Untethered from our Nature

 

On this Creation Sunday in which we remember the fauna of the world, I was reminded right away of Wendell Berry's poem, "The Peace of Wild Things." The message of this poem is so close to Jesus' exhortation to us in Luke's Gospel that I could almost just read the poem to you and then sit back down! Listen to Berry's words:

When despair for the world grows in me / and I wake in the night at the least sound / in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, / I go and lie down where the wood drake / rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds./ I come into the peace of wild things/ who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.../ For a time / I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.[1]

We in Colorado know how restorative it is to walk in gratitude like this, among the beauties of the natural world. How freeing it feels to give up our anxious striving for possessions, success, or money .... and to rest in the simple joy of the divine miracle of life all around us. Such is the grace-filled freedom that Jesus seems to want for us.

          And yet .... this poem also raises a deeper issue. Did you know that Wendell Berry later regretted the title: "The Peace of Wild Things?" Don was attending a live interview with Berry several years ago. A member of the audience asked the poet to read this poem, one of his earliest works. After reading it and hearing the heavy applause that followed, Berry asked for quiet. "When I go out in nature and observe the birds and other creatures," he commented, "I see them building nests, digging dens, feeding their young. They are domestic creatures, building peaceful lives. It is we humans who are the wild things," Berry pointed out. "We are the ones who have become "untethered from our nature; we are the ones who react with unnecessary violence, the ones who destroy the world around us. We are the wild things, not the animals."

          In French, the translation for the English word "pets," is "animaux domestiques"—domestic animals. When we bring animals into our homes, that's when we consider them "domesticated." But what about their God-given place in Creation? We modern humans have divorced the natural world almost entirely, and in so doing have divorced our own natures. We've carefully set up spaces of human control and dominance. We've made artificial spaces that we consider as "ours." We dismiss the rest of the world as our "environment," a space apart from us, a space to be conquered, tamed, and brought under our "civilizing," yet destructive, thumbs.

          Author Lilian Daniels, in an essay about animals, muses on their absence from certain areas of our lives. She tells the story about flying to Botswana to begin a safari. She looked down at the runway as the plane approached for landing. To her surprise, she saw safari guides on the ground, running up and down the tarmac to chase away a herd of giraffes, who were strolling around obliviously. The giraffes wouldn't leave until a lion also padded into the plane's path ... at which point the giraffes decided to move "a bit more aerobically toward the jungle." She remembers, "What made [this experience] unforgettable was not just the animals themselves, but that we had seen them somewhere they were not supposed to be, at a time we didn't expect them to be there."[2] Indeed, except for an occasional anxious pet in his carrier, we don't see animals in the airport, do we? The airport is instead entirely dedicated to that hurried, worried striving that Jesus discourages. I once saw a sparrow in the Louisville, Kentucky airport. She was pecking at Starbucks crumbs on the carpet at the gate. Everyone was taking pictures of her, as if they had never seen a sparrow before!

          Airports, hospitals, prisons, schools, churches, even whole cities, are seen in our culture as "human territory." They belong to us, to manage as we please, and only "domesticated" animals are allowed, either on leashes or in cages. Growing up in Houston's concrete tangle, I don't think I ever even saw a cow up close until I was in college. Here at St. Ambrose, the only time I've seen an animal in the nave is when my daughter brought her Great Pyrenees to our Easter service last spring. (I heard that Kristy did capture a tarantula once, though, over by the choir section .... ?) In a previous parish, we once spent several frantic days trying to remove a dove who had gotten into the two-story narthex. When luring her outside with birdseed didn't work, the staff ran around swatting the air with uplifted brooms. We did worry that we might have been chasing away the Holy Spirit.

          Today's psalm shows us a different world. In Psalm 104, each creature is described as living the "domestic" life that God intends. The birds build their nests; the goats climb in the mountains; the forest animals hunt at night .... and humans work the fields. All creatures move about in a harmonious whole. There's no opposition between the human world and the "wild." Tricia Tull, the author of Inhabiting Eden, writes that in Psalm 104, the "mountains and waters are not scenery for vacation admiration, but every living being's habitat, the world in which we are embedded."[3] Furthermore, the Hebrew bible has no word for either "nature" or "culture" and thus can't distinguish between the two. The only distinction is between the Creator and creation, between God, and all of us creatures-- human, animal, vegetable, and mineral—who all owe God "service and praise."[4] Remember, both humans and animals alike were created on the same day—the sixth day—in the creation story in Genesis.

