Sermon copyright (c) 2026 Dan Harper. As delivered to First Parish in Cohasset. The text below has not been proofread. The sermon as delivered contained substantial improvisation.
Readings
The first reading was the poem “Global Warming Blues” by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie. You can hear the poet reading this poem on Youtube.
The second reading was the poem “look at the blackbird fall” by June Jordan. This poem is available in the anthology Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry, edited by Camille T. Dungy (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2009), or in Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan (Copper Canyon Press, 2012).
The third reading is usually attributed to Unitarian minister and novelist Edward Everett Hale.
I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something,
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
Sermon
Right at the beginning, I should tell you that this sermon got the wrong title. I called it “One Thing,” but as you will see, a better title would have been “Ten Times One Is Ten.” I should also tell you, right up front, that while it might seem a little depressing at the beginning, this will wind up being a positive sermon.
For the past twenty years, one of my sidelines has been doing environmental education with children and adults. Not that I’m trained in environmental education or biology, but I’ve been fortunate enough to work with, and learn from, biologists and environmental educators. The reason I wound up doing environmental education even though I wasn’t trained in it, was because I could see that humanity faces numerous ecological challenges of our own making, challenges which have prompted spiritual questioning and even spiritual crises in quite a few people.
Let me give an example of a spiritual crisis prompted by ecological challenges. Ten years ago, I was one of the people leading a week-long ecology day camp for grades 2 through 8. We gave kids lots of opportunities to play outdoors and explore the natural world, and we even did a little citizen science with them. We also talked openly about the environmental challenges that humanity faces; we didn’t emphasize them, but we were honest with kids that humanity faced some big problems. In fact, the kids were relieved that we adults were willing to talk openly about those big problems. Children and teens are quite aware of the world’s environmental problems, but sometimes adults don’t want to talk with kids about such serious and discouraging topics.
Toward the end of the week-long camp, while we were out walking somewhere, one of the seventh graders said to me, with a little bit of fear in her voice, “Are we going to be all right?” There were a couple of levels of meaning contained in this seemingly simple question. At an abstract level, she wanted to know if humanity was going to survive the various ecological crises we’re facing. Then at a personal level, she also wanted to know what their life was going to be like, and over the course of their life how they navigate the problems raised by global climate change, toxics in the environment, and so on. And at a spiritual level, she was facing a crisis of meaning — would she survive?
My reply to that seventh grader was pretty much what you’d expect. I said that humanity had faced big challenges in the past, and somehow managed to come out all right. I said that in spite of the big problems we faced, I felt humanity was capable of solving those problems. In short, I tried to tell her things that would give her hope for the future.
This exchange helped me understand the roots of the spiritual crisis many kids — and many adults — experience as we contemplate ecological problems. When we contemplate ecological problems, we wind up confronting several spiritual questions. We wind up confronting the nature of humanity — Is there some evil in humanity, some basic flaw, that has prompted us to do so much damage to other living things? Is there enough good in us to overcome the bad, so that we can solve our ecological problems? Then we wind up confronting the purpose of existence — Is it true, as some conservative Christians tell us, that the only purpose of this life is to prepare us for an afterlife? Is there some deity, or some force in the universe, that will be angered by the damage we’re doing to other living beings? And we also wind up confronting some old stories that have been told in Western culture for thousands of years, stories about how there will be an end time filled with disasters. Are those old stories true? — and before the skeptics among us say, “No of course they’re not true” — I would remind you that old stories like that can shape your behavior at an unconscious level, even if you doubt them at a conscious level. And whether or not those old stories are true, are they maybe affecting our behavior in ways that we don’t like, and maybe we want to retell those old stories so that we behave in ways we do like?
All these are spiritual questions. They are questions that cannot be answered scientifically or logically, because they are feeling questions. Ultimately, these spiritual questions boil down to whether we feel a sense of hope for the future.
Getting back to that seventh grader — she was more or less satisfied with the answer I gave her, but I wasn’t. I knew I had only given her a scientific and logical answer to her spiritual question, which meant that I didn’t really address her spiritual concerns. How could we address those very real spiritual questions that those kids had? After talking it over with all the adults who were running that day camp, here’s what we came up with….
