Category Archives: Sustainability

Respect for and care for the planet. Taking responsibility for the good green Earth.

A Climate Dialogue: the Challenge Before Us

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The day Pete Seeger died, Susan Lince composed a song on climate change in honor of Pete. The song, written as a lament spoken back to us by our grandchildren and all future generations, asks repeatedly “You knew… Why didn’t you take a stand?”

Susan and John Lince-Hopkins created Requiem2020.org as a means of rallying artists to widen public consciousness and awaken a new sense of ecological responsibility in the face of climate change and climate departure. John and Susan taught and painted in Alaska. John, a scientist as well as painter, helped supervise the clean-up operation following Exxon-Valdez.

Click HERE for the Evite to First Tuesday Dialogues’ program on Climate Departure led by John and Susan. The song on climate departure, arranged with Susan’s grandson, will debut at this event.

Date: Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Time: 7:00 – 8:30 P.M.
Place: Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church, 145 Engler Blvd., Chaska, MN 55318.

When at wit’s end

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These are strange times that often take us to our wit’s end. No need to enumerate.

A rendering of Psalm 107 from The Book of Psalms in Metre and the Scottish Hymnal , published in 1879 by the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, perhaps spoke to the book’s original owner, John Campbell of Blair Mill, Scotland, when he bought the copy now in my possession, inscribed with his name and the date, January 20, 1880. January is nasty in Scotland. Today it’s nasty all across America.

A portion of Psalm 107 is rendered this way:

Who go to sea in ships, and in
great waters trading be,
Within the deep these men God’s works
and his great wonders see.
For he commands, and forth in haste
the stormy tempest flies,
Which makes the sea with rolling waves
aloft to swell and rise.
They mount to heav’n, then to the depths
they do go down again;
Their soul doth faint and melt away
with trouble and with pain.
They reel and stagger like one drunk,
at their wit’s end they be:
Then they to God in trouble cry,
who from them stairs doth free.
The storm is chang’d into a calm
at his command and will;
So that the waves, which rag’d before,
are quiet now and still.

– Psalm 107:23-29

If we cannot one can identify with nothing else, we each know the soul that faints and melts away with trouble and pain. We reel and stagger like one drunk, at their wits end.

Steve Shoemaker’s poem “A Psalm for Each Kind of Day” – posted previously on Views from the Edge – recognizes the breadth and depth of the psalms. Some days the best one can do is recognize the feeling. Only those who feel will find their way to quiet stillness.

Thanks to a comment from Dennis Aubrey of Via Lucis for prompting the reflection this morning.

Listening to the Stones from the Wall Street Wall

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Last evening we published Susan Lince’s wonderful poem “Every Stone Shall Cry” and her accompanying art work. Thanks to Susan for permission to publish them.

Not everyone is familiar with this line about the stones. The poetry of the stones crying out has its roots in Hebrew Scripture in a poem from the Book of Habakkuk, later echoed by Luke as Jesus’ response to those who want to silence his disciples and protesters to Roman occupation – “I tell you,” says Jesus riding on an ass into the city occupied by the Romans, “if these [people] were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40).

The original Ode of Woe against the Chaldeans’ foreign interventions and military-economic occupation becomes, on Jesus’ lips, the ode against the Roman system of occupation and internal collaboration by indigenous leaders, and, on Susan’s lips, it echoes from the walls of intractable powers that nature itself will not long abide in silence. Nature will not be silent! Think of the stones in the wall of Wall Street. Even the stones cry out against the abuse. Here’s the text from the Book of Habakkuk where the reference to the crying stones first appears:

Woe to him who heaps up what is not his own—
for how long? —
and loads himself with pledges!”
Will not your debtors suddenly arise,
and those awake who will make you tremble?
Then you will be spoil for them.
Because you have plundered many nations,
all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder you,
for the blood of man and violence to the earth,
to cities and all who dwell in them.
Woe to him who gets evil gain for his house [society/empire],
to set his nest on high,
to be safe from the reach of harm!
You have devised shame for your house
by cutting off many peoples;
you have forfeited your life.
For the stone will cry out from the wall,and the beam from the woodwork respond.
Woe to him who builds a town with blood…

– Habakkuk 2: 6b-12a

The ode against the Chaldean Empire ends with a lovely line looking for the day when the most intimate knowledge of the Breath of Life will cover the earth “as the waters cover the sea” and the stones will no long cry.

Susan is a writer, painter, poet, composer, environmental and social justice activist. She and her spouse, John Lince-Hopkins, developed the movement Requiem2020. They will lead the First Tuesday Dialogues event on Climate Departure at Shepherd of the Hill Presbyterian Church in Chaska, MN Tuesday evening, March 4, at 7:00 P.M.

Poem: Every Stone Shall Cry

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Original art by Susan Lince - "Every Stone Shall Cry"

Original art by Susan Lince – “Every Stone Shall Cry”

The stone lies
Near the pile of boulders
In the city park
Watching over the man asleep
In his cardboard shelter
And cries.

And every stone shall cry

The stone cries
Along the roadside
As the bomb explodes
Killing young soldiers
As well as the children nearby.

And every stone shall cry

The stone knows to cry
Even before the excavator
Upheaves the earth
To take away the coal
And leaves only a ragged empty space.

And every stone shall cry.

The ancient stones
Of the wailing wall
Cry as they have cried for centuries,
Listening to the prayers
Of the sufferers
And the selfish,
The grieving,
And the greedy
That reverberate
With echoes of misunderstanding
About who has been left out
Of the Kingdom of God on Earth.

And every stone shall cry.

