardship of a patch of land that we can give away. Especially here in London, though some of us are. But let's all ask ourselves this morning what we can do to be part of the ark. Before we go any further, though, let's light our chalice flame as we always do. It's a moment for us to pause, to take a breath, to be here now, to lay down any preoccupations we might have come in carrying. It's a simple ritual that connects us with Unitarians and Unitarian Universal this world over, and it reminds us of the proudly progressive religious tradition of which this gathering is a part. May the light of this chalice be a reminder of the shared values and principles around which we gather, upholding the inherent worth and dignity of every person, cherishing all those diverse creatures and habitats with whom we share this earth our home. Seeking human liberation and flourishing and serving the common good of all. May this little light and all that it represents make a home in our hearts where it will guide us back to our highest aspirations and help us to be responsive, creative, just and loving in this complex and ever-changing world. Time to sing now. Our first hymn is number 31 in your purple books, if you're in the building. If you're joining via Zoom, the words will be up on screen. We haven't got Benji to help us today, so let's do our best with our hymn. Let's sing up as best we can. Feel free to stand or sit as you prefer for him, number thirty-one. This is based on some words by Laura Horton Ludwig. You might want to adjust your position to get more comfortable. You might want to put down anything you don't need to be holding. Perhaps there's a posture that helps you feel more prayerful, settled, and centered. Whatever helps you get into the right state of body and mind for us to pray together now, and to be fully present to yourself, to each other, and to that which lies within us and beyond us. A longer view. Starting right where we are this morning. Let us shift our awareness ever outward in growing circles of concern. Let us call to mind those we know to be struggling this day. And perhaps that includes ourselves. Our neighbours in the wider community. Maybe we're all too aware of mistakes we've made or opportunities we've made. Taking time to notice what was good and count our blessings. All the ways in which others have helped or encouraged us, inspired, or delighted us. All the goodness and the beauty we have known, even in the midst of trouble. Let us give our prayers and thanks for all the good that we have been given. As this time of prayer draws to a close, we offer up our joys and our concerns, our hopes and our fears, our beauty and our brokenness. And we call on you for insight, healing, and renewal. As we look forward now to the coming week, help us to live well each day and be our best selves using our unique gift in the service of love, justice, and peace. Amen. Time to sing again now. Our second hymn this morning is on your hymnsheet if you're in the church, and again the words will be on screen. Who is my neighbour?

