It is the small connections that anchor us not only to each other, but to our own lives and selves. I’m a fan of the four-way stop as a traffic intervention because it forces interaction between drivers. But all the small exchanges matter. Nodding to the stranger we pass on the street, or the neighbor. Taking the extra minute for the next question. It’s more than giving up a parking place.
The most frequent phrase in scripture is “Be not afraid” and it always precedes the messages of God. It is spoken hundreds of times by God’s angles and prophets throughout the stories of God and God’s people.
This is not an accident or a coincidence. This isn’t a joke or a baseless wish. This is actually the entire point.
as I consider the Incarnation of the Divine this year, I’m struck not by that infant but by his parents, a couple on a journey -not one they’d planned nor would’ve chosen, the trip to Bethlehem for the Census, but also their broader journey. An unplanned child. Visions of justice proclaimed by Mary. The flight to a foreign land for their safety, perceived by the dreamer Joseph. The parents of Jesus of Nazareth were on their own journey of life, one full of danger and protection, vision and purpose.
I grew up in the American South but was born in the plain states, near the Yanktoni reservation in South Dakota. We visited our grandparents every summer, giving us a respite from the Memphis heat and providing us a small dive into the world of crop farming and small town rural life. Post retirement, my grandparents were leaning into being farmers and I learned a lot about how important things like soil quality and water access could be key for survival.
The thing is that the American South is fertile land and flush with water. I had never before considered what it was like for the LACK of water to be the problem. Floods and rising waters like creeks that washed out roads and bridges were the dangers around water at home. Well, that and the Cottonmouths, sneaky river snakes.
Now I live in the American Mountain West, and our relationship here with water is much different from both the agricultural plains or the river rich South. Here, fire can consume 150,000 acres in an afternoon and there isn’t enough water anywhere to put it out. On the edge of the Continental Divide, we are very conscious of water. We know that what falls on our western slope flows into the Pacific, and is “owned” by many communities along that route. Water that falls on our Eastern side feeds into the plains rivers and eventually reaches the Atlantic.
And so water reclamation is the name of the game. How can we capture and re-use water? How can we stop its use by the extraction industries? How can we close some of our water systems and not be so wasteful? How do we shift our relationship with water from one of commodification and control to one of respect and asset-based building?
As long as our stance is one of lack, we will choose poorly. Lack is blinding, and creates looping dark holes in our minds that fulfill all their own expectations. There are also dangers to being in a context of plenty without awareness, as this leads to complacency and an assumption of abundance when in fact, control is being seeped away. This very nearly happened recently in Memphis, TN, when the now canceled Byhalia Pipeline threatened the integrity of the Memphis Sands, a huge aquifer that supplies clean water to the region.
We don’t balance lack and plenty well. We tend to live wholly in one or the other. This isn’t a simple matter of whether one sees a glass with water in it as half full or half empty. This isn’t about pessimism or optimism, although their shadows of cynicism and naïveté do reflect this conflict between lack and plenty, this tension.
This week I am preparing for a Seminar Series I am doing on Scarcity & Abundance. And I’m wrestling with the various ways in which we smack right into both these things. The more subtle bits will make themselves known.
And so water again bubbles up. It’s fundamental, as we ourselves are mostly made of it, the planet is mostly water, and we require it to remain alive. And yet for much of our lives, many of us have never considered water -where it comes from, how it gets to us, where it all goes. We turn the tap and it flows. Usually. But even if you live in Flint, MI, or along one of the compromised fracking field routes, your toilet flushes and your laundry works. You can get water FREE at most restaurants. (Remember that one. It won’t last if we don’t change.)
One of the many ironies of this situation is that right now, very few of us actually drink enough water. I know I don’t and I even like water! (I’m told by many friends the reason they don’t drink enough water is that they hate the taste. I don’t get that. Even hard water is interesting.)
“Don’t it always seem to go, you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.
They paved paradise, and put up a parking lot.” -Joni Mitchell
We bounce between lack and plenty, and it may be true that we often don’t realize it. I used to be a youth minister and had a special affinity for Middle Schoolers. One of my favorite games to play with them is something called “I Want, I Need, I Have” -swiped 100% in name, if not totally in content, from The Journey to Adulthood curriculum, a progressive Protestant course that attempts to equip young people with what they need to be functional adults.
