It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe’er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more.

And again,

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From God, who is our home:

Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

Setting aside theological mysteries and controversies for another day, what has preoccupied me for that last month and a half has not been immortality, past or future, but increasing intimations of mortality:  My own,as I have experienced an unusual and thought provoking spell of genuine illness, something unusual for me; but also increasing intimations of mortality in the world in which we live, highlighted by the Gulf oil spill but buttressed by a host of other events.

First, my own encounter with mortality:  Around the first of July I started to experience unusual intestinal symptoms.  No, not what you are likely thinking but rather the opposite:  My entire system began to shut down – a phenomenon known in the medical world as ‘paralytic ileus’.  This continued for the better part of a month, and included several doctor’s visits, one trip to Urgent Care, one to the Emergency Room of our local university hospital, 24 hours in-hospital “observation” (whatever that means), and finally laparascopic surgery for an obstruction that turned out not to be there.  At the end of the experience, all I had was ‘Maybe you had a virus – and the surgery slowed your recovery.’

In the process, I lost 20 pounds in about two weeks.  I missed two conferences for which I had done much of the planning and in which I had significant leadership roles.   I would have told you 3 months ago that these events were among the most important things I would do all summer.  Instead I found myself just trying to get from one day to the next.  You will note that this is the first post in almost two months – now you know why.

The lesson I’ve taken away from this?  The reality of my own mortality.

Let me explain.

I had great plans this summer, important things to do.  People were depending on me. But all it took was a paralyzed intestine to blow the schedule to bits.  I have talents and abilities, thoughts and dreams, just as you do.  But it all depends on a body that works.  When the body doesn’t work, I don’t get much done.

There’s a bigger lesson here – the mortality of the human enterprise.

Consider the BP oil spill.   A company decides to drill for oil in deep water.  They’ve done it many times before, they know there is a lot of oil on this site.  They are convinced that chances of something going wrong are almost zero.  And if something were to go wrong, it’s almost impossible for them to imagine anything more than a minor problem that will be taken care of almost overnight.  But everything does go wrong.  The well explodes.  The “blowout preventer”, an expensive and intricate piece of equipment designed to be the final and fail-safe preventer-of-disaster of last resort turns out to be useless.  The result is more than 100 days of oil exploding into the Gulf of Mexico, billions of dollars lost, one of the world’s most profitable companies reduced to insolvency, hundreds of thousands of human lives disrupted, and unknown damage to some of the richest ocean waters in the world.

Of the millions of people living and working on the shores of the Gulf on the 19th of April, 2010, not one expected that their entire season – tourism, fishing, even oil drilling – was about to be canceled.  But it happened, and looking back from the vantage point of the present, it is hard to understand why we all didn’t see it coming.  Our economy, indeed our entire lives, rests on a foundation much more fragile than we want to think about.

And now bigger things are happening that should call us to the same caution about our biological foundations.  Hundreds of wild fires are blazing in Russia, amid a heatwave that the Russians claim is the worst in a thousand years. Torrential rains and mudslides in China that have wiped out a city and killed hundreds – maybe thousands.  And in Pakistan, a ’super monsoon’ greater than any ever recorded before has affected more than 10 per cent of the population (15 million is the current number but that is certain to rise).  The flood has wiped out half of Pakistan’s agricultural land in the last two weeks (see the map).  Crop losses alone are in the billions of dollars after the first flood wave, and another is on its way as I write.   No one is yet able to calculate the cost of replacing roads, bridges, oil refineries and power plants.  One UN official guesses that this disaster is worse than the tsunami, the Kashmir earthquake of 2005 and the Haitian earthquake combined.

A friend was in the town of Gilgit, in the far north, when the floods hit.  Here’s his description:

All roads are blocked – to Hunza, to Ghizar & Chitral, to Kohistan and both Kaghan routes. The estimate is it will take 3-4 more weeks to re-open the [main highway]. So supplies are low – no diesel and increasingly less food. We are fine at the Serena but many people are suffering. Local floods and landslides have destroyed and damaged houses as well as taken lives, and the water channels people depend on for daily life as well as their crops have been heavily damaged.