SPEAKER_01 22:29

This is quite a long excerpt adapted from The Creation, An Appeal to Save Life on Earth by E. O. Wilson. It's quite a challenging reading to read. I discovered two new words which I had never come across before, and I'll just point them out to you. One is right at the beginning of the reading, and the other is almost at the end. The first one is exemptionalism. I read it first of all as exceptionalism, but it's actually exemptionalism. Leave you to think about that. The other one comes right at the end, well, not quite right at the end. Artifactually. I'll give you that one as well. Artifactually. I read that as artificially, first of all. So you're going to get the right words from me. What you do with them in your own mind is obviously down to you. So let's give it a go. The philosophy of exemptionalism supposes that the special status on earth of humanity lifts us above the laws of nature. Exemptionalism takes one or the other of two forms. The first is secular. Don't change course now. Human genius will provide. The second is religious. Don't change course now. We are in the hands of God. Or the gods, or earth's karma, whatever. A cheerful faith in human destination destiny dismisses the rest of life through successive denials. The first says, Why worry? Extinction is natural. Life forms have been dying out over billions of years of history without any clear harm to the biosphere. Well, all this is true as far as it goes, but with a terrible twist. Except for giant meteorite strikes or other catastrophes every 100 million years or so, Earth has never experienced anything like the contemporary human juggernaut. The number of species is plummeting. The original level of biodiversity is not likely to be regained in any period of time that has meaning to the human mind. The second stage of denial takes form in a question. Why do we need so many species anyway? Why care? Especially when the vast majority are bugs, weeds and fungi. In time, people will more widely share the knowledge acquired by biologists that these often obscure life forms run Earth completely free for us. Each is a masterpiece of evolution, exquisitely well adapted to the niches of the natural environment in which it occurs. The surviving species around us are thousands of millions of years old. Their genes, having been tested each generation in the crucible of natural extinction selection, are codes written by countless episodes of birth and death. Their careless erasure is a tragedy that will haunt human memory forever. All the zoos in the world can sustain breeding populations of a maximum of only 2,000 mammal species out of about 5,000. Botanical gardens are more capacious, but will be overwhelmed by the tens of thousands of plant species needing protection. A lot of good can be accomplished, but at considerable expense per species, and it can only make a dent in the problem. And how are we even to think of such an emergency measure for the millions of species of insects and other invertebrates, most still unknown to science, and still more the tens of millions of microorganisms? There is no solution available, I assure you, to save Earth's biodiversity other than the preservation of natural environments in reserves large enough to maintain wild populations sustainably. Only nature can serve as the planetary arc. Save the creation, save all of it. No lesser goal is defensible. However, biodiversity arose, it was not put on this planet to be erased by any one species. This is not the time, nor will there ever be a time when circumstance justifies destroying Earth's natural heritage. Proud though we are of our special status, and justifiably so, let us keep our world-changing capabilities in perspective. All that human beings can imagine, all the fantasies we can conjure, all our games, simulations, epics, myths and histories, and yes, all our science dwindled to little more, but dwindled to little beside the full production of the biosphere. We have not even discovered more than a small fraction of Earth's life forms. We understand fully no one species among the millions that have survived our onslaught. It is true that non-human life preceded us on the planet, whether by a literal day, according to Genesis, or by more than 3.5 billion years, as the scientific evidence shows. It is still true that we are a latecomer. The biosphere into which humanity was born had its nature-born crises, but it was overall a beautifully balanced and functioning system. It would have continued to be so in the absence of Homo sapiens. Even today, a diminished world nature provides us ecosystem services such as water management, pollution control and soil enrichment equal in economic value to all that humanity artifactually generates. This planet can be paradise, but only if we take the rest of life with us.

SPEAKER_00 29:57

Thanks, David. So we're moving into a time of meditation now, and to take us into the stillness, I'm going to share a poem by Camille Dungey, which comes at biodiversity from a different angle on the slant. Following the poem, we're going to hold a few minutes of silence, which will end with the sound of a bell, and then we're going to hear some more music for meditation. So again, do what you need to do to get comfortable, adjust your position, put your feet flat on the floor, maybe, if that helps you to feel grounded and steadied. And the words are just an offering. Feel free to use this time to meditate in your own way. Characteristics of Life by Camille Dungy. Ask me if I speak for the snail, and I will tell you I speak for the snail. Speak of underneathedness and the welcome of mosses, of life that springs up, little lives that pull back and wait for a moment. I speak for the damselfly, waterskeet, mollusk, the caterpillar, the beetle, the spider, the ant. I speak from the time before spinelessness was frowned upon. Ask me if I speak for the moon jelly. I will tell you one thing today and another tomorrow, and I will be as consistent as anything alive on this earth. I move as the currents move with the breezes. What part of your nature drives you? You, in your cubicle, ought to understand me. I filter and filter and filter all day. Ask me if I speak for the nautilus, and I will be silent as the nautilus shell on a shelf. I can be beautiful and useless if that's all you know to ask of me. Ask me what I know of longing, and I will speak of distances between meadows of night blooming flowers. I will speak the impossible hope of the firefly. You with a candle burning and only one chair at your table must understand such wordless desire. To say it is mindless is missing the point.

SPEAKER_02 39:01

We are stewards in our brief time of life's great web on this small planet, made so by the twists and turns of evolution. We are not masters of the earth. It is in believing so that we have wreaked such havoc. Teach us humility, great spirits, lest we perish. We are part of the natural order and its interdependence. We cannot float above its struggles, insulate ourselves from its cycles of life and death. They are ours too. As stewards, we are gardeners and foresters, herdsmen and tillers of the soil. And sometimes we mistake the place of things that we destroy, like nature's hunters which keep the biosphere in balance, though red in tooth and claw, for there is a time to kill as well as a time to heal. Teach us great spirit to do both with reverence and compassion. But there is never a time to be cruel or wantonly despoil. And neither is there a time to feel guilt at being who we are. We belong here. We have a right to be here too. We are children of the earth, with all its blood and beauty, all its sentience and insouciance, all its suffering and pain. Like all creatures who breathe your breath of life, the lion, the wolf, the bear, the great whale, the scurrying ant, we are your vessels, great spirits, members of this good creation. We are involved in it all. We cannot live untouched or not touching. Save us from being pillagers and poisonous, inflictors of cruelty, and save us from the sentimentality that morphs into intolerance and hatred. So may our brief tenure of the earth leave it rich in kindness, life and beauty.

