{"id":15497,"date":"2015-09-29T18:16:58","date_gmt":"2015-09-29T22:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/?p=15497"},"modified":"2015-09-29T18:18:02","modified_gmt":"2015-09-29T22:18:02","slug":"environmental-justice-when-only-love-is-enough-by-rev-nancy-mcdonald-ladd-river-road-uu-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/environmental-justice-when-only-love-is-enough-by-rev-nancy-mcdonald-ladd-river-road-uu-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Environmental Justice: When Only Love Is Enough by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, River Road UU Church"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Rev__Nancy_in_Robe-smaller\"
Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I grew up as a rather prayerful Catholic girl in the middle of nowhere. And perhaps more than any innate sense of justice-seeking, more than any clearly delineated theology \u2013 the hallmark of my religious sensibility in those early years was the fact that I was absolutely enamored by the beauty of the sacred. In fact, I was in love with God so acutely that for most of my young life it felt like it was me and God \u2013 God and me \u2013 the two of us against everything scary, every injustice, every challenge. The two of us, God and me, in it together. And my heroes in those days, in these days too \u2013 were, are – the great female mystics of the Catholic Christian tradition who felt themselves to be in love with God just like me \u2013 and who were crucially able not only to feel that love as I did but to use that love \u2013 a love that called them out of all isolation and into holy work in the world.<\/p>\n

One of the greatest of those female mystics was Hildegard of Bingen who was overcome regularly by a profound sense of spiritual transport \u2013 lifted out of her body and out of the everyday and into perfect communion with a source of grace she called viriditas<\/em> \u2013 which in the Latin means Greenness.<\/p>\n

The living, pulsing, thriving greenness of creation worked itself into her heart and she fell in love not just with a traditional notion of God, but with the greenness at the heart of things, the greenness at the heart of the earth itself, which held her, created her, and called her forth to work for justice in her own time.<\/p>\n

Hildegard once wrote that there is one thing upon which our demand for justice depends and that \u2013 quite simply \u2013 is our willingness to fall in love with creation over and over again and let that love change our hearts and our minds and our actions. In her words, \u201cWe shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice.\u00a0 If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.\u201d<\/p>\n

We are at a crucial juncture in these our days \u2013 where anger over the current and impending climate crisis of our time is not enough.\u00a0 Where even fear for what lies ahead for our children and our grandchildren, for the cities claimed by the seas \u2013 even that fear is not enough.\u00a0 And righteousness, railing against those who are yet so blind they do not see the moral obligation to care for the earth our mother \u2013 even righteousness is not enough.\u00a0 We are at a crucial juncture in these days where perhaps only love is enough \u2013 falling in love with creation and letting that love activate and agitate us and our whole system toward justice.<\/p>\n

In 1968, when Apollo 8 turned its camera lens back upon the earth and captured this spinning blue ball in the image we know iconically as Earthrise \u2013 for the very first time, millions of people saw just exactly what this home we share looked like, how precious and fragile and magnificent it was.\u00a0 And millions of people, looking at her there, saw the earth and fell in love at first sight.\u00a0 A love so commanding we could never go back.<\/p>\n

Today, led by the example of Pope Francis who calls us to fall in love with the earth and with our brothers and sisters holding on for dear life upon her, we gather to be reminded of the power of that love.\u00a0 The circles of commitment to climate justice will broaden not by our anger or our fear or our righteousness, but by a passion born of devotion to this the only home we shall ever know, the very viriditas<\/em> \u2013 greenness \u2013 that runs as grace and life and hope through our veins.<\/p>\n

So go from this place, friends \u2013 charged to fall in love again with the source from which we rise.\u00a0 Knowing that this love can only pull us upward out of every dullness that ever settled on our hearts and may that love act upon us and upon those who have yet to hear our call in ways that can never be ignored, but captured in the heart \u2013 calling us out of all of our isolation and into the holy work ahead.<\/p>\n

(Editor: this “Call to Action” was given on September 23, 2015 at the “For the Beauty of the Earth” service at All Souls Church, Unitarian as part of the celebrations of the Pope’s visit to Washington, DC.)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I grew up as a rather prayerful Catholic girl in the middle of nowhere. And perhaps more than any innate sense of justice-seeking, more than any clearly delineated theology \u2013 the hallmark of my religious sensibility in those early years was the fact that I was absolutely enamored by the beauty of the sacred. In … Continue reading Environmental Justice: When Only Love Is Enough by Rev. Nancy McDonald Ladd, River Road UU Church<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1313],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-commentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15497"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15501,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15497\/revisions\/15501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uusj.net\/wp1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}