Category Archives: Ecology, religion, justice

Spring watch

With the warm weather of the past two days, some things have suddenly changed. The long spell of cool weather kept a forsythia in the next block blooming for three weeks; suddenly it is covered with small green leaves and the blossoms are at last falling off. Tulip blooms that had stayed fresh for weeks curled and withered in the past twenty-four hours.

Swallows are everywhere over the river now. Rough-winged Swallows have claimed the space around the State Street bridge. I saw a few Purple Martins over the river downstream of the railroad bridge. Tree Swallows seem to be everywhere.

Tree Swallows strike me as utterly alien beings. You can pretend that some birds and animals have vaguely human characteristics — Cardinals seem cheerful, Racoons seem smart and sly, even frogs can seem to take on a human character. But when I look at the bright round, slightly protruding eyes of Tree Swallows, I can’t imagine any human expression there. Whatever thoughts or feelings they have are wholly their own.

An eco-theological celebration

The recent article published in the peer-reviewed journal Science reporting the sighting of a male Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, long thought to be extinct in the United States, is more than a feel-good story for eco-freaks. It’s also a religious story for some of us.

First of all, how often do we get good news about ecology? Mostly the news brings us a litany of ecological disasters. I’m a Universalist, so I know everything is going to turn out all right in the long run — but it’s nice to know that good things are happening right now, as a little encouragement for those of us who are trying to make the world better now, rather than waiting for some kind of afterlife.

There’s more theology than that involved. Those of us who are interested in ecological theology find a religious significance in bio-diversity. We ecological theologians hold that individual religion, individual salvation for individual human beings, is not enough. By extending religious principles to all species, and to eco-systems in general, we are saying that the category of evil also includes destruction of species and of eco-systems — that we can’t create the kingdom of heaven here on earth without rich bio-diversity. (For those of you who are theology geeks, yes, we stole most of this from the Social Gospelers.)

But the heck with theology — let’s just celebrate. Check out the news coverage on NewScientist.com, which includes a copy of the primary evidence involved — the five-second blurry video showing an Ivory-Billed Woodpecker flying — http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7319. Yes, it’s a blurry video, but I’m just enough of a birder to know that ain’t no Pileated Woodpecker flying along through the swamp.

It will take time for the scientific community to go over the data. In the mean time, the Nature Conservancy has received a multi-million dollar gift to protect more potential habitat of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker. Check out their report of their efforts to save this habitat at http://www.nature.org/ivorybill/habitat/saving.html — and click on the link in the upper right=hand corner of this Web page to make your own contribution towards saving the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker’s habitat. Heck, you were just going to spend that money at the mall, anyway. Give it to the crazy-looking woodpecker instead. What better way to celebrate?

Back from extinction?

When I was a child, I remember reading about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, then thought to be extinct. Somehow, this wild-looking bird captured my imagination, and I always had this fantasy that someday someone would discover that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker was not extinct. As I grew older and more cynical, I knew intellectually that my fantasy was ridiculous. Once something is extinct, it’s gone forever.

Except that new evidence seems to indicate that the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is, in fact, not extinct. My dad heard it on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” show, in a report titled “Ivory-billed Woodpecker Rediscovered in Arkansas” (available on their Web site at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4622633).

Hearing that made my day.

Neither right nor left

I’ve been skimming my way through the 1,000+ page Duelfer report. Fascinating reading. Wow.

It presents a far more nuanced view of the origins of the current Iraq conflict than I have been getting through the news media. Unfortunately, partisan political points of view have had the tendency of obscuring actual events. I mean, we all know the New York Times is blatantly Democratic, and the Wall Street Journal is blatantly Republican — and frankly, I’ve long felt their news reporting has lost some nuance because of partisan bias.

The Duelfer report seems far more balanced — plus it places the entire Iraq conflict into historical context. If you want to blame someone there’s plenty of blame to go around — or to be more blunt, if you want to blame the opposite political party, you’ll find plenty of ammunition no matter what your party affiliation. But I think that misses the point of the Duelfer report. Blame is less important at this point — understanding is what we should be striving for. Given the expense and the cost in human lives, obviously we all want to avoid another conflict like this one if at all possible.

