–May 12, 2013
A sermon by the Reverend Diane Teichert
Originally, when the Sources were adopted in 1984/85, there were only five. The sixth was added in 1995 by the vote of the delegates from congregations to the annual General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. I remember when the vote on adding “nature spirituality” was coming up. I was in my internship year of preparation for ministry and a somewhat older male minister, avowedly humanist, born and raised Unitarian Universalist, asked for my opinion. I said, “It’s already alive among us. It seems a self-evident “yes” vote to me.” I felt like a “young upstart” in his eyes at that moment, expressing what I’d seen among my mainly female seminary classmates and among younger visitors on Sunday mornings.
“Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” That is the language of the Sixth Source. “Mother Earth Wisdom,” I’m calling it today on Mothers Day. It provides an important (but not the only) theological grounding for our Seventh Principle: that “we covenant to affirm and promote respect for the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part.”
(For those of you who are new, we UU’s have Seven Principles and Six Sources – the Principles being how we intend to live and the Sources being that wisdom from which we draw – they are printed in the cover of your Order of Service and on wallet cards we will give to the newcomers who come to the monthly informal gathering in my office after the service, which happens to be today).
This “interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part” isour natural world, in which the “rhythms of nature” move in daily, monthly, annual and epochal cycles. But the “web of all existence” is not limited to the earth, which makes me wonder: what would a universe-centered tradition be like and what would its spiritual teachings be? That question occurred to me for the very first time during my ponderings for this sermon… fascinating! A universe-centered tradition, with spiritual teachings?
I’d like to return to that question later in the sermon, but today I want to share with you my heightened awareness of the interconnected web, the rhythms of nature and the earth-centered spiritual traditions… while in Australia last summer. Having lots of time outdoors in such a different environment, several times in the company of Aboriginal people, I found myself paying more careful attention to Mother Earth Wisdom than usual.
Last July, I had an opportunity of privilege to travel to Australia, to meet my husband Don there, whose way was paid to attend a work conference. Using frequent flyer miles for my airfare to and from, we splurged on in-country flights that allowed us to spend a decent amount of time in four very different habitats in the three weeks we had on this continent that is nearly as large as the United States. Arriving in Brisbane on the east coast of Australia, a (thankfully less than two-hour) flight in a very small puddle-hopper took us to a small coral cay (or island) at the southern end of the Great Barrier Reef. After four nights and a morning on the island, we traveled all afternoon and evening north to a coastal location near the oldest continual rainforest in the world, the Daintree. Our third habitat was the Red Centre of Australia, a massive mostly unpopulated desert. Six nights there, it was our longest stay in the same habitat, ending with a three-hour flight to Sydney, Australia’s largest city. Three nights there, two days in the city and one in the Blue Mountains a short drive away, and it was time to head home.
Our accommodations ranged from hotel to coral research station to eco-resort and a few B and B’s… to sleeping in a swag out under the stars around a campfire in the Red Centre (it was winter there!) and a youth hostel in Sydney.
I wish we had the technology here that would make it easy to show you photographs as I talk. A drop-down screen and a built-in projector would be great (one of you who visited the UU church of a former member now living in Florida told me they’ve got one that capability there and it wouldn’t be hard to do it here). We could also put the words to hymns up on the screen so that our heads wouldn’t be buried in our hymnals when we sing, and provide visual effects for certain services and powerpoint presentations for congregational meetings. And while we are at it, let’s get microphones that wrap around the speaker’s head and videotaping capability…
But, we will have to make do with word-pictures today. And I’ve set up my laptop with a slide show on the table over there, with memorabilia from our trip.
Wherever we were, we explored the natural environment – on the coral cay, I got over my fear of scuba diving and couldn’t get my fill of swimming with sea turtles and the flashing blue/green schools of fish of the Great Barrier Reef, passing over clusters of distressed coral that looked like bunches of forget-me-nots to me and under a giant Manta Ray off in the distance.
