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The Hope Which Springs Eternal Within the Human Breast

by Donald Fausel

The title for this blog was stolen (like in baseball) from a poem I memorized in grammar school, Casey At the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer in 1888.  He in turn stole (like in plagiarism) the line from an essay titled An Essay on Man by Alexander Pope in 1733-34.

Just in case you can’t remember the poem, or never heard of Mighty Casey, here is a brief summary. The baseball fans of Mudville, who were watching their team lose that day, were divided into two groups, the “struggling few (who) got up to go leaving there the rest” and the loyal fans who stayed because of their belief in the “hope that springs eternal within the human breast”, and they were counting on Mighty Casey to whack out a home run and win the day for the Mudville Nine. If you want to know the outcome of the game, click on the link above.

As an example, it seems to me that in some ways, many of us are waiting for “a Mighty Casey like” person or movement to fulfill our hope that climate change isn’t as serious as ninety-seven percent of scientists believe it to be, and we can go about our life as usual. If we’re one of those deniers, I think we need to listen to the wise sage Pogo, who said in a 1971 cartoon, “We Met the Enemy and He is US” Pogo’s declaration has become a universal truth that applies to most organizations, including the church. Like many others, I believe that the laity is the key to change.  Having aired our grievances, and recognized that we are part of the problem, we need to keep hope alive. We all need to become change agents and not just “leave it up to George”. This blog will focus on those who believe that “hope that springs eternal…”, and are willing and able to follow Pogo’s challenge to be part of the solution.

HOPE and HOPELESSNESS

So, here are a few words about hope and hopelessness. I don’t intend to use “hope” in the biblical or theological sense, as in Faith, Hope and Charity, but in a more everyday way, as in “Hope is the belief in what is possible and the expectation of things to come.”  Or as St. Augustine of Hippo described it, “Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are Anger and Courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”  Or if we think of hope as a movement, the Chinese author and Guru Lin Yutang described it as, “Hope is like a road in the country; there was never a road, but when many people walk on it, the road comes into existence.“

In a previous blog Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness , I introduced the founder of positive psychology, Martin Seligman. If you want to refresh your memory you might check that same blog in a section entitled The Science of Happiness.  And if you haven’t listened to Dr. Seligman’s TED TALK entitled The New Era of Positive Psychology I think you’d find it very helpful.

The first thing we need to decide “Is hope a feeling or a cognitive process?” In an article titled Hope: A Way of Thinking, C.R. Rick Snyder, a deceased positive psychologist, “…offers a way of looking at hope that goes beyond defining hope as a feeling.”  In an article by Dr. Brene’ Brown, Learning to Hope , she summarizes Snyder’s method by saying hope happens when:

  • We have the ability to set realistic goals (I know where I want to go)
  • We are able to figure out how to achieve those goals, including the ability to stay flexible and develop alternative routes ( I know how to get there, I’m persistent, and I can tolerate disappointment and try again).
  • We believe in ourselves (I can do this!).

Dr. Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston. She is the author of three #1 New York Times Bestsellers: Rising Strong, Daring Greatly and the Gifts of Imperfection. She is also the Founder and CEO of The Daring Way and COURAGEworks – an online learning community that offers eCourses, workshops, and interviews for individuals and organizations.

Here is a video by Dr. Brown titled What is Hope?  The introduction to the video reads: “This is a wonderful video by Brené Brown on the subject of hope and how we can all learn to be hopeful.  Watch and learn!” I agree!

I suspect that many of us have experienced hopelessness at some at time and at some level in our lives. A loved one dies. We lose a job. A friend disappoints us. You name it… Well here is an opportunity to listen to a TED TALK by Nick Vujicic. The title is Overcoming Hopelessness. Nick was born in Melbourne, Australia in 1982 to a Serbian immigrant family, without all of his four limbs. During most of his childhood he suffered with depression. It’s hard to even imagine going through life without hands or legs. But Nick decided to “…concentrate on what he did have instead of what he didn’t have.” His first speaking engagement was at age 19. Since then he has traveled around the world “…sharing his story with millions, sometimes in stadiums filled to capacity, speaking to a range of diverse groups…” In 2007 he moved to Southern California where he is president of the international non-profit ministry Life Without Limbs. This is his website and it’s worth checking out.