Unfortunately, what I get out of the Duelfer report is how simple misunderstanding was a major contributing factor leading to the Iraq conflict. For example, in my post yesterday, I quoted from a section of the Duelfer report that pointed out how badly Saddam Hussein misunderstood the United States. You can also find examples of how we in the United States managed to misunderstand Saddam Hussein — for example, how we misunderstood how Saddam Hussein had to maitain a fiction that Iraq was capable of producing weapons of mass destruction even when it wasn’t, in order to save face and to keep Iran aggression at bay. It also seems we in the United States misunderstood the extent to which Saddam Hussein posed a threat — he was worse in some ways than we had expected, and not as bad in other ways.

I continue to be bothered by the fact that the Democrats and the Republicans — the “liberals” and the “conservatives” — continue to point fingers of blame at each other, continue to indulge in shrill rhetoric rather than reasoned debate that might lead to a deeper understanding of the situation in Iraq. I find this increasingly unacceptable. We need to understand what’s going on in Iraq in order that we may end the Iraq conflict safely, effectively, and as quickly as possible. I am concerned that reasoned debate about the Iraq conflict, and about foreign affairs in general, has degenerated to the point where liberals and conservatives have essentially stopped talking with one another — particularly within Unitarian Universalist circles. We all need to get over being angry with each other. That’s just a waste of our time. We need to re-learn how to have effective, and openly democratic debate and conversation.

So your mission, should you choose to accept it, is this — 1. Read the Duelfer report. 2. Find a Unitarian Universalist who has the opposite political position from you (liberals, find a conservative, and conservatives, find a liberal). 3. Ask that person what s/he thinks — then, before you respond, repeat back to them exactly what they said, and ask them if you got it right. 4. Then ask them what we, as Unitarian Universalists, can affirm about the religious implications of the Iraq conflict — again, before you respond, repeat back to them exactly what they said and ask them if you got it right.

In other words, let’s see if we can move towards dialogue — and understanding — as “seekers after truth and goodness,” and as “not agreeing in opinion.”

Just war, unjust war?

In a democracy, citizens have to keep themselves informed about key events and issues. That’s why I’ve been working my way through the Duelfer Report, the Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction. And from a religious point of view, this report poses the difficult question — is the second Gulf War a just war?

The report now available on the Web in HTML and as extremely large PDF files. Forget the PDF files, they’re too big — go straight for the HTML version of the report at http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html

I was struck by this passage:

Saddam did not consider the United States a natural adversary, as he did Iran and Israel, and he hoped that Iraq might again enjoy improved relations with the United States, according to Tariq ‘Aziz and the presidential secretary. Tariq ‘Aziz pointed to a series of issues, which occurred between the end of the Iran-Iraq war and 1991, to explain why Saddam failed to improve relations with the United States: Irangate (the covert supplying of Iran with missiles, leaked in 1986), a continuing US fleet presence in the Gulf, suspected CIA links with Kurds and Iraqi dissidents and the withdrawal of agricultural export credits. After Irangate, Saddam believed that Washington could not be trusted and that it was out to get him personally. His outlook encouraged him to attack Kuwait, and helps explain his later half-hearted concessions to the West. These concerns collectively indicated to Saddam that there was no hope of a positive relationship with the United States in the period before the attack on Kuwait.

Although the United States was not considered a natural adversary, some Iraqi decision-makers viewed it as Iraq’s most pressing concern, according to former Vice President Ramadan. Throughout the 1990s, Saddam and the Ba’th Regime considered full-scale invasion by US forces to be the most dangerous potential threat to unseating the Regime, although Saddam rated the probability of an invasion as very low.

Clearly Saddam Hussein misjudged the political situation in the United States. As I work my way through the rest of the report, perhaps I’ll have additional comments. You look at the report, too, and tell me what you think….

Sky drama

Carol and I were walking down Hamilton Street towards the river this afternoon, and just as we crossed First Street a small drama was enacted in the sky above us.

The first thing I noticed was three or four pigeons wheeling above the State Street bridge, and then flying low and fast upriver. Then a larger bird wheeled above us — it looked like a small hawk.

Twenty or so pigeons came from under the bridge, flying very close to one another, dropping quickly back down to cover by the bridge. The larger bird flapped twice, wheeled into the wind and soared for a second. As it turned above us, I could see it was a small hawk, an accipter, probably a Cooper’s Hawk.