In a phone conversation with another friend in the area I learned that in the same town banks are closing.  Why, are they out of cash?  No, they are running out of fuel to run their generators.

What is the long term outlook?  Here’s the first friend’s analysis:

The talk in Gilgit-Baltistan is about whether or not we are entering a phase of sustained environmental instability. The spectacular Attabad slide / dam from January followed by a summer unlike any seen for a long time raise questions about the stability and predictability of life in this region. Global warming is mentioned though some also mention a history of patterns like this, the previous one being almost a century ago. There is little doubt, however, that this level of natural activity, if sustained, will require significant human adaptation. For example, keeping any roads open to China and down country will become difficult. And now life here depends on those roads, unlike 50 years ago.

To summarize:  We modern humans have developed an increasingly complex society on the same fragile biological foundation we have always had to work with, without remembering how fragile that foundation really is.  ‘Six inches of topsoil…’  We have assaulted our foundation in a variety of ways, not least of which is, of course, climate change or global warming:

NEW YORK — Floods, fires, melting ice and feverish heat: From smoke-choked Moscow to water-soaked Iowa and the High Arctic, the planet seems to be having a midsummer breakdown. It’s not just a portent of things to come, scientists say, but a sign of troubling climate change already under way.

The weather-related cataclysms of July and August fit patterns predicted by climate scientists, the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization says – although those scientists always shy from tying individual disasters directly to global warming. [AP via Wash Post][Picture is smoke from the Russian fires from a NASA satellite - click for larger image]

What is the solution?  When talking about climate change, scientists and policy makers usually speak of two different but complementary approaches: Mitigation and Adaption – and these approaches work with a variety of human problems:

Mitigation means trying to prevent  a bad, difficult or unpleasant situation from happening in the first place.  Adaptation means learning to cope after that situation has already happened.
In terms of my intestinal difficulties, mitigation involved trying to find the source of the problem and using various techniques to resolve the issue, up to and including my unsuccessful surgery.  Adaptation meant changing what I ate until I found something (like beef broth) that would go down and stay down and still provide me with some nutrition.

Mitigation with regard to the oil spill might have involved extra safety devices as are already in use in many other parts of the world, more inspections or even a decision not to drill in some places even if we can because the cost of a possible accident is simply too great.  Adaptation is what we’ve been watching for the last 100 days – and that experience alone is a valuable lesson that adaptation is always more expensive and more difficult than mitigation.

In terms of the climate change driven phenomena we are seeing this summer, it’s already too late to mitigate.  While we should do all we can to avoid additional green-house gas driven climate change, these fires and floods have already happened.  What these events show is that sometimes it is not just difficult, but actually impossible to adapt.  There is no way to prepare for a flood like that now devastating Pakistan, and you cannot do anything to lessen the impact of the hundreds of fires in Russia.  Both of these are minor events compared to many other predicted effects of climate change, like  increases in sea level.

What does all this mean?  It means we – the human race – are already reaping the harvest of centuries of abusing God’s creation.  We need to prepare for a difficult time ahead.  And we need to repent.  Perhaps God will hear:

If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.  2 Chronicles 7:14

[See also How Do You Pray About an Oil Spill?]

Care of Creation and Eden Vigil are cohosting a Consultation on Environmental Missions in Manhattan KS July 12-16.  A small group of environmental and missions leaders will spend three days together hashing out issues that will help us to establish Environmental Missions as a new category of missions.  You can read the announcement of the event here – and you can contact Robynn Bliss, event registrar, here if you would like to join us.

Meanwhile, Lowell recently wrote the following piece for the Evangelicals for Social Action newsletter, answering the question, What do we mean by “Environmental Missionary”.  Enjoy!

What Is an Environmental Missionary?

Munnu-ji was my best Indian friend. He was my first landlord, renting me a small room off Assi Ghat before I was married. I’m not sure Munnu ever believed on Jesus. He was a man of peace, however, and assisted numerous Christian workers. He died when a mosquito, borne off the polluted waters of the Ganges River basin, bit him. Munnu-ji contracted cerebral malaria.

