What Do They Teach?
Beth Braxton
June 14, 2009
Job 12:7-10
——————-
Yes, the earth’s is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof and the world and those who dwell therein! We are all connected on this planet earth like one big spider web. And we are consumers, natural consumers, that is, we consume plants and animals to live - for our nourishment; we cut trees and mine coal and ore for our homes, businesses work and pleasure. The problem is consuming has gotten way out of hand! Selfishness and greed have consumed our economy into bankruptcy! We are suffering economically because of our consuming.
But to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us we need to move our attention, our lives to a sustainable consumption, or to use a better phrase coined by the Christian ecologist Edward Echlin in his book, Earth Spirituality – ‘sustainable sufficiency’. We need to move our lives from a “no holds barred” attitude on consuming to a new perspective, where we as persons who, as our mission statement says, are “becoming disciples” of Christ, are encouraged to pray for a heaven earthed – as Jesus taught us to pray - “In heaven as on earth.” “In heaven on earth the material world is sustained, renewed and not exploited. The consumers are just and discerning.”
George Herbert has written a poem called “Providence” which evokes such a sustainable world. Listen:
Bees work for man; and yet they never bruise
Their master’s flower, but leave it having done,
As fair as ever, and as fit to use;
So both the flower doth stay, and honey run.”
Sustainability means taking from the earth’s resources what is sufficient for today’s needs for all creatures, without compromising the ability of future generations, so all creatures can live with sustainable sufficiency, as Echlin says.
“Ask the animals, and they will teach you.” (Job 12:7)
The bee enters the flower takes what it needs to produce its product - honey; it does not destroy the flower in the process. In fact bees are essential to the continuing propagation of our flowers, vegetables, and fruits. They are pollinators. Without them certain plants will not thrive. — Bees are nature’s fertility specialists!
Do we like bees take just what we need to live without disturbing the balance of life? Or do we overuse and disturb the balance of life?
Yes, we have been overfishing the Chesapeake Bay. Over fishing of crabs is major decline of Blue Crabs.
The Bay’s crab population was 791 million in 1990; in 2007 it was 260 million.
Overfishing of sharks – a top predator in the ocean may endanger the scallops. With fewer sharks to devour them, the skates and rays have in creased along the East Coast – and they are gobbling up shellfish, particularly the Bay scallops. Reducing key species – like sharks, affects as entire eco-system.
“Ask the plants of the earth, and they will teach you.”(Job 12:8)
Plants clean up our air; they take in our poisons and give us oxygen! It is called photosynthesis – six molecules of water and six molecules of carbon dioxide produce one molecule of sugar and six molecules of oxygen, which we can’t do without. They make our breathing possible! Wow!
Do we treat out trees and plants with respect knowing that our lives depend on them? Do you know the connection between plants and health? It is called botanical therapeutics. Plants help keep the air clean!
I have a bad news and good news article.
Bad News first – yesterday’s news. The cypress tree grown along our Southern coast, particularly along the Mississippi and Louisiana coasts are being cut down and shredded so our suburban homes can have cypress mulch! The cypress trees are crying – because they are the buffer for the Gulf storms! The protection for the coast is being taken away!
The Good News was an article this week in the POST about a community that saved land along the Potomac River– a 336 swath of hickory forest and waterfalls. It is one of the biggest land battles going on for over 30years! Because one women responded to the notice “Public Notice of Hearing before the Planning Commission” and raised her concern this pristine land is now Scott’s Run Nature Preserve, a scenic touch of wilderness in suburbia between the Capital Beltway and Route 193!
Pay attention to plants and animals, they CAN teach you. Here are a few lessons I have thought of:
Dandelions are the greatest teacher of evangelism – let the wind of the spirit blow through you and like new dandelions the Word will be planted far and wide!! (your neighbors yard , down by the railroad tracks, the shopping mall medium, and the byways and highways miles away!) spread the Word, like dandelion seeds in the wind!
Ants not only teach us about community working together with their incredible social organization and ability to readily modify their habitats as needed, but ants aerate the soil. They remind us of the importance of working together and not going it alone. They also remind us that our lives need spaces to breathe; we need air - the breath of the Spirit in the layers and layers of activities, projects and programs in our lives. We need to aerate our lives with the Spirit.
Observing the crocus and the baobab tree of Kenya, teach us about hope. The crocus often sticks its delicate little head up in the snow to remind us that even in the cold and harsh weather – hang on, spring is coming. Do we have this kind of hope in our own lives when the depth of struggles or the darkness of anger, jealousy or envy get us down?
The huge baobab tree (and when I say huge – I mean I know it took thirteen of us with joined hands to encircle the baobab tree on the Kibwezi School grounds) is bare of leaves in the dry bush land that we see every July we are there. BUT I am told that it blossoms, yes, blossoms just BEFORE the rains come. Now that is a sign of hope and resurrection! When all life seems dry and barren, it blossoms, then the rains come! We need to remember the baobab in the living of our lives – when our Good Friday struggles of death of a loved one, loss of a job or friend, seem to overwhelm us, it is not the end; resurrection is coming!
