Sermon: The Dream of the Earth

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The Dream of the Earth

By Rev. Tom Reiber

September 2, 2001

He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in a field; it is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and become a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.” …Jesus told the crowds all these things in parables; without a parable he told them nothing. This was to fulfill what had been spoken of through the prophet:

“I will open my mouth to speak in parables; I will proclaim what has been hidden from the foundation of the world.”

— Matthew 13:31-35

last sermon was about life's everyday synchronicities, the daily miracles that when heeded bring us into contact with the spiritual dimension. This morning on the way to church I had a run in with a skunk. Now I hope that's not a sign that this sermon is going to stink. I'd like to think it's got more to do with my having immersed myself in environmental readings!

Today's sermon is about the sacred dimension of the natural world. To jump right into that subject I'd like to tell you about an experience I had rafting with my first wife in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This was back before there was much talk about drilling for oil there, back when most people weren't even aware the refuge existed. We found out about it while looking for the most remote wilderness experience we could find.

The Arctic Wildlife Refuge is a truly magical place. Millions of acres have been set aside there as a literal refuge for the wild. When we'd bring our raft ashore on the banks of the Porcupine River we'd see wolf prints the size of an outstretched hand and bear prints the size of dinner plates. One day while rafting we heard the sound of howling wolves. Not quite sure what to do, we started howling back. Then we noticed the sound of their howling was getting closer. Then two wolves appeared in the distance, running beside the river in our direction. We pulled the raft over to the opposite side. As we did, one of the wolves scampered up a steep cliff in an explosive display of power, then sat down facing us, right at the edge of the cliff. It just sat there like that, howling back and forth with us. Being there in the heart of that pristine wilderness and hearing the wild rise up from the heart of that wolf was a sacred moment for me. I've never heard anything more beautiful or haunting. It's as if those howls were rising up from the very soul of the Earth.

I tell that story to establish the sacred dimension of the natural world. We need that as our foundation in order to explore two very important questions: first, how have we gotten ourselves into the ecological mess we're in? And second, what can we do about it? To wrap our brains around these questions we have to step back and look at our cultural assumptions about the Earth and our place in it.

For thousands of years we humans believed we were the capstone of creation, plopped down on a finished Earth like the bride and groom on a wedding cake. That view died hard, and its death pulled out the foundation from beneath our species. Rather than seeking to arrive at a more realistic, integrated understanding of our place in the world, we have clung to the mythological notion that we are somehow separate from Nature. That defensive reaction, coupled with the decline of religion and the rise of science, has atrophied our appreciation for the sacred dimension of the natural world. At the same time we have lost a sense of belonging, a meta-system for understanding our place in this vast cosmos. We have taken refuge in the artificial world of culture, a world that has lost all moorings in the underlying rhythms of the natural world.

Of course elevating one's social world and its leaders above the sacred is not a an entirely new phenomenon. In today's Hebrew Bible reading we see King Nebachadnezzar doing just that. His dream about the flourishing tree that is then cut down is interpreted by Daniel as a warning that the kingdom's balance is precarious and uncertain. Failing to heed the warning, King Nebachadnezzar attempts to usurp the place of God and is consequently cursed with seven years of insanity. It's worth noting that in the dream this is referred to as being made to be like an animal, growing feathers like an eagle and claws like a wild animal. We see that the natural tendency of the psyche to maintain homeostasis at work, balancing the King's attempt at self-aggrandizement by plunging him back into the natural world where he belongs.

We are experiencing a similar imbalance today. Not only are we destroying the planet in ways rivaling the mass extinction that took place over sixty million years ago, we are doing it brazenly, claiming that our so-called “sacred” American lifestyle is above considerations of conservation. It seems our current king is cursing us with four years of insanity. Now, lest I be accused of playing partisan politics here, I should add that I don't think either of our recent presidential candidates would have enacted the kinds of policies we really need. Gore might have been less brazen about it, but our country is in the grip of a powerful, corporate mindset that sees the Earth as a resource to be exploited, not a numinous presence to be communed with.

In a recent front-page article in the New York Times, the sad state of affairs is rendered crystal clear. It tells how environmentalist recently reached a deal with our current administration in order to secure funds to help save twenty-nine of the most at-risk species of plant and animals. The sum of money that was freed up through that deal was $588,000, less then the amount we've raised to add onto our church building. It is difficult to describe how infinitesimal an amount that is in comparison to what we spend on defense, irrespective of whether or not we eventually approve the proposed $60,000,000,000 for missile defense. When are we going to realize we can't shield ourselves from ourselves?

