Respecting the Web of Existance, Each in our own Way....

Centering thought

Order of Service

We gather in fellowship, to speak truth to each other, to reach out and touch one another, to care with each other, and to seek the truth Divine. So be it!

• Respecting the web of existance: Neal McBurnett
  
• Improving the Property by May Theilgaard Watts, read by Sarah Watts
  
• Deep Ecology: Joni Teter
  

We are the flow, we are the ebb We are the weavers, we are the web

Sea Shells By Emily Lewis

You sea shell a work of art
     An architectural monument
          To a life well spent.

More gracious and glorious
      Than anything produced by man
              Of concrete, wood or paint.

You builder remain anonymous
       A humble being creating
              With but one purpose

To provide yourself with shelter
       As  you live and strive
               To survive upon the earth.

Oblivious to any desire
       That your name
               Be a flash of light

Spelled out in neon
       Forever emblazoned
               On the minds of your kind.

Could you speak
        You'd tell us
                How we might create

Out of sheer beingness
         Remaining ever grounded
                 In true simplicity.

Neal McBurnett

Today we gather to nurture the 7th principle of the Unitarian
Universalist Association.  And I quote:

 We, the member congregations of the Unitarian Universalist
 Association, covenant to affirm and promote.... Respect for the
 interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part.

First lets look at some of the parts of that web, and how profoundly
human actions are affecting it.  Humans activities now influence the
way the global ecosystem functions to an astonishing degree.  Much of
the news is about global climate change, which is very likely to
affect patterns of agriculture and ecosystems.  But humans now
dominate much more than just the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere.  We have transformed over one third of the entire land
area of the earth.  By our use of fertilizers and crops we control
more of the global cycle of nitrogen than all natural forces combined.
Two thirds of the ocean's fisheries are fully exploited or
overexploited.  And about about one-quarter of the bird species on
Earth have already been driven to extinction.  And the biggest problem
is that we don't yet really know how the earth will respond to all
these insults.  It is estimated that last week the human population
reached 6 billion.  The good news is that the rate of increase has now
been slowing for a decade.  But we may well add another three billion
people, and the impact per person is growing.

 Allow me to quote from the Reverend Fred Small:

  Okay. I feel like the dinosaur in the Far Side cartoon, addressing
  an auditorium full of dinosaurs:

   "My friends, the picture is bleak. The earth's climate is changing,
   the mammals are taking over, and we all have a brain about the size
   of a walnut."

  Fortunately for us, the human brain is a very good one. The question
  is whether we are prepared to use it. But the ecological crisis is
  not simply a crisis of graphs and computer projections, it is a
  crisis of the spirit. What the world needs now is what religion, at
  its best, does best: confront, inspire, comfort, and
  instruct.

Rev Small goes on to frame non-sustainable living as intergenerational
theft.  We must strive to leave a just legacy for our children and
future generations.

Whew.  That's a lot of heavy stuff.  We certainly need to carefully
assess our situation, but it can be overwhelming and even numbing.
Rather than focusing on the negatives and a "guilt trip", I like to
focus on ways of living more sustainably that are not only good for
the environment, but also good for me as an individual.  This I see as
the essence of the Voluntary Simplicity movement.  The best things in
life *are* free!

I attended the UU General Assembly this past June and was delighted
and inspired by all the things going on with environmental issues in
UU circles.  First was the sermon I quoted from before, by Fred Small,
a songwriter who just became a UU minister.  In it he goes on to
propose a UU program similar to the wonderful "Welcoming Congregation"
program, called the "Green Sanctuary".  Congregations would go thru a
series of steps involving education, energy conservation, outreach,
and so on, in order to be certified by the UUA as a "Green Sanctuary".
This notion started with a book called "The Green Sanctuary Handbook",
by Rachel Stark which is now unfortunately out-of-print.  The UUA's
"Seventh Principle Project" organization is working on fleshing out
this proposal, and perhaps people in this congregation would like to
get involved up-front.  It fits in beautifully with our congregational
vote in 1998 to look at our own environmental issues.

The second thing that inspired me at GA was the selection of the
1999-2001 Study/Action Issue.  Out of 9 proposals, there was very
broad support for focusing on one entitled "Responsible Consumption as
a Moral Imperative".  We have an opportunity to help shape this issue
if we respond to UUA early next year.  Handouts with more details are
available as you exit the hall, and a lot more information is
available on the bulletin board.  Joni Teter will be talking more
about organizing a study group and a congregational vote on that later.
The first meeting will probably be on October the 31st.

