Sermons by Reverend Don Beaudreault
EARTH DAY REFLECTIONS
Rev. Don Beaudreault
Unitarian Universalist Church of Sarasota, FL
April 17, 2005
OPENING WORDS: "For the beauty of the earth, this spinning blue green ball, yes!"
For the beauty of the earth,
this spinning blue green ball, yes!
Gaia, mother of everything
we walk gently across your back
to come together again
in this place
to remember how we can live
to remember who we are
to create how we will be.
Gaia, our home,
the lap in which we live -
welcome us.Barbara J. Pescan
SERMON: "Earth Day Reflections"
Thich Nhat Hanh tells us:
Whenever I touch a flower, I touch the sun and yet I do not get burned. When I touch the flower, I touch a cloud without flying to the sky. When I touch the flower, I touch my consciousness, your consciousness, and the great planet Earth at the same time.
REFLECTION:
When the meter on the gas pump a couple days ago read more than $35.00 to fill my little more than 16-gallon tank, I was so angry that after repositioning the gas hose and closing the lid on my tank, I drove off forgetting my receipt. I did not realize this until I had gone a couple miles on Fruitville. So I decided to return to the gas station, hoping that the receipt would still be in the slot. I was thankful that it was because I keep track of my gas purchases. A little deal we clergy have with the IRS.
At the adjoining tank, the octogenarian man in Bermuda shorts and dark sunglasses spoke to me with one of those East Coast accents (truly, a generic Sarasotan) - and an accent I can't do. He had been cleaning his windshield before I had made my purchase and was still cleaning it. Call it "retirement."
"Hey, you mad or somethin'?" he asked.
I told him I was and explained that it was because of the high price of gas.
He shot back: "It's dem damn animal lovers!"
I looked at him as if he were joking. But as he went on, I realized that he was quite serious.
"They prevent us from drilling in Alaska. Somebody should drill them!"
Already late, I decided not to have a war at the gas pump, and merely smiled noncommittally. "Sorry, I gotta go!" I told him and left.
*****
Thich Nhat Hanh tells us:
The miracle is possible because of insight into the nature of interbeing. If you really touch one flower deeply, you touch the whole cosmos.
REFLECTION:
"You mean you can drink the water here?" I asked the innkeeper in Rotorua, New Zealand, the place of thermal springs.
"From the faucets, sure, but not from the thermal springs!" she laughed. "Although it might make for a salty cup of tea!"
I did notice a strong sulfur smell for the entire two days I visited this touristy town. And it was very strong in my hotel room - no wonder, it was within 50 yards of one of those thermal springs. I must say that it was quite a dramatic turn of events when I first opened up my curtains and saw that ancient cauldron filled with bubbling ooze, an example that New Zealand is still a relatively newly fashioned land. Startling, too, because in opening the curtains, I saw 50 pairs of Japanese eyes staring back at me, with cameras about to go into position. Tourists!
Throughout the country, both on the North and South Islands, I drank water - cool, pure water from the faucets.
Not so anywhere on the continent of Australia. Major portions of the land mass have experienced a decades-old drought. The "a river runs through it" town called Alice Springs has merely a riverbank - where the Todd River is supposed to be. And I never could find the "Springs" named after Alice, the wife of the superintendent of telegraphs when the first telegraph was sent from there to Adelaide.
Stories of drought and polluted water exist around the world. Pretty much everywhere I've been - and I've been to 36 countries.
*****
Thich Nhat Hanh tells us:
The cosmos is neither one nor many. When you touch one, you touch many, and when you touch many you touch one.
REFLECTION:
I'm a downtown Sarasota runner. It takes me about a hour to go from the Towles Court/Ringling area, down Main Street, to the library, across "The Trail," under the new Ringling Bridge, around Golden Gate Point, past the Marina, around Marina Jack's Restaurant, around Island Park, across "The Trail," through Burns Court, up Laurel to Osprey to Hawkins Court - that little brick-lined alley where we live.
