PeaceBang

Global Warming

Much to my surprise, my sermon for today turned out to be mostly about global warming. As a Unitarian Universalist I have been fed on a steady diet of “current events” sermons, for which I generally have very little appreciation or patience, but there I was living into my own joke about “preaching on global warming.”

I connected it to the symbol of water and the grieving of our country and other spiritual issues, but it was still a sermon on global warming. I quoted from the 15th century bhakti poet Mirabai, from Bill McKibbon and from The New Yorker. I talked about carbon dioxide levels. That is so not me. But you know, once I got researching it and my heart and soul got involved, I had to share it. Above all, our children have to hear about this and be prepared to deal with the prodigal chickens that are already coming home to roost, to mix a metaphor.

Greenseagirl helped me a lot with research and then the other best source was an excellent series in The New Yorker called “The Climate of Man” by Elizabeth Kolbert.

Part I is here: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050425fa_fact3

Part II is here: http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050502fa_fact3

Part III, which I relied on heavily for today’s sermon, is here:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050509fa_fact3

If you have the time you might really dig that third article in the New Yorker series. I learned a lot from it and it helped me get the whole greenhouse gases concept much clearer in my mind. Of course now I want to crawl under my bed and suck my thumb until the earth heats up another few degrees and we all float out into the melted ice caps, but I won’t.

I’ll take a nap instead.

We did have one newcomer and he was enthusiastically nodding and going, “yeah” every few minutes, so that was affirming. Everyone else looked like an owl.
And I did get to sing some Mahalia Jackson and because we have this brand new fantabulous sound system, I could practically whisper, didn’t it raaaain, children, didn’t it rain O my Lord, didn’t it rain and it came out just like I hoped it would. That is one haunting tune, children.