From Despair to Possibility

I’m now re-reading a book I went through very quicky to savor the contents. The editors of Not Too Late, Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua have assembled a number of articles under the book’s subheading, Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility. In another context I have been participating in an organizational review where the pandemic has brought deep grief and despair, though the participants seldom link the pandemic to the larger story.

One chapter I found moving and helpful was entitled Meeting the More and the Marrow. It began with a quote from Terry Tempest Williams, currently writer in residence at the Harvard Divinity School. Williams wrote. “A good friend wrote to me, ‘You are married to sorrow". She replied, “I’m not married to sorrow, I just choose not to look away”.

The writer of the chapter is Roshi Joan Halifax, a Buddhist teacher and some of her own insights are worth reflecting upon too. Here are a few of them:

“Before we touch briefly on the givens of hope and wonder, I think we must navigate, at least a little bit, the tough geographies of fear and of grief, as well as the moral suffering, to discover what these harsher landscapes might offer us.”

“We now face the loss of stable ecosystems in which humans have during the twelve thousand years of the Holocene. Yet it is also important to know that like grief, fear can be a kind of doorway.”

“So perhaps we can discover that fear and grief are givens. Working our grief, facing our fears can transform us”

“Transforming our suffering doesn’t mean that we are going to be returned to the state that we experienced before. But we can discover that suffering and loss have given us a greater ability to live in the present, rather than be overwhelmed by the past”.

Portraits

Yesterday I went to the funeral of a distinguished Canadian whose life was celebrated in an historical cathedral. He was a former primate of the Anglican Church of Canada (in the US called a Presiding Bishop in the American Episcopal Church). Among those attending were two of his successors in that role, the national indigenous bishop, other archbishops, bishops and clergy, and a great many family and friends. I knew Michael when I was an undergraduate student studying English literature and he was finishing a degree in theology at the University of Toronto in the late 1950s. Some years later I was a guest at his wedding in Ottawa. Earlier he had trained as a translator and decades later as primate, he was able to address a Russian Orthodox assembly in Moscow, delighting them by speaking to them in their own language.

His family members spoke of a loving father; one of his associates remembers a wise and thoughtful leader and one of his successors, a man who befriended a small and isolated national church in Cuba. Beneath the record of achievements, not the least of which was an early public apology to Canada’s First Nations of our treatment of their people in residential schools - was the underlying sadness of the last five years of Michael’s life with Alzeheime’s disease and the strength of the daily and loving support of his wife, family members and friends.

On the service leaflet is a picture of Michael in his prime. He once joked about a letter confusing primates of the human kind with those of animal kin - but you would never confuse this image with an intelligent, thoughtful and welcoming gaze, as he poses dressed in the robes of his office. I guess it is a form of mugshot. Later in the day we saw another. It’s one that the poser - pun intended this time - is said to be trying to look powerful and menacingly toughly and defiant. It’s an image of the grade school bully that masks other feelings and realities, not the least of which is fear. How will his followers interpret it? So many currently see and fear power that they see behind it and bow or kowtow to that. How scared are Americans when they are are told he is a stand-in for them as victims? A couple of supporters outside the jail expressed how much they love him? But is this a face that loves back? Will it be the one on a funeral leaflet some day?

Interpretations

I’ve been reading Karen Armstrong’s latest book, Sacred Nature, Restoring Our Ancient Bond with the Natural World. One of her strengths is a thorough understanding of Christianity and her additional willingness to explore the teachings of other faiths and to share them. This book reinforces something that I have come to realize in my own explorations. Faith communities need to play an important role in the conversations around aspects of climate emergency and climate justice that cannot be provided by either science or environmental advocacy groups, important as both are. Ours relates to values, ethics, meanings and the rituals where we enact our understandings.

Armstrong has much in common with the views of Thomas Berry, though it is surprising not to find him listed in her bibliography -though his students, Tucker and Swimme are very much there though.

