The below are comments I made at an Interfaith service celebrating the 51st annual Earthday. Each speaker addressed what their faith instructs them about their response to climate change:
Quakers
believe that, there is that of God in everyone.
Many things flow from that. We
believe that we can know the truth experientially, and that our understanding
of the truth may change over time. But
we hold up, as the truth we have found so far, a belief in non-violence, in
equality, in integrity, in simplicity, in community, and in stewardship. To truly embrace any of these things, leads
quite quickly to the need to stop climate change as it threatens all of those
things.
One
cannot embrace equality and non-violence and turn a blind eye to how climate
change is wiping out small island nations and creating catastrophes for some of
the poorest people on earth, as well as creating wars over resources. What does it mean to live in community when
your neighbor suffers? How can we be
good stewards on an earth where we are extracting and burning fossil fuels with
reckless abandon?
Our historic call to simplicity has been to reject
consumption that is bought at the cost of others’ suffering or distracts from relationship with
the Holy One– this is only more true now. Everything which is manufactured, carries a
carbon foot print – some items larger than others – but which are
actually necessary for our life? So many
plastic do das, throw away objects, electric potatoe peelers, etc that both
clutter the unsimple life and also create more greenhouse gases. The testimony of integrity is to tell the
truth regardless of what it costs you personally – There is a lot of radical
truth telling to do these days. One of
the painful truths is about our own complicity in a first world life style that
is not sustainable for our Mother Earth.
The whole planet is sustainable at 2,000 Kilowats per year per person.
The average American uses 11,000. The
painful truth is even those of us, myself included, that live simply, are
living way above our means.
Quakers also
believe we can receive leadings from the Divine Spirit – promptings to do the
right thing. In our history that has led
us, to hide people escaping slavery, and to fight for women’s right to vote,
and to be imprisoned and even killed for our right to practice our faith. It means that we can be asked to take risks
and not play it safe. I think the
magnitude of the climate crisis again requires us, to be boldly faithful. Our being faithful must begin with earnestly
asking the Divine author for guidance on how to rightly live and how to boldly
act in the face of this greatest moral crisis of history. Quakers also believe that when we listen in
silence that we can and will hear the Inner Voice prompting us.
I have been
a climate activist for 14 years. People
often ask me how I find the hope to keep struggling with this issue, and they
also ask me “Is it too late?”. I have
surrendered the question “Is it too late quite” long ago. Because what I am clear about, is that
regardless of if we just squeak by, or if we are in a slow death spiral, our
moral commandment is the same: to love our neighbors as ourselves, to try to do
justice and to treat people with Love in the face of whatever may come. Interestingly some of the same things we have
to do to adapt to climate change are the same things we have to do to mitigate
it. So it is clear to me that the holy
voice of Justice calls us. My hope lies
in the promise that God can enter a situation transformationally when we are
faithful.