Three years ago I read one of his books, Life Without Limits.  At that time in my life I had just lost my wife from lung cancer and I was grieving her death. As I read what Nick had gone through I was inspired by this exceptional man. He tells the story of his physical disabilities and the emotional battle he endured trying to deal with them as a child, a teen and young adult.  As he said in his book, “For the longest, loneliest time, I wondered if there was anyone on earth like me, and whether there was a purpose to my life other than pain and humiliation.” He shares with his readers that his“… faith in God has been his central source of strength… and explains that once he found his own purpose—inspiring others to make their lives and the world better—he found confidence to build a rewarding and productive life without limits.

Even though there are fifty five years between Nick and me, he’s one of my heroes.

Do Your Chairs Need Balancing?

by Amanda Petersen

I meet a lot of people who want to run away to the woods and leave society and all its complications behind like Thoreau. Living away from everyone is the way to get closer to God. There is a truth to the power of solitude and its relationship with God and ourselves.

I also meet a lot of people who run away from solitude. The thought of sitting alone for 20 minutes with nothing else but themselves sounds horrifying. They will do whatever it takes not to be left alone with the thoughts in their heads, let alone an Omnipresent God. Often they are wonderful doers of good works.

As always in the contemplative life, there is a need for both solitude (love it or not) and community (love it or not). There is no running to whatever corner we feel comfortable and staying there.   Did you know that Thoreau had three chairs in that cabin? One for solitude, two for friendship, and three for society.  In Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Sherry Turkle states “These three chairs plot the point on a virtuous circle that links conversation to the capacity for empathy and for self-reflection. In solitude we find ourselves; we prepare ourselves to come to conversation with something to assay that is authentically, ours. When we are secure in ourselves we are able to listen to other people and really hear what they have to say.  And then in conversation with other people we become better at inner dialogue.  Solitude reinforces a secure sense of self and with that the capacity for empathy.  Then conversation with others provides rich material for self reflection just as alone we prepare to talk together, together we learn how to engage in a more productive solitude.”

Now, Turkle’s focus is conversation, yet isn’t the spiritual life fueled by our real connections? Whether with self, others, or the world, it is all grounded in the Source that is our being. Living a life that finds a place for all three with the intention of drawing closer to Love is a very rich life that sees beyond the complications of circumstances or voices that make one want to run and hide. The contemplative life is one that honors the self, relationships, and society. Take a look at your life. Are you exclusive in one area? Is it time to balance your life with solitude, relationships, or service? Let me know your thoughts.

Over the next three weeks, I will look at those chairs individually in the upcoming newsletters.

In fact, I’d love to have a conversation about it. Come join us for one of the Dinner and Conversation Nights: June 17 or July 15 from 6 – 7:30 pm.

Did I Just Read That Right?

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

I’ve known how to read since I was about five. I picked it up quick and loved it. I devoured books faster than Ms. Pac-Man devoured those Dippin’ Dots with a gaggle of ghosts hot on her tail. When I began to follow a Christian path as a teen, I lived out my appetite for written words by reading the Bible. I was pretty intense about it. This rabid intensity in reading and memorizing the Bible lasted into my early 20’s. To this day, I can likely still quote 200 scriptures, chapter and verse. I’m fun at parties.

I don’t know if you have noticed this, but we humans don’t always read things “right”. We stumble over words.  We find out the word we had been using had a different meaning than what we originally thought, like the time I used the word “fetish” about ten times during a class presentation in High School. I had meant something far different, like “hobby” or “interest”. Yes, those would have been much better choices. As the human race, most of us know we get things wrong. We know this because we live this. We don’t always read things “right”.

