Last week, this week, and next week our first reading comes from the Book of Proverbs, one of the books of Wisdom literature in the Old Testament.
Wisdom in ancient Israel and early Judaism included at least six important elements: knowledge, imagination, discipline, piety, order, and moral instruction. According to the wise men and women of Israel, creation was sustained by both divine action and humans living in conformity with the moral order of the cosmos. Woman Wisdom, the personification of divine wisdom, issues the invitation to the “simple” or “unlearned” to take the path to insight that gains favor from God and leads to life.
So, to become wise is to take in the moral instruction that wisdom wants to give us in order to have the knowledge, imagination and discipline to understand our place in the created order. Wisdom is woven into the very fabric of the universe, and we can attain wisdom by paying attention to the patterns of creation. We ignore or flout those patterns at our peril. When we pay attention to the patterns of creation, we will understand our place in the created order and the result will be awe and reverence for God and a life lived in a way in which we prosper not just individually but communally. Wisdom should lead us to care not just for ourselves, but for our fellow human beings and all of creation. The major purpose of Proverbs is to invite the simple to seek wisdom.
Our passage from Proverbs for today is about the maddening rejection of wisdom by dimwits, scoffers, fools, and cynics. In the opening verses, Woman Wisdom makes a dramatic entrance. She is a public figure who chooses the most prominent places in town to deliver her message. Her message is quite simple and direct: ignore me at your peril. She refuses to be silenced. Her voice is loud and persistent. Those to whom she addresses her message may choose not to listen, but they cannot say they did not hear her. Everyone has a choice to make. Will her hearers choose wisdom or not? If they do not, catastrophe awaits. This catastrophe is not sent by Woman Wisdom but is instead the direct consequence of the dimwits’ actions. Her message is extreme and strident because Woman Wisdom desperately wants to wake up the complacent and unresponsive to their dreadful plight.
As I sat with this passage and thought about the Season of Creation which we are celebrating today, I of course immediately thought of climate change deniers. It is an easy connection. It continues to baffle me how people can deny the solid science of thousands of scientists over many decades and the evidence of the changes occurring in the world all around us. And I wouldn’t care so much except we ignore reality at our peril. Woman Wisdom is screaming the truth, and some people just don’t want to hear it. They are truly dimwits and fools.
But, as is my spiritual practice, because I know I can tend to judge others without reflecting on myself, I next asked myself if Woman Wisdom might be shouting anything at me during this season of creation. And of course, I concluded that she is shouting at me too. And I share my reflection with you in case you need to do some self-reflecting too.
And this was what I learned about myself. I accept the science about climate change, and I agree that it exists and is happening, but in my actions and lack of urgency I am just as much a denier of climate change as those who deny that it is real. I haven’t changed some of my personal habits that would be most impactful in our efforts to reduce carbon emissions. I am not out advocating and pushing our leaders in local, state, and federal governments to do the right thing and implement the policies needed to make the changes that will save us all. I am behaving and living as if nothing bad is happening and will happen in the future. And I have done this because I have the ability to do this. My life is comfortable. So far, I have not been personally affected by climate change. My home and workplace have not been flooded or blown away in the increasingly powerful storms of late. I can afford the energy needed to keep my comfortable way of life. I don’t live near polluting power plants or factories. My water is not contaminated by human made toxins. So, I haven’t given up eating my tasty beef. I have not taken up the practice of advocacy. I feel good about myself because I can say I believe the climate scientists, but in reality, I have not done much else. Maybe I am a dimwit and a fool too.
You are probably not as dimwitted and foolish as I am, in which case, you can spend the rest of my sermon in prayer and meditation, but if you find yourself identifying with the picture I painted of myself, then you might want to listen to the rest of what I have to say. As I concluded that I am also a dimwit and a fool, I also decided that I do not want to stay in this place. I really do want to change and act with wisdom. But how?
Well, first I think we have to have knowledge. Over the last few weeks in preparation for writing my sermons for this Season of Creation I took some time to educate myself a little more deeply about climate change and its causes and solutions. Here is some of the knowledge I have gained that has helped me become a little bit wiser. Perhaps it will help you too.
1. If we do nothing, the temperature of the earth will continue to climb until it is no longer fit for human habitation. For some here, this may not happen in your lifetime, but it will happen in the lifetime of your children and grandchildren if we do nothing.
2. We have to stop burning fossil fuels, all fossil fuels.
3. By deploying the solutions we already have, we can bend the curve by the 2040’s-2060’s, but we need to use all the solutions.
4. The initial costs will be 25-30 trillion dollars but will save far more in the long run.
5. We have to farm and eat differently, and this is not about organic farming that frequently produces just as many greenhouse gases as nonorganic farming.
