There is no AWAY
Bob Kistler
Earth Day 2003 Chapel
April 21, 2003
Bethel College, St. Paul, MN
At Bethel, and across the country, today and throughout the rest of this Earth Week we are celebrating creation and tomorrow is Earth Day. Believe it or not, the first Earth Day, 33 years ago started in colleges and universities where students and professors had teach-ins and demonstrations about the degrading state of the natural world, the creation. Our world was becoming too crowded, too rapidly, with too many people. Rivers were so polluted that they caught fire and burned. Toxic wastes were leaching from underneath school playgrounds. One of our Great Lakes was proclaimed dead. Our landfills were filling up with the wastes of modern society so fast that we worried about finding enough space to hold all our wastes. We were trashing God's Creation in our quest for the good life. We were literally throwing it all AWAY.
AWAY
Such a short word, used so much in our current society. I am going to move away. I've got to get away. The gas in my car is all gone away. I am going to throw this away! For a concept that is used so widely, AWAY is very difficulty to define. Why, well because every one knows where AWAY is, right!
One definition for our use of AWAY might be as follows: AWAY is where I go to be, when I don't want to be where I am. Got that? AWAY is where I go to be, when I don't want to be where I am.
AWAY is also a mythical place where things go, well you know, AWAY. So when we don't need something anymore, we throw it AWAY, and "poof" it is gone!
So I would like to take just a few minutes to examine this concept of AWAY. How did we get to the point where we as a "modern" people could just throw so much away, and not even have qualms about it, consequently threatening, and continuing to threaten, the very life support systems on which we depend—the very Creation that our Creator created and called Good!
A: The A in AWAY, I think aptly, stands for Apathy. We just don't care. We are so busy living, like faculty and staff, or trying to prepare for living like you, as students are doing here at Bethel, that we don't think we cause any harm with our actions, our living. We also feel that it doesn't matter because we can't make a difference anyway or that we are called to higher purposes and can't take time for less important things. How many times have you seen or heard someone say, I know I should put this in the recycling but… or I know I should drive my car less, but…. or I want to live a simpler life, but….. Political philosopher Edmund Burke once said that "nobody makes a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little!' We must STOP not caring, because we might find that where we are is exactly where we don't want to be. Not taking responsibility for our actions or lack thereof is Apathy, not AWAY!
W: Now W could stand for WHERE and we, like Pooh and Piglet looking continually for the elusive heffalump, could search for where the elusive AWAY might be, but instead I think we might just end up finding out that as John Muir suggested that, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe". So I want you to think of W as whole or holistic. Our, Bethel's life style covenant, Becoming Whole and Holy Persons: A Covenant for Life Together at Bethel, states that one of the major goals of our community is; "To be whole and holy means to be dedicated to God with purity of thought and action". Similarly, resulting from the work of ecologists around the world, we have found that, as John Muir pointed out, the Creation in which we live as human beings is entirely interconnected. The Creation is also holistic – a Whole of God's place not only for humanity, but for all the rest of the organisms and the non-living components that tie Creation together into one Whole. Since everything in Creation seems to be interconnected, WHOLE, no matter where, then nowhere in Creation can be AWAY!
A: A could stand for all kinds of concepts, and yet I think the A word that best describes Christianity's lack of Acceptance of responsibility for stewardship of God's Creation as demonstrated by the way we live, is the word Agnostic. BUT WAIT! What is he saying! Bethel is a Christian college! But Agnosticism is essentially a split in "beliefs", a theory if you will that does not deny God, but does deny the possibility of a personal relationship with God. And this is exactly what we as Christians have done with our responsibility to God for the Creation. Theologian and author, Richard Young in 1994 stated that "Christianity's lack of involvement (in environmental stewardship) communicates the message that it is incapable of meeting one of humanity's greatest crises and therefore that it is not a credible option…Humans are estranged not only from the environment, but from God, each other, and from themselves. Nature itself has been left in a fractured array of pieces. What is desperately needed in our age is a Christian theology that can provide a holistic framework by which all things are seen as interrelated." We believe in God and a personal relationship with God and yet we have a wide split between the way we talk and the way we live and act! We need to re-integrate our faith with our way of life to—well to be more Agape, in a state of wonder, and amazement, mouth hanging open, living responsibly in the Creation – to move more toward the Agapé love that should unite all of Humanity and the Creation together, with God. Dissonance between how we talk and how we live is Agnosticism, not AWAY!
Y: Y stands for YES. Yes I will decide that God has called me to live responsibly and that a part of that responsibility extends, to all components of the Creation, both human and non-human, and also to my actions and lifestyle decisions that might have an impact on the Creation. For in reality, I recognize that THERE IS NO AWAY, for every breath I take and breath out, every can, bottle, or piece of paper that I use, every gallon of gas I use when I drive, and every reaction to every action I take, do not just GO AWAY, for THERE IS NO AWAY.
So remember this week as we celebrate creation, this Earth Week, tomorrow's Earth Day, Friday's Arbor Day, and each and every day thereafter, that we are Eve and we are Adam and we are responsible to God for not just our spiritual emotions, but for our living actions—we are HERE and THERE IS NO AWAY.
References and Resources
Burke, Edmund (1729 - 1797) Burke's quote is quoted very frequently, but no one seems to cite the source.
Milne, A. A. 1926 Winnie-the-Pooh E.P. Dutton. New York.
Muir, John 1911. My First Summer in the Sierra. Houghton Mifflin Company. New York. p. 110
Young, Richard 1994. Healing the Earth: A theocentric perspective on environmental problems and their solutions. pp 25-27 excerpts.
Links:
A short biography of Edmund Burke
Edumund Burke - The History Guide
Edmund Burke - (The Quotations Page)
Bethel College Green Council (Campus Intranet)
© Dr. Robert Kistler
May 3, 2003