Sunday, September 28, 2014
Cry of the Phoenix from Saint John the Divine
“But Pharaoh's heart was hardened...”
If the ice will melt in the heart of
man, then perhaps we will see a sustainable world (sic). Thus
spoke Uncle Anga, Angaangaq Angakkorsuaq, founder of IceWisdom
International and an Eskimo-Kalaallit elder from Greenland. He was
here in 1978, ten years before James Hansen addressed Congress on the
looming problem of global warming, and told an audience that the ice
was melting, as his tribal elders had forewarned. He received a
standing ovation.
To the logical mind, the Eskimo elder's remarks may seem contradictory. But the theme of this remarkable evening was the Phoenix. Two towering, magnificent birds flew above us, buffering the distance to the high vaulted cathedral ceiling. The Reverend James Forbes, who once preached at Riverside Church, embraced the theme, pulling together this brilliant pagan story with Noah's Ark, nimbly conflating the sacrificial Phoenix with the dove and the raven of Genesis. The Phoenix burns, the Phoenix rises from the ashes, infinitely, like Hindu creation cycles. God destroys creation, but leaves an Ark as seed for the next.
But Uncle Anga was more understated,
simply putting forth the two kinds of ice, inner and outer.
Understated that is, until he called to his ancestors, his howls and
moans reverberating through the vast Cathedral, as he amplified his
remarkable tonal range with two large circular skin-frames forming a
kind of musical bellows to project his anguished cry back through the
aeons to those First Elders of the far North. The twin Phoenixes
silently soared on through the cathedral sky.
Behind him, Sojourners' Jim Wallis, who had just given a fine sermon on how Climate Change had reordered his list of social gospel issues, gobbling them all, winced as Uncle Anga sent out cry after cry, howl after howl into the Night, resounding from the cathedral vaults. It's not often Jim Wallis and Jesus's compelling social gospel is upstaged. But Uncle Anga just had, simply recounting the story of polar ice, it's mighty foundation and prophesied melt, taking global civilization with it. Yet he held out hope for the heart of man to melt – and thus for the Phoenix to rise.
Behind him, Sojourners' Jim Wallis, who had just given a fine sermon on how Climate Change had reordered his list of social gospel issues, gobbling them all, winced as Uncle Anga sent out cry after cry, howl after howl into the Night, resounding from the cathedral vaults. It's not often Jim Wallis and Jesus's compelling social gospel is upstaged. But Uncle Anga just had, simply recounting the story of polar ice, it's mighty foundation and prophesied melt, taking global civilization with it. Yet he held out hope for the heart of man to melt – and thus for the Phoenix to rise.
Before him, calling
us to “This Moment,” Chief Arvol Looking Horse, 19th generation
keeper of the White Buffalo Calf Pipe Bundle for all branches of the
Sioux, in resplendent headdress, recalled the white calf bookends of
his people's history. The white calf marked the coming into material
form of their Mother Deity, and, fulfilling the prophecy of Dire
Times, he spoke of several white calves born n recent years. One
won't do it for hard-headed White Civilization; we need a succession
of them to awaken us. So Uncle Anga, too, was back, pronouncing
climate doom 35 years after a standing ovation, soon drowned out by
implacable business-as-usual from the last empire.
As congregants
entered the cathedral, we were each given a stone by a costumed
troglodyte for ritual use in the service. Each speaker made a
personal commitment, then walked to the altar, placing their stone as
a sign. The most striking instance was when Terry Tempest Williams
made a public promise to “lay my body down” along with a close
band of friends at the site of the first tarsands project slated for
the US in her native Utah.
Speaking for the
civil rights community, Atlanta's towering Gerald Durley deposited
his stone after promising that his constituency would be “the rock”
of the climate movement (indeed, people of color were quite
prominent at the march earlier in the day, unlike previous climate
rallies I have attended). Al Gore promised to keep up the fight to
his dying day.
When the time came,
I deposited my stone in a primitive barrow, which was later wheeled
to the main altar by a person dressed as a medieval peasant. I had
not discerned my own commitment yet, but I wanted to take part in the
rite, and did so as a place-saver until I found what that might be.
In the interim, my wife and I have decided to max out our inverter
and add two more solar panels on a pole, since those on our rooftop
cover all the usable space. We also are shifting as much as possible
from cow dairy to goat and sheep products, since these ungulates emit
less methane (we haven't eaten beef for decades).
This service,
orchestrated by Union Theological Seminary and numerous partners, was
as thoroughly planned as the March, a magnificent array of voices
from many traditions, with superb musical intervals by
artists-in-residence Paul Winter and the brilliant and sensitive
percussionist John Arrucci, as well as a mixed quartet of Cathedral
Choir singers who exquisitely offered simple chants as well as a
complex composition by a modern Egyptian composer Mohamed Abdel
Al-Fattah's on the theme of Ai-Yu, expressing “awe, excitement, and
wonder” at the penultimate moment of the latest Phoenix, the
Phoenix of the Anthropocene.