The basic idea was to combine the environment and missions in a way we don’t think anyone else is doing. On an organizational level, no mission organization in North America is openly both environmental and missional. It’s very similar to medical missions in its approach to the mission field. When you take out the word ‘medical’ and put in the ‘environmental,’ that’s what we are. We want to do practical things where we help people by sharing the Gospel, but we want to serve people and serve the church by helping to heal the land through various means.

If the recent government effort to reduce salt in processed foods is successful, this is what we will have to eat.  Or so says the food industry according to an astonishing front page article in yesterday’s New York Times (free subscr reqd).

Compared to reducing fat and sugar, for which substitute ingredients have been found, eliminating salt and sodium is turning out to be a major challenge for these companies.  Why is that?  It turns out that without salt – lots and lots of salt – we eaters might discover that the stuff that is being sold to us as delicious, tantalizing and even healthy “food” is really nothing of the sort.

It’s a marketing problem.  Without salt to hide the true nature of these products, we might not buy them.   Why not?  It turns out they don’t taste very good:

As a demonstration, Kellogg prepared some of its biggest sellers with most of the salt removed. The Cheez-It fell apart in surprising ways. The golden yellow hue faded. The crackers became sticky when chewed, and the mash packed onto the teeth. The taste was not merely bland but medicinal.

“I really get the bitter on that,” the company’s spokeswoman, J. Adaire Putnam, said with a wince as she watched Mr. Kepplinger struggle to swallow.

They moved on to Corn Flakes. Without salt the cereal tasted metallic. The Eggo waffles evoked stale straw. The butter flavor in the Keebler Light Buttery Crackers, which have no actual butter, simply disappeared.

“Salt really changes the way that your tongue will taste the product,” Mr. Kepplinger said. “You make one little change and something that was a complementary flavor now starts to stand out and become objectionable.”

Let me be clear:  I cook, and I use salt in my cooking.  Salt is about as natural a substance as you can find.  There is nothing wrong with salt – in reasonable amounts.  It is a useful seasoning.  It’s an important preservative, going back to Bible times.  Salt was so common that it makes an appearance in Jesus parables and his followers are even told that we are “the salt of the earth“.  Salt is one of the things that you must have for your body to function normally.

On the other hand, we also know that too much salt causes all kinds of problems, most significantly, hypertension or high blood pressure.  Again from the Times article:

By all appearances, this is a moment of reckoning for salt. High blood pressure is rising among adults and children. Government health experts estimate that deep cuts in salt consumption could save 150,000 lives a year.

Since processed foods account for most of the salt in the American diet, national health officials, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York and Michelle Obama are urging food companies to greatly reduce their use of salt. Last month, the Institute of Medicine went further, urging the government to force companies to do so.

But the question here is not “to salt or not to salt”.  It is somewhat simpler than that: We now know from the food companies themselves that without salt their food is not really very good.  This is not a diatribe from a health nut.  The industry itself is pleading with the government:  “Our food is so bad that if we aren’t allowed to load it up with salt, people won’t eat it.  You have to let us keep the salt.  How else can we sell the stuff?”

The question is this:  If the companies themselves think the product is this bad, why are we still buying it?

Instead, get yourself out to that Farmer’s Market this week.  Then come home and cook some real food!

To explore this topic further, I highly recommend Michael Pollan’s short book, “In Defense of Food” – available here from Amazon or at your library.

Our environment — God’s creation — is in deep trouble. From the effects of climate change and the extinction of animal and plant species to the growing shortage of clean air and water, creation is in a crisis more serious than ever before.

But the good news is, there’s no better group of people to help solve the problem than Christians. It’s us — those who love God — whom He has called to take care of the environment He made. And if we’re faithful to that call, He’ll empower us to heal our suffering creation.

God is counting on you. Here’s how you can mobilize your church to care for creation: Recognize the complexity of the problem. The environmental crisis we face is a vast and multi-dimensional issue in which every local problem is caused by or causes problems in other areas of the world. All of God’s creation is connected, and when one part suffers, all of it suffers. There are more people alive on earth now than ever before, and many are living a consumer-oriented lifestyle that’s damaging the environment for us all.