          Jesus, like Wendell Berry, invites us to "rest in the grace of the world and be free." In order to do that, though, Jesus says, we must return to our God-given place among the other creatures. We must relearn how to live according to our nature. We must learn the lessons that the animals teach us: lessons of trust in God's provision, lessons of making our home where God has placed us; lessons of openness to others, of sharing what we have. Can we learn? Well, this week's news certainly gives us hope.

Perhaps you've heard of the fifty Venezuelan refugees who were herded like cattle onto an airplane and shuttled away to a strange, unknown place. Believing that they were being cared for by those who lured them into buses and planes, believing that they were being taken to get jobs and work permits, the refugees soon learned that they had been political pawns, instead. Landing on the small island of Martha's Vineyard, unable to speak English, they wandered down the road, as out of place, vulnerable, and unwanted as those giraffes on the airplane runway. And yet, a small group of Episcopalians from a little parish like St. Ambrose refused to simply gawk at them and walk on by. These Episcopalians invited them into the church, fed them, respected them, advised them, gave them a place alongside their own.[5]

Yes, there is hope. We can learn. Thanks be to God!

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[1] Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things." Found at https://onbeing.org/poetry/the-peace-of-wild-things/.

[2] Lillian Daniel, When "Spiritual but Not Religious" is not Enough (New York: Jericho Books, 2013), 130.

[3] Patricia K. Tull, Inhabiting Eden: Christians, the Bible, and the Ecological Crisis (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013), 28-29.

[4] Ibid., 30.

                [5] See https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/2022/09/16/episcopal-church-on-marthas-vineyard-takes-in-migrants-flown-in-by-surprise/

Waves of Heart-Break

 

Growing up on the Texas Gulf Coast, I’ve always known about the allure and power of water. Ocean smells and the cry of gulls have always felt like coming home. Yet hurricanes and tropical storms were also a part of my world from birth, along with the overflowing bayous that accompanied every storm. The murky waters would rise, flooding Houston streets, stopping traffic, and leaving us wading home from school through warm, brown waters, kicking slowly to scare off the water-moccasins that lurked below the surface.

          Along with the sand, waves, oyster shells, and jellyfish at Galveston Beach, I learned early on about other sea-creatures, too. There was a black, sticky one that my parents called “Tar.” It would cling to your beach towels and bathing suits, even after they came out of the wash. Sometimes you'd find it on your heels and toes after swimming, and you’d have to scrub it with alcohol after your bath to get it off. There were also little worm-like creatures everywhere on the sand. They were called “Cigarette Butts,” and you weren’t allowed to pick them up. And far out to sea, there were tall, angular structures that looked like ships, except that they didn’t move. They had a flame of fire that hovered over them, flickering through the mist. Those were called “Oil Rigs.” My mother said that they were where the Tar Creatures came from.

          In my late twenties, I discovered a different kind of beach experience. For several years, my mother would take my kids and me to Sanibel Island in Florida during our February winter break. While still on the Gulf of Mexico, Sanibel had clean, white sand and oil-free waters. There were piles of amazing seashells from far-away places, brought to shore by special ocean currents. There were dolphins playing near shore, and a glistening bay with manatees and egrets and mangrove trees. Leaving the cold snow and mid-winter sicknesses of Kentucky behind, I'd shed my hectic single-mom life to splash in the ocean with my children, like a jet-setter …. These annual island visits quickly became a special time for the whole family—a glowing memory in a series of often dreary years.

          My memories of Sanibel were so wonderful that I decided that I wanted to share them with Don when we got married. So in 2019, we headed back to the island for our honeymoon. It didn't take me long to realize that something was wrong. After about five minutes on the beach, our throats began to burn. We coughed, and our eyes watered. At first, in these pre-Covid days, I thought that we had picked up colds on the plane. Then I heard others coughing, too. Strange! Walking on the beach, I noticed that instead of beautiful shells, there were dead, smelly fish, and too much seaweed. The motels looked a bit shabbier, and there were lots of "for sale" signs in front of the fancy homes. The dolphins were gone, too, as were the manatees, and the water in the bay looked a sickly shade of bluish green.

