Sermon by Rev. Diane Rollert, 18 October 2009
Once upon a time there was a Zen master who had a cat. One day, as the master was meeting with his students, the cat jumped into his lap and demanded to be petted. The master was too busy to attend to the cat, so he placed it on the ground. Of course, the cat, being a cat, was not about to be deterred in its mission.
So it jumped up again into the master’s lap and began turning round and round, digging its claws into the master’s knees and wagging its tail across the master’s face. This happened a few more times, until, without saying a word, the master picked the cat up, carried it outside and tied it to the big tree growing in the centre of the courtyard. Calmly, the master returned to his students and resumed his teaching.
Each day as the master met with his students, the cat would demand attention and the master would take it outside and tie it to the tree. This went on for weeks. One day, some of the students arrived early and decided that they would help the master by tying the cat to the tree before he arrived. So it went for days, then weeks, months and years. Before the day’s teachings would begin, the students would tie the cat to the tree. When the master died, the students continued the tradition. When the cat died, the students found another cat and tied it to the tree. What else would they do? The cat had become sacred.
When I first heard this story, I couldn’t help but think that it was a perfect metaphor for congregational life. Aren’t there so many things that become sacred because “we’ve always done it that way” ? We get used to things being one way and we can’t imagine them ever changing. And what happens when we decide we aren’t going to tie the cat to the tree anymore? We wring our hands with worry about the change. What will we do without the cat tied up out there in the courtyard?
Isn’t this also a perfect metaphor for so many things that we hold dear or true in our lives? I know I’ve got a number of cats tied to the tree. These aren’t the beautiful rituals in life that I appreciate. These are the places where I get stuck in my thinking, where change is hard to accept. This is when the thought of taking a chance and changing something is followed by a lot of anxiety. I don’t know why I’m tying that cat to the tree, but if I untie it, couldn’t something really terrible happen? I wager that if we are honest with ourselves, we’ve all got cats tied to a tree somewhere. Think about it.
While you think about it, here’s a word from one of today’s “sponsors”. (What this has to do with cats, I’ll explain shortly.) On Saturday, October 24, people all over the world will be participating in the International Day of Climate Action. The organizers of this action, 350.org, are calling for the “global voice of humanity to rise together and call for reducing Greenhouse Gas in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million.” That’s the maximum level for safety determined by climate scientists. Anything above 350 “puts us all at the mercy of catastrophic climate events” – and the level, right now, is close to 390 parts per million.
Here in Canada, a mass rally has been planned for next Saturday in Ottawa. A group of members and friends will be carrying the banner of the Unitarian Church of Montreal to Parliament Hill. They will be there from noon to 3:30 p.m. They go with the blessing of our board, and you are all invited to join them. They will go with a mission to speak much needed truth to power. They will urge the government to forge a strong international agreement on greenhouse gas reductions to limit global warming. They will demand that responsible and scientifically-required action be taken when Canada sits down to sign the “post-Kyoto” climate change treaty at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December. Now is the time for us to be heard, before it is too late.
So, about those cats… Well, I love the earth. I love her in all her beauty, especially on these blue-sky, golden, vermillion days of autumn. I love people too. I love their ingeniousness, and the marvelous things they create to make life easier. I live a privileged life here in the North, and I know that there are many things I’m resistant to give up. So, I live with the guilt of my modern life. Sometimes I think that my guilt has become sacred. What would I do without it? But isn’t that too simplistic?
The stakes in global climate change are so much greater than the valiant actions of a few -- though I am inspired by those who practice spiritual disciplines like composting and riding bicycles to work year round. To staunch the flow of greenhouse gasses will require a gargantuan international effort. You know the problems. The countries of the developed North live with excessive abundance, while the countries of the developing South say it’s their turn now. What a shock to see Canada, a country I’ve always imagined to be on the side of the angels, refuse to take responsibility for its own emissions. “We won’t do anything, unless you do,” this government says to India, China and Brazil.
Last November, EcoEquity and the Stockholm Institute released a paper they titled, “The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework: The right to development in a constrained climate.” The only hope we have, they say, is to enter into a trust-building period between the Northern and the Southern Hemispheres. The North “has much to do to convince the world that it is in fact willing to engage seriously in a global effort to protect the climate.” That means following through on previous commitments and delivering the technological support that developing countries need. The South has to demonstrate that it will follow through on taking measurable action and “that it is serious in its oft-professed desire to prioritize poverty eradication and sustainable human development.” The wealthy in both spheres need to stop hiding behind the poor. The governments of both spheres have to shift from the sacred cats of “What’s in it for us?” to “How can we help?”