For about eight years I was a supervisor of several treatment programs in Tucson. I was on call a lot and had to answer the phone frequently after I went to sleep to work out whatever crisis was occurring. One such night, the call that woke me was from an overnight staff member who was working at a short-term stabilization house. The nature of the house meant people could arrive at all hours if they needed support. The staff member who called me was a phenomenal helper. She got into this work for all the right reasons. She is consistent and awesome still today.

This night, though, she was concerned. She was worried about someone who had arrived on her shift because in his paperwork it indicated that he was a cannibal and she wasn’t sure what to do with a cannibal. She thought she’d give me a call for my expertise. After I didn’t speak for likely 30 seconds, she repeated it: he’s a cannibal. I was having many thoughts and questions come to me.

-Is he a cannibal in theory or in practice?

-How do we know he is a cannibal? Did he go to prison?

-Do you get to leave prison if you eat people?

-I need to say something because I am likely scaring this staff member massively.

So I said, “Hmmm. Did you ask him if he is hungry?” An assessment seemed important. She said, “Well, he’s in bed now.” I talked with her a bit more and we agreed if she had any concerns, even a small concern, we would talk again and I could even come out and be with her through the night. She said she was okay and would let me know if that changed at all. I drifted back to a fitful sleep, what with the visions of cannibals dancing in my head. Around 6 am I called her to check in. She described a hard night of jumping at every sound and checking on him a whole lot. She said he slept through the night and was still asleep. I promised her I would figure out what is safest for this person who was, apparently, a cannibal. I told her she could rest assured we would have some solid answers later in the day.

An hour later, I received a call from the Team Leader of the house who had arrived and debriefed with the overnight staff. The Team Leader was just as perplexed as I was and decided to review that paperwork once more. After a thorough review she gave me a call. I had a hard time, at first, understanding what she was saying due to her laughter that was bordering on hysterical. Finally she caught her breath and managed to say, “Cannabis Abuse”. Cannibal vs cannabis abuse; well that’s a whole different kind of munchies.

What a tremendous misunderstanding of fantastical proportion. What a helpful demonstration and reminder that as we live and be in this world, we get it wrong. Sometimes, we get it very, very wrong. This extends to all aspects of our living, including our faith development and concept of what is Holy and Sacred, what is Spirit and Life. Our lens changes as we have new experiences. That’s a really wonderful thing if we can acknowledge and allow for that. In my own lived experience, absolute-ism does not allow for flexibility, questions, and the mistakes I make all the time. It is too rigid. Absolutes demand that we say we know what we know loudly, proudly, and often regardless of what lived experience offers. Lived experience often leads me to humbly admitting all the things I do not know, all the things I desperately want and all the things I sure do fear. Holding all of that leads to a very different experience with Holy Scripture.

I still read the Bible today. It is the sacred text of my faith and my spiritual development. I just read the Bible differently now because I realized I wasn’t actually reading the Bible that whole time, after all. I was reading the Bible through my own lens, my own bias, my own culture, my own spiritual principles and values, my own church’s theology, my own hopes, my own wishes, my own fears. I was reading the Bible according to Davin.

The Bible is like poetry to me. The beauty of poetry is that it can mean something completely different to you than what it means to me. Clever poetry lets us hang out in the framework, knock around a bit within the walls, slink down into it as it envelopes us, raise us up, lower us down, and on and on and on. When a poem takes our breath away, it is awe-inspiring. This is also what I can experience when reading the Bible now. There’s just so much more room for wonder and questions than how I encapsulated it all before.

I shy away from individuals who quote scripture at me because it really feels like it is something being hurled to harm versus something being offered to nourish.  I don’t get into theological debates all that often because they seem to take me further away from my call: loving God and loving each other. I am not offering my thoughts as the “right” thoughts or the “right” way to read and interpret the Bible.

I am a seeker, a meaning maker, a holder of hope. My faith development in this leg of the journey can best be described as an inclusive Christian. I want to learn how to love better. I want to know how I can hold vulnerability as sacred. I want there to be room enough for your precious self and my precious self as we juggle some love back and forth in a rhythm that is easy and satisfying.

