In Harmony
The Rev. Dr. Matthew Johnson-Doyle
May 1, 2011

Reading: This World by Mary Oliver
From Street Trees by Melody Ermachild Chavis

Message: In Harmony

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 purchase a CD of the sermon in the church office. © Matthew Johnson-Doyle, 2011.

This is my home,
my only home.
And, yes, there’s smoke across the harbor and factories on the shore,
but this is still my home, my only home.
So rock me goddess, in the gentle arms of eden.

This is our home.
This world –
where the once-lers have cut down all the truffula trees,
yet we hold the seed,
yet we are the unless –
though it must be said, we are also the once-lers.

This is our home,
this world –
this world in which, whatever the subject,
the morning sun glimmers it.
So fancy is the world, maybe the stars sing.

This is our home –
this is our world –
a both – and world.
A world where singing stars are obscured by the too-bright haze of incandescent lights;
a world where a ginko tree grows, protected by wire mesh,
on the sidewalk of a drug-ridden neighborhood;
this is our home, this is our world.

It’s both –and.
Both beautiful and tragic.
Both broken and lovely.

There’s that famous quotation, you know the one –
by E.B. White:

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to save the world
and a desire to savor the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.

When comes time to preach about ecology, about earth day,
about this world,
we preachers are often troubled by the same dilemma.

What shall it be today?

Shall I harangue my people?
For the wasteful purchases, for the gas-guzzlers,
for the water bottles, the meat-eating,
all those things that they should know better,
or do better –
and it’s OK, because I can include myself in that jeremiad,
and we can all resolve to do better?
And I could do that.

Or, in a slight variation on that theme,
shall I summon us to act on the conscience of others?
To write letters and make calls and push for a price on carbon,
an end to factory farms, a community garden on every block?
Shall I say,
we must be the yeast, the leaven, which will change our world?
And I could do that.

Or, instead, would it be better this earth day
to remind us to celebrate the world,
to be little Mary Olivers,
noticing the beautiful stones,
telling you about the dramatic skies, the budding trees,
the flowing river out my window,
encouraging you to make plans to get outside,
to go up to the wetlands or the dells,
to get out the park,
and breathe in and breathe out,
and enjoy this blessing,
freely given unto you?
I could do that.

Preachers are torn between these impulses.
It makes it hard to plan the day.

I supposed I could look back at last year’s sermon,
and see what I did then –
switch it off, you know –
one year harangue, one year praise,
and so on, back and forth.

But of course, the truth lies, as it usually does,
when you hold both these realities together
hold them together in your heart, your head, your pulsing nerves.
Both truths: the world is beautiful and the world is hurting.

Melody Chavis makes it clear:
to hold the gingko trees in one hand and the summit tree of the mountains in the other,
to feel the connection between their roots,
as they pass through our heart and tangle.

It’s a lovely image,
and it’s an arresting story.
It’s a story we could tell right here in Rockford:
the forest city, a place full of beautiful parks and gardens,
and yet there are neighborhoods with too little green,
too little care.
And the absence of vegetation in these neighborhoods,
is, of course, only a symptom:
a remember of how we’ve failed to learn the central lesson:
we are all connected.
the inescapable network of mutuality.

The whole world is like this:
beautiful and hurting.
Nature, people –
and people, of course, are simply a subset of nature,
not, as we sometimes pretend,
something different and apart.

Nature can be beautiful –
the waves lapping the shore, the flowers up here in these vases –
and it can be terrible –
as the devastation in Tuscaloosa reminds us, again.

We are part of nature,
and we can be beautiful – kind, creative, generous, hopeful.
And we can be terrible – cruel, oppressive, greedy, violent.

The same storms that produced those horrible tornado’s all through the south,
have swollen the Ohio river.
There is a levee – the bird’s point levee,
just south of the town of CAY-RO Cairo, IL,
where the Mississippi and the Ohio join up.

As I prepared these remarks Thursday night,
the town of Cairo was about to be flooded.
The Army Corp of Engineers had designed the Bird’s Point Levee
to be destroyed if need be,
and had designated miles of Missouri farmland
as a flood plain,
so that, if they had to, they could save the city.
The Corps was ready to blow the plug and let the water out,
but the State of Missouri sued to stop it.

Thursday night, in Cape Girardeau, Missouri,
Judge Steven Limbaugh was hearing the case,
in the Rush Limbaugh Sr. courthouse –
The Sr. being the father of you-know-who
and Judge Steven being his cousin.

This should be an easy one, right:
flood the farmland, save the town.
3000 people live there – save the town, right?
That’s what the levee is designed to do.

But.

Well, the speaker of the house in Missouri,
he was asked, if you had to choose, Missouri farmland, or Cairo,
which should be flooded?

Cairo, he said. Trust me, he said. I’ve been there.
Everybody laughed.
He said, you know what I’m talking about, right?

And, what was he talking about?
Cairo is 60 percent black.

In 1909, Cairo resident Will James was lynched will hundreds looked on –
In 1969, the national guard had to be called in to desegregate the town.

Some people think racism is something from the past,
but in 2011, some folks think it would be better to flood the black town
rather than some mostly-empty farmland which is a designated floodplain.