Understand the call to dominion. When God gave humans dominion — charging them with ruling over the planet — He intended that people accomplish His goals (not their own) in creation. God made creation to be one of the primary means by which people could come to know Him. It’s a temple that’s intended as a place to meet God, so it should be respected and cared for. Let your love for God motivate you to value the creation He made. Decide to take care of it as an act of worship to show your love for God.

Look at Christ’s example. Jesus Himself walked the earth and worshipped in the midst of nature. He used the fruit of creation in responsible ways, consuming its resources (like food) whenever necessary and enjoying them fully, but never diminishing or destroying creation’s ability to be fruitful.

Recognize the root of the problem. The core issue that’s caused creation to become broken is sin. But the creation that’s been damaged by our sin can be restored by our redemption. If we seek to restore our relationship to God, then to ourselves, and then to other people, our relationship with the rest of the creation can be restored. Realize that the way you treat creation has an impact on your relationships with God and others. The way you either take care of or neglect God’s creation is a measure of how well God’s redemption either is or isn’t working in your life.

Understand the church’s power to fix the problem. The church is the only organization on earth that can successfully address a crisis with as many dimensions as the environmental crisis. The church can deal with: repentance from sin, motivation for individual action, courage and influence to change corporate behavior, and the ability to recruit and mobilize millions of people to take redemptive action to solve the problem. Since the environmental crisis is an unmatched challenge that’s critically important to tackle, it should be addressed in every aspect of your church’s life.

Worship in ways that foster wonder and awe of God’s creation. Design worship that inspires people to feel passionate about creation and work to help heal it. Sing songs about creation and read Scripture passages that describe it. Make creation visible during your worship services, such as by opening window shades to bring in natural light and featuring fresh plants and flowers in the sanctuary. Schedule some worship services outdoors when possible. Pray for environmental healing, and for the people who are currently suffering because of environmental problems.

Preach and teach about creation. When preaching sermons and teaching Sunday School classes, help people see the connections between how they live and what is happening to the world God loves. Emphasize the comprehensive nature of God’s redemptive plan for the environment, and each person’s part in it.

Encourage the next generation to care for creation. Take children and youth outdoors whenever possible, and when the weather doesn’t permit going outside, bring creation indoors when you can (such as by having some unusual pets visit, setting up an ant farm or aquarium for fish, taking care of plants in the classroom, etc.). Urge your classes to conserve energy (like by turning off lights after leaving a room) and recycle materials you use in class. Use service project time for environmental projects. On missions trips, point out the damage that’s been done to the environment in each place you visit, and how that’s hurting the people you’ve come to serve. Encourage kids who are interested in science to prepare for possible careers in that field so they can help the environment even more.

Respect the environment when building or renovating. Whenever you’re building a new church building or renovating your existing one, make sure your plans are environmentally responsible. Minimize damage to your land and the creatures on it, such as by minimizing artificial landscaping (like lawns) and maximizing natural areas, saving animal habitats, planting gardens, and avoiding the use of chemicals that harm the soil.

Save energy. Conserve energy however you can, such as by updating your heating and air conditioning system to one that’s optimally efficient, using good quality insulation, switching from incandescent lighting to fluorescent lighting, turning office machines like computers off at night, using only environmentally healthy cleaning supplies, and reusing supplies like cups and dishes.

Work for a better environment in the community surrounding your church. Get together with others in your church to go out into your local community and contribute to the health of your part of creation. Do volunteer projects, like clearing and maintaining hiking trails or cleaning trash from stream beds. Collect specialized items for recycling (like cell phones and printer cartridges), use and promote public transportation and carpooling, turn over a part of your church’s property to be used for a community garden, host a farmer’s market, etc. Let non-Christians who also care about the environment see that people who love God also love His creation — that will give you a platform to share the Gospel with them at the right time.

Incorporate creation care into your church’s missions programs. Design missions programs that are theologically sound, scientifically informed, geographically comprehensive, and politically savvy. Learn about the environments in the places your church is serving through missions. Plan how to help the people there whose health is suffering because of environmental issues. Do what you can to help heal their environment as part of your overall service to them.