I love to chill inside the Bible with a sense of wonder. I love it when what I read clicks nicely with something I have been contending with or hurting about. I love it when I read something and it makes me more curious and loving about the world around me than I was before I took it in. I am not an authority on the topic of the Bible and theology, I am simply a guy sharing his own lived experience in seeking and finding God. To me, the Bible is a living, life affirming, sacred text that has the power to not only take my breath away, but it also has the divine ability to make me breathe once again in parts I had long thought were dead and gone.

That, my friends, is a pretty awesome thing to receive from reading the Bible. Right?

Family Portrait

by Karen MacDonald

His arm is lovingly draped over her shoulders, his fingers holding a cigarette away from her skin.  She stands close to him with a comfortable smile, holding their cute Chihuahua dog. A handsome pit bull/terrier mix dog stands between them looking at the camera, one ear flopped over.  John and Pepper, Chico and Deuce posed for this portrait in the parking lot of a church where they’re spending part of the day.

Pepper and John met a year ago at a methadone clinic and have been inseparable since.  She says she’s never been cared for like this before.  By the time each of them was six years old, they’d been started on the road of harsh knocks in their dysfunctional and/or abusive families.  He spent many years in jail, she spent many years selling her body, both of them hooked on drugs.  Now their addictions are cigarettes and state-sponsored methadone.  They each have multiple serious health issues, they have survived living on the streets–and they have each other and their canine companions.  

The money they manage to panhandle goes to the dogs’ food, bus passes, and cigs.  Their food stamps go mostly to support the woman who invites them to spend the nights at her apartment.  John hopes to land a job at a pizza joint near where they’re staying, though his felony record doesn’t help.  They’ve been attacked (with the scars to show), they’re ignored by individuals and the system, they’re sick, they’re tired.

And still Pepper says she loves life.  And they love each other and Chico and Deuce.  They’re a family.  They’re astute and compassionate.  The dogs are sleeping on the strip of grass between the parking lot and Wetmore Road.  Looking at Deuce, Pepper says, “’This dog is so judged. It’s because he’s part pit-bull….He’s not judged by the content of his character, but by his species….’”

In a different, though related development, there’s a push to prohibit (homeless) people from selling papers or panhandling on street medians in Pima County.  This would go along with a similar law in the city of Tucson.  The judging goes on, individually and societally.  Our work of compassion goes on.

(The story of John and Pepper and the quote is found in the Tucson Weekly, May 5, 2016, article entitled “The ballad of John and Pepper, hurting and homeless” by Brian Smith.

image ©Johnny Sajem 

Jesus’ Solidarity with the Least of These

by Amos Smith

Jesus’ solidarity with “the least of these” plants him among the prophets. Jeremiah and Isaiah said the measure of a society is how it treats its least powerful. How would America measure up?

How do we treat those without adequate health care? How do we treat the elderly who can’t afford their medicine? How do we treat our poor neighboring countries? What are our priorities? Are they as George Herbert Walker Bush put it, to be a “kinder and gentler nation?” Do we send neighboring countries the food and medicine they need or do we send them fighter planes and guns? Our obligation to the poor and powerless has deep Biblical roots, echoing through the generations of prophets leading up to Jesus.

In the fullness of time, God entered the messiness of history. God entered into solidarity with the human family to show us the way. Jesus walked the dusty streets of Palestine in sandals. Jesus entered into solidarity with the poor and suffering. Authentic Christianity continues to enter into the fray of poverty and affliction. This is Christianity’s legacy—to show God’s love through service to “the least of these.”

Primal Spirituality

by Karen Richter

I just read something in Spiritual Directors International’s journal about ‘primal spirituality.’ Not the spirituality of ancient humans, but the first spirituality: that way of approaching life that sets us off on a path of growth and contemplation.

