I don’t know how much fear of that grief drives climate inaction -it’s a really messy and complicated topic. But honestly, I think many people don’t get more involved or more deeply active because they have no idea what’s happening around them. I don’t mean a general apathy or disengagement. I mean they simply do not get word, don’t know a group is cleaning up that creek, or have no idea that all you need for composting is to sign up. The planet needs a town crier staff.
Without a vision of shared life, without something generative to move towards, we turn inwards. Our units of concern become smaller and smaller. A city, a neighborhood. A single church group, a social club. A gaggle of high school friends, college alums. Like-minded companions online. Your biological family.
I have been asked to speak at a Climate Justice retreat about the potential before us in regards to living with Climate Change, and I suppose that syntax itself reveals my first point. We are living with it now. It isn’t stoppable. What IS stoppable are the worst effects of inaction, and for that we need only begin.
“Take more time to say less” was excellent advice that I received this weekend while running a rehearsal of the upcoming Saturday Seminary Series on Scarcity & Abundance. It’s funny because this is the first piece of advice I used to give new Lectors in The Episcopal Church when I worked as a verger: “Slow. Down. If you feel like you are speaking too slowly, take it back another notch. Like you’re wading through molasses? Take a breath and slow down again.”
I discovered in my work with young people that they might choose specific words and phrases to test and question, try out and explore, or struggle to describe but that they were also always testing our reactions to their words. Were we listening? Would we be triggered by something salacious or edgy and cease to see them? Could we reach behind the words and hear what was really being said?
I know most of the country felt horrified and helpless as Flint, MI, went without a safe water supply for years. YEARS. And even now, the lead pipes remain a clear and present danger to the populations they serve. We rarely think about where the water in our ubiquitous bottled water comes from, but much of it is essentially stolen by mega corporations like Nestle and Coca Cola. You can walk into your local convenience store right now and buy water bottled from Las Vegas’ municipal supply. Las Vegas. A desert city.
Last week, the primary bridge over the Mississippi River between Arkansas and Tennessee was shut down due to a crack all the way through a structural beam. Repairs will take months, and the impact on national shipping will be felt for much longer. Much of the 50,000 daily vehicle average over the bridge is I-40 East-West long haul shipping truck traffic. The southern riverbarge traffic was also affected, although the Coast Guard opened the lanes on Friday.
Many things matter to me, and I am vocal in several spheres. But it is articulating and uplifting the moral voice in the care of Creation that makes up most of my work. I believe that we who live in that world are ideally placed to help us transform and shift as a culture into one that can thrive in a world of radical global change.
I grew up on the Mississippi River, in Memphis, TN. Water does not only form our western border, water is all over the city itself. The Wolf River winds its way into the Mississippi here, and small streams and creeks are woven throughout the neighborhoods. Much of the city’s storm runoff system is made up of these water channels reinforced with structure and drains.
Honestly, I haven’t always celebrated Earth Day in such a joyous or communal way as is usually done. Oftentimes, I have chosen to be on my own with Creation, either on the banks of some body of water, or riding a train. I grew up on the Mississippi River, so water will always soothe my soul. But ride a train?
In the ancient times of the Hebrew people, the Pharaoh of Egypt was disturbed by a dream. In his dream, 7 fat and lush cows were wholly consumed by skinny, scrawny cows but the lean cows did not change. It was as if they had eaten nothing. The Pharaoh called for Joseph to interpret his dream. Joseph, son of Jacob and Rachel, grandson of Isaac, was also an alien to Egypt, a foreigner. Joseph was a man of the Hebrew people and read the dream for the Pharaoh, perceiving God’s message. The 7 good cows are a time of growth and abundance, of heavy harvests and abundant water. The 7 bad cows are the following time of famine and scarcity. During the time of the good cows, we must save for the time of famine, when we must spend.
This is the counter-intuitive model of God, the way in which God calls us to be different. And the Pharaoh believed and responded. Great stores were made from abundant harvests and when the famines came, food was there to be dispersed. This intervention saved people throughout the land, and in fact fed Joseph’s own family towards the end of the Egyptian famine. But what a temptation it must have been to eat well in the days of heavy harvest, and to horde whatever could be found in times of little.
During the times of abundance and great wealth, stores and savings must be made. Reserves and reclamations must happen, for famine is next. In the time of scarcity and hunger, we must spend, disperse, and be generous in our support and care of our neighbor, the other. This is the will of God, the way of faith.
But here’s the hard truth in front of me now. THIS is our time of plenty, of heavy harvest and abundant water. Now. The next decade are our good cow years. This is the time to create the new systems for times of little. This is the time to craft reserves and build the relationships that will carry us through the famine. This is the time to find routes of synergy and leverage, to break apart the heresy of the zero-sum game.
