Earth Day 2018

Concept: Ian Ridell, Art: Kimberly Debus

Seventh Principle of Unitarian Universalism

Art by Mare Cromwell

RESPECT FOR THE INTERDEPENDENT WEB OF ALL EXISTENCE OF WHICH WE ARE A PART

What did you do today that connected you to the earth?
What did you do today that you can point to and say: “That was the seventh principle at work in me”?

Gaia

When I think of my relationship with the earth I think of Gaia. Gaia is the Greek word for the goddess who is the earth, but what I’m talking about is Gaia as the idea, put forth in the 70’s, that the entire ecosystem of earth is one being. A being that is made up of rock and plant and animal. A being that breathes and lives. And we humans are a part of that being.

Process theology tells us that everything is made up of many other things. And that all of these things aren’t even things, they are processes. The planet is a collection of many processes, just as each person is a collection of many processes. And there is really not much distinction between the process that is one of my cells and the process that is the earth or even the solar system. We are all containers of many other things. The chalice of the earth contains us, just as we contain myriad forms of life. The earth is a green growing container, a chalice, if you will. And so are each one of us.

Have you seen the video going around the internet that is narrated by Julia Roberts? The visual is fly-bys of these spectacular places on our planet: orange and brown desert canyon; frothy white jungle waterfall framed in deep green; stark pale blue arctic ice floe in endless sea… In it Julia is the voice of Gaia, and Gaia is reminding us that she has existed before us, and will exist after us. She doesn’t much care if humans make ourselves extinct. She doesn’t need us. She is so much bigger, so much more, than an earth lifeboat for humans. We need her.

This can come as a bit of a shock. Or it can help us to feel our dependence, and our connection, with the natural world. Indeed, our oneness with the natural world and all that makes up the earth.

Viriditas

The other concept I think of when thinking of our relationship to our earth lifeboat is the idea of viriditas. That idea that the divine is the greening life-five was articulated by Hildegard von Bingen. “Hildegard of Bingen”, also known as "Saint Hildegard" and "the Sibyl of the Rhine" lived from 1098, to 1179, in Germany. She was a Benedictine abbess, writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, and visionary who wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, as well as letters, liturgical songs, and poems. She is considered to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany.

A cornerstone of Hildegard's spirituality was Viriditas, or greening power, her revelation of the animating life force manifest in the natural world that infuses all creation with moisture and vitality. To her, the divine was manifest in every leaf and blade of grass. Just as a ray of sunlight is the sun, Hildegard believed that a flower or a stone was God, though not the whole of God. Hildegard celebrated the sacred in nature, something highly relevant for us in this age of climate change and the destruction of natural habitats. - The definition of viriditas or "greenness" is an earthly expression of the heavenly in an integrity that unites dualisms.

Mandalas

One of Hildegard’s spiritual practices was to draw her visions. We, in this modern world, call them mandalas. Just like the mandalas created in India and Tibet, her mandalas were visual patterns that represent the cosmos metaphysically, spiritually, or symbolically.

When you truly believe in and value your relationship with the earth, or God (and for Hildegard those were the same) you act on your spiritual connection. The Church of her era was rife with corruption and sexual misconduct. While many men held back from protesting, fearing the repercussions, Hildegard decided that she would take on the mantle of reformer. Although St. Paul had forbidden women to preach, Hildegard embarked on four preaching tours in which she delivered apocalyptic sermons to her male superiors, warning them that if they did not mend their ways, they would fall from grace and be toppled from their seats of power.

Nor did Hildegard enjoy a quiet retirement. She took in and nursed a man who had run away from fighting in the crusades, and when he died she buried him in the churchyard. It is hard for us UUs to imagine, but giving this Christian burial to someone who rejected the command to fight in the crusades didn’t sit well with the powers-that-be and she and her nuns were collectively excommunicated. The excommunication was only lifted a few months before Hildegard's death in 1179.

Acting on Your Spiritual Direction

Hildegard didn’t just pray with words. She lived her belief that every person was sacred, that her love of Viriditas must be expressed, that the church, her communities, and yes, the whole world was worth her time and energy, risk, and commitment. What does your relationship with the earth, or the divine ask of you? We need to listen to our heart songs, our earth songs, the voice of viriditas, the sacred, and we each need to find our own spiritual direction, a direction that lives our love for our world.

Hildegard speaks for God, saying: "I, the fiery life of divine essence, am aflame beyond the beauty of the meadows, I gleam in the waters, and I burn in the sun, moon and stars ... I awaken everything to life." -- Hildegard von Bingen, Liber Divinorum (Book of Divine Works)