“Ask the animals, they will teach you.”
“Ask the plants of the earth and they will teach you.”
The oyster has a message for all of us. The oyster opens and closes its shell as it breathe. Sometimes a parasite or a grain of sand will invade – an irritant, to say the least. The oyster covers the irritant with a substance called nacre. Over the years the irritating object is covered with enough layers of nacre that it forms a beautiful pearl! Do you suppose that if we covered our irritants with enough love over the years that they too would become pearls. I like to think that that is what God is doing with us, covering us with so much love that we are shaped into pearls, as Christ’s disciples!
“And the fish of the sea, they will tell you, and the birds of the air will declare to you.” (Job 12: 7 & 
Let us pay attention to the animals, the earth, the fish and the birds – let us pay attention to what they are telling us.
Two of the biggest threats to this beautiful planet earth God has given us are the abundance of our waste and the scarcity of water. As the English Bishop James Jones illustrates in his book, Jesus and the Earth, “In Britain recently we had the extraordinary scenario of nuclear waste from one of our reactors in the northwest of England being shipped around the world via Japan only to return to be buried in one of the most beautiful parts of the country neat the Lake District. It was a symbol of how our society is finding it increasingly difficult to handle the waste that it produces. Landfills continue to grow in our country at a rapid rate.. There were 247 million tons of non-hazardous waste in 1990; by 2001 there were 409 million tons! Virginia is second leading importer of waste in the country – 3,891,000 tons (Biocycle Magazine)
The other threat to our earth is water. It is predicted that the next world war will be over water. We know that about 70 percent of the earth is made up of water and less than one percent is fresh water, on which all terrestrial life depends. It is therefore all the more serious when this comparatively small amount of water is polluted. And we know that two million children die in our world every year from drinking contaminated water.
As persons becoming disciples of Christ who pray at least every week that God’s will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” and as Christians who listen to the animal , and fish and birds and plants, let us think today of one thing we can do to earth heaven. – something that deals with both of these two problems of waste and water. Let us examine our unnecessary water bottle and plastic use. (Now let me say up front that not all use of plastics and water bottles is bad.)
My first heightened awareness is when my husband Bob and I went to a Company Picnic in NJ. The Company was Prudential. There must have been 500 employees at this picnic and we were all given hard plastic plates, not flimsy ones, like this and hard plastic forks like this. – Then after a gourmet picnic meal, one by one everyone was putting these plastic plates and forks and knives and spoon and cups into the garbage. They were used once! One time!! They could have been used for my life time and never worn out, but we were throwing them away, because it is obviously more convenient. I started multiplying in my head – think about all the other company picnics, family picnics, university picnics, church picnics – using plastic one time and throwing it away – imagine this huge pile of plastic waste!
A fifth grader asked a professor of science — - What toxic substance is produced that is harmful to our health when a plastic material is burned?
Answer: Many plastics, particularly PVC when burned result in emissions of the deadly poison named dioxin. Dioxin is a toxic organic chemical that contains chlorine and is produced when chlorine and hydrocarbons are heated at high temperatures. To inhale dioxin or to be exposed anyway to its fumes can cause many deadly results. (Dr. Richard Barrans, Asst. Director of the PG Research Foundation Drien, II.) Do you think maybe there is a connection with the rise of cancer diseases?
Now let me remind you of some of the facts about bottled water:
1-First bottled water cost a 1,000 times tap water. Tap water is $.0015 a gallon and bottled water is $1.27 a gallon.
2- The water is not necessarily safer as often presumed. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has strict water quality standards for tap water, but the EPA does not oversee bottled water. The state Health Dept. of CA and PA did some testing and in fact found chemicals in many of the bottles tested. Coca Cola’s Dasani and Pepsi’s Aquafina are tap water coming from places like Queens, NY and Jacksonville, FL with some additional treatment.
3- In the U.S. more than 30 billion plastic water bottles end up as garbage or litter each year. Most don’t get recycled. I have read that the bottles take anywhere from 500 years to 1,000 years to decompose and they contribute to the vast plastic waste in rivers, lakes and oceans, which is harming wildlife.
4- The withdrawal of large quantities of water from springs and aquifers for bottling has depleted household wells in rural areas, damaged wetlands, and degraded lakes.
5- It takes 3 liters of water to produce 1 liter of bottled water.
6- And what about the bottles themselves? Every year about 1.5 million tons of plastic go into manufacturing water bottles for the global market, using processes that release toxics such as nickel, ethylbenzene, ethylene oxide and benzene.
7- And in the U.S. alone 1.5 million barrels of oil are consumed in making the bottles. Most bottles end up in landfills, adding to the landfill crisis.
Water and waste – environmental problems that we can do something about.
Maybe we need to ask the animals, the plants of the earth, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea what they think!
Amen? Amen!
