A Day of Challenge

So here I am at the Unitarian Universalist General Assemby thinking about how to do church, and they are disturbing our peace with talk of climate change.

I know what Wendell Berry says.  He said it in his poem, "Questionnaire,"

Wendell Berry wrote this poem for The Progressive Magazine.  

1. How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security,
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill. 

Well, here is what I say:

Time to stop removing mountaintops to get at those skinny vein of coal. Time to stop wasting water on getting gas out of those fractured rocks.Time to stop sending garbage into that giant gyre in the Pacific.  

Time to admit that the oceans themselves are being harmed by increased CO2 levels.  That we don't know how many species will be lost or how the shapes of continents will change or anything much about what will happen.  We could be taking charge of what we can take charge of, letting go of what we don't need to contribute to the poisoning of our planet.  We could start thinking about how everything is connected to everything else and what it all means.  

Which poisons will we take?  Which monuments will we destroy?  What landscapes forever blotted off the face of the earth?  Which children will we kill?  

Or, what about our lifestyles of today will we release?  How will we make a good life that doesn't revolve around poison and death and destruction?

Are we all one family or not?