The
Sacred Circle of Life
June 8,
2003
Rev.
Gretchen Woods
READING
Gloria!
The tenacity of Earth and its creatures.
These children who will go on to save what we cannot.
The ordinary tenacity of plans and of people.
The center of the universe which is everywhere, not the least place in
the human heart.
Love that survives anger, and winter, and despair, and sorrow, and even
death.
Love that persists.
Calm that is the seed in the dark.
For endings that are beginnings, for beginnings that are endings.
For the circle, the spiral, the web, the egg, the orbit, the center,
the seed, the flower, the fruit, the opening, the death, the release, the seed.
Amen
We are going on.
Amen
It is going on.
Amen
Blessed be.
SERMON
The Sacred Circle of Life
I live just south of the latest development of
professional buildings across Kings Avenue from the Starbucks at Timberhill.
This past week huge bulldozers and other earth moving equipment completely
denuded a large portion of earth, taking not only all vegetation, but all the
topsoil that existed, in order to build a new drive-through bank. I don’t know
how many thousands of lives were taken in the process. I can certainly account
for at least twenty mice I live-trapped in our garage and carefully carried out
to the grass seed-rich environment for a new lease on life. I suspect there
were voles, in addition to the mice, not to mention all the birds that
regularly fed there. This entirely overlooks the insects and other tiny life
forms present as well.
The last time I saw something like this, I confounded
the people involved. The last year of my ministry in Kitsap County, a row of
huge Douglas firs was cut down outside the local high school in Port Orchard,
WA. I went up to the people finishing the job and asked, “Who is responsible
for taking these lives?” A teacher in the vicinity just stared at me, so I
said, “Who killed all these trees – and why?” He allowed as how I ought to ask
in the office, which I promptly did. I was told that youth were hiding drugs
and themselves under the sheltering boughs of these trees, so they had to go
for security reasons. No one “got” that I saw these lives as worthy of lament,
nor did it occur to them that an alternative might be to deal with the youth,
not kill the trees. I was appalled and felt powerless to do anything. The trees
were dead after all.
My maternal grandfather, who was an ecologist before
that name was in the public vernacular, had taught me that all lives were
connected, if not equally important. Subsequent teachers from various Native
American traditions continued to offer me this perspective on life, as did my
own mystical experiences of union with every atom that exists. For me the sacred
circle of life is a pulsating reality. And when we, as Unitarian Universalists
assert that one of our sources of inspiration is “the spiritual teachings of
Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and
instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature,” I take this, not
only seriously, but as true organically. This means that we bless ourselves
when we honor all of life. It also means we need to consider whether we wish to
dominate our earth or to relate to it as stewards, and we need to deepen our
connections with all of life, not just that of human beings.
I have always been amazed when human beings assert
that we are the pinnacle of evolution and have the right of “dominion” over all
the rest of life on earth. Of course, we can now contest that translation of
Genesis as only one possible way to tell the story. The idea of “stewardship”
has come forward, but continues to struggle with millennia of insistence upon
humanity’s claim to superiority.
I have wondered why cetaceans returned to the sea,
after a brief, evolutionarily speaking, stint on the land as four-legged
creatures somewhat like wolves. After all, their ratio of brain to body mass
far exceeds that of humans. Their body masses are generally larger, and they seem
to be having a whole lot more fun. On the other hand, in a church in a galaxy
far away, I watched a fine UU boy slowly slide off his father’s lap onto his
head, showing no sign of awareness of his precarious situation and making no
effort to keep from falling. This did not raise my hopes for human evolution,
though the programs offered by our Coming of Age Youth and our YRUU youth
certainly do.
It seems to me we don’t deal with our own sense of
self that well, much less show a capacity to deal well with the whole planet.
We may be able to steal elections and overcome other cultures through war, but
our capacity to thoughtfully deal with our world in a sustaining way is not in
great evidence. I am hoping that we shall bring the power of this congregation
to bear on our own UU Association, once again submitting the environmental
resolution that Bill Ferrell and Jim Spain started last year. It always takes
more than one try –and we are up to it!
If we take a second possible translation from Jewish
Scripture that offers the idea of stewardship of the planet, we come to
understand our power as co-creators, but not as people with “Power-over.” We
understand our part in the chain of life as meaningful, not powerless, but also
not “in charge of everything.” Believe me, being a UU minister constantly
reminds me of this way of being in the world!
When we think of ourselves as stewards, we recognize
that we have a responsibility to all of life, to all the planet. We know that
our ethic not only include our relationships with human beings, but also must
consider our relationships with all forms of life. This is not new thought: it
is ancient. People we now call primitive knew that all lives are connected. As
Chief Sealth of the Suquamish essentially told the Euros who wanted to “buy”
land from him said:
This we know: the earth does not belong to us, we
belong to the earth.
This we know: all things are connected like the blood
which unites one family.
All things are connected.
Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons and
daughters of the earth.
We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a
strand in it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
With these simple, clear words, Sealth links the
notion of stewardship with the mystical experience of connections in and
through all of existence. It is the connections we make with one another that
bring us back to this building time and again, that remind us of our own worth
and of the worth of living, even when life feels unlivable.
One of our contemporary Unitarian Universalist
theologians, Thandeka, who teaches at Meadville/Lombard School for Ministry,
has noted, after Schleiermacher, that “God is in the interstices.” What this
means for those of us who care about the possibility for some ultimate
experience of life, is that the most meaningful experiences are found in the
“spaces between.” What is most important is neither you, nor me, but the energy
that passes between us and the experience of that energy/consciousness that
uplifts our spirits and makes life worth living. This is the sacred circle of life: the spaces in
which the most important experiences happen, the experiences that give “purpose
to our existence and motivation and moral energy to our human enterprises.”
(Averill, Lloyd)
We live best, most at peace, most in harmony with
life when we are aware of the scared circle of life and honor all beings within
that circle, not just human beings. We honor all life forms as important to the
whole when we bless the animals, as we shall do now.
Let’s sing our closing song, move out onto the lawn
next to our Fellowship Hall, and honor the other lives with which we share the
sacred circle of life.
SHARING BLESSING WITH THE ANIMALS
Knowing that it is hot and we are full of life, I
shall keep this short.
We come together today to honor all life forms with
which we share our Mother Earth, knowing that their presence on the planet
blesses us even as we come to bless them. This is a simple acknowledgment of
the interdependent web of which we are a part.
Let us each feel the energy of the sky over us and
the good earth under our feet, then hold our hands out to the animal with whom
we have chosen to share this life and say:
We are grateful for your presence in our lives.
We wish all good things to you, and are thankful for
all the good you bring to us.
Blessed Be!