Cultivating Hope in a Changing Climate

 “We seldom admit the seductive comfort of hopelessness.

It saves us from ambiguity.

It has an answer for every question: "There's just no point.";

Hope, on the other hand, is messy.

If it might all work out, then we have things to do.

We must weather the possibility of happiness.”

This was written on the former Twitter, by The CryptoNaturalist last July. (July 22, 2022, Twitter)

This quote spoke to me about the reason hopelessness seems so easy

in the face of so much in our world that seems so hard.

In order to have hope, we have to be willing to change

whereas hopelessness gives us an easy out.

In August of 2017, the United States experienced what some media outlets called "the Great American Eclipse."

It was a total solar eclipse that spanned fourteen different states,

with a partial eclipse being visible from parts of Canada to parts of South America.

I was traveling that day and remember pulling off the highway into a shopping mall to catch a glimpse of the event.

It was a moment where much of the United States was united with creation,

as everyone stopped to go outside and look up.

Reflecting on the where we are today, six years later,

many of us have lost all hope of anything in creation bringing so many people together.

Many folks have fallen into a state of hopelessness.

They do not see a point to getting involved with the hard work of living in our world.

As one climate related disaster rolls into another,

less of the country is coming together to witness and be a part of such events.

How can we find hope this Advent?

especially when Jesus has gone all apocalyptic talking about when the heaven and earth will pass away.

This past week, the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai heard a report

that 2023 is the newest hottest year on record.

We are feeling the heat of the earth all too soon already!

A few months ago,

Kathleen Carozza and I surprisingly found ourselves on the same national Zoom conversation

offered by the Agrarian Ministries of the Episcopal Church.

It was a conversation with Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist who wrote a book

called Saving Us: A Climate Scientist's Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World.

I saw the title in an email and was immediately interested.

After listening to Katharine Hayhoe, Kathleen and I talked about reading the book together and perhaps offering a book study on it.

Which is what we did.

This past fall, we have met twice a month with people from not only our congregation but others in our area

to talk about the climate, our planet, our faith,

what we can do, and how all these things intersect.

We have had great conversations, learned amazing things, and gathered strength to have conversations about what is going on in our struggling world.

A few of us started with hopelessness in the face of the changing climate,

but towards the end it has been all empowerment and hope,

despite the many challenges.

During our last session this past week, we came up with an Advent calendar to share with you all today.

Traditionally, the first week of Advent's theme is hope.

Which isn't always easy to pick out of the readings for the day.

If you aren't feeling very hopeful right now, hopefully by the end of the sermon or the service today,

you'll feel the soft flame of hope stirring up inside of you.

In the Gospel passage from Mark,

Jesus is sitting on the Mount of Olives, opposite the Temple,

talking with Peter, James, John, and Andrew.

They ask him to tell them more about his previous statement

that all the stones of the temple will be thrown down.

As Jesus is describing the time of when all will be thrown down,

a great apocalyptic unveiling, he mentions eclipses and the stars falling and everything that we know being upended.

In the end, his advice to his disciples is simple: "Keep awake."

He tells them to keep awake in order to stay hopeful and engaged.

In her book, Saving Us, Katharine Hayhoe also cautions staying alert.

In her perspective, what we need to stay alert to

are the times and places we can connect with others about what is going on in our world today.

Her case for hope in the midst of our planet in crisis is to share stories.

While many of us are alarmed by the statistics coming out from scientists about the climate,

she recognizes that people are quickly overwhelmed by facts.

While she advocates ending the use of fossil fuels,

she argues that the best thing we can personally do to help ourselves and our home

is to talk about why we care about the world.

Humans are more likely to feel hopeless in the face of what we think of as big systems issues.

Climate change is a big systems issue.

It is a global issue.

It isn't our waste of food, or our dependence on cows, or our use of fossil fuels to run our cars and heat our houses and create all the plastic we use

all the plastic, plastic, plastic!

its all of these things together with all the other issues around water, land resources, politics, laws, cultural expectations.

Big systems are hard to change.

They require adaptive changes

changes in how we think and speak and act

along with the technical changes in what products we buy.

Big systems require big adaptive changes in which people come together to change corporations, governments, whole industries to make a big impact on the whole system.

People are most like to come together through sharing stories.

Stories are how you build a movement.

Small changes do help.

Its always good when one person in a big system becomes healthier in the system,

for example, in the climate system, when one person cuts back on their carbon footprint by buying solar panels or a heat pump.

Even better, as people do make small changes, the feeling of hopelessness decreases,

hope starts growing for an overarching changed system.

Hope grows in every system where one person starts to change.

this happens in family systems, when one person works towards being better towards a specific problem,

this happens in religious systems, when one person starts to work towards safer and healthier religious practices.

Small changes do make an impact.

In order to change the whole system, a large number of people have to start asking new questions, come together in bigger actions,

and seeking new answers.

All of this can be started by sharing stories.

One of my favorites stories is the ongoing story of God with humanity.

Its amazing to me when reading the Bible that God never loses hope with humanity.

I lose hope with humanity in reading the Bible,

but God doesn't.

There is always more hoping for good relationship.

Jesus comes into a world that has not been in great relationship with God

and despite this, Jesus is not a despairing prophet or hopeless teacher.

He tells stories.

He engages people in their lives.

He creates hope for a new future.

We all have stories.

Human beings are designed to share stories.

We share them incessantly, whether we are aware of it or not.

We talk through stories to our friends, our families, our neighbors, our coworkers.

We are already having plenty of conversations

we don't need to feel like we need to go out and have new conversations.

We are called to share our faith and our creation stories,

why the world matters

why our faith matters

why we do what we do to help others in our communities.

We already have these stories.

We need to share them in the conversations we are already having.

We know the stories of the scriptures as well.

Of the changes of landscape across generations and how it has affected civilizations.

Hannah Malcolm, a theologian, who writes about climate change, is quoted in Saving Us saying,

"The words of the prophets - living and dead - can help us learn to talk about our apocalyptic fears.

They teach us to be honest about the realities of sin, greed, and grief.

They call for radical, upside-down changes, not small adjustments to existing systems.

And they teach us how to be absurdly hopeful,

painting visions of peaceful futures when that seems impossible."

Our prophet for today, Isaiah ,

speaks to some of the hopelessness of the world many millennia ago.

Isaiah recognizes the power and might of God.

In this passage Isaiah writes, "Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; 

we are the clay, and you are our potter;

we are all the work of your hand."

God can change our hearts and minds.

God can change the world.

God can make the impossible happen.

We who await the birth of the Christ child,

God incarnate on this planet,

know what amazingly impossible things God can do.

We know that God's amazing works happen all around us through nature, through humans, through forces we cannot quantify or categorize.

As we wait with bated breath this Advent,

we need to keep awake to what is happening around us

and share our stories of the amazing impossible things God is doing in our lives.