This game invites a deep inventories not only of items but of attitudes. We catalogue belongings each young person may ‘own’ or have access to, what they don’t or can’t get, what they believe they need to be certain things or claim certain identities. The game invites an exploration of the balance between want and need, something I wish more adults had a handle on.
For all of our own human issues with this tension, and we have wrestled with lack and plenty for a great deal of our history, the last 100 years have had the added layer of mass media advertising. And that industry has been all about perverted images of both Lack and Plenty. Perhaps a piece of the whole conversation must include some deconstruction of messaging techniques themselves.
Fear is also deeply entwined with Lack and Plenty. I can hear blues notes behind me as I think on this, and am struck by how familiar a story it is, the embracing of the fear and then its alchemy into empowerment and fuel for action. And I wish I couldn’t, but I also hear the screeching riffs of angry mutterings as fear hardens hearts and closes borders.
We live in a time of Plenty. We have all we need, yet all we see around us is Lack. And Lack is there -a lack of justice, a dearth of compassion, an abyss of accountability. But within each of these struggles is also Plenty, for when they are based out of love, our actions are generative.
“I have come that you might have life more abundant.” -Jesus
Many among all of us live in fear daily. Generally. All the time, not just when we are on lock-down due to global pandemic protocols. The undocumented fear ICE. The beaten spouse fears date night. Women walking alone at night fear rape. The young black scholar fears trigger happy police. And those with acute climate awareness fear the coming crisis.
For those of us deeply immersed in the environmental worlds, we fear in part this we are experiencing right now -global pandemics, as they are a known part of a predictable climate apocalypse. But we also fear many things, or if we do not actively FEAR them, for that is part of this whole issue itself, we do know they are coming. We have acknowledged the fear along with its cousins despair and grief and integrated them into our world views. Hopefully. And I do mean both that I hope many of us have been able to do that integration itself, and that we have done so with hope.
Fear can be a good thing, as a sign and a signal for action. Fear can also lead quickly to very bad things, of course. We see those things easily. Fear is the rationale for far too many dangerous, violent, and divisive actions. But fear can also be the only alert to true danger. It can be an alarm, although it’s never a place to stay, with its constant bells and lights and their never-ending stimulus assaults. Neither fear nor anger is grounds on which permanent action can stand, although they have been the catalysts for much.
The fear to look out for is the creeping fear, that which is backbone of so many thrillers and horror stories. Creeping fear gains power when it is not faced. And some of our creeping fears are smacking us upside the head at the moment. For instance, many of us have long had a creeping fear that the integrity of news outlets had become too compromised by financial ties. When that creeping fear intersects with the worry that vetting be impossible and fact-checking a doomed endeavor, who the hell do you turn to in a global crisis?
Yes. Creeping fear is what feeds our uncertainty, what makes the air feel eerie as our cities slowly shut down. And thankfully, it is this kind of creeping fear that is combated effectively by what is most needed right now. Individual action (or in this case radical inaction) coupled with extreme mutual aid and assistance will transform this pandemic crisis.
This is a time when individual action has great community impact. Right now, the actions of each person will affect the whole in very tangible ways. We will be able to see it nationally when the virus runs its course, in colorful maps with real data. Where people flattened the curve and where they didn’t. Where deaths were in the hundreds and where they were in the thousands. Where systems of aid and support developed and where they didn’t. But those are the aggregate effects of each person, and much more easily seen.
I’ve never seen a more direct example of the small affecting the large as this right here. Many of us believe that we must embody the changes, the attitudes, the perceptions that we want to see in the world –we are the agents of change. In my Christian language, I am acting as the hands and feet of God and what I bind and name here in that work has deep and real impact.
The fear is real, because the danger is. But the hope is very real, too. The external mimics the internal, the outer world reflects the inner. The small things each one of us does or does not do can be felt around the world. And as we have all had stabs and waves of fear, if we’re honest, we can also be open to this hope. That we will shift. That we can change. For we must. But for now…
Be still. Breathe. Be grateful.
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
