Sermon Transcript for April 15, 2007 I am speaking this morning about air as one of the elements of nature, and I would like to begin with a situation that could happen in any emergency room in the country. The doctors and nurses are preparing for the arrival of an 8 year-old girl, and they hear the sirens of the ambulance as it approaches the hospital. As the sirens get louder they know that the emergency is closer, so they prepare in a flurry of activity for the girl, who is arriving with breathing problems. The girl is brought into the emergency room. A doctor examines her, and it is found that her air passages are so constricted, and her breathing so tight, that she is only just hanging on to life. After a few more moments of working with this girl, her breath slips away from them. Later that day, as the doctor has some quiet space to gather his thoughts and reflect on this young life lost, he comes to the conclusion in his own mind that her death was avoidable. As he begins to do some more research, he comes to the conclusion that at least part of the cause is air pollution. He finds that this girl is one of 100 in that county who will die from air pollution that year. He digs a little deeper and finds that there is a power plant in that county, and as a result of it, 3000 people in that county that year will contract asthma. That leads the doctor to do a lot of soul searching about his, and his family's lifestyle, and they begin to make some changes. Inhaling the Consequences of our Lifestyles Did you know that the average human inhales 3,000 gallons of air each day? Air is our life force, and yet because of our extravagant lifestyles, we are now inhaling the consequences of our materialism. We are inhaling the consequences of our shortsightedness, and we are feeling the effects- people are suffering and dying because of our lifestyles. Let that point sink home for just a moment. Innocent people, even 8 year-olds, are dying because of our lifestyles. It's as simple as that. It's also true that the most vulnerable people in society are suffering the most because of our lifestyles. The second leading cause of death for children under the age of four is air pollution. African-Americans are three times more likely to end up in an emergency room because of an asthma attack. That's true because African-Americans are much more likely to live nearer power plants. We are reaping, on behalf of innocent people, the destruction of a lifestyle that we're living. And I hope during this earth series that we might consider what it might take for us to make some changes. Or what it takes to make just one change, because even one change will make a difference. What will it take for us to live according to the mantra that “enough is a feast?” I could quote to you a litany of air pollution statistics, disasters, and stories from around the world, but I’m not going to do that because you already know the reality. You already know the reality that we're living in today as far as air pollution, climate change, and the destruction of so many species. So what I want to talk about is what will motivate you. I would suggest that our motivation might come from a number of different places, and you can find your own motivation. But I want to offer some possibilities. One place you may find motivation is in nature itself, learning the lessons of nature, but another place that I would like to talk about it is a motivation found out of your spiritual tradition. How Much is Air Worth? Let me ask the question: how much do you think air is worth? If you were to put a price on air, how much do you think it is worth? The church I was pastoring in Auckland, New Zealand was a large white stone Gothic building, a beautiful building, right in the heart of downtown Auckland. The building was flanked on every side by skyscrapers. A casino, national bank headquarters, and all sorts of commerce surrounded the church. What we discovered was that the space above our church, the air, had a price tag on it. We could sell the space above the church for a very hefty sum. It became a very significant part of the money that was raised to save that building from falling into disrepair. A local law said that every building could build up to a certain point, and if the building was lower than that height, it also owned the space above it, up to the legal limit. So a church like ours, which had no intention of building any higher, had all of this space above it that we could sell to other companies and buildings in the city that wanted to go higher than the regulated height. So we sold space to an insurance company that had a very large building on the waterfront. This was a tough decision for us to make. There were so many different factors - all the ethical questions that came to light about a building that was building higher on the waterfront, and the church that was making it possible for them. You can understand the controversy! But what I really want to talk about is that while we were discovering that the air above our church was worth money, other people were discovering the same thing about their space. As the activity around the city increased, you know what happened: the value decreased. By the time we sold several batches of air above of our church, the value of that space had come down to almost nothing- the greater the activity, the less the value. We discovered something very important from the experience, and that was that as soon as you commodify nature, you decrease its value. As soon as air became a commodity, it’s