For all but a couple years of the six I've been in Sarasota, I have lived and run this route, or variations of it. I have seen how the city has changed. I have witnessed the old houses being knocked down - or in some cases moved to other parts of town; I have seen big holes dug and big buildings put up into the holes. I have seen the "Holy Ghost Fathers" residence on Golden Gate Point destroyed and a behemoth structure rise up, blocking the view of the bay. I have experienced the sunlight being closed off by those out-of-place high rises at either end of Main - the one at Five Points, and the one on Ringling and 301. And in today's (Friday's) front page of the newspaper there is an article about yet another concrete and steel giant planned for Fruitville and 301!
I have seen traffic increase along with the tempers of the drives. I have had to endure two daily tours of those stand-up, motorized scooters called "Segways" pass fifteen feet from my office at home. I hear them before I see them - up to 12 tourists with helmets. The entire world passes by my window, invading my private, bucolic, meditative existence.
I have been frustrated by all this "growth." But last week I cried and cry even now because two of my favorite trees - both mature and beautiful live oaks have been destroyed. One has been pulled up by its roots, the other has been hacked to an odd configuration and probably won't live much longer. Both desecrations were done in order to put up buildings. The sacred spirit of creation must be crying with me.
*****
Thich Nhat Hanh tells us:
You can be everywhere at the same time. Think of your child or your beloved touching you now. Look more deeply, and you will see yourself as multitudes, penetrating everywhere, interbeing with everyone and everything.
REFLECTION:
The city of Adelaide, the capital city of the state of South Australia, is directly situated under a crack in the ozone layer. Everyone seems to wear a hat - even the huge flies which descend upon the town the second the temperature begins to edge upward. At least the flies want to get under the hats that people wear.
There's a lot of skin cancer in Adelaide.
Here, in one of the cleanest, safest and most organized places I have ever been, there is that little matter of a crack in the ozone layer! Not little, at all, of course, but a pestilence leashed upon what would otherwise be a lovely, pristine town filled with British descendants who did not arrive as convicts.
I don't think we can blame the Australians entirely for that split in the "zone." After all, there really aren't that many people on the continent!
Still, in Adelaide, people are trying to do something for the environment. There are lush parks and everyone seems to have a personal garden and plenty of trees on their property. I imagine there are civic regulations to keep those trees. And there are lots of Queen Ann-type houses - that is to say, lots of curly woodwork. Sweet.
In fact, parks surround the entire city of Adelaide. If you are a runner the way I am, you never have to leave the greensward to cross a street; or if you do cross a street, you are fairly safe, since the drivers are not hell-bent-for-leather in running you done - even if they know you are an American (lo and behold as I write these very words in my home study-office, the Segway tour is passing by my window).
Appropriate, don't you think? I can't even cross my own alley for fear of being run over by one of those contraptions!
*****
Beaudreault tells us, in praising Gaia, our mother:
The song we sing,
The dance we do
is ongoing,
is forever;
was before here, before now -
and will be after -
long, long after -
ceaseless,
pulsating;
keeping time with planets and stars,
tides and seasons -
from the beginning
to some final future moment:
this song,
this dance,
this hallelujah chorus,
this jubilee movement;
lifting praise to that which is wondrous,
celebrating the mystery,
honoring the ineffable.So, let us come this day,
singers and dancers of this movement,
to sing and dance with those who went before us
and will come after us-
all, all one in the ongoing commemoration of the human spirit
that says "yes" to life;
to Gaia -
that everlasting affirmation
despite that which would stop the song, the dance:
"Yes!"For, how can we keep from singing?
How can we keep from dancing?To life!
To Gaia!
The song we sing,
the dance we do.
CLOSING WORDS: "O Spinner, Weaver, of our lives."
O Spinner, Weaver, of our lives,
Your loom is love.
May we who are gathered here
be empowered by that love
to weave new patterns of Truth
and Justice into a web of life that is strong,
beautiful, and everlasting.Barbara Wells