Happy
Solstice everyone!
May
every blessing be yours!
It’s good to be together in our deep green Humanist Church. Because
this is a humanist church, we’re celebrating the Solstice instead of
Christmas. We’re bypassing Christmas and all that pressure to buy
things for family members and friends. What we have here, instead, is
our own togetherness. Enjoy!
And we are here on the
eve of a new era. We don’t know what the future holds so I want to put
out a few Humanist Hopes
toward what I would like to see happen. As Humanists, we don’t pray
and we don’t worship. But we
HOPE
in our mindful hearts.
Let’s say there
are six dimensions or directions:
right, left, front, back, above and below or east, west, north, south, up,
and down. I’ve got a
Humanist Hope
for all of them.
Looking east, we run
right into Washington D.C., a veritable vipers’ pit of war and
money-mongering hoodlums. Let’s put our mindful hearts together in
HOPES
that the next administration moves from its retro and leaden centrist
beginnings to a progressive bandwagon and banishes the whole self-serving
political-economic system that’s currently eating its whole environment
along with all the rest of us. Here’s
HOPING
that we move from corporate capitalism, imperialism, globalization, and a
growth economy to a humble small is beautiful, decentralized, steady state
economy.
Looking west, we’re
gazing out over the Pacific. Human pollutants make it more acidic
every day, make it hold less oxygen, support less plankton, less life.
Let’s
HOPE
that the great ocean gets a break from all the pollutants pouring into it
from rivers and from the toxic air, wind, and rain that blend with it.
Surely that depleted uranium that the U.S. sprayed all over the coastal
Middle East is blowing now across the Pacific and coming back to us.
Nevertheless, I
HOPE
that the kelp and the corral make a comeback and the dolphins, fish, and
whales live a natural life again in abundance.
Turning toward the North, what do I see but MicroSoft in Seattle. The oil
barons are on the decline and the computer barons are on the ascendency. My
HOPE
is that, as computers replace cars in our aspirations and dreams, we are
lifted out of the dead end that the barons of petroleum transportation have
driven us to. You know, we’re choosing to live in a world of microwaves of
our own making and we don’t know what’s in store for us and for life in such
a massive swirl of microwaves moving not only all around us but through us.
My
HOPE
is that organisms come to no harm in this new world.
Turning toward the
South, there is, or was, the great Amazon rain forest. Let’s hold out
HOPE
that the next few
decades of human destruction do not result in the death of this fantastic
region. I
HOPE
that we all keep the
Amazon in our mindful hearts, and that we all find a way of helping it
survive even from here in the U.S. There are things that we can do as
individuals and as organizations. We can boycott products that the
Amazon is being torn down to produce. I
HOPE
that each of us finds a
way to help.
Looking up now, I have
to
HOPE
that the air and atmosphere regain the integrity that life brought to it for
a long, long time before the advent of industrial humankind. It has to
recover the balance and the chemistry in sync with the life that breathes
it. My
HOPE
is that the atmosphere heals in our life times and humans heal with it. Or
vice versa. We are all susceptible to untold sicknesses because of bad air,
or what’s passing through the air. My
HOPE
is that we come to our senses, heal ourselves and our societies, stop
trashing our environment, and the air will be our friend again.
Looking down, we all
know there’s the ground somewhere. But it’s hard to see because it’s
so covered up with asphalt and cement, or wood and metal, that it’s hard to
recognize it. Where can the Earth breathe today?
There are so many buildings, so many cars and highways and parking lots, so
many cities, it’s hard to know the ground. Sad to say, the Earth has an
aggressive and malignant cancer upon it. Of course, the Earth has its own
requirements for staying alive and will do what it needs to do to free
itself of this cancer we call “civilization.” My
HOPE
is that we cease and desist from being the enemy of Earth and help it, and
ourselves, recover from lethal disease. Here’s
HOPING
that help for the Earth is on its way.
Just like I can
say there are six dimensions or directions, so I can say there are six
fields of
HOPE
that I want to extend to you today:
a
HOPE
for yourselves, our society, our politics, our culture, our region, and our
environment. I
HOPE
that all of you as individuals escape the consumer society that’s thrust
upon us all from every corner and build a niche for yourselves and your
family and friends in a new, sustainable world; I
HOPE
that our society itself becomes transformed into a network of humane
villages conscious that the Earth has needs of its own that have to be met;
I
HOPE
that our politics becomes based on a new bottom line, and the Spiritual
Progressives say:
compassion and generosity rather than money and power; I
HOPE
that our culture becomes inclusive of all the human diversity there is while
at the same time adheres to a universal standard of dignity and human
rights; I
HOPE
that we all learn to live within our regions, bioregions rather than
political regions, living on the plants and supporting the animals whose
habitat it is
─
we don’t really have to be importing foods and products from around the
world; I
HOPE
that we come to know our environment to be as important as ourselves and
take the same care with it.
Let’s all hold out these
HOPES
on this, the longest night of 2008. Light is on its way. Every day
forward, we’ll be seeing more light until we meet again on the Solstice in
June. By then, we’ll have put some of these
HOPES
into action. We’ll talk action in 2009. Our deep green Humanist Church
invites you to go into action in the coming year on deep green agendas.
Thank you from coming to
Humanist Hall on this Winter Solstice.