The third UU activity you can get involved with is much simpler and
more personal.  I can hear you say "Oh boy - its not committe work!"
Our church is sponsoring a pair of study groups.  We'll read materials
from the Northwest Earth Institute and discuss them.  The "Deep
Ecology" study group will meet on alternate Tuesday nights, and the
"Voluntary Simplicity" study group will either meet biweekly or
perhaps combine 9 study segments into a few Saturdays.

We'll get together briefly at the beginning of the meeting on the
31st, to pick up the reading materials and finalize details.

Of course the standard joke is "But my life is too complicated
already.  I don't have time for a biweekly study group".
If you are drawn to these ideas but just want some ideas in
writing, let me suggest two books.

On voluntary simplicity, there is a book by Cecile Andrews, a fellow
UU in Seattle, titled "The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life".

You've probably seen books with titles like "1001 things you can do
for the environment".  Thats a lot of stuff to thing about!  Here is
a book I like much better, recommended to me recently by Alan Davis.
Here is a quote from the back cover by Denis Hayes, Chair, Earth Day 2000:

  "Too many people drive their Land Rovers to the grocery store and
  think that "paper or plastic" is a meaningful choice....  [this
  book,] The Consumer's Guide to Effective Environmental Choices will
  help you distinguish the crucial from the trivial and make choices
  that are congruent with your values."

It really is excellent.  Focus on the big things you do all the time,
not the little things.

Ok, enough of the "big picture" intro and organizational detail.  Let
me share how I benefit from these ideas on a personal level.  Of
course thing that work for me may not work for you.  Doing this talk
from a laptop fits right in with the way I function at work and means
I don't have to print it out, but certainly many people prefer to
simplify their life by avoiding computers altogether....

I have been fortunate enough to never have to drive a car anywhere on
a daily basis.  It was easy to ride a bike to work as a teenager.  Now
for 20 years I've gone to work in a carpool or vanpool.  There I get
to chat with friends or read, and I get much less irritated by
traffic.  It's also good for my career to hear what is going on in
other parts of the company.  I choose to walk 25 minutes to where the
vanpool picks me up in order to incorporate nature and exercise into
my daily routine.  This also allows Holly and I to get by with only
one car, which we drive only perhaps 6000 miles a year.  That saves us
thousands of dollars a year.  I'm looking forward to the debut of the
new "carshare" organization in Boulder which will allow us to have
access to another car or pickup truck for the occasional times when
that would really be handy.  Otherwise the cost of an occasional taxi
ride is dwarfed by the savings.

Another route to simplicity in my life is avoiding consumption.  Oh, I
have a soft spot for high-tech toys, but I often successfully manage
to put off purchases by waiting for the "perfect" choice.  The money
saved from avoided purchases either goes to good causes or straight
into savings.  That provides security and the option of retiring early
or choosing more rewarding jobs.  The book "Your Money or Your Life"
taught me a lot about that.

One place I choose to spend a little more is buying organic food.
This is one of the more effective ways to help the environment.  I
also mostly avoid meat, dairy and fish, which have large environmental
and/or health impacts.  But I do sneak a bite now and then as a treat
or out of curiosity.

Of course there are things that still feel too complicated and
consumptive in my life.  For instance, we took a long-distance airline
trip on vacation this summer to a place that could only be explored on
a boat.  After learning that our share of boat fuel for one week was
more than two years of our car usage, I resolved to reconsider any
form of cruise in the future.  What I'm looking for now is a local
retreat center for vacations in the mountains where I can take
occasional classes, hike, and enjoy the company of others who come
back every year or so.

In a few minutes, you'll hear Joni, a long-time leader in Boulder
civic affairs, bring the power she absorbed from the natural world in
Yellowstone back to our congregation.  But first, here is Sarah Watts,
with a poem by her grandmother about a sad thing that happens so often
in our suburban life.  In fact, Holly and I recently had exactly this
experience when we visited our former home in Portland.

Sarah Watts

	On Improving the Property

They laid the trilliums low.
	and where drifted anemones and wild sweet phlox
	were wont to follow April's hepatica - they planted grass.

There was a corner that held a tangled copse
	of hawthorn and young wild crabs,
	bridal in May above yellow violets,
	purple twigged in November.
	They needed the place for Lombardy poplars - and grass.

Last June the elderberry was fragrant here.
	and in October the viburnam poured its wine
	beneath the moo-yellow wisps of the witch-hazel blossoms.
	They piled them in the alley and made a burnt offering - to grass.

There was a slope that a wild grapevine had captured long ago.
	At its brink a colony of mandrakes held green umbrellas close,
	like a crowd along the path of a parade.
	This job almost baffled them: showers washed off the seed
	and made gullies in the naked clay.
	They gritted their teeth - and planted grass.