Most frightening for many, the spill is perilously close to, or may have already reached the Loop Current (see graphic), a powerful ocean current that feeds directly into the Gulf Stream:

Water flows through the Gulf of Mexico deep under the surface.  It enters with warm water from the Caribbean between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba, loops south of Louisiana, then exits around the Florida Keys.  This could bring oil up the US East Coast in the Gulf Stream Water. This was mentioned a few weeks ago in this report, and now scientists believe it is already on the move in that direction.

A researcher tells the Associated Press that computer models show the oil may have already seeped into the powerful water stream called the loop current. A boat will be sent later this week to collect samples.

William Hogarth is the dean of the University of South Florida’s College of Marine Science. He says one model shows the oil already in loop current, while another shows the slick three miles away.

[UPDATE:  Check out this infographic... click on the picture to see it full size.]

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece that was picked up by a number of people – “How do you pray about an oil spill?” That concept has now been developed by others into a full website:  http://www.oilspillprayer.com that I urge you to check out and bookmark.  In particular, read “The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Tragedy: How Your Church Can Help!” by Kendra Juskus of Flourish (http://flourishonline.org).  Beyond calling us to prayer, Kendra offers some very good suggestions about how to become more informed and even how to move to action if God leads you in that direction.  This is a sample of what is on offer:

A number of organizations are recruiting volunteers to help out with immediate efforts in the areas impacted by the oil spill. The links provided here will bring you directly to the volunteer opportunities provided by these organizations. Please note that experience relevant to oil spill clean up and skills associated with wildlife observation and handling are in particularly high demand. But there is also a need for folks to take photographs, tend databases, and staff phone banks, so check out these opportunities and see where you might fit in:

• National Wildlife Foundation Gulf Coast Surveillance Teams – Volunteers are needed to track and report on the impacts of the oil spill, support the wildlife rescue and rehabilitation effort, and restore delicate coastal ecosystems in the Gulf of Mexico.
• Audubon Society – One of the more detailed volunteer registration forms available, which may helpful in determining where you can plug in.
• Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana – This aggregate of organizations is just asking volunteers to register at this point, with the understanding that they will be contacted when appropriate opportunities emerge.

Pray we must – but action is called for as well.

Let me know what you and your church are doing.

The “official” estimate is 210,000 gallons per day (5,000 barrels).  This is almost certainly way too low.  Some outside experts (non-government and non-oil industry) put the rate at more like 1,050,000 gallons (25,000 barrels).  BP itself has admitted that in a worst-case scenario the rate could be more than double that pessimistic amount, or 2,520,000 gallons (60,000 barrels).

Whatever the amount, it adds up fast.  NPR has designed a Widget that I have installed to the right ———>>>

You can use the slider to adjust the rate and see what the current total would be if it were leaking at that rate.

Again, no one knows.  But what we do know is it isn’t going away.

Lord, forgive us.

[If you are reading this post on FaceBook or on Networked Blogs, you will need to come over to http://ourfathersworld.org to see the widget.]

Situations like the oil spill in the gulf tend to leave us deflated and discouraged.  It’s good, therefore, to be reminded that amid the rubble that we have created in God’s world, he occasionally shows us that there is (still) beauty and wonder when we can shout “Stop!” and look. This post from our friend Donn Ring is a perfect counterpoint to the last one on praying over the oil spill.  Enjoy, and spend some time pondering his fantastic photography.  Then get yourself *outside* today and look for some wonders yourself!

A few weeks ago we heard rumors of wild flowers in bloom on the south side of the Superstition Mountains east-northeast of Phoenix. We hopped in Dennis’ Honda Element “Pudge” and charged up the road from Arizona City. Once spring temperatures heat up, desert flower displays can be very short lived. We must move!

We left behind all our Taoist Wu Wei philosophy of moving naturally and contemplatively along the energy contours and flow of the topography (what we unceremoniously call “dinking”), and blasted down wide highways that had been blasted straight and level through rolling deserts framed by ghostly slag heaps and bare naked tailings of recent mines shut down. We were aggressive voyagers in the mode of Nietzsche’s Will to Power to possess our particular currency of beauty no matter what.

