40/40/40 for the Earth
The Rev. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
April 25, 2010

Reading: Ode to the Onion by Pablo Neruda

Message: 40/40/40 for the Earth

Note: The sermon is an oral event. This manuscript may not reflect the exact spoken words. If you want to hear what was actually said, you can listen to sermon visit our website at www.uurockford.org. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2010.

I’ve known my friend and colleague John
for many years – his wife Sarah and I helped plan
Unitarian Universalist young adult events when we were both in college.

John reminds me of my sister,
and many others who I know –
including some of you –
who take ecology very seriously.

I’ve always known John as a vegan –
no animal products.
No dairy. No meat. Nothing.

I knew that John cared a lot about climate change,
and I guess I always assumed that his eating decision was about that.
And partly, it is.
But I discovered recently that
part of it comes from a time he spent
working at a humane society –
it opened his eyes and his heart,
and he treats animals with a reverence and care
that is uncommon in our world.

This year, for the fortieth anniversary of earth day,
John and some others have organized this campaign –
40 – 40 – 40.
The idea again is simple:
for the 40th anniversary of earth day,
40 people in a congregation
will each commit to do something new
for 40 days.

40 is an auspicious religious number, of course –
and a familiar one.
Some of you may be wondering,
is this UU lent?
If you want it to be, sure.
But this more about adding than subtracting –
although it can be about subtracting.

40 is a religious number
because 40 years is just over a generation
and 40 days is just over a month –
it is the number that the Hebrews used
to describe a kind-of-long time.
Not really long, but not short.

Time enough that it was serious,
but not so long that is felt like forever.

40 is a time to grow up,
if we haven’t already.
40 is long enough for a change to sink in.

Anyway, John tells me that next year
we’ll do 41 / 41/ 41
and just keep adding.

The point of the 40-40-40 campaign is simple:
Earth Day needs to be about more
than celebrating the earth.
It needs to be more than a time for corporate sponsors
to put on green-tinted chemical suits.
It needs to be a time that we examine our own habits,
our own lives and choices.
The campaign is focused around the choices we make about what we eat.
Ethical eating is the current study-action-issue
of our association of congregations,
and it is a place where policy, health, religion, and ecology
all intersect.
It’s a good place to start.

It’s also a deeply emotional issue –
I know that.
If, after hearing all I have to say today,
and looking over the list,
you don’t want to do this,
that’s OK.
If I go to far,
or if I don’t go far enough,
well, I hope we will keep talking.
That’s the idea, after all –
that we become more conscious and reflective about our choices,
and especially about the choices which are made for us by others.

I decided that I wanted to invite us to participate in 40-40-40
before I looked at the list of suggestions.
I was thinking,
OK, what will I do for forty days?
I can’t very well preach about this and not do something myself.
I already do some:
no beef or pork.

But I knew instantly what would be a worthy challenge:
something that would really push me,
that might help me be healthier
and make a difference for the world we share:
I thought,
I should give up fast food.

This is a hard one.
But I thought, I should try.

I grew up in the suburbs in the 1980s.
I grew up in the land of fast food.
And I have fond memories of these places:
I remember the McDonalds where
we often had birthday parties,
the slides and the fries.
When I was a kid I didn’t like
sauces or, you know, vegetables,
so it was chicken nuggets and French fries for me.

In Junior High,
there was an Arby’s about a block from the school.
We would walk there and get some curly fries.

In high school, oh, my favorite still:
Taco Bell.
There was a kind of ritual aspect to our Taco Bell patronage:
after Sunday Night youth group at the Unitarian church,
we would all go to the bell.
We even had a rule and a practice in our youth group sessions:
whenever someone would start to get off-topic
in our discussions,
or start sharing things that were more gossip than real,
we would say, “taco bell.”
The idea was that youth group could be spiritual
and taco bell could be social.

When someone new came,
we would always show them the trick
where you put a rusted penny on the Hot Sauce,
let it sit for a minute,
then pick it up and see how it had become bright and shiny on that side.