SPEAKER_00 42:25

Thanks, Julia. We've got a bonus hymn this week. There's so many good hymns on environmental themes. I thought we'd squeeze this one in. Number one five six in your hymn books. The Earth is the Lord's. In view of a sermon from me this week, I want to share this reflection from the UU Minister Anna Levy Lyons. I was so pleased to find this. It's an extended excerpt of a sermon from her, so it's long for a reading but short for a sermon, about eight minutes. But it says just what I wanted us to hear today. She writes. Those of you who went to Sunday school when you were kids may have happy images in your head of Noah and the Ark. The smiling giraffes and cows and lions going two by two up the ramp into the big boat. Noah and his family waving like they're going on a cruise. And of course, the end of the story when the flood subsides and you have that post-rain smell of the earth, and everything is all sparkly and clean and new with a beautiful rainbow in the sky. That's how it always looks in the kids' picture books, anyway. But the way it's described in the text and the reality of the modern day floods, well, that's not so happy. Around the world is we're getting storms and floods that are increasingly biblical in their proportions, and nobody is smiling and waving. One idea that has resonated through the millennia that at root humans and the earth are one and the same. In the beginnings of the biblical origin myth, God takes a handful of earth in Hebrew Adama and breathes life into it to create the first human, Adam. Adama, Adam. The Adam has no gender, no race, no language, no religion, no political affiliation. It is simply an earthling, a creature made out of earth and infused with the spirit, the breath of God. Through the generations we've sensed that the earth is our essence, it's our home, our origin, and our final resting place. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. When we bury a loved one's body, or indeed sprinkle ashes in a sacred place, we feel that we're returning a loved one to their source. And it's true, of course. Earth becomes plants, which become our bodies either by eating the plants directly or indirectly. And when we die, the remains of our body become the earth again. So what happens to the earthling in the Genesis story? The earthling is given a garden, the text says, with every kind of a tree that is beautiful and good for food. It's a paradise where the earthling, like a baby, is given everything it needs. But the earthling is also given limits on this use of natural resources. Using only part of what's here will be more than enough for you, God says. And as most of us know from the story, that does not go well. They get cast out of the garden, and life for the first time becomes hard. Now they have to work the earth to grow food, and things just get worse from there. Jealousy and greed crop up, a brother fights with a brother. And then there's the flood. The Genesis text introduces the flood story by saying, And God regretted having made humankind in the earth. And God's heart grieved, and God said, I'll wipe out the Adam who I've created from the face of the earth. I'll create uh I'll wipe out from human to animal to creeping thing and the bird of the skies because I regret that I made them. It's the worst condemnation possible. And when God explains the flood to Noah, God says it's because the earth is filled with violence. Noah is apparently an exception. It is said that Noah walked with God. He's described as a righteous man, blameless in his age. That is an interesting way to put it. Blameless in his age. In his age sounds like a qualifier, like people who say that so-and-so is honest for a politician. It's not entirely a compliment. Noah isn't blameless in an absolute sense. He isn't perfect, he isn't a saint. He's just pretty good relative to his times, which apparently are pretty bad. He's real, he's good, but he's real. He walks with God, he's trying. And so God chooses him and his family to survive and pass those pretty good genes on to the rest of humanity. God chooses Noah to build the Ark, and he gives very God, I should say, uh leave out the pronouns, God gives very detailed specifications. So many cubits wide and long and tall, see all the edges with pitch, three stories, one window and a door on the side, and bring in two of every living creature to be protected from the storm. Two elephants, two mosquitoes, two of everything in between. Noah is also supposed to bring in every type of plant that is good for food, presumably food that's good for the animals and the humans, which would pretty much include every type of plant. Every kind of seed would need to be there so that the plants could regenerate. So Noah is given the responsibility of bringing the entire living biodiversity of the earth into the safety of the ark. You'd think that Noah might find this a little burdensome, even a little unfair. You might think he would complain, why should I have to clean up a mess that I did not make? The parallels between this