When I look at my own life and think about where it all started, several memories and experiences come to mind:

  • As a teenager, visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and becoming committed to nonviolence.
  • As a college student, coming to terms with the suffering of my 3 year old cousin with brain cancer and the terrible lie that says people get what they deserve.
  • In young adulthood, considering the death of my grandparents and realizing that being healed is different from being cured.
  • During my 30s, realizing that the way I prayed had changed to reflect a different kind of vision for God.

These and many others were formative experiences, along with the slow growth pattern of living in the community of marriage and parenthood. But there’s a particular experience that is on my mind today, which was the primal experience for growing the spirituality of my life now.

I had a miscarriage after my second child. As these events go, it was early, uncomplicated, and ordinary. I healed quickly and moved on.

About 10 months later, I found myself staring at a positive pregnancy test again. I was understandably more reticent about sharing my news, a bit more circumspect about making plans and assumptions about the outcome. At around the 5 week mark, I began experiencing signs of miscarriage again. My doctor’s advice was just to wait it out until an ultrasound at 8 weeks could tell us more.

And that three weeks was simultaneously incredibly difficult and unexpectedly rewarding. Rather than assume the best or the worst, I took an in-the-moment approach to the waiting. This was my mantra during those days:

  • I am pregnant today and I am grateful.
  • No matter what happens tomorrow or the next day, week, or month, I am pregnant today and I am glad for that.
  • No outcome will change the gratitude I feel today.

My joy at the birth of my daughter later that year was all the much greater because of my gratitude practice.

Today, about 11 years later, I have more sophisticated words for this kind of approach to life. I might tell you about my spiritual life… how it’s important to me to live my life as if it were as a gift. I might explain that I have a comprehensive view about life, how good things and bad things happen but life itself is capital G “Good”.  I can talk with you about process theology and religious maturity all day long. Yet is comes down to a primal spirituality:

  • I am alive today and I am grateful.
  • Someday my experience on the earth will end and there’s no way to know what happens next, but today I am alive and thankful.

Meditation:

The days of a human life are like grass: they bloom like a wildflower; but when the wind blows through it, it’s gone; even the ground where it stood doesn’t remember it.* Yes, we are just as fleeting as a flowering weed but we bloom beautifully in our time. Amen.

*Psalm 103.15-16

To Seek With Heart and Soul

by Talitha Arnold

“They entered into a covenant to seek the Lord, the God of their ancestors, with all their heart and with all their soul.” – 2 Chronicles 15: 1-15

This May 22 at the church I serve, we celebrate the “Rite of Initiation and Confirmation” with six young people from the congregation. The service marks the end of a two-year journey for the young adolescents and also the beginning of their adult lives, or the “initiation to adulthood,” as we call it.

Right now the Youth Confirmands are working on their Statements of Faith to present to the congregation that Sunday. Each young person will share what they believe about God, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the Church. Some of their answers are long, others quite brief. A youth once wrote about the Holy Spirit: “I don’t know what it is or what it’s supposed to do. Do you?”

Whether their answers are long or short, and whether or not they choose to confirm their faith and join the church, the Youth Confirmands are living into the kind of covenant with God that the Book of Chronicles records the people of Israel made centuries ago—a covenant not to obey God or follow God or even love God. It is, instead, to seek God, “with all their heart and with all their soul.”

United’s Youth Confirmands may not be ready, even after two years, to confirm their faith this May. That’s okay. What we truly hope is that they will continue to seek God, with heart and soul.

In so doing, may they know something of God’s presence and grace. As the Greek author Nikos Kazantakis wrote in his book, St. Francis, “What is God but the search for God?”

Prayer

Thank you, God, for the journey and for the questions. Amen.

The Heart of Worship

by Ken McIntosh

I’ve just returned from two weeks in the United Kingdom, where Christian faith has an ancient and storied history that contrasts with the lack of church attenders in the present day. According to a 2015 survey, Great Britain is among the least religious countries in the world.  In a global ranking of 65 countries, the UK came six places from last, with 30% of the population calling themselves religious. Some churches continue to thrive in the UK, but many rural congregations are only a handful of members.