"It's the 'Red Tide,'" the locals told us, "with Blue Algae overgrowth in the bay. It comes from Lake Okeechobee," they explained, looking defeated. "It's toxic, and it is ruining the island, becoming a year-round problem." Lake Okeechobee, Florida's largest body of fresh-water, is filled with run-off from uncontrolled development and agriculture on its banks. The government has chosen to ignore the problem, which gets worse every year, for the sake of profit for the large companies near the lake. Run-off from the lake flows through channels into both the Atlantic and the Gulf, and with increasing ocean temperatures, has created a toxic ocean soup.

I was heart-broken. Every day, for as long as I could stand it, I sat on the beach coughing and moping, like Job in his ash heap. I had wanted to bring our grandchildren here, as my mother had done for us. I had wanted a romantic ocean honeymoon. Yet human greed and selfishness had ruined it all, once again. Even my childhood in Houston had not prepared me for this. Even before I experienced the fires in Colorado, I suddenly realized what life on our injured planet is going to look like from now on, and I was furious and depressed at the same time.

Poet Mary Oliver begins her poem, "Lead," with the line: "Here is a story/ to break your heart./ Are you willing?" She tells about a group of wintering loons that fly into her neighborhood only to die, gracefully, one by one, from some mysterious environmental poison. Appreciating life even in their tragic death, they cry out, “in the long, sweet savoring of … life/ which, if you have heard it, you know is a sacred thing.” After singing, the loon, “speckled/ and iridescent and with a plan/ to fly home/ to some hidden lake,/ was dead on the shore.” Oliver then concludes in her wise way, “I tell you this/ to break your heart,/ by which I mean only/ that it break open and never close again/ to the rest of the world.” [1]  

A few days into our visit on Sanibel, a late-season tropical storm skirted the island. As the wind howled, and the waves crashed up high on the beach, I was drawn outside into the wild beauty of it. I walked along the shore for miles, the turbulence of my own heart churning along with the sea. It felt good to be battered by the wind, to feel the danger of the storm rattle and echo the gloom of my heart. It felt good to see beauty in the chaos, to savor its sweetness like the dying loon.

I wonder if that's how Job felt, too, when God spoke to him out of the mighty whirlwind, battering him with unanswerable questions about the exquisiteness of creation? Here in our verses from Job, the ocean is alive and livid with rage, tossing in a storm. It's like a newborn baby, kicking and screaming without reason. Yet, in the hands of God the midwife, the ornery sea is swaddled in clouds, held in secure bonds, and beloved.[2] God will hold us, too, in our chaos, in our anger, in our questioning.

In the tropical storm on Sanibel, as the ocean writhed, I felt like God was telling me, like God told Job, to shake off my gloom and to stand up and "gird up my loins" for battle. God was giving me a glimpse of the chaos to come, and the need for me to fight for creation—to fight my own laziness and desires, as well as the corporate greed that continues to lay waste what God is making. As we face the disastrous results of ecological turmoil, it is perhaps good for us to remember the power of God's creative Love ... as well as the power unleashed in us when we let our hearts be broken open to the world's pain. Our hearts must break not so that we may be crushed, but so that we may be filled with the Love that is around us. Are you willing?

         

 

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[1] Mary Oliver, "Lead," found at https://wordsfortheyear.com/2020/06/18/lead-by-mary-oliver/

[2] William P. Brown, Wisdom's Wonder: Character, Creation, and Crisis in the Bible's Wisdom Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 112.

Choosing Life

 

 

Psychiatrist Rachel Remen tells a story about a young skier who got lost in the mountains during a snow storm.[1] He was found and transported to the hospital, but he had spent three days in below-freezing temperatures. Even after treatment, one of his feet was so frostbitten that it was beyond saving. The doctors told him that they would have to amputate that foot to save his life. The young man refused. For days, he kept ignoring the pleas of the doctors and his family, while the gangrene in his leg kept worsening. One day, as the man lay dying, his fiancée couldn't take it anymore. She took off her diamond engagement ring and slipped it onto his blackened toe. It sparkled with life and light on top of the dead and rotting flesh.

          "I hate this [stupid] foot," the brokenhearted fiancée sobbed. "If you want this foot so much, why don't you marry it? You're going to have to choose, you can't have us both."

          The next day, the young man scheduled surgery to remove the foot. Dr. Remen asked him later what had made him decide to amputate. He said that seeing the diamond on his toe had shocked him. He had realized that he had been more attached to keeping his foot than he had been committed to his life, and especially to his life with the woman he loved. He remembered that it had been the promise of life with his fiancée that had kept him going during those three horrible days alone in the snow. Yet later, the attachment to his foot had kept him from choosing life.