I remember when the first Taco Bell opened
in the small town where I went to college –
we were so excited
and I could tell you the location of five different bells
in Colorado Springs –
here in Rockford, the two that are convenient to me are both here on State,
but McDonald’s is only two blocks away,
so I’ve wound up there more often that I would like.

Look, sometimes the speed is helpful.
My life can get a little crazy sometimes –
or, you know, if you are on the road,
fast food is what there is.

But I let it get out of hand.
I can make a nice lunch at home –
a sandwich with organic turkey and cheese,
fresh red onions,
spicy mustard
an apple, still juicy.
This isn’t hard.
It saves me money, time, and its better for me and the earth.
But it doesn’t contain nearly as much sugar and salt,
and those receptors hold a hard grip on the brain.

40 days, I thought. I could maybe make that work.
No McDonalds, or Taco Bell, or Burger King, or Wendy’s,
or any of the rest.

That was my thought –
and then I looked at the list of suggestions
from John and the 40-40-40 team,
and what was there at the top of the list?
Well, you can see for yourself on your insert –
no fast food.

If that’s not a sign, then nothing is.

I also noted the second suggestion there:
say grace.

I’m not a regular out-loud grace speaker,
but I guess this is still part of my problem with fast food:
it can be so fast there is no time for grace.
Especially when you are eating in your car,
carrying on with your day,
your mind already on the next thing,
not paying attention to what you are doing in that moment.

Saying grace.
Saying, this is grace-filled.

Saying, thank you for this food before me,
for this luminous flask,
this celestial orb,
this food that sustains
the day laborer on the hard road.

It is such a lovely poem,
Ode to an Onion
and what is lovely about it to me is how it weaves together
the two central themes:
the beauty and tactile sensuality of good food –
how it smells and tastes, looks and sounds,
the onion slices cooking in oil,
the tear without mourning on your cheek -
this theme,
and also the theme of justice –
that this is the food of the poor,
the food that is within reach,
that sustains.

Fast food only seems cheap.
In truth, it is so very costly.
An onion, grown in the secret dark earth,
this is food within reach.
This is saying grace.

Around the world, and through most of history,
food was something sacramental –
a sacrament being a visible sign of the holy in the world.
The Jews, the Muslims, and the Hindu’s all believe
that some foods are holy, and some profane.
This is a common belief in indigenous traditions around the world.
The Jains, the Seventh Day Adventists, and others
hold vegetarianism to be a necessary part of the religious life.

Our own Unitarian ancestors had a higher sense of this, too
that eating was a high stakes religious activity –
especially the transcendentalists,
who established Brook Farm as a place where
they could grow their own food and live together in harmony.
Of course, to few of them knew anything about farming,
and this didn’t really work out.

Intention isn’t everything.
Sometimes you need skill, too.

In recent years, many of us have been paying more attention to what we eat.
We feel that something has gone off-kilter,
off-centered,
when we don’t know what we are eating.
We want to live more lightly on the earth.
Local foods, organic foods, a diet for a smaller planet –
all these things have had a home in liberal religion,
a religion that believes that this world,
and the most everyday things of the world –
how we live and eat and work and love –
are things that matter.

For all our taco bell trips,
when my youth group went to conferences with other youth,
we would always surprise the camp and conference directors
with how many vegetarians we would tell them to prepare for –
½ or more of us, as I recall.

Food is a sacrament.
It gives life.
A product of the dark earth
and the waters of the heavens,
a miracle.

To speak a grace –
to eat with gracefulness,
this is an act of faith and courage.
In a world that doesn’t really want us to know
what we’re eating,
we can pause,
we can do this essential activity with intentionality and awareness.

Well, I’m wondering what you are thinking about.
Are you thinking about something that you could add
or take away for 40 days?
Something you’d like to try out?
Remember, this is something new.
If you are already ahead of the curve,
push yourself to the next step.
If you are just getting started,
this is a great time to stretch yourself.

Anybody else going to join me in giving up fast food?
How about the second suggestion:
saying grace before meals?
Anyone not doing this who will try it for 40 days?
What else are you thinking about?
I’d like to hear a few ideas.

. . .