We need to step outside the confines of culture. We need what Walter Brueggemann calls the prophetic imagination. That's the term he uses to describe the capacity to see the world in ways that are different from that of the dominant culture. In our Hebrew Bible text Daniel does just that. None of the king's other advisors can interpret the king's dreams, since they are incapable of imagining anything outside the confines of the earthly kingdom. But Daniel repeatedly stands up to the secular powers out of respect for God, so he is able to grasp the meaning of the dream.

You could think of our enmeshment in culture as being similar to a drug addiction. Like an addiction, there's a reason we have a hard time “breaking the habit.” The habit—whether it's a drug, shopping or food—serves as a buffer between us and the underlying issues we're afraid of confronting. In the same way, culture shields us from having to open up the awesome powers of the universe. The most natural thing in the world is to stay confined within it. It's like the scene in One Flew Over the Coo Coo's Nest when Jack Nicholson's character, McMurphy, makes the discovery that several of the other patients are there voluntarily. “You mean to tell me that you guys can just get up and walk out of here?” he asks, astonished. He can't believe anyone in their right mind would choose to surrender their autonomy to the powers of an institution. That scene says something profound about human nature that we must understand if we are going to save our planet.

Now it might seem strange to lift up One Flew Over the Coo Coo's Nest in a sermon about the Earth, but I actually came across a reference to the film in a book on Native American spirituality. Afterwards I went back and watched the film again. I noticed the first and last scenes are of a natural landscape, with Native American music playing in the background. Sandwiched in between these natural bookends is the drama that unfolds within the psychiatric hospital. And of course one of the main characters, “Chief Broom,” is a Native American. McMurphy is a bit raw and at times downright offensive, but his actions reveal a genuine longing for transcendence and a deep respect for the lives of those in his community. He ends up pitting his passion against the tyrannical rule of the infamous Nurse Ratched, who governs the hospital with an iron hand in a velvet glove. The film is a critique of western culture and its irrational, exploitative zeitgeist which confines us in a cultural straightjacket, keeping us from opening up to the real healing powers of the natural world. The hospital becomes a microcosm for representing the larger historical macrocosm in which the archetypal hero battles to transcend the constraints and pathology of the system itself.

In one of his many skirmishes with Nurse Ratched, McMurphy asks for a vote to see if the patients can watch the World Series. That would require changing the routine at the hospital. Nurse Ratched allows the vote, but when all nine patients seated in the circle raise their hands, she says, “That's only half. There are nine other patients on the ward.” The other patients are mostly isolated by more severe conditions, hence their existence on the margins of the comparatively higher functioning therapy group.

Nicholson says “So, I just have to get one of those guys to raise his hand?”

Nurse Ratched says yes, but McMurphy can't get any of the men to respond. The last one he tries to get through to is “Chief Broom,” a towering giant of a native American so named because he spends his days pushing a broom across the institution's floor. But as McMurphy turns away, the Chief raises his hand. McMurphy goes berserk with excitement, but by this time Nurse Ratched has ended the group and says to him that it's too late, they'll have to take it up tomorrow.

McMurphy plants himself in front of the television, brooding. But he's not the type of guy to give up easily. In an earlier scene he bet the men that he could lift a huge marble bathing block attached by its plumbing to the floor. The other men took the bet, knowing there was no way he could ever do it. And he couldn't. But he gives it his all. Afterwards he says to the men, “At least I tried. At least I tried.”

Still brooding in front of the blackened TV screen, he suddenly gets an idea. He starts to give a play by play of an imaginary game. Soon the other patients begin to walk over. Before long their hooping and hollering and hanging on every word. In that moment McMurphy is the archetypal hero. Like the Tim Robins character in The Shawshank Redemption, he is able to see the world in ways other than those dictated by the powers that be.

If this is making any sense at all, you might be wondering to yourself, where can we glimpse the prophetic imagination today? One source is in the writings of Thomas Berry, author of The Dream of the Earth and The Great Work. Berry's profound grasp of the universe's ancient history and the long, multifaceted development of life on Earth has sprung him loose from the constricting confines of our culture's myopic vision. He sees that humanity is integrally related to the rest of the cosmos. Not only are we integral—as is every being, every life form—but through our capacity for self-conscious reflection we are in a position to activate the deepest dimensions of the natural world. He has issued a wake-up call for our species, announcing that the present time presents us with a cosmic challenge to see the world in a new way. This is why Berry titled his most recent book, The Great Work. He's referring to the needed shift in our overall relationship to the Earth from one of exploitation to one in which we view the Earth as a “numinous presence.” Berry writes:

“The Great Work before us, the task of moving modern industrial civilization from its present devastating influence on the Earth to a more benign mode of presence, is not a role that we have chosen. It is a role given to us, beyond any consultation with ourselves. We did not choose. We were chosen by some power beyond ourselves for this historical task. We do not choose the moment of our birth, who our parents will be, our particular culture or the historical moment we will be born. We do not choose the status of spiritual insight or political or economic conditions that will be the context of our lives. We are, as it were, thrown into existence with a challenge and a role that is beyond any personal choice. The nobility of our lives, however, depends upon the manner in which we come to understand and fulfill our assigned role” (p. 7).