It will take a lot of education, the authors say. We’ll have to confront the taboo subject of inequality within nations and between nations. We will have to stop pretending that “the climate crisis can be addressed on its own, and that the crisis of development and inequity is another matter.”
“The way forward out of this macabre dance is to recognize that the right to development adheres not to nations, but to people, that it can only be a right to sustainable development, and the wealthy – whether they live in Washington or London, Shanghai or New Delhi – share a global obligation to protect the climate.”
The prospect of building trust in such an environment is truly overwhelming. Yet, Johanna Macy, scholar of Buddhism, and deep ecology, says that we are actually in a time of Great Turning.
“The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world-we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other.”
The Great Turning, she says is “the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.”
Life-sustaining civilization. What would it mean for us to engage in that, we who live here in this abundant North? Some of the answers are personal. Some require us to take action, like marching up to Parliament Hill and letting our voices be heard. Macy urges us to deeply grieve what we have lost through the damage already done to the earth. Out of the ashes of our grief, we can rise with renewed energy to participate in the Great Turning. One of those cats tied to the tree out there, well, she’d say that we’ve lost touch with our love for the earth and don’t believe we need to grieve for what is lost. Yet, in her estimation, when given time to reflect, we would find that we are all deeply grieving the damage that has been done.
Recently, our board of management has been dreaming about what we might do to live up to our mission to take action in the world. They began to consider taking on a project that would address issues of global climate change, global poverty and hunger, in a way that is directly connected to life-sustaining civilization. To make this dream a reality, they realized that they would have to consider a particular cat we’ve had tied to the tree for many years. Bear with me, and I promise you, I am going to tie all these threads together.
You see, once upon a time there was a congregation called the Unitarian Church of Montreal, founded way back in 1842. In the old days, it never had to worry about money. Its members had names like Workman and Molson. When there wasn’t enough money to cover expenses, Mr. Molson would whip out his chequebook and make up the difference. Years went by, and the likes of Workman and Molson moved on. But the church still sat at the foot of Mount Royal on Sherbrooke Street. Those were leaner times with a big, gothic building to maintain.
Tragically, one day in 1987, the church was burnt to the ground. Two firemen were lost, and the dreams and hopes of a congregation were dashed. But the members of the community were amazingly resilient – a part of the story we should never forget. It took nine long years, but finally they sold the land where the ruins of the old church stood. They bought land right here and they built this building with the help of insurance money and the sale of the old property. At the same time they managed to create a healthy endowment fund. They had learned their lessons from those leaner days. They had lived through tragedy and they knew they would always need to be prepared for a rainy day.
Over time, the church started to live beyond its means, just like in the days of Workman and Molson. It came to rely on the interest of the endowment. Whenever the annual pledges from the members of the congregation fell short, well, they could always draw from the endowment’s earnings to make up the shortfall. (In recent years, the board has been very careful to withdraw less than the average growth of the endowment fund.)
One day, about two weeks ago, the leaders of the congregation (the board of management) got an inspiration. Do we always have to use the earnings on the endowment to cover our expenses? Is that sacred, they asked? What if, we the people, gave enough to cover more of the church’s budget? What if we gave so much that it covered all of the church’s budget? What if we could use some of the growth of our endowment fund to really make a difference in the world? What if we used it to live out our mission to take action in the world? Imagine the impact we could have.
Today the board is looking at an exciting project to support through the Unitarian Service Committee. Some of you may remember when Kate Green came to speak here about Seeds of Survival. Her stories of working with farmers in India to regain their land and their spirit were inspiring. In the 1960s and 70s, the developed world thought that it was helping India and other developing countries by providing hybrid, high-yield seeds, and farm machinery. At first the results were phenomenal. Harvests were abundant. But over time, the seeds yielded less and less, until they yielded nothing. The farmers were left seriously in debt. They lost their land and were forced into the cities.
Today, the USC is working with farmers all over the developing world to help them recover the natural seeds that can thrive in their climates. The people are regaining their lands and rebuilding the soil that had been destroyed by the more “modern” practices of the 1960s and 70s. In a time of climate change, these projects are essential to the survival of people who would otherwise be at risk of joining today’s terrifying statistics of hunger and starvation. These projects are enabling the people to shift from an industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization.
Imagine what we could do if we could take on a major project for something like Seeds of Survival. Imagine helping a single community or several. Imagine the impact we could have. It would be one way to take part in reversing the damage that has been done to this earth. It would be one way to right an imbalance between North and South. So when you hear from the board in the weeks to come, I ask you to give their dream some serious thought. What would it mean to you personally if we changed our relationship to our endowment and the way we fund the work we do? What would it mean to you if we could truly take action in the world?Or, dare I say, should we leave the cat tied to the tree?