          Remen points out that there is a difference between "attachment" and "commitment." Attachments to things, to people, to "the way things have always been" can close down new life and possibilities; they can trap us and bind us and drag us down. Yet commitments open us up to life; they might feel constricting sometimes, but they point the way to freedom.[2] Think of how a fierce attachment to "our tribe" can lead us to war, violence, and exclusion of others, but a commitment to our group leads us to caring participation for the good of all.

          Today's readings all show people who are put before hard choices between attachments and commitments. In Jeremiah, the people of Israel are called to change who they are as a nation, to turn from their selfish ways and to embrace right relationship to God and to their fellow human beings. They are called to give up their attachment to their "own plans," to choose to commit themselves to God's Ways.

          In Paul's letter to Philemon, Paul also sets Philemon before a difficult choice. Does the slave-owning Christian give up his attachment to his useful slave Onesimus? Does he renounce the money and ease that keeping this man enslaved could bring him? Does he give up his attachment to the clear hierarchies of the Roman world? Or does he free his slave, committing himself to a completely new kind of Christian freedom? Does Philemon commit himself to the radical Gospel call that there is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, but that all are one in Christ Jesus?

          And then there are Jesus's words to us in Luke. These are probably the most difficult words of Jesus in the whole New Testament. Talk about difficult choices! Is Jesus really asking us to give up all of our dearest attachments? To turn from our loved ones, our possessions, our very lives—in order to commit ourselves entirely to him? I'm not going to wishy-washy this away. It sure sounds like that's what he's asking. Jesus wants for us the healing freedom that we find in committing ourselves entirely to his Way of Love. He's putting the sparkling diamond of Life everlasting on top of our rotting attachments and asking us to make our choice. And yes, sometimes choosing life in Christ might well result in chopping off things that we hold very dear.

          That's not what we want to hear today, is it? If you're like me, you're echoing Jeremiah's listeners about now: "It's no use. We'll continue with our own plans; thank you very much, God." I may not want to hear this Gospel, but I do at least appreciate the warning from Jesus. Jesus seems to want us to know what we're getting into. He wants for us to count the cost of discipleship before we take up his dangerous calling. I can't help but remember that the man who wrote a book called, "The Cost of Discipleship," Dietrich Bonhoeffer, died as a young man in a concentration camp for opposing Christian Nationalism and German Fascism.

          Before you run out of church never to return, though, we also need to remember the God that Jeremiah describes to us: God the Potter. I've watched a potter work, and it's a fascinating process. She starts with an immobile lump of clay and sets it spinning. Quickly, oh so quickly, the clay takes on life, rising and falling, at the slightest pressure from her fingers. As it spins, she sees what the clay can become—a useful utensil, a work of beauty. Quickly, oh so quickly, a wrong touch, a hint of decentering, and the whole thing starts to wobble. In the blink of an eye, it is ruined, collapsing in on itself. That doesn't stop the potter, though. She spins and caresses the clay until it takes on a new shape, a new piece arising from the same old lump of clay. Her hands become a part of the clay itself, completely covered in it, one with the work of art that she is creating.

          So it is with God in Christ. We are works in progress, all of us. Our whole cosmos is a work in progress. God didn't create the world once, millions of years ago. God is creating the world, every day. We make our choices while held in the hands of a master potter, approximating, always approximating, the ideal set before us in Jesus Christ. Spinning from choice to choice, we rise; we wobble; we crash; we rise again—all within God's loving hands.

          Our churches today, our nation today, our world today, are whirling on the potter's wheel. Everything spins, feeling as if we are lost in the mountains in a blizzard. Before we can become what God intends for us, there will be pressure applied. There might even be some amputations involved. There will definitely be hard choices for each of us to make and commitments required. Yet, at the same time, we are sustained in our whirling by God's ever-creating hands. As Bonhoeffer wrote to his own fiancée from prison in 1944: "By [gracious] powers so wonderfully protected,/ We wait with confidence, befall what may;/ God is with us at night and in the morning,/ And oh, most certainly on each new day."[3]

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[1] Rachel N. Remen, Kitchen Table Wisdom  (New York: Riverhead Books, 1996), 191-192.

[2] Remen, 192.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "Von Gueten Maechten." In Letters and Papers from Prison, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol. 8, trans. Christian Gremmels, Eberhard Bethge, and Renate Bethge (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 550.