Our World is One World: A Reflection for Earth Day

“Our world is one world:
what touches one affects us all –
the seas that wash us round about,
the clouds that cover us,
the rains that fall....
Our world is one world,
just like a ship that bears us all –
where fear and greed make many holes,
but where our hearts can hear
a different call.”
Words of Cecily Taylor from one of our most loved hymns.

The COVID-19 pandemic has shown us just how true it is that our world is one world. Facilitated by global air travel, since it first appeared in Wuhan in China in December 2019, the disease has spread to over 180 countries and 200 territories, with over 2 million confirmed cases worldwide. I have a natural inclination to look for the positives in a situation. There is immense suffering as a result of this disease – there are deaths, job losses, food shortages, poverty, mental health consequences. I believe we are also being given the opportunity to make positive changes. Our interconnection and interdependence have enabled the disease to spread far and wide in a short space of time, but they have also enabled communities to respond to the crisis with compassion and care for each other, and they are key to building a healthy future for our world.

Last week, the key note speech at the UK Unitarians online gathering, Being Together, was given by writer and activist Alastair McIntosh. He identified our excessive consumption as a major component in the adverse effect that humans have on our environment. As a result of lockdown measures, many of us have had to make substantial changes to the way we live. Most of us are travelling less and consuming less. Food waste has reduced and air quality has improved.

Carbon emissions have dropped dramatically with the reduction of industrial activity and engine-driven transport. Compared with this time last year, levels of pollution in New York have reduced by nearly 50%. The proportion of days with “good quality air” was up 11.4% compared with the same time last year in 337 cities across China. In Europe, satellite images show nitrogen dioxide emissions fading away over Italy, Spain and the UK.

Of course, when restrictions are lifted, and industrial activity and air travel resume, emissions will rise, but I do hold out hope that we will not just go back to the way things were. Social science research shows that behavioural changes that are imposed upon us by external interventions can turn into lasting habits.

A 2018 study at Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Switzerland found that when people were unable to drive and given free e-bike access instead, they drove much less when they eventually got their car back. A study in 2001 led by at Kyoto University in Japan found that when a motorway closed, forcing drivers to use public transport, the same thing happened – when the road reopened, people who had formerly been committed drivers travelled by public transport more frequently.

As a species, adaptability has been key to our evolutionary success. We have had to adapt quickly and extensively to our new circumstances. Some climate scientists are heartened by the ways communities have pulled together to look out for each other – we have taken collective action at local, national and international levels in response to this health crisis – so surely we should be able to take substantive collective action in response to climate change?

Over the next few days, I invite you to consider what recent changes to the way you live would you like to continue in the future?

The first thing that comes to mind for me is connection. This crisis has brought home to me just how precious are my connections - to friends, to family, to the Unitarian community, to the wider human community, to the rest of nature.

For me, one of the gifts of lockdown has been being able to really be present to the great greening of springtime, especially in the last week or so, when the leaves have all unfurled on the trees and the blossom has exploded in a riot of colour. I have realised that most years I am too busy scurrying about to see much further than the end of my nose. As a result of the reduction in the level of noise from machinery and traffic, birdsong is much clearer. A pair of nuthatches have taken up residence in a tree on the street opposite our house, something that has not happened in the 8 years we have lived there. This week has seen a multitude of birds, bees and butterflies visiting our garden. In future years things will be different and probably noisier again, but I would like to continue being present, appreciating being part of nature, taking notice of the sights and sounds of the seasons.

Other changes I have had to make include shopping within a very small local geographic area. As a result of this, I am getting to know the owners of my local health food store and zero waste shop, and I am supporting local businesses. This change in my consumption habits has led me to ask myself, what is enough? Am I doing enough?  Am I consuming too much? I am considering all of my personal consumption, not just food, but other purchases, and less tangible things, but things that are just as influential to our well-being, such as news and social media.  A word we are hearing a lot is “essential”. We are told only to leave our homes for essential purposes. Only essential businesses are to remain open. So I ask myself, what is essential for me?

A lesson for me in all this is that we do a lot of unnecessary things.
“Times are urgent, let us slow down,” says the activist Bayo Akomolafe.
Let us slow down and ask ourselves,
What is enough?
What is essential for the well-being of the Earth?

Holy Saturday – reflections on despair and hope in lock-down

"It was the day of Preparation, and the Sabbath was beginning. The women who had come with him from Galilee followed, and saw the tomb, and how his body was laid; then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the sabbath day they rested according to the commandment." The Gospel According to Luke, 23:54-56

In the Christian tradition, today is Holy Saturday, when Jesus lay dead in the tomb. The women who cared for him rested, and sat with their grief, their despair, their confusion. It was a day of silence, a day of darkness, a day of stillness.

In the Gospels, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus happen during the Jewish festival of Passover, a festival commemorating the Exodus, the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt.

Recorded not in the canonical gospels, but in some apocryphal texts such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, there is a tradition in Christianity, known as the harrowing of hell, that in between his death and resurrection, Jesus descended to the underworld to liberate the souls there from the bonds of death.

Holy Saturday is thus also a day of transformation. When Jesus rises from the dead on Easter Sunday he has not just been resuscitated and restored to the life he once had, he has been transformed. In John's Gospel he appears in a locked room. In Luke's Gospel he is not recognised by his followers when he travels with them and he then vanishes.

In the Acts of the Apostles, after Jesus ascends into heaven, the disciples (followers) are transformed into apostles (messengers) at Pentecost - “and they were filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness.”

The Apostles are inspired to continue Christ's transformative work of love - radical inclusivity, the liberation of the poor and oppressed – “And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.” (Acts 2:44-45)

The pandemic has brought the inequalities of our world into sharp focus. Millions live and die in poverty and squalor. If our living conditions are such that we have access to clean running water to be able to practice good hygiene and enough space to practice physical distancing, then we are privileged. Even in our privileged country, the UK, the rich and powerful have access to early testing and superior medical care, while the poor are sickening and dying in their thousands. Those most at risk of the disease, such as care workers, refuse collectors, hospital porters, shelf-stackers, are among the most poorly paid members of society. The demand for food banks has rocketed.

The followers of Jesus were not expecting the resurrection. With the death of their leader, all their hopes had been dashed. They were scared and disappointed. When the women returned to the tomb on Sunday morning with the spices and ointments they had prepared, they fully expected to find Jesus' body there and to anoint it. They were amazed when angels appeared and told them that Jesus was no longer in the tomb, but risen from the dead.

The C19 pandemic has caused fear, confusion, despair and grief. Unlike the followers of Jesus, may we dare to hope for resurrection – not for life to return to exactly as it was before, but to be transformed by love.

Let us not turn away from our fear, confusion, despair and grief. Let us use this time in lock-down to rest with all of it, to sit in silence, to deepen into darkness, to stay with stillness. Let this also be a time of transformation. Let us dare to hope for the resurrection of love in our world. Let us commit to the spiritual life, in the definition of Alastair McIntosh, “life as love made manifest.” Let us commit to doing whatever we can to help build a better world in which all people are free, fed, watered and cared for. Amen.