All Creatures, Embracing Earth

Reading from Book of J (Genesis)

"Look," said Yahweh, "the earthling seems like one of us, knowing good and bad. And now he may blindly reach out his hand, grasp the tree of life as well, eat, and live forever."

Now Yahweh took him out of the Garden of Eden to toil-in the soil from which he was taken.

The earthling was driven forward; now, settled there-east of Eden-the winged sphinxes and waving sword, both sides flashing, to watch the way to the Tree of Life.

Now the man knew Hava, his wife, in the flesh; she conceived Cain: "I have created a man as Yahweh has," she said when he was born. She conceived again: Abel his brother was born. Abel, it turned out, was a watcher of sheep, Cain a tiller of soil.

The days turned into the past: one day, Cain brought an offering to Yahweh, from fruit of the earth. Abel also brought an offering, from the choicest of his flock, from its fat parts, and Yahweh was moved by Abel and his holocaust. Yet by Cain and his holocaust he was unmoved. This disturbed Cain deeply, his face fell.

"What so disturbs you?" said Yahweh to Cain. "Why wear a face so fallen? Look up: if you conceive good it is moving; if not good, sin is an open door, a demon crouching there. It will rise to you, though you be above it."

Cain was speaking to his brother Abel, and then it happened: out in the field, Cain turned to his brother, killing him.

Now Yahweh said to Cain: "Where is your brother, Abel?" "I didn't know it is I," he answered, "that am my brother's watchman."

"What have you done?" Yahweh said. "A voice-your brother's blood-cries to me from the earth. And so it be a curse: the soil is embittered to you. Your brother's blood sticks in its throat.

"You may work the ground but it won't yield to you, its strength held within. Homeless you will be on the land, blown in the wind."

"My sentence is stronger than my life" Cain said to Yahweh. "Look: today you drove me from the face of the earth-you turned your face from me. I return nowhere, homeless as the blowing wind. All who find me may kill me."

"By my word it will be known," said Yahweh, "any killer of Cain will be cut to the root-seven times deeper." Now Yahweh touched Cain with a mark: a warning not to kill him, to all who may find him.

Cain turned away from Yahweh's presence, settled in a windblown land, east of Eden.

Today's service serves four purposes: First of all, it is a learning activity for our children, who are studying the life of St. Francis of Assisi. Secondly, many of us, children included, love animals. By inviting everybody to bring our animals to church this Sunday we affirm our love for our animal companions. Third it gives us a chance to compare our lives and values and world views with those in the story of the Takers and the Leavers, which you'll hear in a moment. Finally, this service gives us our animal companions a chance to remind us that we Takers don't yet have complete control over the world. As long as this is so, there is hope!

Before I get to the story of the Takers and the Leavers, I want to talk about The Market. The Dow hit an all time high on Friday ­ 9,736 points ­ just 264 points shy of 10,000. Harvey Cox, writing in the latest issue of The Atlantic Monthly tells us that:

"The Market is becoming more like the Yahewh of the Old Testament ­ not just one superior deity contending with others but the Supreme Deity, the only true God, whose reign must now be universally accepted and who allows for no rivals."

He goes on to describe "transubstantiation," an element of Catholic theology, in which ordinary bread and wine become vehicles of the holy. He continues,

In the mass of The Market a reverse process occurs. Things that have been held sacred transmute into interchangeable items for sale. Land is a good example. For millennia it has held various meanings, many of them numinous. It has been Mother Earth, ancestral resting place, holy mountain, enchanted forest, tribal homeland, aesthetic inspiration, sacred turf, and much more. But when The Market's Sanctus bell rings and the elements are elevated, all these complex meanings of land melt into one: real estate. At the right price no land is not for sale, and this includes everything from burial grounds to the cove of the local fertility sprite. This radical desacralization dramatically alters the human relationship to land; the same happens with water, air, space, and soon (it is predicted) the heavenly bodies.

This week I read in the paper news about a new bridge which will traverse the St. John's River, making I-4 a wider and safer highway. The price is the excavation of a midden ­ the desacralization of an ancient First People's site. This week's paper also spoke of the challenges ahead for those who want to preserve wet lands abutting Spruce Creek ­ namely the rising cost of waterfront property and the shortage of cash.

If you've been to the movies lately, I'm sure many of you have seen the trailer for the film Instinct. It stars Anthony Hopkins and Cuba Gooding, Jr. It was inspired by the book Ishmael, written by Daniel Quinn. Since the film isn't out yet, much as I'd like to, I can't make today's sermon a "movie review" sermon. Instead, I will share with you some of the ideas Daniel Quinn puts forward in his book, which is mostly a dialogue between two characters: the narrator, a man, a writer whose name we never learn and Ishmael, a gorilla. The man is a student of the gorilla. The book is a record of their conversations and the lessons the man learns.

The gorilla uses Socratic method to help the man learn many basic truths. First among these is the Law of Community of Life, which is that competition is ok, war is not. The second is that the world is divided into basically two cultures: Takers (most of humankind) and Leavers (some of humankind and all creatures). While humankind evolved from the Leaver culture, at the time of the agricultural revolution, humankind began to develop its own culture ­ the Taker culture.

Taker culture believes in unlimited competition. And the pupil learns through considering Ismael's questions that we members of the Taker culture break the peace-keeping law of limited competition in four ways.