(It amazes me in my many years of wandering the sanctuaries of religion that zealots in the pursuit of the most intimate, profound and beautiful insights can shove and bully and legislate and condemn and destroy, leaving ugly slag heaps of bitter history as witness to their rape of truth meant to liberate. One of the greatest Taoist sayings is found in the ignored Beatitudes of Jesus: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth.” We were not meek this morning. — Excuse this brief diversion to scratch an itch).

As we barreled up the road at 75mph (120kph) a flash of brilliant red caught the corner of my eye. I yelled at Dennis, “STOP!” Dennis did his best to pull Pudge over onto the gravel shoulder while semis rumbled up our tail and roared by. A few other cars, pickups and trucks flipped their greetings at us. He backed up slowly along the gravel strip. The car rocked with the air compression wake of every thundering truck.

Here, isolated, next to this racetrack highway, growing out of a pile of rubble in a ditch collecting scattered debris was a most brilliant Firecracker Penstemon (pentsemon eatonii) in full bloom. Dennis pulled Pudge further off the road and we unloaded our cameras. This was the only Firecracker Penstemon we saw on this trip. But as we nestled down with macro lenses to get our close-up photos we were dive bombed.

A female Anna’s Hummingbird (calypte anna) did not take kindly to our intrusion of her feeding spot. She whizzed around us, stopping, backing up in mid air, buzzing this way and that, her iridescent green back flashing in the desert sunshine. She was sizing up the danger of these strange interlopers, finally whirring up to the top of the gully and sitting on a pile of dead branches and waiting for us to leave.

(Hummingbirds are the only bird that can make such maneuvers. Their variable wing attitudes can beat as high as 90 times per second; they have been clocked flying 60mph in spurts, their heart rate pumping up to a 1000 beats a minute. Their metabolic rate is so rapid that daily they must consume their body weight in nectar. Without a source of rich nectar they are only hours away from starvation. No wonder she was disturbed at our visit. We could see no other flowers in sight. At night, to conserve energy, they go into a hibernation-like state with their heart rate extremely reduced.)

Dennis and I decided to sit absolutely still and become part of the landscape and gain her trust. The cacophony of noise from the highway echoing in this bulldozed gully with a carpet of tossed fast-food wrappers didn’t lend itself to bucolic nature watching. With some caution she approached the penstemon, ignored our motionless hulks and then with determined necessity began feeding close to us. So delicate and agile was her dance from blossom to blossom — truly a winged ballet among the rubble. We were blessed by this island drama of beauty-in-the-wasteland that forced us to stop cold in our thoughtless rush.

It’s a legitimate question:  The news is getting worse by the day for those of us many miles away, and no doubt by the hour for those living in the area of impact.  This morning we learned that some experts believe the amount of oil leaking may be much more than even the revised estimate of 5,000 barrels per day. More worrisome than that, there is now real concern that the oil may join the Gulf stream ocean current, which would send it around the tip of Florida and all the way up the East Coast of the United States, staining beaches and killing wildlife as it goes.

There are already complaints that BP didn’t act quickly enough, the Federal Government didn’t step in fast enough – but to my mind these complaints are very much beside the point.  What would the Feds have done if they had stepped in 15 minutes after the explosion?  This disaster – easily on track to eclipse the Exxon Valdez spill – is far, far beyond anything any human agency can do.  This picture is a parable for me of the entire situation.  Does anyone really believe that these puny streams of water could have made the slightest impression on a blaze of this magnitude? Some genies simply cannot be put back into their bottles.

Which takes us right to the subject of this post:  When you can do nothing else, maybe it’s time to pray.  We will skip over a couple of tempting side arguments here:  On the one hand, there is an implicit assumption in this statement that prayer is real and worth doing, and on the other, the legitimate argument could be made that maybe one should have been praying long before the disaster arrived.  Setting those aside for another time, how should we pray in a time of disaster such as is now bearing down on all those who live in the gulf coast area?

The topic came up in a phone conversation yesterday.  “Maybe we should pray that God will keep the winds blowing offshore to protect the marshes.”  But that would only blow the oil somewhere else – and as today’s news suggests, “somewhere else” could be the entire East Coast.  We could pray for good weather – but it will take a lot more than a spell of good weather to clean up a leak that is still increasing in volume.  We might, I suppose, pray for a genuine miracle – the complete disappearance of the entire slick and miraculous healing for every bird and fish being poisoned.