Further north, and a bit inland, we hired a local naturalist for a day of learning about the geological history, flora and fauna, especially the very strange-to-us birds of Australia. We had an unwelcome encounter with a five-foot tall male Cassowary with chicks who menacingly followed us expecting to get treats. We saw the intriguing three-foot high bower of twigs by which the male Golden Bowerbird tries to attract a female but we never saw either, nor did we see the Whip Bird, though we tried, having heard over and over again its bizarre call: a build up of short whoops – whoop, whoop, whoop, and then a loud cracking sound like that of a whip.
We also explored bits of the Daintree RainForest National Park on foot, by boat and with a park ranger – absorbing details of the interconnected web of life in that moist, lush environment.
And we were five days in the Red Centre traveling long distances over flat, arid sandy previously Aboriginal land but now mostly huge cattle stations – to get to, hike in and camp out near gorgeous places sacred to Indigenous peoples, like the huge sandstone rock formation called Uluru which unexpectedly rises more than 1100 feet from the flat terrain all around.
While in Sydney, we visited the nearby Blue Mountains where Charles Darwin famously walked in 1836 when his ship The Beagle was moored at Sydney, and we tromped through the National Botanical Garden, hoping for a refresher-course on the plant life we’d been seeing for the previous weeks, but instead it featured specimens from around the world!
Aboriginal people are not known to have inhabited the coral cay, but in the other environments we made an effort to expose ourselves to the spiritual teachings and ways of life of the Indigenous people of the area. For example, in the vicinity of the Daintree RainForest, we joined an Aboriginal-led day tour that included a visit with a local artist, tramping in the woods along a stream learning about Aboriginal uses of vegetation, lessons in spearing crabs and searching for edible periwinkles in the mangroves (and then eating them as prepared by the guide’s mother in her kitchen, which was much like any here in Adelphi). We had lots of travel time in the van between stops for conversation with the driver/guide Chris who was married with children. Growing up in Western ways, he learned Aboriginal ways from his grandmother and expressed to us his hope that increased recognition by white people of the value of Indigenous culture would lead to increased Aboriginal self-respect and greater identification with their own heritage, leading to an end to the stupor of drugs and alcohol which he saw (and we could see) so much around him.
We had similar opportunities to learn about their traditional ways and spiritual teachings from Aboriginal guides in the Red Centre, but throughout our trip we also tried to find out about the contemporary cultural expressions and human and land rights movements among Indigenous people. In one Red Centre town, we happened upon an Aboriginal TV/Radio station which was open to the public, so we ventured in, observed the studio in action, watched a documentary, talked with people, and purchased CD’s and a DVD. We visited several Aboriginal-owned art galleries. And at the Sydney Opera House, we saw a joyful production by the Bangarra Dance Theatre, a leading indigenous performing arts company, “combining the spirituality of traditional culture with modern story-telling.”
From my brief three-week exposure and several books I acquired there, I learned enough to see parallels, differences and similarities between the experiences of the Indigenous Australians with both Native Americans and African-Americans. With Native Americans, they share an earth-based spirituality, keen awareness of the natural cycles of life, and survival knowledge. But the British didn’t claim Australia until 1770 and the first European settlements weren’t until 1788, so the onslaught of genocidal disease, violence and land appropriation hasn’t been going on for as long there as here. In common with African-Americans, Aboriginal people have dark skin that visually differentiates them from the people of European descent and created the potential for a racial caste system; but Australia does not suffer the legacy of slavery that we do, although there was brutality and servitude, and conditions of severe unemployment (six times that of white people) and disadvantage persist today.
Yet there is so much I don’t know, and I confess a large carbon footprint to get what I’ve got. And maybe you’re wondering how I’m going to get from this travelog to the Sixth Source?
Traveling to Australia broadened my understanding of “earth-centered traditions, which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.” Sometimes, seeing something from a new perspective helps us appreciate the more familiar perspective more deeply.
For example, the night sky. The rhythms of nature are such that the stars and planets are more visible when the moon is less visible. Yet, here, we have so much light and air pollution, we see very few constellations even on a perfectly clear moonless night. The constellation Orion is one of them – so I looked for it in Australia and it was upside down! No Northern Star – instead there was the Southern Cross – I was disoriented.
Yet, lying on the beach on the coral island (mainland far out of sight) or snuggled in my swag in the Red Centre (not even a small town for hundreds of miles), gazing up, I’m sure I was seeing more stars than I’ve ever seen even on my most remote back-packing trips in the US, and which way was up didn’t matter because I was awestruck by the expanse of the Milky Way from horizon to horizon amid an incredible density of stars everywhere, hardly any black at all.
Being awestruck was a powerful reminder to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature by doing what I can, personally and politically, to reduce light and air pollution. If we succeed sufficiently, our descendants will be learning the names of constellations you and I have never seen, patterns in the night sky as seen by the native people everywhere EVERY clear night of the year. Being awestruck feeds my wondering: out into and beyond that brilliant but usually hidden to Americans night sky is the rest of the universe: what would a universe-centered, rather than earth-centered, religious tradition be like and what would its spiritual teachings be? Can we even imagine that?
Another example of Mother Earth Wisdom, we learned that, some 50,000 years ago when the Aboriginal people came across land bridge or water to Australia, where everything was different from what they knew before and no one was there to instruct them, they used trial and error to figure out what to eat. Our young guide Chris pointed out a poisonous leafy plant near our trail to a waterfall and told the story he learned from his grandmother – that when eaten fresh, it was poisonous; but they figured out (and it’s likely some people died learning) to boil it and then put it on the edge of the stream and watch – when the little fish came up to nibble on it, they knew it was okay to eat.
This is just a small sample of the intricate wealth of knowledge the Indigenous people had, and some still have, about their environment. Their ability to survive day to day depended on their knowledge of the natural cycles of the plant and animal life on which they relied. They passed that knowledge from generation to generation by telling stories (and some still tell), sketching the stories with sticks in the sand or dirt, as they speak. Being nomadic, they didn’t do art, except on stone cave walls or outcroppings. Today, Aboriginal paintings on canvas depict these ancient stories and aspects of their environment with intricate patterns of earth-hued dots and short lines. Selling their art is an important way to maintain their connection to the land and their spiritual teachings while also earning income in Western society, in which they must find relevance for their future or their culture will expire.
One painter and storyteller and elder of the Arrernte people in the Red Centre, Kathleen Kemarre Wallace, who has lived in her homelands all her life, continues to share, teach and preserve the remarkable living cultural life and knowledge of her people. She expresses a keen sense of loss in Listen Deeply, Let These Stories In (a beautiful collection of her artwork and stories told both in her language and in English, co-written with the white woman who works with the local arts center Wallace helped start). She says,
Our homelands country has slipped away from us now, and we can’t get it back to how it was before. There have been too many cattle, and some cattle station owners don’t let us get through to our own [sacred] sites. They don’t even protect our sites from their cattle with fences. Out there, it ‘s like we don’t own anything anymore. The waterholes are choked up, or dirtied by the cattle, camels, wild horses [they brought in to our lands]… It makes me really sad. We know how to look after this country, but no one even talks to us about that knowledge, or about our history and traditions.
She also sees clearly that the Western and Aboriginal aspects of Australian culture need each other for their mutual survival. She sees that Western ways are destroying the earth and she also sees that her people cannot go back to the way of life they had before the Europeans came.
Both worlds are here now. Let’s make it all work together. Come, listen to us, we will tell you our culture. Learn from us. That way we will all survive. We share this country. We need to work together and learn from each other. We must do things together: respecting, listening and thinking; doing things together, not just talking all the time. Sometimes think, just let there be silence. You must learn to wait, let your thoughts come back to you.
It is crucial for the future of human (and other) life on the Earth that one of our Six Sources is the lessons of nature itself as taught to us by ancient traditions augmented by modern science. Continued ignorance on our part is not a survival option. Mother Earth Wisdom may well be our most important Source of all.