First Parish Unitarian UniversalistWe Need a New Creation Story
A homily by the Reverend Diane D. Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
April 22, 2007 – EARTH DAY
Dramatic Reading
Startull: the Story of an Average Yellow Star: An Evolutionary Parable by Connie Barlow, starring Chris Shoemaker, Brian Shoemaker and Amika Kemmler Ernst (see thegreatstory.org).
Second Reading
“Four reasons why church people should be in the forefront of the Stop Global Warming movement” from an article by Bill McKibben in The Christian Century, February 20, 2007.
Homily
- Why do we need a new creation story?
- Our old one – from Genesis in the Hebrew scriptures - is ancient. As the leading myth in the industrialized world – ie the polluting, energy-consuming world - it must be viewed as suspect in our current environmental crisis. If not a culprit contributor to that crisis, it certainly didn’t prevent it.
- We need a new creation story that will move us to turn Global Warming around.
- Why do we need a new creation story?
- In our old creation story, God said to man and woman, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living that that moves upon the earth.” (Gen1:28).
- Well, we multiplied and our dominion, it turns out, is having lasting and destructive effects. Too bad the Bible didn’t tell us to be good stewards.
- We need a new creation story that will move us to turn Global Warming around.
- What do we need in a new creation story?
- We need one that will help us heed scientific warnings, so we need a creation story based on scientific evidence. The earth’s population—human and otherwise— can no longer afford to have the leading creation myth in the industrialized world be a religious myth divorced from, and even contrary to, science.
- We need a creation story that teaches us the truth of evolution: that, though past evolution worked to produce life as we know it on this amazing earth, future evolution will continue to work to preserve life, but it may not be our life. Life will continue to evolve to adapt to conditions on the earth as it always has, conditions now largely caused by human effect, but the question is: will the life that evolves include human life, or not?
- What do we need in a new creation story?
- We need a creation story that will spark Americans’ imaginations and nurture the fire of our commitment to change our household habits and also be a force of policy change on the state and national levels. We are the world’s greatest consumers. Speaking for myself, it’s not easy to “reduce, reuse and recycle” = the 3R’s of energy conservation (for more information, visit the Girl Scout’s exhibit –among many--at the Earthday Fair today) so a new creation story that works for me, at least, must be an inspirational one. More difficult than personal change is public policy change, given the powerful money interests serving the status quo, so a new creation story must be inspirational.
- What do we need in a new creation story?
- One that establishes us as humans as part of –not dominant over—the earth and all therein. In this respect, we UU’s have the values—if not the behavior— right: look at our seventh principle, which if you cannot remember it is printed in the grey hymnal just before Hymn #1: “respect for the interconnected web of all existence of which we are a part.” Note that we say that we are merely a part. But, it’s kind of flatly stated. We need a creation story that is fun, fiery, vivid, and most of all motivational.
- What do we need in a new creation story?
- We need a creation story that helps us marvel at the vast dimensions of the universe- and, even, possibly, other universes. Has there been intelligent life is some other universe? How long did it survive? Will we survive long enough to meet it?
- We need a creation story that helps us marvel at the intricacies of the human eye- an eye that can gaze at the far away stars that gave us our birth… and equally examine close up the fine powdery pollen inside the daffodils now (thankfully) blooming: an eye that evolved, with all its imperfections, in the evolutionary process of natural selection.
We do not need the Biblical creation myth to explain the nature of our world. We have other ways, ever evolving through science, to understand and marvel at it… the story science tells is as cosmic, as mythic as the story Genesis told. May it inspire us to love this universe that is our home in our very bones, and to love its future even more.
Why do we need a new creation story? We need a new creation story that will MOVE US to turn Global Warming around.