Other faiths have always the divine in nature and continue to do so. Christianity did in its earlier days, but diverged in the fourteenth century. Western people encounter the God of history, especially as it is understood in the Old Testament, rather than a God of nature. When we are encouraged to look at nature, we are encouraged to see beauty and look for comfort now - while forgetting the ugliness and discomfort that we have wreaked upon it through the notion of domination over it. What we may miss in the process is nature’s power to disrupt and destroy, which other faiths and cultures recognize more fully. Job, for Armstrong, is the Biblical figure who gets it right - but not without going through a major transformation. Armstrong sees it as a lens worth exploring.

Truth & Facts

What is Truth?, said Pilate. And indeed we might ask. I’m hitting the Oxford English Dictionary for a history of the word over time. Here are some definitions

Year 1734 - God’s Truth:. The absolute truth (also with the and as a count noun); also God's honest truth; (b) int. used as an oath. (Interesting that use in an oath still seems to apply in 2023)

Year 1833 -A fundamental truth. Also: the real or underlying facts; information that has been checked or facts that have been collected at source.

Year 1977 -Ground Truth. A fundamental truth. Also: the real or underlying facts; information that has been checked or facts that have been collected at source.

Year 1982 -Post Truth. Originally U.S. Relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping political debate or public opinion. (Aha. Has it really been that long that we have been living with this meaning and are we just waking up to it now? )

2023 Smith Indictment. “The defendant, like every American, had the right to speak publicly about the election and even to claim falsely . . . . . . “

If all Americans - and because we Canadians are frequently copycats - have a perceived right to claim things falsely - as a right, is there any way back to truth definitions of earlier times? In my country as well, we see politicians of all stripes claiming questionable things, but generally we are willing to consider rebuttals. But if adherence to law depends on the evidence of facts - and “alternative facts” are permitted outside the law, how and when will be move toward justice? Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Is the arc getting longer?

Power & Energy

We in the west are the beneficiaries of the development of energy originally produced by the burning of coal. I am old enough to remember the arrival of the coal man who provided fuel stored in the basement of my house - a scary person, because he was necessarily covered in soot. Later the oil truck arrived to deliver fuel. Still later, my father had a heat pump installed in a newer house - in the late 1970s. His motivation probably had little to do with saving the planet, but saving money.

Canada is blessed with much electricity produced by hydro electric power and my province has more resources than others. But it is human power that also plays a role. There is news this morning that young people in Montana have been successful in suing their state government asking for the right to “a clean and healthful environment” through a provision relating to energy projects. It’s the first successful case following a number of others started by young people. The impact on climate has to be a consideration in approving projects, and more rulings will now have a better chance of success. The suit was brought on behalf of the Children’s Trust and it involved 16 young people aged 5=22.

The oldest of these will be 49 in 2050. I have a friend who is now in his 102nd year and he has said that he thinks 144 would be a good age for a lifetime. He is a retired professor and when he retired at 75 as a University professor, he thought working five hours a day on academic research would be a good aim. He still does - without either a TV or a computer - but attends both opera and Blue Jays games as a fan. His environmental impact is much lower than mine - and since he has never driven a car, it undoubtedly is.

The likelihood of his making age 144 is small. But the politicians who want to slow down the use of climate change might think about how old they will be in 2050. The premier of Alberta will be 79 that year. I’m in a better position than she is to imagine what life will be like for her then. She won’t have her current job. She may have health issues relating to climate change or be affected directly by floods or fires. But basically she will have left the problem of pausing the support of renewable energy for a bit - as she has just done- to the current five and 22 year olds. I wonder how she will feel then.

What we generally lack is imagination and a realistic picture of human nature - the latter with its combination of strength and limitations. Politicians start with the best of intentions - to make the world the better place. After a term of office the intention becomes to stay in office. They like power after having a taste of it. Companies are good at telling us that climate change depends on us as individuals so they can keep doing what they do, which is to make a profit. They like power too.

That doesn’t mean that individual actions don’t count. I continue to recycle in the hope that at least some of my trash gets re-used. I send letters to my premier urging him to reconsider his original promise to retain the Greenbelt. Individuals matter - but governments and movements matter even more. Young people are teaching us that the law matters. What if all these elements converged? That’s a story that imagination could start to tell.