6. Time is crucial. We must act now with what we have.
7. If we solve climate change, the world will be a better and more equitable place for everyone.
Next, we need imagination. Part of the reason most of us are so complacent is that we lack imagination. From our comfortable position we have failed to imagine what life is like for the people whose island nations are gradually sinking under sea-level rise, or the devastation in places like Puerto Rico after climate warming driven hurricanes, or the misery of living next to a coal-burning electric plant or polluting factory. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of those who are suffering right here and right now. We have also failed to imagine what it will be like for our children and grandchildren. I think we fail in this regard because we are terrified, but we need to let that fear motivate us to take action not deny it and do nothing.
We have also failed to imagine how good the world can be if we do succeed in solving climate change. Imagine a world in which those living in poverty don’t have the added burden of diminished health, shorter lifespans, and stunted development of their children caused by environmental toxins and air and water pollution. Imagine a world in which there are no longer thousands of refugees trying to cross international borders because they can remain in their own homelands because the results of climate change are no longer destroying their homes and their nations. Imagine a world in which agriculture is sustainable and functional and so food is not in excess in some parts of the world while other parts of the world live in famine. Wisdom would have us use our imaginations to understand the costs and benefits of doing nothing or doing everything.
And we need discipline. Discipline to make the personal changes we need to make. I am personally wrestling with the issue of eating red meat. I have to be honest; I love a good steak. It makes me hungry right now to think about eating one. But one of our members, Marek, brought me up short last Sunday during our book discussion. He said that he had done the numbers, and I know this is a real skill and gift of his, so I trust his numbers, and he figured out that eating a steak is the equivalent of using an entire tank of gas. Am I really so undisciplined that I can’t work on my consumption of red meat? I would like to think not. Let’s see how wise I can be moving forward.
As I read the writing of several different environmental activists, I gained some wisdom about a few important truths. Wisdom does not dodge how bad things are, but also does not get stuck there. Wisdom keeps a forward gaze. Without knowing the outcome, we have to try anyway; without a single guarantee, we must show up. We must summon truth, courage and solutions. There is no great movement that acted because the members of the movement knew what the outcome was going to be when they started. These movements succeeded because people acted anyway, even if they had every reason to think they might fail. It only takes 3.5% of a population getting active—voting, donating, taking to the streets, talking to neighbors—for a movement to succeed (from a study by political scientists Erica Chenowith and Maria Stephan). We need to become advocates, all of us need to become advocates, even if we are comfortable now and the worst might not happen until after we are gone from this earth.
But, you may be saying, I don’t know where to begin.
Well, it is always easier to start on a personal level. If you have the means to do so, electrify your life. Heat pumps, electric stoves, solar panels, solar farms, EV’s, PHEV’s have all become financially accessible to more people, and the more people who deploy them in their own lives the more the prices will come down. If you can afford to do so and haven’t, do everything you can to electrify your life and bring clean energy into your home. Don’t get caught up in the debates about batteries and the like. The bottom line is that these are the technologies we have right now. We need to put them to use. In Maine 54% of our carbon emissions come from transportation, and 59% of that is from passenger cars and trucks. The next biggest chunk of emissions, 19%, is coming from residential energy use: heating, cooling, and lighting our homes. In other words, an awful lot of it is coming from you and me. We also can start to reduce our consumption of red meat with the goal of eliminating it all together. About 40 percent of greenhouse gases come from agriculture, deforestation and other land-use changes. (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/eating-less-red-meat-is-something-individuals-can-do-to-help-the-climate-crisis/). Meat—particularly beef—drives climate change in two ways: first, through cows’ emission of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and second, by destroying forests as they are converted to grazing land. This is low-hanging fruit that can be tackled immediately by the daily choices we make.
And we need to become advocates. We need to become political in the communal not partisan sense of the word and we need to start at the local level. Many of the big decisions that matter to our climate are made at the state and local level. I was perusing the State of Maine website on climate resiliency. Maine is doing a lot. For example, they have a Community Resilience Partnership that works to help local communities find opportunities and the funding to combat climate change and become climate resilient locally. Local communities are not required to join but have to choose to join. Damariscotta, Wiscasset, Alna, and Waldoboro are members, but Newcastle, Nobleboro, Bristol, South Bristol, Edgecomb, and Jefferson are not. Maybe we who live in these communities need to ask why and speak up. Are we showing up to town meetings and budgeting processes to advocate for climate awareness and change? Can we figure out how to decarbonize as a church? Could we fundraise to help people who can’t afford to electrify their lives do so? What organizations already exist that we could join individually and as a parish to advocate for change?
Perhaps our biggest problem is not the dimwits and the fools who deny climate science but the lack of urgency in the rest of us. Woman Wisdom has given us the knowledge we need but we haven’t listened, and we have lacked imagination—both of what could be if we do not act and what could be if we do. We must imagine the future we want to pass on, and every day do something to reel the dream closer to reality. We have the solutions we need, the wisdom is there, we just need to get to it, removing barriers to solutions, including the barriers we put up ourselves.
Wisdom cries out in the street;
in the squares she raises her voice.
At the busiest corner she cries out;
at the entrance of the city gates she speaks:
“How long, O simple ones, will you love being simple?
How long will scoffers delight in their scoffing
and fools hate knowledge? (Proverbs 1:20-21)