On a Thursday evening my wife and I entered the Cathedral church in the Welsh city of Brecon and sat ourselves in the section of the building where the choir sings, in order to hear Evensong. There was one other person in attendance there—an older gentleman who greeted us briefly, apparently a local. The lector came, asked us to stand, and the choir processed in—a dozen people of mixed ages and gender, robed in scarlet. After the service began, a group of four German tourists walked into the Cathedral and decided to sit in the larger sanctuary space and listen.

The service was perfect—as I expected in a Cathedral church. The Welsh are famous for singing, and this choir was no exception. The voices, the enormous pipe organ, and the acoustics were out of this world. The readings were pronounced by a speaker whose voice certainly merited a career on the BBC. And I couldn’t help thinking…such a huge place of worship, such a meticulously rehearsed service, yet if the tourists hadn’t wandered in, and we hadn’t made that trip to hear the choir…they would have had one congregant.

Yet there was a sort of beauty to that. Now, please don’t misunderstand me. My life is all about the worship of God and I rejoice when I see communities of faith growing. My vocation is helping churches to increase, and I love it when I see churches at home or abroad flourishing. I dearly wish that the nave had been filled with worshipers that evening. And yet…there was something pure and delightful about that service.

I realized that choir would have sung just as beautifully, the organ sounded just as grand, and the Scriptures read with the same eloquence if only that one gentleman had been in attendance. Or, I strongly expect, it would be the same if there were no human audience.

“O sing unto the LORD a new song: sing unto the LORD,” says the Psalmist (96:1). Thankfully, the choirs and worship groups at our churches usually sound forth praise to the Lord and to a congregation. The participation of those gathered adds to the energy of the worship event. At my own church, the congregation usually claps and exclaims when the choir finishes singing—and rightly so; it’s a good feeling for the choir and for the rest of us to hear that appreciation. I’ve also been in churches where the worship vibe was similar to what used to be the experience at Grateful Dead shows—the crowd and the band sending pulses of energy back and forth, clapping and dancing with abandon.

And the blessing of an audience is also a subtle temptation, because performing in front of a human audience, who are responsive and appreciative, it’s easy to forget that our worship is “unto the Lord.” Hearing their congregation clap or smile, the musicians may not hear God silently applaud, or see the Creator’s smile. But when a choir and musicians faithfully execute their craft for an audience that are half their size—or for no audience—they are touching the very heart of true worship.

When I was ordained as a minister, I was given a charge by the Reverend Stanley Green, then my bishop in the Mennonite Church. In that sermon he kept urging me to discharge the various responsibilities of my calling “for an audience of one.” Over and over, in different ways, he urged me not to base my ministry on either the praise or the disparagement of the people in my future churches; to keep my focus undivided on what best serves God.

That’s never easy to do, because the clamor of yay-sayers and nay-sayers can drown out the still small voice of Jesus. That charge has pursued me for decades now, and it sometimes seems more difficult as I grow older, but I keep trying to focus on Christ despite all the words that press around me. I hope that our churches continue to be filled with active worshipers, adding to the energy of praise. Yet it would be good for all of us who serve God’s people, either as ministers or singers or in any other way, to remember that we are ultimately performing our skills for an audience of one—for The One.

image credit: Ken McIntosh

From Earth Day to Earth Week

by Donald Fausel

Last December I joined a group of residents at the Beatitudes Campus of Care in Phoenix, Arizona to plan for a celebration for Earth Day on April 22. Early on in our meetings we decided to make our celebration a week long event rather than just a day. For the next three and a half months we met regularly to plan activities for each day of our Earth Week. I’d like to share with you some of the events that we had during the week.