At the base of the slope there was a hollow
	so lush with hundreds of years of fallen leaves
	that maiden-hair swirled above the trout-lilies,
	and even a few blood-roots lifted frosty blossoms there.
	Clay from the ravaged slope washed down
	and filled the hollow with a yellow hump.
	They noticed the hump - and planted grass.

There was a linden that the bees loved.
	A smug catalpa has taken its place,
	but the wood ashes were used to fertilize the grass.

People pass by and say: "Just look at that grass -
	not a weed in it.  It's like velvet!"
	(One could say as much for any other grave.)

				-May Theilgaard Watts

Joni Teter

Opening poem
My help is in the mountain
Where I take myself to heal
The Earthly wounds
That people give to me.
I find a rock with sun on it
And a stream where the water runs gentle
And the trees which one by one give me company.
So must I stay for a long time
Until I have grown from the rock
And the stream is running through me
And I cannot tell myself from one tall tree.
Then I know that nothing touches me
Nor makes me run away.
My help is in the mountain
That I take away with me.

Earth cure me.  Earth receive my woe.  Rock strengthen me.  Rock receive my 
weakness.  Rain wash my sadness away.  Rain receive my doubt.  Sun make 
sweet my song.  Sun receive the anger from my heart.

- Nancy Wood,  from Hollering Sun, collected in Earth Prayers

I recently returned from spending seven weeks in Yellowstone National Park.  
Seven weeks in Yellowstone.  I still can't quite believe it.    I was 
working there, living at Mammoth Hot Springs and working in a stately old 
stone building that housed cavalry officers a hundred years ago.   I did the 
same kind of work I do every day - sitting in front of the computer, talking 
on the phone, meeting with people.  But then I'd walk outside and I was in 
Yellowstone.  There were elk grazing on the lawn right outside the door - 
I'd have to peer around the doorjamb before stepping outside to make sure I 
didn't spook anybody.  There were falcons wheeling overhead as I trudged 
down the hill to fix my lunch,  and a symphony of coyotes welcomed  the dawn 
each day.  Every time I stepped outside the office, I got affirmation of why 
I do the work I do.

On the weekends - and sometimes after work - I got to step out of the 
Mammoth comfort zone right into wilderness.  I wandered the backcountry, 
saturating myself in the sights and sounds and smells of that incredibly 
diverse ecosystem.  I saw a great grey owl swoop out of the trees to scoop 
up its breakfast,  saw bison calves butting heads in mock battle, heard 
wolves howling just up the drainage, and had that heart-stopping encounter 
with the big brown bear .... just me and the griz, out there in the middle 
of nowhere and no place to hide.   I felt entirely filled up by this 
immersion in the natural world, more complete than I can every remember 
feeling in my life.

And now I'm back in Boulder, taking the bus to Denver most days to do my 
work.  Instead of bull elk bugling outside my window, I've got bull drivers 
riding my bumper while they blare their horns.  Instead  of a downy 
woodpecker playing percussion on the pines,  I've got boom boxes and street 
corner evangelists and grim-faced business people bound up in suits bearing 
down at me on the sidewalks.  I try to listen for the sounds of nature - the 
clicks of the grass insects, the drone of the flying bugs, the chirps and 
calls of the songbirds - but I can't hear them over the backdrop of 
airplanes and engines and the constant drone of machinery that permeates our 
lives.   I try to connect with the sky, to watch the cloud pageant that was 
so ever-present in Yellowstone, and all I can get is a glimpse of blue here 
and there between the glass and concrete monoliths that block out the sun.

I am very aware of how diminished I am by this urban setting, by this human 
environment that we have created.  I feel like my niece's soccer ball: it 
has a slow leak somewhere, and it gradually shrinks and shrivels until 
eventually it doesn't seem very much like a ball at all any more.  To keep 
my shape, to stay balanced and centered in this urban world, I have to 
maintain a sense of connection with the natural world.

Over the years, I've developed various touchstones and rituals to keep 
myself balanced, to keep myself feeling connected to the earth.  One of 
places I look for connection is in the writings and meditations of the 
people who are part of the Deep Ecology movement.  To me, Deep Ecology is 
like this prism: there are lots of facets, lots of ways in;  and at the 
center there is this pure white light.  We all know this white light 
somewhere deep inside.  We experience it in different ways, as different 
colors, different slants of light, but at the core there is a common 
experience and a common truth.  The Deep Ecology thinkers are like the 
facets of this prism, offering us different pathways into this truth, 
through our own experiences, and through our own perceptions of the natural 
world.

At the core of Deep Ecology is a dialogue about right relationship with the 
earth and all our kindred.  There is a shared truth that our society, our 
culture has gone terribly awry in our perceptions and values and behaviors 
around the natural world.   There is shared commitment to setting us on a 
better path, and open exploration of many paths to healing and a better way 
to live.