The zero-sum game is the concept that within a system, there is a finite amount of X to be distributed and dispersed according to principles of effect. It’s the balanced budget. On a practical level, the zero-sum game breaks down easily, yet is persistent as a go-to rational for fear and hording-based action.
Almost nothing is truly discreet within a system like this. For a zero-sum game to even be a construct requires some level of unrealistic isolation which is impossible in real life. Life is messy. Systems are permeable, and mitigating factors can never really be corralled.
So stop trying to make it even. Stop trying to rationalize your hording and selfishness as responsible caring for your own. Find ways to live into a vision of abundance, and adopt deep patterns of generous giving and creative restoration. The fear of scarcity has a clawing effect on the soul, and will eat away at all joy. But as we move into times of chaos and a little bit of the unknown, carry this time of abundance and grace with you. Peace.
Rev. Jessica Abell, Prophet of the Apocalypse
The role of loss in climate work
Recently, I was a panelist for a group of faith leaders from Together Colorado interested in addressing care for creation and public policy. Each of us on the panel was to address our own eco-theology, and our thoughts specific to being a person of faith working in the public sphere. I found myself speaking about the call to hold spaces of grief, and to name the true and hard things. I said that one of my tasks as a clergyperson has been to name that the old is passing away, and that we are called to live differently.
After the panel presentations, we moved into smaller groups to discuss how we were moved, what resonated, and where we wanted to go. My own small group articulated a vision of hospice and midwifery, of endings and new beginnings, based in love and sanctuary and abundance. Only when we face with open eyes the endings, and grieve, can we also birth anew, and celebrate.
What is old is passing away. Species are becoming extinct and rainforests irrevocable lost weekly now. Portions of the ice making up Greenland melted 70 years early last month. If your hope about the environment rests in what was, in what is passing away before us, your heart will be broken. Franciscan theologian Mary McGann says that we are afraid to fall in love with the earth because we are afraid of having our hearts broken. And I get that. I do.
But we need not be afraid. There is new life in the endings, and only by facing the grief and lament can we move into a new vision of abundance and green sanctuary. We all carry varying images and visions for what could be. As a Christian, mine is deeply intertwined with the patterns of death and life, endings and resurrections.
But for us all to face the Climate Apocalypse with grace and love, and resilience, we must also face the grief, and lament. And know that this too is holy. We must discover what it means to care for this earth, and all of Creation, and how we as people of faith move and act together in a hope based in truth and solidarity.
Rev. Jessica Abell, Prophet of the Apocalypse
I loved Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Joss Whedon television program that aired over the turn of this century, from 1997 to 2003, generally on Tuesday nights. Facing a weekly “Big Bad” and the regular threat of the end of the world, Buffy and her team of friends and colleagues became well acquainted with crisis. “It’s Tuesday? Must be the apocalypse” was a common sentiment expressed. Perhaps my love of this fierce woman and her fight also set within me a comfort with Apocalypse. Something this show did well was to tell stories in which the endings and changes often included death, and yet always held a kernel of new life.
Nonetheless, grief and lament are real and active, and are of course part of the fear that holds at bay our requirement to face the Climate Apocalypse. Several years ago, I wrote a piece for an online journal that I’d intended to frame after the deep laments of the psalms. I titled it “God Has Left Creation” but the editor found that too stark, too severe. It is published under the title “Has God Left Creation?” And no, I do not believe God HAS left Creation. I believe that is impossible. But I certainly know that we who grieve the loss of so many things, and who grieve the death and pain to come, and search for hope and new life must also cry out. We must lament. For the curtain is being torn, much is being revealed, and all things will change.
“Marriage as Apocalypse” was my sermon title at the first same-gender wedding in the Episcopal Diocese of Colorado. The women marrying that day were good friends, and had been a couple for many years at that point, over 20. And yet I contended that the marriage itself, the new thing being entered into, WOULD bring apocalypse -in Greek, apocalypse simply means revelation, an unveiling.
Radical change due to climate shifts is imminent, and has in fact been happening for some time. Ask the residents of The Maldives.
Fires, floods, super-storms, tornadoes, bomb-cyclones, tsunamis, earthquakes and eruptions have already become more common –and all of this will only increase in frequency and scope. Climate Apocalypse is real, and what is up to us now is how we respond. Do we know who we are and who we want to be?
I suppose that I liken this to the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil narrative in the beginning of Genesis. I’ve never been comfortable with the framing of that as the FALL OF HUMANITY INTO SIN, but rather the choice to know. To know you are naked. To know you are hungry. To know you do not know. The choice to leave paradise. The choice to make, to create.
And so perhaps the Apocalypse we enter into now is like that as well.
A chance to choose. A choice in how to live.
Because something that Buffy taught me is that Apocalypse can only be faced with open eyes, in community and with love.
Rev. Jessica Abell, Prophet of the Apocalypse
