One cannot be concerned just with civil rights. It is very nice to drink milk at an unsegregated lunch counter—but not when there’s Strontium 90 in it”
First United Church of Christ, Gloversville, NY. Martin Luther King Interfaith Service, January 20, 2025
I’m giving this message because God told me to teach the Church how to MODEL sustainability and finally they are open to the spiritual secrets of sustainability—the secret to sustainability and even regeneration is to listen to our Earth Mother and follow original instructions. Kind of like when all else fails, read the manual. As a process theologian, I’m not interested in speaking to your head. In fact, I want to speak THROUGH your heart to your hands. I’m action oriented so if you understand even one word of what I am saying…please ACT ON IT..
Is anyone here old enough to have had a mother that told them to come home before the street lights came on? And if you came home AFTER the street lights came on, you knew you were going to get a whipping or at least be in BIG trouble. Well guess what? Our Earth Mother is calling/Wisdom is calling us to come home and the street lights are already on—social and weather climates are raging!!
Today’s scripture tells us what to do to lessen our pain… First let’s look at the Nature of Wisdom. In our scripture look at the inseparability of God, Lady wisdom/Mother Nature. At the beginning of Eternity God acquired wisdom. She was “set up” Scholars say this word has the deeper meaning that she was anointed to create, uphold, govern, judge and save the world”. Wisdom was there before anything else was visible, she was there beside God like a MASTER worker. Wisdom is intelligent and efficient. AND daily she was God’s delight. There was intimacy and joy. But look was it only God and Wisdom rolling around in the ecstasy of green mountains and fruitful meadows? Riding the waves of exhilarating oceans and waterfalls?
Look carefully at the text—Humans were/are invited to the party—God delighted in Wisdom and Wisdom delighted in the human race. This is our first Beloved Community. Martin Luther King Jr. made this idea of a Beloved Community popular, but he did not live long enough to remind us to invite our mother to the table. You see in this picture he knew where to go. So I’m telling you. We need our mother in the Beloved Community as a Voice to get out of the trouble we have made for ourselves. Remember the street lights are already on—the climate is raging all over the planet
If we want to lessen our pain, we must gather people across all sorts of boundaries. We must Do what Wisdom did at the beginning of Proverbs 8. The Message translation says it this way:
She’s taken her stand at First and Main, at the busiest intersection.
Right in the city square
where the traffic is thickest, she shouts,
“You—I’m talking to all of you,
everyone out here on the streets!
Listen, you idiots—learn good sense!
You blockheads—shape up!
Don’t miss a word of this—I’m telling you how to live well,
I’m telling you how to live at your best.
And after we gather people we must point them to our original instructions and remind them that to live at your best requires you live in harmony with Nature. Genesis 2:15 Laavod and Lishmor Earth. Laavod means to serve. It’s the same word used when Joshua says as for me and my house we will SERVE the Lord. SERVE Nature as a waiter SERVES you food on the table. Nature was not given to us as a table decoration, Nature is a VOICE to be heard at all decision making tables.
Whatever SHE needs, we need to GIVE IT TO HER so we can LIVE AT OUR BEST. The church NEEDS to remember the Divine Feminine so we can balance again and Live at our Best.
Knowledge of Earth abounds—Indigenous peoples have it, permaculturists have it, ecologists have it. We just refuse to do it. We refuse to humble ourselves and turn away from our extractive ways so God can heal our land.
Rebelliousness is not an ecological problem, rebelliousness is a Spiritual problem. And the faith community—Imams, Rabbis, Pastors, are uniquely trained to expose spiritual weaknesses and shore them up. So why aren’t we telling people to Come Home to Earth? The street lights are on and Wisdom is calling so we can Live our Best Lives. How do we cure our own rebelliousness so we can save humanity from self destruction?
We must engage the Divine Feminine because she gives birth and STOP the fight dynamic. STOP fighting poverty. STOP the war on Drugs. STOP fighting Hunger—JUST plant some food!!!! Learn to support giving BIRTH. YES the world is falling apart—that only means we have an excellent opportunity to BIRTH a new world—not build a world—BIRTH a new world.
When you give birth you learn to adapt to and work with a power that has a mind of its own. When you are birthing a child you do not fight. There is a time to give a push and a time to receive a push. If you fight while giving birth, either you or the child or both will die. That’s where the world is right now—We are fighting and we are dying. Let’s stop fighting Earth Let’s Give Birth and live at our Best
As long as we are FIGHTING climate change, the fires will get larger and the floods will get deeper. When we shift we learn to calm the climate, balance the climate, bring order to climate chaos, and give birth to a new climate. Then we will live at our BEST. Don’t you remember when the world sat down during COVID and in just 30 days pollution clouds that had covered mountain ranges for generations disappeared. It does not take 10 generations for our Earth Mother to respond when we come to our senses.