Since the Beatitudes is a faith-based campus, we started and ended with:

A PRAYER FOR MOTHER EARTH AND OURSELVES

God of the sun and moon
Of the mountains, deserts and plains,
God of the mighty oceans, rivers, lakes and streams
God of all creatures that live in the seas and fly in the air
Of every living thing that grows and moves on this sacred Earth
Help us to love and respect it,
To repair what we have damaged,
To care for what You have made good and holy.
Give us the wisdom and the passion to change our minds,
Our hearts and our ways.
Let us be mustard seeds in our world
Bringing about ecological conversion which grows and
Spreads to every corner of the Earth.
Four our sake now and for every generation which is to come
We offer this our prayer. Amen.

(Based on Catholic Earthcare, Australia 2003)

Our Earth Week began on Sunday evening when we started with Vesper services accompanied by our Campus choir.

On Monday Gerald Roseberry and I had our first of four TED TALKS. Before each TALK we would read a prayer or petition from an article titled Where’s an Earth Prayer When You Need One?  I found all these requests very inspiring.

Each of the TALKS was about 15 to 20 minutes. After each TALK we would encourage audience participation by our asking questions or their bringing up points they thought would be helpful.  For example, the first TALK was given by Al Gore titled The Case for Optimism for Climate Change. If you haven’t followed his career since he ran for president of the United States, he’s been quite busy. He was co-recipient of a Nobel Laureate Medal with the Intergovernmental Planet on Climate Change for their documentary An Inconvenient Truth in 2007, is chair of The Climate Reality Project, and has authored Earth in the Balance, The Assault on Reason, Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis, and most recently, The Future: Six Drivers of Global Change. In this TED TALK he asks three powerful questions about “…man-made forces threatening to destroy our planet—and the solutions we’re designing to combat them.” You’ll see, he’s still optimistic about our overpowering climate change.

Our second TED TALK was by Sylvia Earl. She is a legendary ocean researcher who is known by her colleagues as “Her Deepness” or by the Library of Congress as a “Living Legend” and by Time Magazine as the “Hero for the Planet”. She’s earned these titles because she’s “… led more than 50 expeditions and clocked more than 7,000 hours underwater. As captain of the first all-female team to live underwater, in 1970 she and her fellow scientists received a ticker-tape parade and White House reception upon their return to the surface. In 1979, she walked untethered on the sea floor at a lower depth than any other woman before or since.” The title of her TED TALK is My Wish to Protect Our Oceans .

Dr. Earl’s hope is, “I wish you would have all the means at your disposal—film! Expeditions! The web! More! To ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean, the blue heart of the planet.” I hope you’ll find her TALK interesting and motivating.

Our third TED TALK was by Dr. James Hansen. One of his titles is The Father of Climate Change. As far back as 1988 at a US Senate hearing, Hansen declared that the “greenhouse effect has been detected and is changing our climate now”. Later in his career as director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, he “…described how government officials had…changed his testimony, filtered scientific findings and controlled what scientists could and couldn’t say to the media—all to underplay the impact of fossil fuel emissions on the climate.” He now is an American adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. (One of my Alma Maters.)

I had the good fortune to attend a lecture he gave at Arizona State University before we had his TED TALK at our Earth Week last April. He sat right in front of me before his lecture. As usual, he was wearing his wide-brimmed hat and started his lecture  by saying, “What do I know that would cause me, a reticent mid-western scientist, to get arrested in front of the White House, protesting?”  I had a chance to talk with him briefly after he finished his lecture and I told him about the Elders for a Sustainable Future that we had at the Beatitudes Campus. He was very supportive of what we were doing as Elders and he flippantly asked me if he was old enough to join since he had turned 75 recently. So much for my claim to fame! Here’s Hansen’s TED TALK, titled, Why I Must Speak Out about Climate Change.

Our final TED TALK is by Alex Teffen and titled, The Route to a Sustainable Future. After working as a journalist on four continents, Steffen co-founded and ran the online magazine Worldchanging.com from 2003-2010. “In those seven years, he made Worldchanging one of the world’s leading sustainability-related publications with an archive of almost 12,000 articles and a large global audience. He also edited an internationally best-selling book surveying innovative solutions to the planet’s most pressing problems: Worldchanging: A User’s Guide for the 21st Century. “ His most recent work is Carbon Zero, a book describing cities that create prosperity not climate change, accelerating their economies while reducing their climate emissions to zero. As the New York Times said in a recent profile, “Alex Steffen lays out the blueprint for a successful century.”

