Earth Day

Last night I attended a watershed film festival that was part of Earth Day activities.  The film that was shown was Return of the River and it shared the story of the Elwha Dam in Washington State, how it was built and the effect that damming the River had on the communities and the environment, and how it was eventually removed and came to life again.

It is a story that kept coming back to me today.

In many Christian Churches today Revelation 21:1-5 was read. It is the passage that speaks to a New Heaven and a New Earth -- and it has been for some the justification for NOT taking care of the Earth. I guess the thinking is that since God will create a whole new heaven and earth, taking care of this one is not a priority! I don't believe that is what the passage means, rather it speaks to a new way of living post empire. In the case of Revelation, the Empire was referred to as Babylon but was a veiled reference to the Roman Empire of the time. In our day we live in an empire and have imperial actions and domination to address. We too have the option of resisting empire, of living with values that reflect love, justice and inclusion. 

Today when I heard  the reading from Revelation regarding a new heaven and a new earth; and how the first heaven and earth that had disappeared … I thought of the Strong People of the River, the Klallam People, who had lived on the banks of the Elwha for thousands of years, with a culture that was in tune with the river, and with the salmon that spawned in the high clear waters; salmon that went down into the sea to grow big and strong and then returned bringing the nutrients of the sea back to the people, and also to the river and the other creatures that relied on it. I thought of the people's anguish as hundreds of thousands of pounds of concrete were dumped into the water to build the dam. Of their grief when the waters were backed up to create Lake Aldwell, a reservoir that covered places that were important to the lives of the people and to the fish, and their distress at the second dam that kept so many of the fish from returning home.

But I also thought of the people who had built the dam, the European Americans who had looked at the majestic river and the powerful falls and had had a vision of inexpensive and plentiful power that would make life easier for themselves and for their families. Both the City of Port Angeles and the Georgia Pacific Paper Mill that was the primary provider of jobs and industry came into being with the creation of the Elwha Dam. With the abundant power a new city was born – filled with people who marveled at the beauty and abundance of the Pacific Northwest, prospered because of the wealth of the forests and enjoyed fishing and relaxing around the Reservoir Lake. For these people, the dam had created a paradise. 

When it was first suggested that the dams come down, the people of the city reacted with astonishment, then anger and sometimes with more than a little racist behavior. They were very disconnected from the paradise in which they lived -- so disconnected that they believed that they had created a paradise out of the wild rather than participating in the destruction of a paradise that already existed.

When the Dams began to come down in 2011 and the river was fully free again in August of 2014, the People of the River believed that the divine protectors of the River had at last awoken from a slumber that was caused by the Trickster. Surely they felt that their tears were being wiped from their eyes, and that the death and mourning, crying and pain that had been part of their lives was finally ending -- as the words in Revelation might describe it. Indeed, for over 100 years they had held onto the hope that the dam that had destroyed their livelihood would one day be removed. 

A Klallam storyteller came to last night’s event. He said that for the Great Spirit, a hundred years is only a moment in time - something that we should all remember, but too often forget. 

The decision to bring down the dams was not easy. It took a long and sustained effort by the Klallam People and their allies – and it took city people willing to take a long hard look at the data that scientists had gathered over the years that the dam was in place.

 

The run of Salmon went from over 400,000 a year to 4,000 the first the first year that the dams were in place to almost zero in the succeeding years. But that was not the only destruction. The reservoir that some had referred to as a paradise, was slowly choking on the silt and debris that could no longer be washed down to the sea. The estuaries at the mouth of the River became rocky and void of life without the constant refreshment of the free flowing water. The native people suffered. The fish grown in hatcheries were not strong or healthy. The Native storyteller referred to the hatchery fish as "poodles instead of wolves". The once abundant wildlife suffered as their source of nourishment was depleted and the waters became murky and unclean. 

With all the evidence in place it became clear to those who were charged with making a decision, that that everything is connected. It is not possible to change a powerful river without collateral damage.    

