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Earth’s Proclamation
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15 March 2009 Because I live in Frederick, home to the Maryland School for the Deaf–with a gorgeous new campus–it is common to be in a public setting or commercial place and see people carrying on animated conversations. Sometimes one or the other speaker vocalizes, but most of the time, the conversations are completely silent. In a twist on the old Yellow Pages ad, their fingers do the talking. Our psalmist tells us that nature is our still-speaking God’s sign-language, speaking to us of a magnificent creator whose ability to innovate, to play with a theme, is endless. It may be a snowflake or a human being, but each one is unique in all the world. We think we’re hot stuff when we do just the opposite–clone something into an exact replica of itself, but that doesn’t hold a candle to what God does as creator. And then to take all that is created and weave it into a tapestry with endless variety and with consistent laws to govern the whole and the part. Amazing. Simply amazing. Scientist Charles Townes sat on a park bench in Washington, DC, waiting for the restaurant to open up so he could snag some breakfast. For years, he’d been working to figure out the properties of light and focused molecules and short waves. And right there on that park bench, after all those years, it came to him. It only took a moment. And a lifetime, and persistence and insight. Charles Townes went on to figure out lasers and masers. He went on to become a Nobel Laureate for science, receiving his prize at the same event as Martin Luther King, Jr. received his Nobel prize for peace. He went on to do what only one other human being has done–he received the Templeton International Religion and Science Prize for building bridges between science and religion. And the sole other recipient? Mother Teresa. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa. Not bad company.[2] Charles Townes learned to listen deeply to the sign language of the natural world, to God’s law written in light. But the listening is critical. The day after Christmas, The New York Times reported “a coal ash spill in eastern Tennessee that experts were already calling the largest environmental disaster of its kind in the United States.”[1] The spill came from the breach in a holding pond, and was estimated initially at1.7 million cubic yards of coal ash, but by the next day, the figure was revised to more than three times that amount, a whopping 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.[1] In its current form, that sludge is relatively harmless–the chemicals it contains have to be ingested to be harmful. But it’s still mixed with water. Now that it’s spread out, it can dry out. The concern is that dry particles may become airborne, and in that form, they can be ingested. This summer, our youth will be heading to New Orleans, to help rehabilitate homes still needing drywall and paint nearly four years after another breach. I don’t believe the lesson we should take from just these two breaches is that we should never mine coal because a byproduct is coal ash, or that we should never build dikes to protect fragile shores from erosion because they might break and flood the surrounding area. We know that somehow balancing a range of concerns from employment to energy is part of the larger picture. But equally a part of the picture is our stewardship of God’s realm. Equally a part of the picture is our responsibility to listen to the speech of the natural world. I believe this is the witness of Charles Townes, who listened so profoundly to the speech of light that he was able to work in harmony with its properties, and open to us a whole new realm of possibilities–from microwaves to printers to laser surgery. The other part of Dr. Townes’ witness is his deep and abiding faith–something else he shares with Mother Teresa and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A decades-long and active member of First Congregational UCC in Berkeley, Dr. Townes Charles has said “the most important thing in life is to find out ‘the purpose and meaning of our lives and universe.’ Life’s meaning, why and what we are created to do. Townes is proud to be a member of a church that is open minded and welcomes the insights of science. His spiritual depth and faith experience came together for him in that moment on the park bench, a moment he likens to religious revelation.”[2] Most of us have no chance of becoming the next Charles Townes–at least in terms of winning the Nobel Prize and the Templeton Prize, and that’s fine. By the same token, most of us will not bear primary responsibility for decisions to overfill coal ash ponds or defer maintenance of levies. But we do have the opportunity to listen to the natural world and reclaim our own voice in proclaiming the gifts of God’s handiwork and our responsibility in abiding by God’s law. We do have the opportunity to choose to leave a much greener footprint on God’s good earth. As we do so, we work in harmony with God’s creation, and join the whole earth in singing God’s praise. *** [1]The New York Times, New York edition, December 27, 2008, page A10, as quoted from NYTimes.com, “Tennessee Flood Larger Than Initial Estimate,” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/27/us/27sludge.html |