Though
the Phoenix theme is an old one, and Earth nowhere near finished with
her evolutionary tapestry, Uncle Anga reminded us that it is too
late. Too late
unless our collective hearts melt, and we awaken into a chastened
human community restored to an integrated place in a diminished, but
surviving web of life. Weep, my reader, reaching deep within yourself
to find that wailing voice which connects with your own First
Ancestors. May those tears initiate the kneading of your hearts
until they melt into the living waters of New Life. The old Phoenix
must die.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Peoples' Climate March: Prelude to the Mother of all Movements?
Geeta and I joined the amazing People's Climate March in New York last Sunday. We marched with Quakers amongst the faith communities, a cohort with a pre-march estimate of 10,000, rivaling Labor as the biggest bloc. Over 300 Quakers showed up, positioned next to the Unitarians. This march, carefully planned and brilliantly executed, was billed as a watershed event for the climate movement. Whether or not this will prove to be the case, we will know soon enough. As many have said, including the International Energy Agency, we are now in “decade zero”; it's now or never. The immediate goal is to sign an international climate treaty under UN auspices at COP 18 in Paris next December to replace the fading Kyoto Treaty.
The careful planning was everywhere
evident. The march was led by Front Line folk, those already
affected by the Climate Beast: the poor boroughs of NYC, refugees
from the Philippines and terrifying typhoon Haiyan, residents of
island nations threatened by rising seas, some of whom have already
packed their bags, heading for new homes. A “climate train” came
all the way from the West Coast, as well as Florida citizens fearing
the loss of their communities to rising seas. At the head of the
parade were Ban Ki Moon in a march t-shirt and baseball cap, whose
initiative to call a climate summit was the inspiration for the
march, and France's environment minister Segolene Royal,, impeccably
dressed in a tailored business suit, among other dignitaries.
And we were joined by people of color,
a notable shift from my previous climate actions, including the big
march in Washington in February 2013. At the powerful interfaith
service later in the day at St. John the Divine, an old associate of
Dr. King proclaimed that the civil rights movement would be the
“rock” of this ecojustice movement, because the poor and colored
would be the first affected by the massive changes underway. In
addition to North American blacks, many indigenous folk from south of
the border were on hand, several colorfully dressed and with
beautifully crafted signs. The sign art everywhere was eloquent. One
Central American native was pullling a little clay-and-wattle kiln,
which he told us represented the earth, seeking a delegate's seat at
the negotiating table. Inside was a woman in fetal position.
The large faith contingent was to gather on a side block, joining the march at the appropriate time. We waited well over three hours for this moment to arrive, with those who arrived early for Quaker-style silent worship to bless the effort waiting much longer. The entire march was aksed to observe a minute of silence in honor of those who have already lost their lives to climate change. I would say the partial silence lasted less than 15 seconds. Believe me, there is not much silence when 310,000 put on their boots and take to the streets! While we waited, we had prayers and a lot of rallying songs and hymns from the speaker trailer up front. True to form, the Hari Krishnas next to us drummed and danced with such cacophany that the loudspeakers couldn't dint them. I hope Krishna heard, because we couldn't. Next to them were middle class South Asians, also gathered beneath the neat little pennant reading “Hindu.” This was a Big Tent affair, so the mainstream faith communities were joined by groups like ethical humanists, atheists, and “New Thought.”
The march began in Central Park and wound its way through the streets, right through Times Square, to 34 Street and 11th Avenue. At one point progress of the march was halted, because the entire route, 80 city blocks, was filled. We were making a statement, amplified by some of our onlookers, including a large group of meditators in a park along the route and the Bard Grad School, who egged the crowd on to huge roars beneath their strategic quarters about eight stories up on 42nd Street near Times Square.
The gargantuan rally coincided with the announcement of fossil fuel divestment by the Rockefeller Foundation, who some speculated may have bankrolled the PR for the march. Other companies also announced divestment that day. A high official from the World Bank said before the week began that folks were “going to be surprised” at how many corporations and various regional political unions, as well as provinces and municipalities, were lining up behind a carbon tax.
However, on Tuesday, given their chance to answer Ban Ki Moon's call, national leaders ducked, waiting, as usual, to see what commitments other nations might make. Many on the Left, notably Chris Hedges, dismissed the march as a huge greenwashing stunt by corporations, orchestrated by the U.N., and the lack of commitment on Tuesday gave these arguments a depressingly prophetic air.
I am one small nexus of that movement,
and I agree with economists who convincingly argue for an
international carbon tax, bound by a treaty which
nevertheless allows individual sovereign nations the option to use
the dividends as they choose best. The eleventh hour is past. We
have a small window in which to build the movement to awaken the
political will to create a strong, binding international treaty. The
proposed Paris Protocol would take force in 2020, right at the end of
our current “decade zero.” This is indeed a midnight hour's
decision, and it may be too late. But it is the only moment we have.
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