ancient myth and our real life story today are quite chilling. In each, it is human wrongdoing, misuse of natural resources, and violence that brings the threat of destruction to the earth. In each, the destruction threatens not only the humans who caused it, but all living creatures. In each, the destruction is to be carried out by means of flood, storms, a deluge of rain, and a powerful rising of water. And in each, it is only through the actions of imperfect people who are willing to take responsibility for cleaning up the mess that they did not make that life can be saved. If Noah is a hero because of anything, it's because of this. He takes responsibility even though he isn't especially guilty. He does everything he can to make things right again. We haven't personally, single-handedly made the choices that caused storms and floods. But weather was likely made more extreme by the choices of our age, our time. We most likely haven't personally directly polluted the earth or the oceans with our own hands. But the economic systems in which we participate have. None of us caused global warming, but the people of our generation and our parents' generation did. And it's up to us now to take responsibility for it. There is no singularly evil person that deserves all the blame, and there is no same, but no one blameless paid person in an absolute sense. No one who is singularly qualified to fix it all. There is only us good in our age. We each walk with the God of our understanding in our own way, and we try. In the modern version of building an art, we don't have the benefit of detailed instructions. It's a lot more complicated these days. But we do have the wisdom of the stories of our traditions. Stories that paint for us a different relationship with the earth. We have the ancient teaching that we are Adam, made of earth and not separate from it. We have the vision of a beautiful garden in which we live simply and in peace, taking no more from it than we need. And we have the inkling of what it means to care so much for every person, every species, every form of life on this earth, that we bring every single one into our circle, into our arc of compassion. So may we be blessed like Noah, with the courage to clean up messes that we did not make, and the strength to weather whatever storms may come our way. Amen. If you're online, oh thanks to Juliet for greeting and Marianne for making coffee. If you're online, do stay on for a chat with Lochlan if you can. If you're here in person, do stay for tea and cake. It's apple and pear cake or chocolate beer cake. Chocolate beer cake, yeah that's right. Delia Smith special. You can stay longer if you like for the afternoon, which will go on from one till three. You can just stay and chat, or you can rummage in our craft boxes, do some colouring, painting, whatever you fancy. As Roger mentioned, there'll be a small ceremony in the garden at half past twelve, so you can go and get a cup of tea first, where we'll be scattering Jonah's ashes. All those who want to pay their respects would be welcome. Tonight on Friday at seven, we've got our online heart and soul contemplative spiritual gathering. This week's theme is enthusiasm. Sign up with me if you want to come along to that. We're meant to be having a walk on Tuesday, but this may be scuffled by the tube strike. So if you were thinking of coming, let me know so that I can tell you the last minute call once we know what's happening. That'll be around Greenwich Park if it does go ahead. Sonia will be running a near class on Friday lunchtime here at the church. Uh next Sunday, uh we are talking about finding the mother tree in the Better World Book Club. We have still got a couple of copies of this left to to loan out. If you want to read it this week and come along, please do. And I've already got the book for the following month. Is this working? So if you want to borrow that, take a copy as well. But let me know you got it so that I know who we've loaned them out to. Next Sunday is also our membership uh service and AGM. So please members do come along for that. Uh it's not too late to join. If you've been coming along for a while and you feel that you belong, the more the merrier. It's not about money, there's no subscription fee, it's about a commitment and support in the work we do here. All the activities are on the back of your order of service. You get them in the Friday email as well. If you haven't already signed up for the mailing list, please do. We've very much got a life beyond Sunday morning. So do what you can to keep in touch, look out for each other, and nurture those supportive connections. As we go forth from this sacred space, may we celebrate the wonder of our shared lives. May we recognize our connection to all that is in and on the earth. May we truly and deeply value the inherent worth of all in this astonishing, interconnected web of existence. May we commit ourselves to a new and better way, and may we hold our commitments and each other gently and firmly as we meet the days to come.