THE WEEK THAT WAS

In addition to the TED TALKS there was some activity related to our planet every day between April 17 and 23. To mention a few, on Tuesday there was a campus stroll to learn about our campus vegetation and a planting of a tree. The Roadrunner Extra, that is published periodically “for the residents and by the residents” had nine articles/poems on issue that related to Earth Day. For instance, The Day that Mother Earth Jolted My Attention Irrevocably!!! by Leroy Calbom was about the 1980 explosion of Mt. St. Helen in Spokane, Washington. Or a beautiful poem by Una Thomas titled Mother Earth and Father Time. Then there was Earth Day on the Farm by Bob Hunter.

The library had a display of books related to climate change and residents were provided with pictures of Mother Earth to past on their apartment doors. Residents also had the choice to take an Earth Day Pledge.  The pledge has four practices:  To REDUCE, RECYLE, REUSE and to BECOME ENVIRONMENTALLY—MINDED.  Each section had at least a dozen pledges. For example, the first three practices for REDUCE were: Take quicker showers—Walk short distances instead of driving—Turn of the lights when I leave a room. If you chose to do anyone of these you put an X next to that practice  you agreed to do. There were 24 practices altogether. At the end of the sheet was the pledge: “I pledge to begin as many of these good practices in my day-to-day life as I can to be a good steward for the future of Mother Earth and for the benefit of humanity.”

THE GRAND FINALE

Friday evening we had a two-hour program with a diversity of participants. From readings from the Chinook Psalter, to a piano solo, and a PowerPoint on the Greening of our Campus, to singing It’s a Small World, to a number of Earth Notes that were read by residents; to a couple acting out their version of This Earth is Your Earth, we had a great time. But the presentation by a number of fourth grade singers from the Casa Academy brought down the house, as they say in show business.  

So as my father used to say, “If the good Lord’s willing and the creek don’t rise”, let’s look forward to Earth Week 2017.

Summer Reading

by Amanda Petersen

Summer is the time I do most of my research and dreaming for the rest of the year.  When it is 110 outside I spend a lot more time indoors reading. As I stack up the books to read and create lists of blogs to read a constant theme keeps coming up. We are, as humans, always looking for that “thing”.  That part of our life or understanding that is going to make everything make sense. We have to go find it.

In this search we encounter obstacles that make it impossible to find this “thing”. There is a period of blaming the obstacles – parents, spouses, bosses, weather, money etc. If only they had not happened the thing would be here. And there is a time of wishing if only the right person, place or money would arrive then……

As I search these books, listen to others lives, and just observe, a central truth arrives. The “thing” is not out there. There are no big obstacles blocking us from reaching it. We already own it. The thing is Love, and it resides within us. Every teacher from every age points to this fact. If we would just stop and listen we would hear this Love saying we are already right where we need to be.

The problem is we need ears to hear, as Jesus would say. Learning to hear Love, really hear it, is not easy. There are so many other voices calling our name. We need other people through books, blogs, signs, notes, sermons, Ted talks, etc., to tell us in 100 different ways. We’re all saying the same thing. Love is big, Love is in us, Love is meant to be given away.

There may be someone in your life that you wonder if they will ever hear it. Or you may be wondering if you will ever know this Love. My encouragement is keep speaking it, keep writing it, keep living it if you want others to know. If you are looking, keep reading, keep journaling, keep connecting, keep listening. It’s already there; the right sounds just haven’t arrived. It’s vital we don’t stop learning to listen to and share Love.

In honor of this quest for awareness, please look at the summer groups we are offering. Many revolve around a book. All revolve around the quest of being aware of love!

Exercise: Send a note of encouragement and Love to someone.  See what happens.