For the Beauty of the Earth

By Rev. Terry Davis

Delivered at Northwest Unitarian Universalist

Congregation on April 21, 2013

In his wildest dreams, Gaylord Nelson, the governor of Wisconsin from 1959 to 1963, and a U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981, probably never imaged that he would be the father of an awakening . . . an awakening of minds and hearts to the dire straits of our planet.

In his wildest dreams, Earth Day Founder Gaylord Nelson probably never imagined that his goal of setting aside one day to focus on protecting our natural environment would forever change the consciousness and political agendas of the U.S. and nations around the world.

But it did. On April 22, 1970, millions of people – an estimated 10 percent of the U.S. population – took part in marches, rallies, concerts and teach-ins. They planted trees, picked up garbage and gathered to hear speeches. New York City Mayor John Lindsay was said to have set the tone in a brief address to over 100,000 persons in Union Square. He boiled down environmental concerns to one simple question: “Do we want to live or die?”

Gaylord Nelson and his allies awakened a nation and a world to the notion that our beautiful earth is not an infinite resource and will not always rebound from misuse and abuse. The blue seashore and green forested mountains that Dave and Tony spoke so eloquently of – and that all of us here treasure in our own way – are threatened and we know it.

And, even as we might see the salvation of our planet as a life or death issue as Mayor Lindsay did all those years ago, we are still struggling with how to live our lives in sync with a rhythm and moderation that is in step with Earth’s abundance and her limitations.

I remember the first Earth Day 43 years ago. Although I was only nine years old at the time, I can still recall the excitement and energy I felt in anticipation of participating in something bigger than myself. My elementary school in Washington, DC had been gearing up for the big day with posters, special projects and scheduled performances – much like schoolchildren are still doing today.

I joined my 4^th grade class in a skit where children, dressed as animals and flowers, joined together in a battle against the evil “litterbugs.”

The litterbugs wore costumes adorned with aluminum cans and pieces of paper. Thankfully, I was dressed as a geranium. I remember the litterbugs taking the stage and chanting with shrill enthusiasm, “Litterbug, litterbug, mess, mess, mess. Will we win? Yes, yes, yes!” Then they rushed across the stage at us flowers, birds and squirrels with their cardboard swords and shields. We fought back with songs and swords of our own.

Not a very bucolic Earth Day play, was it?

As you might imagine, it was the animals and flowers– not the litterbugs – that prevailed in our school play’s make-believe war on trash. But, reflecting back on that performance in 1970, I can’t deny that the reality today is a far cry from that innocent outcome. I wonder how many more generations of children will have school plays and programs on the environment while glaciers melt, seas rise, and plants and animals die?

I personally don’t think the life-or-death messages are working in our struggle to change our consumption and disposal habits. Rather, I believe that we need something more intimate and immanent to allow Gaylord Nelson’s passion and vision to become ours, too. I believe we need what Dave and Tony did . . . and what I imagine many of us here at Northwest do.

I believe we need close-up and personal encounters with Nature that leave a permanent imprint on our souls . . . imprints that bring up strong emotions and vivid images . . . imprints that bring forth poetic language and music . . . imprints that change us and compel us to think and act differently in the world.

And, so this morning, on the 43^rd anniversary of Earth Day, I invite us each to consider what kind of relationship we have with the beauty of the earth right now and what we might do to intensify that relationship.

I believe that increasing our intimacy with Nature’s beauty will increase our sensitivity to its peril. And, it will be the beauty of the earth – not the danger of our self-destruction – that will enliven our spirit and strengthen our resolve to change the way we live.

Within our own liberal religious tradition, I can’t help but look back to our 19^th century Transcendentalist forebears such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Walt Whitman for examples of persons who had intimate relationships with the natural world and allowed it to inspire their lives and their work.

We know, for example, that Thoreau’s famous two-year experiment in the woods near Walden Pond, Massachusetts, was transformative and grounded him in a life-long affair with Nature. A famous passage in Thoreau’s memoir of this experiment is a testament to the intimacy he sought with himself and the clarity he believed he could find only in the outdoors. It reads: “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

While we may not be able to take two years out of our lives and live in a cabin in the woods like Henry David Thoreau, we can make time to allow the beauty of the earth to infuse us with a sense of grace and deep meaning. We can be as intentional as he was in seeking out a simple communion with Nature, whether it’s with a sandy Florida beach, a New England mountain forest, or the grass and trees in our own backyards.

The more deliberate we are in looking for the beauty of the earth, the more I believe we open ourselves up to be changed by it. And, as we change on the inside, I can’t help but believe we will be motivated in our external world to do the right thing for our planet and all of its inhabitants.

While love of our planet and appreciation for its beauty is certainly an appropriate theme for today, we should make no mistake about Gaylord Nelson’s ultimate objective behind creating Earth Day – he fully intended it to be a political exercise.

Impressed by the antiwar teach-ins taking place on college campuses in the late 1960s, Nelson conceived the idea for a nationwide teach-in about the environment. He raised money to fund the Earth Day project and recruited a team of volunteers to organize the event.

Nelson wrote to all 50 governors and the mayors of several major cities asking them to issue Earth Day proclamations, and sent an Earth Day article to college newspapers and Scholastic Magazine, which reached most high school and elementary school students (including 4^th graders like me).

Public response to the first Earth Day energized the U.S. environmental movement and made the environment a top political issue overnight. It led Congress and several states to pass or strengthen key environmental legislation and to create the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, as well as similar state agencies.^[1]

In thinking about where we are 43 years later, there’s no doubt that we’ve come a long way since my childhood battle between the litterbugs and the geraniums. A number of harmful chemicals have been banned in our country, many lakes and streams are cleaner, and most cars have lower emissions and are more fuel efficient.

But, the world is also a more populated place. And, with more people using the earth’s resources, it might seem that many of these gains of the last four decades have been either diminished or negated.

So, I believe that what was true for me then as a nine-year-old girl is also true for me now as a woman of a certain middle age: my motivation is still needed to change the direction of things.

And, it seems that the best way to keep my motivation alive is to immerse myself in the very thing I believe needs saving. I must – we must – immerse ourselves in the beauty of this earth, learn of its fragility and promise, and allow it to guide us to do the next right thing.

So, as we take part in the Earth Day celebration following this morning’s service . . . and as we leave here today . . . let’s certainly be more than a little concerned about the welfare of the natural environment. But let’s also commit to engage with it more often. We don’t have to go far away to do this – even Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond was just a half an hour’s walk away from his parents’ house.

For myself, I can begin by simply taking more walks around my leafy neighborhood. I can slow down to make it more of an adventure rather than an exercise excursion. I can approach my encounter with Nature deliberately, taking it all in – like Dave took in the dance between the tides and the moon and Tony took in the cycle of life he saw teeming from the decaying stump of a massive tree.

We can all deliberately take in the beauty of the earth and what it has to teach us in that moment.

And, when I do that . . . when we do that . . . I believe we enliven our spirits and our desire to change. It’s then that we’ll gain the key to our salvation . . . we’ll have what we need to save the planet and ourselves.

May it be so for you and for me. Amen.