First, we decided that we needed to be more explicit about the ecological problems facing humanity. By not being specific, we made it feel as though ecological problems were huge and amorphous and beyond the capability of any one person to tackle — and when you feel powerless to address something, that can prompt a spiritual crisis. I had heard a talk given by Dr. Stuart Weiss, a Stanford-trained biologist who ran an environmental remediation company. Weiss listed five major threats to earth’s life supporting systems:
One: Global climate change. Two: Invasive organisms, non-native plants and animals that outcompete native organisms. Three: “Toxication,” or pollution from solid wastes like microplastics, to chemical wastes like PFAS. Four: Deforestation and other land use changes that now affect three quarters of the Earth’s land area. Five: Overpopulation by humans.
I use the acronym DOGIT to remember these — Deforestation, Overpopulation, Global climate change, Invasive species, and Toxication. Other biologists have come up with similar lists with different acronyms. The biologist E. O. Wilson used the acronym HIPPO, which stands for Habitat loss, Invasive species, Pollution, human Population, and Overharvesting. Use whatever list or acronym you prefer — the point is to get more specific about the challenges facing us.
At the day camp, we told the campers about Stuart Weiss’s list of five major environmental challenges. Then we told them that they do not have to solve all of these challenges. All they have to do is choose one of them on which they wanted to focus their efforts. We also gave them stories about role models, people whom they could emulate who had taken on one of these big environmental challenges. So, for example, we told them about Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for starting the Green Belt Movement to help reverse deforestation in Kenya. We told them about Rachel Carson, who brought public awareness to the damage that chemical pesticides were doing to the environment. As we talked about Wangari Maathai and Rachel Carson and others, we would make it clear how each one of these people focused their efforts into straightforward and achievable projects. Wangari Maathai didn’t try to solve land use problems everywhere the world, she focused on addressing deforestation in Kenya where she lived. Rachel Carson didn’t try to tackle every kind of pollution, she focused on what she knew best, pesticides like DDT. In addition, for each one of our role models, we made sure the kids understood that these people did not work alone, but rather they worked with others to bring about positive change.
One of the ways we reinforced this was by reciting the following short poem:
I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something,
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
When talking with kids, I usually attribute this poem to Unitarian minister and novelist Edward Everett Hale even though it probably wasn’t written by him. I like to attribute it to Hale because it captures the spirit of what he believed. One of Hale’s most famous novels was titled Ten Times One Is Ten. The novel begins just after the funeral of Harry Wadsworth. Ten people who had all known Wadsworth, but who had never met before, wind up telling each other stories of the good things Harry Wadsworth had done for each of them. For it turned out that Harry Wadsworth was one of those people who quietly went around doing good things for other people. Not that the good things he did were anything extraordinary — everything he did was something any one of us could have done — but he went ahead and did them, whereas all too often the rest of us don’t.
As they sat around listening to each other’s stories of Harry Wadsworth’s good deeds, these ten people became inspired by his actions, and they wanted to continue his legacy. They wanted to form a club to carry on his legacy, but because they lived all across the country, they couldn’t have a conventional club with bylaws and meetings and so on. Instead, they decided that each of one of them would go out and do something good in the world; then they would report what they had done to the others. And, to better capture the spirit of Harry Wadsworth, they adopted the following mottos:
“To look up and not down,
To look forward and not back,
To look out and not in,—
and
To lend a hand.”
Since there were ten of them whose lives had been touched by Harry Wadsworth, they set themselves the goal of each touching the lives of ten more people. Now you begin to understand why the book is titled Ten Times One Is Ten. Each of those people did something good that touched the lives of ten more people, so that ten times ten becomes a hundred. Then those hundred people went on and did things to touch the lives of ten more people, until before long it ten times a million became ten million. And the good work spread from person to person, until at last the club realized that they had reached a thousand million people (ten times a hundred million is a thousand million) — which at the time the book was written, in the late nineteenth century, was the entire population of the world. As the narrator of the novel puts it: “When ten million people have determined that the right thing shall come to pass in this world, having good on their side, they will always be found to have their own way.”
“Ten Times One Is Ten” became a bestselling novel in the late nineteenth century. The novel proved so popular that it spawned a real-world movement of “Lend-a-Hand” clubs across the United States, devoted to making the world a better place. (These nineteenth century clubs have mostly disappeared, although when I worked at the Unitarian church in Lexington twenty-five years ago they still had a Lend-a-Hand Club, and there is still a Lend-a-Hand organization in Boston.) And you can see how the Lend-a-Hand club concept sounds like that poem attributed to Edward Everett Hale:
I am only one
But still I am one.
I cannot do everything,
But still I can do something,
And because I cannot do everything
I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.