We don’t have to have a virus to embrace our Beloved Community. We just need to take slow small steps and Walk before we run. We can calm climate chaos right now when we naturalize the 30 million acres churches control in the United States. We can organize marches to the compost pile and rally at the home owners association. Convert them to a natural beauty aesthetic and baptize in the name of the Beloved Community. Your best ecological sermon is a naturalized lawn where Nature is your teacher and healer. The Psychology Association tells us that where the tree canopies are replaced, crime goes down, emotional and mental health goes up. A Beloved Community is a safe and abundant place to live
And don’t do it by yourself—come TOGETHER to redeem the ecosystem of your neighborhoods. Fellowship in mission, just like you have fellowshipped in worship for this service. Practice co-operating. Mother Nature rewards joyful encounter. When I was working on some family land in Virginia I noticed that any task that took me 2 hours to complete by myself took only 20 minutes when I had just one helper. And that mathematical dynamic repeated itself over and over. Guess what I learned to listen to my Earth Mother. She rewards joyful encounter
The only reason you feel despair about the climate is because you are not listening to your Mother. When you listen to your mother you will be able to mitigate changes and calm the climate chaos—Like a child nursing at their mother’s breast, your physical needs will be met at the same time your emotional and mental states of being are balancing. I am working with young adults all over the country who have responded to the call to come home. They have left prestigious jobs and lucrative careers because the Spirit told them to return to the land. They are not in despair because they are in direct relationship with Earth. They are not fighting. They are learning how to adapt while cultivating strength from the land they love.
Do you really think you can fight Mother Earth and win? Read the text…Lady Wisdom and Mother Earth were here looonggg before we humans came on the scene. Humans created the drama we are experiencing now, so if you are fighting climate change you are fighting yourself. It’s like hitting yourself with a racketball and blaming the ball. Whether you are fighting them or working with them, They will be here long after we leave….
When I first began environmental justice work, it was all advocacy because that’s where the jobs are. Then I attended a Climate Reality training in Johannesburg in 2014 and the whole global south showed up. They all said the same thing. These market solutions and carbon offset calculations were meaningless to change the climate crises they were already facing. What made immediate impact was planting real forests—not timber land; redeeming the desert with sacred geometric gardens—decentralized growing of food. Flooding was rerouted using ancient growing practices ..In other words they were listening to Mother’s wisdom and beginning to LIVE AT THEIR BEST
So do you know what happened when I began to share an Earth affirming message? Well the church has spent hundreds of years separating heaven from Earth and relegating earth to a lesser importance. The church has massacred Indigenous peoples all over the planet and desecrating lush forests. So what do you think happened when I began to share this message of redeeming Earth Mother? There was a subconscious backlash.
My contracts were not renewed and my church colleagues began to whisper—she’s in a category all by herself—just smile and keep going. They did not want to lose the money they were receiving to do other things. I’ve had local police in small towns tell me I can’t grow natural ecosystems inside city limits. Anything native has to be boxed in. The owners of land I have leased cut down my crops because the plants were too tall, or they sprayed roundup on my organic crops, or told me I could not access the land I leased because on that day I might disturb other land users. I was dismayed until I discovered that women all over the country who were dedicated to ecological farming were also being ostracized by local officials, ridiculed by the men in their families, and patronized by the male leaders around them. This demonizing the Divine Feminine is a spiritual problem the faith community can cure it.
Truth pressed to the ground Rises Again—and the tide is turning. People who dismissed women and our ecological responses to the climate crises are now listening. And the wise ones are acting. I discovered that in order to Live at our Best during chaotic social and weather climates, we need to mobilize people with open minds and strong backs. I co-founded Soil & Souls to train young adults in resilience science and land based spirituality. Hood Seminary has begun a Soil & Souls cohort with churches in two different states. These Beloved Communities are taking slow sure steps towards living their BEST LIVES. The texts they are using include a 5 week Bible Study I wrote called Breath of Life—people of all ages enjoy it’s an easy read with links to videos and music and quotes from liberators about the importance of living WITH EARTH. Its available for purchase through these links, on Amazon and my website. There is also a book about Sojourner Truth’s spiritual formation in nature when she was 11 years old. I’ll bet you didn’t know that—I didn’t either until I ended up living 5 miles south of where her prayer life began in Ulster County-New York.
I want to end with this version of Gwan do Day from my MicMaw lineage. It’s a song to open and honor the 4 directions. This version sounds like a lullaby to Earth Mother to me so As I am singing, I want you to visualize ways to love Earth right where you are. Think who can you touch Earth with. Who can you organize in this neighborhood to redeem the land with natural low maintenance landscapes. Landscapes that don’t require mowing, watering or fertilizing. Whether it is your lawn or the public right of way, you can model sustainability right where you are. Dream about that.