First, we exterminate our competitors. The narrator, in coming to this conclusion, elaborates: "[This] never happens in the wild. In the wild, animals will defend their territories and their kills and they will invade their competitors' territories and preempt their kills. Some species even include competitors among their prey, but they never hunt competitors down just to make them dead, the way ranchers and farmers do with coyotes and foxes and crows. What they hunt, they eat." Ishmael points out that animals will also kill in self-defense or when they feel threatened. However, while animals may organize to find food, they do not organize to kill competitors or even animals who prey on them.

Second, the pupil continues, "Takers systematically destroy their competitors' food to make room for their own. Nothing like this occurs in the natural community. The rule there is: Take what you need, and leave the rest alone."

Third, "Takers deny their competitors access to food. In the wild, the rule is: You may deny your competitors access to what you're eating, but you may not deny them access to food in general [The Taker] policy is: Every square foot of this planet belongs to us, so if we put it all under cultivation, then all our competitors are just plain out of luck and will have to become extinct."

Fourth, every being ­ plant and animal ­ stores food. In the Leaver culture animals store food on their bodies, some in their hives. In fact, the system depends on storage: "the green plants store food for the plant eaters, the plant eaters store food for the predators, and so on." Takers store food only for themselves and for tomorrows beyond and beyond and beyond.

Ishmael is pleased that his pupil has figured all this out. However, he asks his pupil to think more deeply, to see the effect of these four ways the Taker culture deviates from the Leaver culture. The man figures out that the Leaver culture promotes millions of species, in short, diversity. The Taker culture's war on competitors promotes homogeneity. While the Leaver culture is ecologically enduring, the Taker environment is ecologically fragile. The diversity in the Leaver culture promotes stability in population growth and balance in the ecosystem, whereas the Takers' culture of unlimited competition leads to increased food production, which, in turn, leads to increased population, and, therefore, imbalance for the ecosystem.

Ishmael helps his student figure out that the Leavers must have written the myth of the Garden of Eden and the story of Cain and Abel. The story would be the Leavers' explanation for the reason why the expanding agricultural revolution (symbolized by Cain) annihilated the Semitic herders (symbolized by Abel). Cain slew Abel. Agriculture, following the god which Harvey Cox would this month call The Market, killed off the Leaver culture which preceded it ­ the culture which lived in harmony with the land. The story of Cain and Abel would provide an explanation for the Leaver people of what happened to their culture.

Leavers life patterns evolve very slowly over time. They do not need laws or rules to govern their lives because they trust the system, the gods. Takers, on the other hand, need to know what is the right way. They do not trust the gods, they trust only themselves. So they invent laws and rules to govern their lives out of a lack of trust. Leavers belong to the world, and the ever evolving process of creation goes on forever. Takers believe the world belongs to them, that creation was a once-in-an-eon event, and that from here on out they are in charge. Every indicator we have is that our planet earth is in grave danger because of the Taker culture.

What's more, Takers look down on Leavers. Takers see human Leavers as living like animals, and they don't want to live like animals. Animals don't have any control over their lives, because they don't have any control over their food supply.

I see you all out there ­ some of you hanging on to a dog leash, or holding a caged animal, or restraining a cat. I ask, which one of you would truly trade places with your animal companion? Which one of you would choose to chase your tail or bits of crumpled paper in a mock battle, in preference to doing battle by telephone or e-mail? Which one of you would choose to swim through plastic castle arches and nibble insect flakes at the surface of the water, in preference to motoring under interstate highway bridges and nibbling fast food french fries on the run? Which one of you would choose to talk in squawks and peck at your owner's furniture in preference to speaking so that you are possibly understood and protecting your precious buffet from dust, smudges, spills, and, yes, bird pecks.

However, Ishmael is quick to teach his pupil that the way out of our Taker/Dominator role is not to go back to what was, but to reach forward to what may be. We do not have to live as animals or as the Timucuans did here once or as extant human Leaver cultures do today ­ the Bushmen of Africa, for instance or the Kreen-Akore of Brazil. Our development has taken us to a different place. We need to evolve from where we are into another culture ­ a culture which lives in greater harmony with its environment.

Yesterday I was at a meeting for the Florida District Training and Church Management Committee. I brought lunch for the committee ­ cheese or humus sandwiches, salad, fruit, cookies, and ice tea. No meat. By way of apology I explained that I am a vegetarian. Ed Porteus, District President responded with these graceful words of acceptance. Today, he said, some of us excuse Thomas Jefferson for owning slaves, saying he was a man of his times. Two hundred years from now, he continued, our descendants will think it strange we were still eating meat at the close of the twentieth century.

There is no question that a vegetarian diet is less harmful to our planet. It is one of the things we can do to try to restore balance to our ecosystem. However, it is not the only way. Those who are interested in taking a personal environmental audit may wish to consult EarthScore, a guide for such an exercise. It is full of helpful tips and a surprising amount of information. I will talk more about it and other ways to change our ways of living next week.

Daniel Quinn does end the book Ishmael on a hopeful note. He says that if the Takers, as a species, are able to reverse the Genesis story ­ (1) stop Cain from murdering Abel ­ that is, to live in greater balance with our eco-system; and (2) relinquish the idea that humankind should be in charge of who lives and who dies ­ then Creation has a chance to survive. For if we continue being a Taker culture, then all of creation becomes imprisoned in a system bent on consuming all that is, devouring Earth, annihilating life as we know it.

Let us sing a hymn to our dear earth, #163, "For the Earth Forever Turning."