I can imagine how God might respond to these requests:  “But my children:  I already did my part – I hid the oil safely away from harm underneath solid rock below 5,000 feet of ocean.  Is it really my fault that you thought you could dig it up without any thought for the consequences?”

If we are to pray over this situation, we need to be  very clear about one thing:  This is not an act of God.  We have done this to ourselves.  This does not mean we cannot pray – it actually means the opposite, we will find no solution unless we do pray.  But it suggests how we ought to pray.

Our model for a prayer suitable for a tragedy we have brought on ourselves might be that of the prophet Daniel.  Living in Babylon in the sixth century BC, Daniel was a Jew exiled from his homeland.  He had endured the destruction of Jerusalem, a disaster unparalleled in the history of his nation – and one that had been predicted by earlier prophets and directly tied to the disobedience of Daniel’s people.

In chapter 9 of Daniel’s prophecy, we find him meditating on the fate of Jerusalem:

I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. ³ So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes.

Daniel’s prayer is a model of how to pray when the disaster is our own fault:  It is a prayer of confession.  It is an important principle that we cannot appeal to God for something that is our own fault unless we also admit to him that it is our fault.

Listen to Daniel:

⁵ We have sinned and done wrong. We have been wicked and have rebelled; we have turned away from your commands and laws…

⁷ “Lord, you are righteous, but this day we are covered with shame—the men of Judah and people of Jerusalem and all Israel, both near and far, in all the countries where you have scattered us because of our unfaithfulness to you…

¹² You have fulfilled the words spoken against us and against our rulers by bringing upon us great disaster. Under the whole heaven nothing has ever been done like what has been done to Jerusalem. ¹³ Just as it is written in the Law of Moses, all this disaster has come upon us, yet we have not sought the favor of the LORD our God by turning from our sins and giving attention to your truth. ¹⁴ The LORD did not hesitate to bring the disaster upon us, for the LORD our God is righteous in everything he does; yet we have not obeyed him.

But why should I, living safely in central Wisconsin, have to confess for the sins of a multinational corporation like BP?  What does it have to do with me?  Or you?

From today’s New York Times:

“In the furor over the Gulf disaster, a hard-to-overlook fact: America needs the oil.”

As an individual, I do my part to feed our oil- and coal-driven economy by pumping gas into my car, by burning electric lights and using all kinds of oil-derived plastics to sustain my “lifestyle”.  As do you.  (You are reading this on a computer screen… enough said).  Collectively, we have created an economic and political system that cannot run without these fossil fuels, and we bear collective guilt for this.  Yes, guilt.  We could have designed an economic system that would have functioned in harmony with God’s creation rather than in opposition to it.  We did not.  We are guilty. [See my article on this topic here.]

Another prophet’s confession comes to mind here:  “I am a man of unclean lips and I live among a people of unclean lips…” (Isaiah 6:5)  BP may have pulled the trigger, but you and I bought the gun.

If the disaster is our fault, what is the point of confession and prayer?  It remains our fault, right?  True – but confession allows us to throw ourselves on God’s mercy.  Listen again to Daniel:

¹⁷ “Now, our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. ¹⁸ Give ear, O God, and hear; open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your Name. We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy. ¹⁹ O Lord, listen! O Lord, forgive! O Lord, hear and act! For your sake, O my God, do not delay, because your city and your people bear your Name.”

We know historically – and many of us know personally – that God will sometimes step in to help in a situation like this, not because we deserve it but because we don’t.  He will act for his own sake when he does not have to act for ours.  This is mercy.  And we need it.

Maybe it really is time to pray.

Event Alert: The National Day of Prayer for Creation Care was planned many months ago, but its timing as a possible response to the disaster unfolding in the Gulf could not be more appropriate.  Join us May 25 in Washington DC or plan an evening of prayer and confession where ever you happen to be.