The story of the universe is our story. To allow that knowledge to transform our culture would require a dramatic shift in our universities, the legal system and our religious institutions. We would need to begin to see the integrity of the Earth's natural processes, to give them the same legal rights as human beings and corporations. We would need to teach our children the story of the universe, not as a series of cold objective facts, but as a symphony in which they, too, are notes, in which they become flowering melodies never before heard.

Jesus heard and sang these melodies like no one ever had. Standing firmly in the prophetic tradition, he affirmed the goodness of creation and the inherent worth and dignity of all people. He disregarded the constraints of culture and tradition and treated all people with love and respect. He spoke of the kingdom of God as a realm of being located within all of us. It's as if he sensed intuitively that we are all of the same substance, that we are all made of stardust and imbued with the same sacred life force. Is it any wonder, that he would advise us to love even our enemies?

Notice the image in the parable of Jesus we read today. He says the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that when planted grows into a bush and then a tree, housing the creatures of the earth. Opening to the spiritual dimension of life means opening to beauty and wonder of Nature and seeing it as a revelation of God. There is a power in this world and we are caught up in it; we are able to harmonize with it. It is a power rooted in the ancient depths of reality, hence Jesus is revealing “things hidden since the foundation of the world.”

In this modern age we cannot think of the foundation of the world without thinking of the Big Bang. And that's precisely where Thomas Berry begins in his exposition of the story of the universe. He says that in that first creative explosion the seeds of all that was to be were present. “…The origin moment of the universe presents us with an amazing process that we begin to appreciate as a mystery unfolding through the ages. The flaring forth of the primordial energy carried within itself all that would ever happen in the long series of transformations that would bring the universe into its present mode of being. …The primordial emergence was the beginning of the Earth story, as well as the beginning of the personal story of each of us, since the story of the universe is the story of each individual being in the universe. Indeed the reality inherent in the original flaring forth could not be known until the shaping forces held in this process had brought forth the galaxies, the Earth, the multitude of living species, and the reflection of the universe on itself in human intelligence” (p. 27).

Through the convergence of religious and scientific understanding, we stand on the brink of a new era in the history of the cosmos. We are standing upright on this magnificent planet and staring back at the cosmos from which we were born. The great insight of the existentialists is that the sudden awareness of our existence is staggering. This is why we cling to culture, even when it drives us to destroy the Earth and its peoples: because opening to the majesty of the created world is a radical, momentous experience. Avoiding that experience or mediating it has consumed our psychological energies for the past one million years. In the past three hundred our awareness of how we got here has grown in leaps in bounds, shrinking the gap between the story we tell ourselves about our origins and the story as it really happened. The challenge is to merge our new-found scientific understanding with a religious sense of awe and wonder.

When we do that in relation to our religious tradition, we see Jesus in a new light. He becomes one of the first primates to see through the mystifications of culture all the way. As it turned out, he saw too much too soon. The other primates nailed him to a tree, thousands of years before we were to discover trees were our earliest homes. Today with the rise of scientific knowledge we stand at the convergence of religious myth and cosmic awareness. As Berry puts it, we are poised to activate the deepest dimensions of the universe. But first we have to wake up from the destructive dream of culture so that we can begin to live the sacred dream of the Earth.

You may not remember the end of One Flew Over the Coo Coo's Nest. Nicholson's character incurs the wrath of the system, much like Jesus, except instead of scars on his hands and feet he's got a scar across his forehead from psycho-surgical procedure in which they opened up his head and ripped out his soul. His Native American Indian friend sees what they've done to him and can't stand it. He holds a pillow over his head in the darkness of the night.

Then he goes marble appliance McMurphy had tried to lift and in a superhuman display of strength he lifts it up off its foundation and hurls it through a window, breaking the metal screen holding him captive. The last scene is of the Chief moving through the forest, free at last. ¹

When I looked for the book to research this sermon, it wasn't in the literature section. It was in the recommended summer reading section, set apart by a teacher or group of teachers and librarians. That simple discovery gives me faith. May we all become students of this great universe and learn its lessons and sing its songs and dream its dreams together.

Amen.

¹ Kesey based most of the characters on people he knew through his work in a V.A. hospital, but says the Chief came to him from beyond. Kesey, Ken, Kesey's Garage Sale (New York: The Viking Press, 1973), pp. 14-15, as found in Capps, Walter H., Seeing with a Native Eye: Essays on Native American Religion (New York: Harper & Row, 1976), pp 775-76.