value decreased. Nature Reveals our Shortsightedness There is another lesson that can be learned from nature- nature itself shines a light on our shortsightedness. Consider just one obvious example; air pollution. You can't see it until it mixes with sun light, and when it mixes with sun light it shows up as smog. What a wonderful example! The sun is shining light on our shortsightedness, making our materialism and extravagant lifestyles visible to us. Nature couldn't be any clearer about what we're doing wrong, and what we need to change in our lives. The sun shines light on it all the time. We learn also from our spiritual traditions. As people of spirit- the images and metaphors, the archetypes, and the traditions that we inherit, also motivate us. The word spirit comes from the same origin as the Latin word for inspire- the origin of inspire is literally “to breathe life into”. Breath in the Hebrew Tradition What will inspire you? What will breathe life into your vision of life and the earth? How will your imagination inspire you to make changes in your life, to make necessary changes that will make such a big difference? In the Hebrew tradition, the word for air is “ruach.” It a breathy word, and sounds like what it is. The word ruach means breath, as we inhale and exhale, but it is also the atmosphere. It's the source or breath of life, and it's the quality of life. And so you heard it read from Genesis this morning, and in that story it said that the very first people had ruach breathed into their nostrils, and I have always loved that detail, so much so that the first youth group I ever led was called “Nostrils.” The pastor at the time was very thrown by the name, and he called me up to a meeting in his office to please explain why this was- a youth group in an evangelical church, one that his son was in, why was it called Nostrils? So I pulled my Bible out and I began to read to him from Genesis- God breathed ruach into the nostrils of the first people. Our youth group would be called Nostrils as new life was being breathed into the church. When Noah entered the ark, he went with ruach accompanying him. Ruach is what Ezekiel used to describe the new life that entered the dry bones in the Valley of death. Ruach was the resurrection of the exiles post-Babylon. Ruach is the word used in Deuteronomy to describe stubbornness. One is described as having “hard ruach”, that is, a hard heart. Ruach is used in Psalms to describe despair and a broken spirit. One is described as having broken ruach. It is also the word used in the Old Testament to describe moral integrity. I could give you so many more examples, but you see the point: Ruach is all things and the quality of interconnection between all things. Ruach is mystery, simplicity, it is the elements. It is the relationship between people and the earth, and between people and their traditions. Ruach may inspire us to care, because it is not about doing to the earth, it is about being one with the earth. I could take you on the same journey through the New Testament. The Greek word for spirit or breath is “pneuma”, as in pneumatic, and it expresses spirit, Holy Spirit, the breath of God, and so we might find that these words out of our tradition can fire our imagination. Being One with the Earth Let me tell you a brief story out of the Zen tradition that shows the distinction between doing to the earth and being one with the earth: A teacher and student are walking in a forest one day, and they come across a group of children who are torturing some frogs. The kids are playing a game, and the student is a person of very kind hearted compassion, and can't stand the thought of all these frogs being tortured, so she goes up to the children and says she will buy the frogs from them. They agree, and she buys the frogs and puts them back in the pond. She feels very pleased at this situation, and goes to the teacher and says, “Did you see that? I liberated the frogs from certain death!” The teacher, who is a very wide hearted person, says, “You did a wonderful thing, and you're going to Hell.” As you can imagine, that surprises the student a little bit. She says, “I liberated the frogs, so how can I be going to Hell?” And the teacher says, “Listen to what you just said- ‘I liberated the frogs.’ “ “The ‘I’ that you think was acting in that situation is going to Hell, AND you did a kind thing.” The student needed to learn the distinction between acting on the earth and being one with the earth. It might be that our motivation to make changes in our lives comes about as a result not of being good, not doing the right thing, not doing to the earth, but by blurring the very distinction between self and earth. Take the “I” right out of the equation, rise above self and become one with the earth, and that might be your motivation to make changes in your life. Because to continue to live the way you are living- is harming yourself as well as others, its harming the most vulnerable in society, and its harming the earth itself. How many 8 year-old girls need to die from asthma before you will learn? How erratic does the climate need to become before you make changes in your life? How many plant and animal species need to perish before you will see the consequences of your lifestyle? How much ruach needs to be broken? How much ruach needs to be ignored before you realize that you are one with all things? The answer, my friends, is blowin’ in the wind. The answer is blowin’ in the wind.
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