3.  It’s all about us and how we treat each other.

It was, frankly, surprising to note the number of times during this conference we were told that we should be – and most of the early leaders of this movement were – concerned about people as much as about nature.  Nelson himself was as much concerned with conservation of urban resources as with environmental resources.  Leopold’s “land ethic” was based on a concern not only for the health of the land but for the health of the people who live on it.

The wider environmental movement has had its radicals in the past – those who are quite convinced that human beings are not much more than a fungus running wild on the surface of the globe, and that most natural places would be better off without us.   The problem with this approach is that even these radicals are human beings themselves – and I don’t see anyone rushing to the front of the line to check out.

If the speakers at this conference are to be considered representative of the mainstream environmental movement – and I think this is a reasonable assumption – we would have to conclude that the movement as a whole not only recognizes a place for human beings in the world, but also sees the connections between environmental values and human values.   Doroceta Taylor reminded us that the long history of the oppression of minorities in the US is a history of environmental abuse of those peoples.  Even recent history like the building of interstate highways through our cities shows an uncomfortable pattern.  It was not white suburbs that were generally leveled for these new highways, but thriving minority communities.

Novelist Margaret Atwood addressed the question of ecojustice by asking for new language:  Using the term justice, she suggested, conjures up an image of judgment and law and a host of negative connotations.  Why not substitute ‘ecomercy’ for ‘ecojustice’?  Whoever is wrong – and all of us have plenty to be guilty about – perhaps we can start best by being merciful to each other.  If a wealthy person were to see reducing consumption as a conscious act of mercy toward those who have less and need more, might that not help a bit?

Conservation of natural resources and urban resources is one and the same.  Preservation of ecosystems and human societies cannot be separated.  These themes ran through almost all of the presentations of the conference, perhaps best summed up by the speaker who said, “The problem is us and how we treat each other.”

Surely the connection to Creation Care is clear?  The heart of a Christian approach to environmental problems is to recognize that ‘environmental problems are sin problems.’  The problem indeed is us – but the solution is God.  This more than anything else is what we can bring to this movement.

4. Even business agrees.

One of the most enduring fallacies surrounding today’s environmental crisis is that we have to choose between prosperity and environment.

“Green business is good business” was repeated over and over – by the business leaders among us.

We had a couple of top ones at this conference, the most prominent of which was Fisk Johnson of S.C. Johnson.  This premier consumer products company (Saran Wrap, anyone?) is a remarkable family company (Fisk represents the fifth generation) that takes environment seriously.  They cut CFC’s from their products three years before the government made everyone else do it and have pioneered a “Green List” of environmentally friendly chemicals that has some of their competition a bit upset with them.  “You’re going to change the whole industry!”  “You bet.”

But Johnson sounded almost sounded plaintive in expressing his frustration at making changes at the consumer level:  Even if a company is committed to doing the right thing, it isn’t so easy when consumers won’t go along.  By way of example, he tossed several rolls of toilet paper into the audience.  Paper made with recycled fibers is better for the environment but paper made with new fibers is softer – much softer.  Guess which one we consumers prefer to buy.  “What price softness” was his question.

Johnson’s best line:  “We need to change the social norm from keeping up with the Joneses to being greener than the Joneses.”

Robert Kennedy Jr. reminded us that those countries who have moved to ‘decarbonize their economies’ by moving away from fossil fuels as much as possible are among the most prosperous economies in the world today.  This very short list includes Norway, Sweden, Germany and Iceland.

How does the Creation Care movement interact with the world of business?  Business people go to church.  Or they would do if the church is doing its job of reaching into its communities.  If churches are committed to and are preaching love for God’s creation, this ethic and passion will penetrate the boardroom and will show up on the factory floor.

We started this series with an analogy.  We’re all citizens of a town about to be engulfed in flood waters.  We need to work with each other to save our homes.  It doesn’t matter what our faith-affiliation is when sandbags are waiting.  Applying this to the environmental crisis, we who are Christians have a perspective on the problem and a toolkit that is not available to the rest of our community and we need to use these in two directions:  We need to persuade our fellow Christians that the crisis is real and that our town needs us – many of them are still asleep in their beds even as the water rises.  And we need to reach out to the larger environmental movement to let them know that we’re here and we’re ready to work.

So let’s get going!