The Watching Tree

“In contemplation the human spirit learns to see the presence f the divine in nature, and so recognizes that the Earth is a sacred place. For such a spirit the biblical bush burns, and we take off our shoes. --- Elizabeth Johnson

About 30 some years ago I had one of those “aha” moments as I was standing on top of a hill overlooking the brome waving in the wind. I found out later that brome is not a native grass of Kansas. In the distance I saw trees, clouds and blue skies. The field was also circled by trees. I was struck by the beauty of it all and was moved to take off my shoes and stand barefoot on the ground. I saw the Divine everywhere and my heart rejoiced while bitter-sweet tears started flowing from my eyes. The realization of the Divine Presence all around me, left me pondering “why oh, God, are we abusing you when you display such beauty and glory”?.

This realization was overwhelming to me. I was feeling fear, anger, love, longing for restoration, cynicism and shame for not paying attention to the “Book of Nature”. I had read the Book of Genesis in Scripture and knew that God said all creation is good. How could we believe otherwise. I was grieving over Mother Earth. She has been a good mother. Without her, we could not live or breathe. She has given us safety and security. Her seasons remind us that the cosmos is intact. As we stand upon her we have a sense of stability in an unsteady world. Mother Earth, it seems to most of us is here to stay for many more eons. Yet, some of us see her changing for the worse and we want to slow it down. I have to say that the change is not totally bad or hopeless.
It is bringing many of us together to come up with some solutions to help Mother Earth become more resilient against the encroaching climate change. Thus, we are creating community, who are connected and relating to the earth.

Mother Earth is always changing. Human history is scattered with the destruction of the environment and its species. One example of this is found when Minoan Crete was brought to devastation. They had taken down all the forest to build their palaces, which eventually led to soil erosion. Eventually, their civilization sank into the sea. The dust bowl occurred in Kansas due to the farmers constantly tilling up the soil and planting the way they were taught in Europe. The soil eroded way and what was left blew away with the wind. It seems human growth and development compounds the devastation of the earth. We are not fully aware of how we affect the Earth.

“Despite the dozens of new ways to look at the world---the genetic, the microscopic, and the chemical---we are still very much the same people who built Stonehenge ... (Bill McKibben, The End of Nature, pg. 88.) Most of us want the certainty of the four seasons because it gives us the assurance that the life of the earth still turns. But lately, some of us are getting anxious on how Mother Earth is responding. She is getting hotter, in fact, raging in some parts of the globe. Her warming up is not comforting. Winters are carrying over into summers destroying crops and trees with frosts and freezes. With this comes grief over what we are loosing.

I have learnt that grieving is truly a spiritual discipline if we use it right. It is virtually a necessary door to major personal change. A major change was happening to me. For a long time I was feeling despair and inadequacy, but instead of running from it I faced its darkness and simply waited for the light of hope to return. The hard part of this time was not being able to get anyone to listen to my pain. I felt unheard. So often we put off persons who are in grief after a few days of the loss by saying: “Get on with it”. We forget that grief is a process.

We cannot suppress grief. Otherwise, it comes out in the form of depression. Stephen Levine wrote “resistance to the pain about us causes the heart to wither.” We must allow the pain to tear our hearts apart so that we can be exposed to the truth. In all of the wisdom writings I have found the belief the life and death are one. In my ministry with the dying I recognized death to be a part of the life cycle. The loss of the life that once was becomes life anew.

We cannot avoid death or the grief that comes with it. When the reality of dying hits us, denial can set in. I believe many of us are coming out of denial when it comes to the environmental crisis. In my own grief over the loss of my ministry with the dying I had to grapple between what really happened and what I wished had happened. I had to deal with the reality of this loss. We would like to avoid the grieving person and not hear her story one more time, but get on with it. Sometimes we don’t realize that we are instruments of hope to one another.

Recently, I was talking with some young adults about plans for developing Earth Care in our Diocese of Kansas. We touched on the effects of climate change and one young man remarked “this is making me sad; I would rather brainstorm about what we are going to do about in our own corner of the world”. I felt the other comments were being brushed off and he simply did not feel the pain of it. Resurrection is so much more joyful than death. We forget the two need each other.

I have struggled to reframe my mind-set from despair to hope. I have the tendency to see the world with dark glasses. I grew up with my mother saying “we must have done something wrong to have this happen” whenever illness or tragedy occurred in our family. My family often dealt with life circumstances from a denial stance. We were not supposed to have emotions. After sixty years I have finally embraced a “hope” stance. I have crawled out of despair into the light. I did not push the grief away over the earth, the loss of my ministry or a dear friend of thirty years. Recently, I lost my mother and struggle with the memory of her last three months in a hospital gown. I have allowed the pain to tear at my heart so that hope could arise and erase despair.

By now most of us have used the term “active listening”. It is what we know as engaged listening with our whole being in attempt to truly understand the other. As a chaplain I learnt about “presence of care”…leaving behind myself to be truly present to the other.
I spent six years listening to the dying tell their story and wishes before leaving this earth. Some fought the transition over; I did not interfere with their battle, but simply sat with them and others died with peaceful acceptance. It was a privilege to be there for the dying person. Once they slipped away, a deep silence filled the room, but their presence could still be felt. It was a “deep time” watching the dying person’s respiration slow”, the skin turning blue in places, the last rush of heat in the body and at last the last breath. The waiting is over.

We are a wounded humanity living on a wounded planet. We are loading the arms of our youth with guns and bombs instead of flowers. Some of us sincerely believe that the poor tropical farmers are burning the rain forests when in reality it is our gas guzzling cars that are causing the greenhouse effect. We are starting to treat people as the problem, making statements if the Chinese would clean up their own air and the Indians would not have so many cars, we would not have a problem with climate change. The point I am trying to make is we are treating people as a problem. “If they would not have so many babies, we would have more.” We look at the poor as consumers who cannot contribute to society, as one more mouth to feed, the elderly as problem who eat up health care and we discover that children are to be used as way to make money. And those of us who take this into their heats are grieving or becoming Jeremiahs, telling the world that doomsday is upon us if we don’t get our act together. There seems to be little hope.

Despite all this grim reality I believe the earth is dying and it is a simply natural thing for her to do, but she wants to die on her own terms. Her dying leads to her rising again. The Paschal Mystery is repeated in all of creation. As Christians we believe that in order to have Resurrection we must have the crucifixion. Like Mary in the garden on the third day after Jesus’ death, we grieve over what is being taken away from us. Then Jesus comes upon the scene asking why are we weeping and we tell Him the earth is not the same anymore…it has changed for the worst since His departure. Jesus simply tells Mary: “Don’t cling to me”. (Jn. 20:17) I interpreted this to mean now to let go of the past and embrace the task of creating a new world. Yes, we need to do our grief work but then find a way to change our broken earth and selves into restored, healthy beings.

Grief can empower us if we are open to its potential. The key is not stay stuck in it. With time I found myself moving out of grief into a new sense of my responsibility to the Earth. Something in me recognized that I was being called to a new vocation that would take a deeper creativity and commitment. I had to act on these two experiences.

Jesus did not leave us totally stranded. He sent us another Advocate…a Comforter…the Holy Spirit to guide us in restoring the planet again. (Jn. 14:16) “And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate to be with you always…” If we are open to the Spirit we will find a way to heal ourselves and the Earth.