The hawk wheeled twice more, and drifted downwind, towards the south. Suddenly another bird appeared close behind it — a Crow — then two more. The three Crows began mobbing the the hawk, driving it west away from the river. Half a dozen smaller birds broke cover and headed north, away from the hawk. Crows are just about the same size as a Cooper’s Hawk, so it hardly seemed a fair fight — three Crows mobbing the one Hawk.

The last I saw, the Cooper’s Hawk had dropped down to treetop level, still followed by the Crows. My guess is that it wanted to take advantage of its ability to dart and fly swiftly through trees, so it could get away from the Crows. I wondered if it is the mate of the Cooper’s Hawk that is sitting on a nest a few blocks from our house.

Sense of place

As I continue to explore ecological theology, I get more and more interested in the notion of place. A sense of place is essential to understanding how we humsn fit into the rest of the ecosystem.

So this blog, called Where Project, caught my eye: www.whereproject.org Later note: I removed the link because this Web site is now defunct.

It’s written and photographed by a PhD candidate in English at Boston College, who’s writing a dissertation on “place blogging” — blogs that are all about one person’s relationship to one place.

Update August 2006: This blog is no longer current, although the author keeps promising to update it.

The April of religion

Back on October 13, 1885, Rev. William C. Gannett preached a sermon to the Illinois Fraternity of Liberal Religious Societies here in our little church in Geneva. It was later published as a tract in 1889, and republished by the American Unitarian Association in 1922 in the “Memorable Sermons” series. Here’s the opening paragraph:

“Are there not seasons of Spring in the moral world, and is not the present age one of them?” asked Dr. Channing toward the end of his life — and he died in 1842. Doubtless many persons living then were saying, “It is a season of the falling leaf, the old faiths are dropping from the tree; it is November in religion.” People say that today. I feel, instead, that Dr. Channing’s question is pertinent again: ‘”Are there not seasons of Spring in the moral and religious world, and is not the present age one of them?” There come seasons when thoughts swell like buds, old meanings press out and unfold like leaves; seasons when we either need new words for greatening thoughts, or else new meanings, new implications, new and larger contents, frankly recognized in the old words. And I think the present age, which some call November, is such an April in the world of faith; that old words are swelling with enlarged meaning, and that that is what’s the matter. In religion April’s here!

While I’m not as interested in the rest of Garrett’s sermon, I like his metaphor — and I do feel a new season of April coming to liberal religion in our day. I feel a quickening of new life as we expand our theology to include not just humankind but other living things as well. I feel old words swelling with new meaning as we recast Universalism for a new age in which people hunger for our message of hope. I feel a season of spring coming when our liberal religion will show itself as an example of how humanity can create humanity without narrow creeds and doctrines.

It’s an exciting time to be a part of a Unitarian Universalist congregation. We really do have the capacity to transform the world around us. It’s time to be hopeful.

Update 13 January 2006: I’d now add that the emergence of eco-theology gives reason to believe that this is another season of Spring in the moral world.

Going to Saint-Terre

One of the more life-affirming Web sites that I visit these days is:
http://www.andrewskurka.com/

Andy Skurka is taking a year-long, 7,700 mile walk across the North American continent. Right now, he is somewhere west of Frazee, Minnesota, having walked close to 5,000 miles already. His sister posts trail logs just about every week, giving the latest news from his trek.

What is this but a contemporary pilgrimage — a pilgrimage, not to some dusty bones and pieces of a holy person long dead, but a pilgrimage to find who knows what? It strikes me as a good kind of pilgrimage for my kind of religion. Henry Thoreau offers a theological justification for this kind of pilgrimage in his essay “Walking”:

I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understand the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering, whihc word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going a la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land, till the children exclaimed, “There goes a Sainte-Terrer,” a saunterer, a Holy Lander.

And where is that Holy Land, that Sainte Terre, of which Thoreau speaks? Why, right in front of your feet. Andy Skurka is finding that Holy Land with each step he takes, and he has captured my imagination. I’m already thinking about what pilgrimage, to which holy land, I’m going to make.

Update: Andy Skurka completed his cross-continental hike ahead of schedule.