Open to the Spirit

Today’s Word: Environment

I remember a great comedy years ago, entitled “Trading places” with Dan Ackroyd and Eddie Murphy, where this argument was an essential part of the plot. It was quite funny. Certainly in our church lives we try to provide a healthy environment to enable people to nurture their spirituality. We demonstrate empathy, share freely, and treat all with respect, at least in theory.

I am also always grateful for my home environment that nurtured my brothers and sisters and me. My parents were good role models, loved us unconditionally, and encouraged us to find our own paths in life.

What about the world we live in, our natural environment? Do we cherish it the way we do our homes? Would we trash our house, ransack it for treasures to sell, allow it to fall down without repairs or maintenance? I would certainly hope not. If we are so careful to foster a warm welcome environment for people, why are we so reckless with nature and the planet we live on? Nature or nurture, why can’t we have both?

3) Sometimes it seems environmental awareness has dawned so slowly. We are living in times that Joanna Macy has named the Great Awakening, or what David Kortem calls the shift from Empire to Earth Community. Belatedly, our understanding of interdependence and deep connection with all of nature is growing and enlarging our worldview. With climate change, Earth is speaking to us in urgent ways that just might hasten our learning.

My understanding of environment began with the poets back in the 80s. A favourite on my shelf from a writing course back then is a very dog-eared copy of News From the Universe, an anthology by Robert Bly, one of our teachers at the time. He’d gathered and translated some of the best voices from all over the world, all selected for how they gave a human voice to animate and inanimate nature. We studied these poets as models for our own writing. Exploring how human imagination might be transformed from exploitation and control to deep connection with and compassion for all of nature. “Go inside a stone,” writes Charles Simic. Try to read the star charts, he says, written on the stone’s inner walls. Or — go inside anything in order to connect with its essence.

For millennia we’ve mistaken our place in the world, despite stories like Genesis that grounded our own creation in the very humus or soil of Earth. Now we know we are part and parcel of the environment, and as postmodern theologian Sallie Mcfague writes, the world, indeed the whole cosmos, is God’s body — all sacred. What if our role as 21st century humans is to awaken to our deepest connection with all that is. Let’s pray we’re in time. It’s not the environment we must save, but ourselves from ourselves.

4) Let’s shift our focus for a moment from the outer environment to our inner environment. Within each of us is the same potential for beauty or pollution, for respect or for misuse of resources, or even, in extreme cases, the need to clean up some toxic contamination. Just like the environment around us, a few changes can restore us to health.

One of the things you can notice in your inner environment is how you talk to yourself. This morning I arrived at work only to discover that I had forgotten the keys to my office. When the trip back home led to an unsuccessful search I then found the keys in my pocket, where they had been all along. There was a time, when I would have berated myself. But what is the good of that? The keys are still lost, and the time is still gone. What good does it do to call myself stupid? Instead, I appreciated the extra walk, had a little chuckle, and went on with the rest of my day unharmed. My inner environment, thank goodness, is now one of kindness and acceptance.

Our inner environments have been shaped by interactions with people around us. Most people have an inner voice that sounds a lot like their mother or their father. If you had good ones, you can count yourself lucky and enjoy the gentleness you have inside. If not, pay attention. Notice how you speak to yourself. Choose to speak kindness instead and, by doing so, restore some of the natural beauty that you are.

One word, four voices — now it’s your turn: What do you think of when you hear the word environment?

Rev. Mead Baldwin pastors the Hatley, Waterville, and North Hatley United churches. Rev. Lynn Dillabough is now rector of St. Paul’s in Brockville, Ont. She continues to write for this column as a dedicated colleague with the Eastern Townships writing team. Rev Lee Ann Hogle ministers to the Ayer’s Cliff, Magog, and Georgeville United churches. Rev Carole Martignacco pastors Uuestrie — the Unitarian Universalists in North Hatley.