Illinois, which has joined the suit on the side of the Army Corps,
wasn’t hopeful, Thursday night, for a favorable ruling from
Judge Stephen Limbaugh.
In the Rush Limbaugh Sr. courthouse.

Friday, Judge Limbaugh, in fact, ruled on the side of the Army Corps;
how about that.
Missouri appealed, and that was denied Saturday.
So maybe, this once, reason will prevail.
It’s still possible they won’t have to blow the levee at all –
depends on the weather the next few days.
Nonetheless, it offends me that there was even a doubt about this.

Katrina.
Toxic waste dumps in poor neighborhoods, seeping into the water.
Uranium mining run-off on the rivers in Native American reservations.
Don’t worry about Global Warming –
it’s just the Bangladeshi’s who will find their whole country underwater.
Water out of the tap in South Chicago – or Southwest Rockford –
that you dare not drink.

We call this “environmental racism” –
though that seems like too sanitary a term.

It’s a crime against humanity and against nature,
all at once,
and since humanity is nature
and since we are all connected –
even if we deny it,
it is a form of self-mutilation.

It’s evil.

And it happens every day.

A braid, I am told, is the weaving together of three or more stands:
so braid these four things with me today.

1. A little over a week ago was Earth Day,
which we’re marking today.
The Unitarian Universalist Ministry for the Earth
has encouraged congregations to take 40 days –
and you can start today, go through the 9th of June –
40 days to do something for the earth.
And this year the focus is on water.

So they encourage folks to conserve water,
to stop using bottled water,
to learn about water justice,
to make a trip to their local water treatment plant,
and so on.
They also suggest collecting rainwater for irrigation –
an act which is illegal in much of the American West
and in countries around the world
where the water that falls from the sky,
and the stuff under your feet,
is owned by a multinational agribusiness company,
and not for you to do what you please with.
This is strand one.

2. This weekend, the national YWCA is encouraging organizations,
schools, businesses, houses of worship,
to take a stand against Racism.
To say, no more.
To take the pledge against racism and commit to standing against it
in their personal, professional, and volunteer lives.
I signed us up.
I got stickers.
I’m going to ask you to take the pledge with me.

And you can get a sticker before you leave today.
Wear it with pride all day.

3. Today is the last in a series of sermons
on the six sources of the Unitarian Universalist faith.
Next week’s music Sunday, at 11am, will celebrate all these sources in music.
The source we are focused on today
is Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.

Notice the both-and character –
that these traditions – pagan, neo-pagan, ancient, modern,
these traditions calls us both to celebration and harmony,
to be awed by nature and to live in accordance with its rhythms.
Earth-centered traditions are deeply committed
to the golden rule – except they extend it to all of existence,
and they triple it –
what you do to another, to the earth, comes back to you three times.
That’s some serious mo-jo,
and I don’t think we’d hesitate to do a better job of caring for the earth
and each other if we took that teaching to heart.

4. We celebrate Flower Communion today.
Norbert Capek, the minister of our congregation in Prague,
invented this simply ritual –
everyone brings a flower, everyone leaves with a different flower –
to remind his people of the beauty of a diverse community,
that each person brought important gifts,
and each person mattered,
and it was together, in this beloved community,
that real beauty happened.

This wasn’t cheap talk.

Norbert believed it, and it was this same belief
that led him to oppose the Nazi’s,
and this same belief for which he died in the Holocaust.
That everyone – Jews, Christians, Unitarians, every religion,
every tribe, every individual person
was sacred, was beautiful,
as a flower is unique and beautiful,
different from all others.

So take these four strands,
braid them together.
Water is a question of ecological justice.
We stand against racism.
We celebrate life, and seek to live in harmony with nature.
We see beauty in every diverse life.

But those together,
and ask yourself:
how am I going to live?

How shall I use water, energy, food,
such that others – other people, other life –
might thrive, too?

How shall I vote, that we, together,
will care for the most vulnerable?

How shall I learn, and teach others,
about the truth of the world we live in,
get under the gloss and find out what’s really going on?

How shall I make connections,
stand in solidarity, stand up for justice?

How shall I celebrate the beauty of the earth,
and turn my feelings of gratitude and joy
to service, to caring, to harmony?

Put those threads together and ask yourself,
how shall I live?
What will I do today that will be different?
What will I do tomorrow?

There’s so much to do.
But don’t give up.
Plant that gingko tree in the sidewalk,
tend it, even if your hands get cut,
because – because if enough of us act,
speak up, make a little change at a time,
if enough of us seek to live in harmony with life, of which we are a part,
well, then, change will happen.

We’ve come a long away since the early 70’s,
when Dr. Suess wrote the Lorax.
A long way, but we’ve got a long way to go, too,
and some of our problems are pretty huge.
But we don’t lack the capability, or the knowledge, not really.
What we lack, mostly, is the will.
What we lack is the courage.

So, let’s make common cause.
Because we are all connected.
We are all part of the network of destiny –
summit trees and sidewalk trees,
the Missouri farmer and the Cairo child,
the sun and the moon and the stars,
me and you and the wild deer who live in the woods
behind me,
the stones, fancy on the shore,
the children of your children’s children,
who shall inherit this world,
we’re all connected.
Everything, everyone.

And when each part of it thrives,
when all may unfold to its best,
why, then all is beauty,
all is lovely,
all is worthy of song.