So even if Edward Everett Hale didn’t actually write this little poem, the anonymous author captured one of Hale’s most important teachings in a memorable form. Furthermore, Edward Everett Hale would go on to say, though you may be only one — ten times one is ten.
Regardless of who actually wrote that poem, we taught it to the kids in the day camp. I wish we had also thought to teach them the motto of the club in Hale’s novel:
Look up and not down,
Look forward and not back,
Look out and not in, and
Lend a hand.
Yet even though we didn’t teach them those exact words, we taught them that sentiment. Look up for solutions rather than getting pulled down by the problems. Look forward to the future rather than always looking back at the past. Don’t get trapped inside yourself, but look outwards to other people, for there is where you’ll find hope. And finally, of course — Lend a hand where you can.
This is not to say that we ignored the very real phenomenon of “eco-grief.” “Eco-grief” is a term that I learned from a professor of environmental biology; she uses that term to describe the feelings of her college freshmen students when they realized the true magnitude of the environmental problems we face today. Eco-grief is a real phenomenon; most of us have some feelings of eco-grief. We should not dismiss eco-grief, but if we get trapped in our inward feelings of eco-grief, then nothing will change for the better. Go ahead and look in on your feelings of eco-grief, but remember to then turn and look out, and lend a hand.
I’m making this sound like while we were running that ecology day camp, we considered all these matters ahead of time, and then implemented a carefully constructed curriculum to help kids maintain a positive attitude, so that they weren’t overwhelmed by eco-grief, so they could go out and change the world. Actually, what happened is that we made it up as we went along. We watched how the campers responded (and, if I’m honest, we watched how we adults responded), and then made adjustments on the fly. This took us several years.
We knew we had succeeded by watching the campers. We got to a point where they didn’t have to ask us if things were going to be OK, because they already knew how they could contribute to make things better; that is, they were looking forward, and not back. I’ll tell you about two of our very obvious successes. One girl, who started out as a camper and went on to become a junior counselor, told us one year that she could not return to camp again because she had gotten a summer internship in local government working on environmental issues. Another girl who had been a camper then a junior counselor and was about to enter her senior year of high school, announced that she was applying to college programs in environmental science. We had other successes that weren’t as obvious, although they were just as successful. There was the camper who planned to become a high school history teacher, and who wanted to teach his students some of the history of environmental problems. There were the many campers who learned to love and enjoy the outdoors, and we knew they would grow up to become voters for whom environmental protection would be a priority.
Our successes with these kids grew out of the basic principle that you do not have to solve all the environmental problems by yourself. Do the one thing that you can do, no matter how small. When you do that, see if you can touch the lives of other people. When you touch the lives of others, perhaps you will inspire them in turn to do just one thing to address our environmental challenges.
This basic principle works for kids, and it works equally well for adults. We can begin by reminding ourselves that it is not up to us to solve all the world’s problems as isolated, solitary individuals. One person can’t do everything. But each one of us can do one thing to make the environment a little bit better. We can focus our efforts even more, to make it seem less overwhelming. We can each pick just one of the five major environmental challenges. Remember the acronym DOGIT — Deforestation, Overpopulation, Global climate change, Invasive species, Toxication. You are only one person, so you only have to concern yourself with one environmental challenge at a time. And for the one challenge with which you choose to concern yourself, you only have to do your part. If you choose to address deforestation, you could support your local land trust to protect natural habitats. If you choose overpopulation, you could support Planned Parenthood in teaching people about contraceptive choices to help reduce unwanted births. If you choose global climate change, you could help local governments in supporting renewable energy infrastructure. If you choose toxication, you could pick up trash whenever you go for a walk. Or if you choose invasive species, you could help remove invasive garlic mustard plants.
All you have to do is one thing. And it can be a small thing. But when you do that one thing, see if you can touch the lives of others. See if you can bring joy and happiness to other people, helping them feel better about the world. Just as in Edward Everett Hale’s novel, if your one effort inspires ten others, then ten times one is ten; ten times ten is a hundred; ten times a hundred is a thousand; and so on until we reach eight billion people.
I know this sounds hopelessly idealistic. I know it sounds like pie in the sky. But from my experience with that ecology summer camp, I’ve seen how eminently practical it can be. It is practical because when we inspire each other, we give each other hope. And when we give each other hope, we free ourselves — and we free our children and grandchildren — to make the world a better place….
Look up and not down,
Look forward and not back,
Look out and not in, and
Lend a hand.