Here’s what I think:
whatever we might do,
whether it is officially saying grace or not,
whatever we might do is a way of saying grace.
It is way of blessing the things you are about to put into your body
it is a way of blessing the life you will live
with that energy.
It is a way of blessing the earth our home,
the animals who are our relatives,
the people who toil in the fields,
who prepare and transport.
When we eat with our ethical selves,
with awareness and thoughtfulness,
this is a blessing,
a way of naming that food
and the lives it sustains
are sacraments –
an everyday common thing
transformed by our purposefulness into something holy.

One more important point about this:
we will inevitably move from individual action
to communal action.
As we seek to make different choices in our own lives,
we will find ourselves in company with others
who also seek out those different choices.
We’ll see our common struggle.
We start with appreciating the onion
for its flavor and beauty,
and then stand on the side of the poor of the world,
for whom this is both about beauty
and about justice.

Look, these things are complicated.
I’m not an expert.
There’s a lot of hyperbole and exaggeration.
But it seems to me
that when Guatemalan farmers
stop growing corn and beans to eat on their own table
and start growing broccoli,
with pesticides and fertilizers,
for markets in the United States,

and then Guatemalan children
start going hungry
because there’s nothing to eat,
well, it seems something is wrong.

I know this:
there is plenty of food in the world
to ensure that every person everywhere
has enough good food to eat.
I know this, too:
the poor in this country live in what are called “food deserts” –
places where there are no supermarkets,
there is no fresh food,
the only choices are processed chemicals
masquerading as food,
fast food restaurants,
junk.
Unjust food is just one more way
that the rich get richer
and the poor get poorer.
And now we are exporting this system
to places around the world.

This is complicated.
There’s no sure evidence that organic foods are better for you,
but they do taste a lot better,
and I just find it hard to believe
that all those chemicals can be harmless.

Eventually, we will have to do more than make personal choices.
We will need to change the structure of things.
We will need to remove soda machines from schools
and serve real food and not processed cardboard,
which is how I remember my school lunches.
We will need to change the incentives around what we grow
spending less of our tax dollars on subsidizing corn syrup,
for example.
There are folks who are really working these questions –
Michael Pollen, the author,
Jamie Oliver, the chef,
Michelle Obama.
And millions of others.
Some of them in this room:

I think it’s great that this is a congregation
that includes folks who are organic farmers and ranchers,
who grow vegetables in their backyards,
who cultivate their own honey,
who belong to natural food co-ops and vegetarian potluck circles.

This is complicated and its personal,
but this isn’t one of those things that feel hopeless.
There are so many things we can do,
starting right now.

We will need collective action,
structural change, it’s true.
If you are ready to work that, let’s do it.

But if you are just starting,
then just start –
start with your body and your life.
For your health, and for the health of the earth.

Start with saying grace –
in word or deed –
treat each bite as a holy act –
an ethical act,
an act of privilege in a world where some cannot,
start with this sense of respect and reverence,
and the rest will follow.

Responsive Reading: A Declaration of Interdependence

Leader: We believe it is imperative to care for the Earth, its vital ecosystems and all living beings who inhabit it.
Congregation: We are relational creatures, capable of both good and evil.
Leader: We have experienced enough brokenness, within and beyond ourselves, to seek the power of forgiveness and reconciliation.
Congregation: We are called to make choices that help to heal and transform ourselves and the world, and to move toward solidarity with all beings.
Leader: Why? Because we believe it is our responsibility to be stewards of the Earth.
Congregation: We believe in the beauty and renewing power of nature.
Leader: In response, we become more willing to replace the desire to consume with the
responsibility to sustain. In this way,
Congregation: We recognize the need for discipline as we build a world that is both just and sustainable.
Leader: We are called to be stewards, restoring the Earth and protecting all beings.
All: As we manifest this vision, may we cast yet another, and then another web, ever widening our circle of compassion.

40-40-40 Pledge

Matthew: Take a moment to read and consider 40-40-40 I will take this pledge; will you join me? If you are so moved, say with me:
Congregation: As an expression of our Unitarian Universalist values, we pledge to change some aspects of our lives and behaviors for 40 days, for the sake of the Earth and all who live on it.
Leader: May it be so.