In Laudato Si Pope Francis wrote that ‘Care for nature is part of a lifestyle which includes the capacity for living together and communion. Jesus reminded us that we have God as our common (Parent) and that this makes us brothers and sisters. Fraternal love can only be gratuitous; it can never be a means of repaying others for what they have done or will do for us. That is why it is possible to love our enemies.’

Jesus commanded his disciples to love one another. It was for them a challenge to care for one another as they might care for their own families. But we are also challenged to love those who are not part of our family, our clan or tribe; people who are outside of the boundaries of ethnic, racial or national groups that we identify with. This means looking for the common good and putting the needs of those we love -- which means all people -- ahead of individual gain.

 

The call to care for our common home is not simply a commitment to recycle and drive less; it is a call to consider the relationships that we have with all of creation. Pope Francis speaks of a universal fraternity; of the need to love and accept the wind, the sun and the clouds, even though we cannot control them.

To live in communion with nature, to view each person and each creature as precious and loved by God calls for a lifestyle conversion that is only possible if we work at it each day, not just Earth Day or on the Feast of St. Francis, but every day.We need our own sacred stories and the stories of other peoples as well to help us understand one another and learn to live in communion.

 
And we need a powerful hope that what we do for the Good of the Earth and for the Earth Community matters. Surely we can hold in our hearts a hope that is as strong and faithful as the hope that sustained the Klallam during the many years when their river was held captive.

Anyway, that is what, was thinking today. Maybe you have heard that story before, or another that is similar. I would welcome and thoughts or comments that you might have.  

Opportunity for Everyone

Yesterday was an exhausting day. On my way to work, walking as I do the last mile in order to get a little exercise into my day, I received a couple of curious texts. One about  "an interesting day ahead" and the other from a co-worker inquiring if I had "made it to work yet." I didn't know what the texts were about but within a couple of blocks I saw the flashing red lights and police barricade.
A man from the street community, living in a tent outside my place of work, had been shot in the back. He is in critical condition as I write today, stable but perhaps paralyzed as the bullet apparently hit or lodged near his spine. The perpetrator was not apprehended.

As an advocate for homeless campers, I am incredibly distressed. No one should have to sleep on the streets unprotected from violent people. Before Christmas two campsites were burned down in the same area, one right in front of my church. Public safety people, fire department etc., told us that camps had been burned in several different areas of town where homeless people congregate to sleep.

Generally the conversation around public camps has to do with unsightliness or the fears that local housed residents or business people have. These concerns need to be addressed but the fundamental issue is that people, human beings with all the needs of any other human being, are sleeping on concrete sidewalks in makeshift huts or in tents without sanitation, running water or garbage service. Theses shanty towns are smaller than the ones we see in the news outside large cities in the developing world, but for the people who live in them, life is anything but pleasant even though they are living in one of the wealthiest countries in the world.


In the campsite that is currently being cleaned up - now that an incident has taken place- there were men and women, couples and a family with children. Likely they felt safer in a place with other people near a church and a school where people treat them with some dignity. But it is not a good place for campers. Along with the Director of a small school across the street we have been pushing for the last year for a protected zone around the school - a block or two around the school so that parents don't have to guide their children around tents and sleeping people to get them into school. Although we had been assured that our request was a good one and that the street would be kept clear while the city worked for longer term solutions, there was little follow through after the first few weeks.

What we need in our city is more housing that is affordable and accessible to families and individuals just starting out or for those who work in necessary service industries where the pay is not high enough to cover the cost of the market rate apartments that are springing up everywhere that a developer can manage to purchase the land. Long term thinking needs to include the needs of people at all levels of income or the creation of ghettos and shanty towns will continue to be the only option left for the poorest of the poor. When the low cost studio and one bedroom apartments are filled with working people who cannot afford to move into market rate housing or cannot find affordable housing near enough to their jobs, then there are no places left for the poorest people even when there are housing vouchers to assist them.

Other countries, other cities have figured out how to care for their citizens. We need to do the same.