RevBillytalen | We are finding a faith inside “Environmentalism” and “Earth Justice” and “Climate Change Activism.” A faith can support multiple movements, and carry hundreds of issues.
A single belief system can sweep across culture and change us all. Christianity did this, and Marxism. And in the 60’s we witnessed Zen Buddhism meet and unite with indigenous faith to give power to the peace movement.
We have seen the failure of saving the earth through shopping (Bono’s red t-shirts) and through lawsuits (Natural Resources Defense Council) and compromising with Wal-Mart (the Sierra Club). A faith accesses the origin of all things. This is far deeper and wider – and it is what we need to counter our man-made apocalypse.
We get up in the morning and there are hundreds of emails on our computers, each from a passionate advocacy group. The thing is – nobody is wrong. Everybody’s right. That’s the problem. We have splintered into colonies of right thinkers. The question is – what is the mother of all issues?
Earth-a-lujah! Life on Earth is not the object, receiving our civilized activity. The Earth is the subject. The Earth is all of us, is more than us, and includes us. Feel the Earth’s wave inside us, the good tsunami. We can’t fight it or improve on it. We will be saved as the Earth saves itself.
Once you believe this, everything changes. The corporations that held Copenhagen hostage don’t seem so impregnable. We are relieved of our green-washed careers and marketing cynicism. We know to go to the Earth and await our instructions. Life on Earth is the best strategist.
Mountaintop removal is 80% financed by JP Morgan Chase. My instructions don’t come to me in a fevered delirium. My instructions rise simply from common sense. I live near this bank. So I go to the hurt mountain in West Virginia and take the mud in a couple barrels in my van – back to the ATM lobby in New York. We wheelbarrow it through the door and the mountain grows again before the blue hieroglyphs of the CHASE letters. We sing and preach around it, sensing that the Earth is the author. Customers pause at the unexpected rocks. We are the Earth encountering the Earth.
We go to the Chase CEO’s house on the upper east side. Jamie Dimon isn’t home. The townhouse is ringed by cops, who are ringed by the Earth. But the police see the Earth in our eyes and feel the Earth seeing through their own eyes. The Earth is doing all this with its power. That is our faith.
Earth-a-lujah!