This coming Sunday, April 22, is Earth Day. Not to be confused with Earth Hour, back in March, which promoted turning off surplus electric lights for one hour, causing a wave of darkness to sweep all around the earth. Earth Day has a larger focus this year, to “End Plastic Pollution.”

            “Plastics,” says a promotion piece, “poison and injure marine life, disrupt human hormones, litter beaches and landscapes, [and] clog our waste streams and landfills. The exponential growth of plastics now threatens the survival of our planet.”

            I don’t disagree. But I see plastics as a symptom of a deeper malaise. We didn’t have plastics until we made them out of fossil fuels. And our use and abuse of fossil fuels reflects the belief that this planet is a lifeless landfill site where we humans can dump our waste products forever.

            Basically, we don’t care much about the earth that gives us life.

Seeing the earth a new way

            Earth Day got started in 1970, when Senator Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin feared that environmental concerns were not adequately addressed in politics or media.

            Nelson was influenced by Rachel Carson’s 1962 bestseller Silent Spring. The book sold more than 500,000 copies in 24 countries. It raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment, and the connection between pollution and public health.

            Silent Spring also influenced renowned chemist James Lovelock. Lovelock had worked with NASA, evaluating images of Earth seen from space. With microbiologist Lynn Margulis, he developed the Gaia Hypothesis – named after the goddess of earth in Greek mythology.

            It argued, essentially, that living organisms interact with their environment to form a complex, self-regulatingsystem to sustain the conditions for life on the planet.

            By implication, it made life itself a living thing. 

            One of my church’s hymn books has a song called “O Beautiful Gaia.” The words seem to attribute personality and intention to the biosphere: “O beautiful Gaia, O Gaia calling us home…”

            Some people reject that song, on the grounds that it worships a pagan Goddess. (Or perhaps just because it’s a goddess, female.) Others argue that the sole object of worship should be God. They quote the first Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other Gods before me!”

Better than NOT worshipping

            Personally, I don’t think that Lovelock, or Margulis, or the hymn’s author Carolyn McDade, ever intended to make the planet an object of worship – with priests, incense, prescribed prayers, chanting, and collected offerings. 

            I’m not suggesting we should worship the earth either. 

            But if we wanted to worship something, we could do a lot worse than the earth. 

            We could, for example, treat the earth as a short-term exile from our true home, somewhere else. We could treat this life as an inconsequential interruption, something to be suffered through until we can return to our home in gloryland. 

            Which is, unfortunately, a view too common in some parts of Christianity, and perhaps in other faiths too. 

            Is it worth gambling on a heaven from which no human has yet returned, to describe in person, while letting this life go to hell with industrial toxins, plastic waste choking the oceans, and rising seas drowning coastal farmlands and cities?

            I think we’d be better off worshipping the earth.

            If we didn’t have the earth sustaining us, would there be any humans to worship God anyway?

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Copyright © 2017 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

            To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Bob Rollwagen got into the spirit of last week’s column – which was not a satire, by the way: “False prophets, economists, and politicians have some similarity. They report visions they imagine using convenient facts, personal bias, their limited life experience, and assumptions about what a potential audience might believe. The unfortunate reality is that many get a larger following than you would expect or common sense would suggest. When you listen to the supporters, you hear that they hook into one or two points that sound credible or fit their personal understanding, and ignore the remaining 99% which questions their desired view of life. Recent research tells us that 65% to 70% on humans see their life through filters that have deep-rooted learned biases reflecting their education or lack of knowledge. Most people enter a democratic polling booth with little or no knowledge of what is best for their society because of these filters, and little or no understanding of the inter-relationship of the issues. 

            “False prophets use fake news to create fear that obscures or misdirect energy that could otherwise have been used to improve and build the society that I believe is illustrated by God’s word, the word that brings hope to all who wish to build and not tear down.”

Isabel Gibson had a similar criticism of those revelations of doom: “The older I get, the more value I see in my father's assertion (relatively late in his life) that it would be fine if all anyone took out of scripture was Jesus' injunction to love our neighbours as ourselves. Hard to do much harm with that.”

Dorothy Haug must have had a bad day: “Thanks for the paraphrase. Much needed this morning.”

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PSALM PARAPHRASES

Psalm 23 is probably the most loved, and best known, of all the 150 psalms. I’ve written at least half a dozen paraphrases, some of which remain unpublished. During a memorial service, I heard my minister suggest that Psalm 23 could have been written by someone looking back on a long and full life. I took that idea and ran with it.

God has walked with me; I could ask nothing more. 

God has given me green meadows to laugh in,  clear streams to think beside, untrodden paths to explore. 

When I thought the world rested on my shoulders,  God put things into perspective;

When I lashed out at an unfair world, God calmed me down;

When I drifted into harmful ways,  God straightened me out. 

God was with me all the way. 

I do not know what lies ahead, but I am not afraid. 

I know God will be with me. 

Even in death, I will not despair. 

You will comfort me and support me. 

Though my eye dims and my mind dulls, 

You will continue to care about me. 

Your touch will soothe the tension in my temples; 

My fears will fade away. 

I am content. 

In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with me. 

All though life, I have found goodness in people.

When life ends, I expect to be gathered  into the ultimate goodness of God.

For paraphrases of mostof the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalmsfrom Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

            To subscribe or unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to jimt@quixotic.ca. Or you can subscribe electronically by sending a blank e-mail (no message or subject line) to softedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca. Similarly, you can un-subscribe at softedges-unsubscribe@lists.quixotic.ca.

            I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols.

            Ralph Milton ’s latest project is called “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca

            Ralph’s HymnSight webpage is still up, http://wwwDOThymnsightDOTca, with a vast gallery of photos you can use to enhance the appearance of the visual images you project for liturgical use (prayers, responses, hymn verses, etc.)

            Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,”an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>

            I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom

            Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.

            Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony”-- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’sreaders. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet