HELLO!

Yesterday I received this email from Betty. I have her permission to share: On Sunday, among the “Pieces of Creation”, I chose a stone. Sitting beside me were Brian and Heather Star Williams. This was the first time we met. Brian shared with me the story of why he chose a feather and I shared with him why I chose my stone. We chatted. He is a lovely man.  Just before the service ended, Brian leaned over and presented me with his feather. I now have it in a bottle with sea glass and a blue feather I collected years ago. I think this connection was meant to happen. Betty

In my sermon that day I tried to make the point we cannot mobilize political efforts to save our planet without creating opportunities to see Creation as part of us, to personalize our relationship with the earth. I think this is a deficit in the climate change movement, and it explains why the environment is a priority with voters between every election but quickly slips as a voting issue as soon as a campaign begins. Creation remains “other”. I have often found, in matters of justice, that humour is a key building block. That sometimes sets me apart from other political and social justice advocates. Humour can be seen as a diversion, even a means of insulating people from hard and necessary choices. But humour also can place us in another’s reality, point out the way we criticize others for things we do ourselves, that we are part of the problem, not only “them”. I love self-depreciating humour as it reveals we can see how easy it is to be seduced by the very thing we are critical of in the other. It further, allows us to see the other, less as evil, and more as manipulated by an evil idea. Lucian, our child, recently sent me this video, it is a review of a film, The Time That Remains (2009). The movie is an autobiographical and historical film about a Palestinian family living under Israeli rule, but the comedic style makes it feel fictional. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVhpp5_4ZJg The other aspect of how humour can be employed in the midst of despair, is how just the basic reality of our finite lives also requires a response. We all know we will die. Extending time, vertically, can be achieved by finding ways to embrace life even as life itself is slipping away. Humour can do this, as it reveals we are in on life’s mystery and secret, that pretending to avoid death by way of changing our look, our wealth, our success in the eyes of others, insulates us from death. It does not. So mocking this can open up another pathway, which is to live life by embracing love, compassion, relationship, and joy. Making fun of delusion opens up reality, but reality with a sustaining purpose. And Creation is part of that reality.

Brian sent me this photo of a tree. Looking at it, I am released from the status quo of conventional beauty to see what is lasting and true. My fragile being, yours too, allows me to see time vertically. Peace, Kevin