There are paths through science and simplicity, through feminism, politics 
philosophy and religion.   I find the voices of the Deep Ecology movement to 
be sources of great solace, tremendous inspiration and challenge, and 
intense irritation.    I'd like to share a sampling of the voices that have 
spoken to me,  to give you all a flavor of the smorgasbord of ideas and 
approaches that are out there:


· The vast majority of human history is prehistoric - we grew up in the 
wilderness, and wilderness is still very much a part of who and what we are.
· As homo sapiens, we came with a set of operating instructions about how to 
live in the world.   But we started making up our own rules instead.  Deep 
Ecology is a dialogue about how to get back to our basic instructions.
· Deep Ecology is the place where science, philosophy and spirituality meet.
·  Whereas in classical mechanics the properties and behavior of the parts 
determine those of the whole, the situation is reversed in quantum 
mechanics:  it is the whole that determines the behavior of the parts.  
Today there is a wide measure of agreement that the universe looks more like 
a great thought than like a great machine.
· The earth is our natural bank account.
· As I write this, I hear the snarl of earth movers and chain saws a mile 
away, destroying a farm to make way for another shopping strip...The 
machines work around the clock.  Their noise wakes me at midnight, at three 
in the morning,  at dawn.  The roaring abrades my dreams.  The sound is a 
reminder that we are living in the midst of a holocaust.
· To continue the modern masculine habit of using intelligence without 
wisdom and technology without wonder is a formula for certain disaster.
· We please god (or the goddess) by learning about her creations. ( I'm 
especially fond of this one because it provides a religious explanation for 
all those field guides that are taking over my bookshelves at home.)
· We're eating ourselves out of house and home and making a mess of things 
in the process.
· Our Lady of Perpetual Growth.
· This is a one shot deal.
· It has taken me half a lifetime of searching to realize that the likeliest 
path to the ultimate ground leads through my local ground.  I mean the land 
itself, with its creeks and rivers, its weather, its seasons, stone 
outcroppings and all the plants and animals that share it.  I cannot have a 
spiritual center without having a geographical one:  I cannot live a 
grounded life without being grounded in a place.
· Ecological ideas are not enough.  We need community, ritual and structure 
to combat the juggernaut of modern society.

The primary thing that keeps me in Boulder is our Open Space, the almost 
40,000 acres of natural lands that we own, that our larger community has 
dedicated itself to preserving in perpetuity.  One of the primary things 
that brought me into this UUCB community was the hope that I would find 
people here who feel a similar sense of connection to the natural world, 
people who are also engaged in that delicate dance of keeping balanced in 
the urban world.   I have found those people, and I suspect there are many 
more of us out there.

One of the objectives of this service today is to open up a dialogue within 
our UUCB community about right relationship with the earth.   The Green 
Sanctuary program described by Neal offers a set of tangible objectives that 
we can undertake as a community to increase our awareness, to engage in 
dialogue, and ultimately, to take more personal responsibility for our 
behavior in the world.  We can turn to the Deep Ecology movement for 
spiritual and intellectual fuel to power our engagement.  SOME BRILLIANT 
CLOSING WORDS ABOUT NEXT STEPS AFTER TALKING TO NEAL...



Closing poem
I'd like to close with a poem by one of this country's early Deep Ecology 
thinkers, Walt Whitman:

I swear the earth shall surely be complete
 to him or her who shall be complete,
The earth remains jagged and broken only
 to him or her who remains jagged and broken.

I swear there is no greatness or power
 that does not emulate those of the earth,
There can be no theory of any account
 unless it corroborate the theory of the earth,
No politics, song, religion, behavior or what not, is of account,
 unless it compare with the amplitude of the earth,
Unless it face the exactness, vitality, impartiality,
 rectitude of the earth.

- Walt Whitman, collected in Earth Prayers


Benediction
In keeping with the "smorgasbord" of Deep Ecology thinkers, I'd like to 
offer the final benediction from Hildegard of Bingen.   Hildegard was a 
Christian mystic, abbess of an important priory in twelfth century Germany.  
She lived in an era of great religious and political turmoil; in her own 
time, she was respected and revered as a great healer, a great teacher and 
one who received revelations from God.  She left a large body of teachings 
in words, in music and in art.  As Europe industrialized, the Christian 
world lost touch with Hildegard's wisdom, but the Deep Ecologists have found 
her again.   Hildegard is one of the great voices on the religious path of 
Deep Ecology:


Glance at the sun.
See the moon and the stars.
Gaze at the beauty of earth's greenings.

Now,
Think.
- Hildegard of Bingen