Every stone shall cry
Yet goes unheard,
As humankind,
With hardening core,
Pushes violence, power,
Injustice, and neglect
Rumbling across the world
Like boulders.

– Susan Lince, artist and poet, Chaska, MN.

Planetary Pledge

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We pledge allegiance to the earth

that sustains humanity,

and to the land, air, water, and sun

on which our future rests:

one fragile creation

in our hands to preserve and protect,

with equality, freedom, justice,

and peace for all

.

  – Steven Shoemaker and

Joan Humphrey Lefkow,

2007

The headless chicken brigade

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Prince Charles recently called climate deniers “the headless chicken brigade”.</p>

“It is baffling, I must say, that in our modern world we have such blind trust in science and technology that we all accept what science tells us about everything – until, that is, it comes to climate science. 

“All of a sudden, and with a barrage of sheer intimidation, we are told by powerful groups of deniers that the scientists are wrong and we must  abandon all our faith in so much overwhelming scientific evidence.

“So, thank goodness for our young entrepreneurs here this evening, who have the far-sightedness and confidence in what they know is happening to ignore the headless chicken brigade and do something practical to help.

“As you may possibly have noticed from time to   time, I have tended to make a habit of sticking my head above the parapet and generally getting it shot off for pointing out what has always been blindingly obvious to me. 

“Perhaps it has been too uncomfortable for those with vested interests to acknowledge, but we have spent the best part of the past century enthusiastically testing the world to utter destruction; not looking closely enough at the long-term impact our actions will have.”

– Prince Charles at award ceremony honoring young green entrepreneur.

Think Headless Chicken Brigade Keystone Pipeline.

 

Winston Churchill on Climate Departure

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What might Winston Churchill say about climate change and the prognosis of climate departure around 2020?

“So they go on in strange paradox, decided only to be undecided, resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all-powerful to be impotent…  Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger.  The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to its close.  In its place we are now entering a period of consequences….  We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…” 

                 – Winston Churchill, November 12, 1936

 

The Last Lion - Winston Churchill

The Last Lion – Winston Churchill

The View from the Bristlecone Pines

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Bristlecone Pines photo

Bristlecone Pines photo

Clinging tenaciously to the ridgetops
and twisted by the winds,
bristlecone pines are the oldest
living trees on Earth. The oldest
of them, found only in the White
Mountains of California, are
4,600 years old. Those pines were
already 1,400 years old when the
Egyptians were building the pyramids.

The Bristlecone Pines on Windy Ridge,
Colorado (picture, taken by friend
Harry Strong) are nearly 1,000 years
old.

These gnarled trees have endured
strong winds, cold temperatures,
drought and poor soils. They learn
to grow horizontally. The sign posted
on Windy Ridge invites visitors to
“walk through these survivors and
stand watch with them over the vast
South Park.”

How will these remarkably adaptive
creatures do with the projection of
Climate Departure? Are they calling
out for help from down below, echoed
back to them in song by Pete Seeger’s
“God’s Countin’ on Me; God’s Countin’
on you”?

You might say that Pete’s life was a
reply to the Bristlecone pines, a
modern day Habakkuk whose writing
we have from the time when the Bristle-
cone Pines were just teenagers:

“I will stand upon my
watch, and set me upon the tower,
and will watch to see [God] will say
to me, that I will answer when I am
reproved. And the LORD answered me,
and said, Write the vision and make
it plain upon tablets, that he may
run who reads it.”

Every Stone Shall Cry

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The stone lies

Near the pile of boulders

In the city park

Watching over the man asleep

In his cardboard shelter

And cries.

 

And every stone shall cry

 

The stone cries

Along the roadside

As the bomb explodes

Killing young  soldiers

As well as the children nearby.

 

And every stone shall cry

 

The stone knows to cry

Even before the excavator

Upheaves the earth

To take away the coal

And leaves only a ragged empty space.

 

And every stone shall cry.

 

The ancient stones

Of the wailing wall

Cry as they have cried for centuries

Listening to the prayers

Of the sufferers

And the selfish

The grieving

And the greedy

That reverberate

With echoes of misunderstanding

About who has been left out

Of the Kingdom of God .

 

And every stone shall cry.

 

Every stone shall cry

Yet goes unheard

As humankind

With hardening core

Pushes  violence

Power

Injustice

And neglect

Rumbling across the world like boulders.

– Susan Lince, Chaska, MN, January 26, 2014

The Perpetual Question

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Yet Again, for the 21st Century:

The Perpetual Question
 
Based upon a preponderance of evidence, the question of climate change and its potential ramifications is no longer a valid debate for the 21st century.  Once again, like thunder reverberating from Genesis, comes the ancient and perpetual question:

                             “Am I my Brother’s Keeper”?

As we reach the tipping point of climate and climate departure becomes a global concern through the remainder of the 21st Century, a driving and as yet unaddressed question looms large before us:

          “In light of what we now know, how are we to be the keepers of our brothers and sisters as our world changes and climate stress affects vast populations”?

The UN High Commission on Refuges (UNHCR) and the governments of the world have not yet addressed this question nor adopted a legal definition of “Climate Refugee”.

The year 2020 is a statistical marker, more or less, when we begin to see the first indications of climate departure in the western Pacific near Indonesia.  In the ensuing 50 years or so, climate departure is projected to spread from the tropics to the poles until it becomes global.

The time is NOW to begin the discussion. 

– John Lince-Hopkins, scientist, artist, and developer of Requiem.org. (http://requiem2020.org)

NOTE TO THE READER: Please chime in here or on Requiem.org and help spread awareness and the consideration of the question. Thank you, John, for raising the perpetual question.