Speaking of my Masters, I really haven't had but a handful of half cups of hot coffee since then. I took my coffee with milk, and the shelf-safe milk in Mexico really, really upset my stomach. I still liked iced coffee all this time, with milk, but if I wanted a hot beverage, I'd stick to tea.
Well, last week when I visited Lafayette to preach, I poured a small cup of hot coffee before realizing there was no milk left. Not wanting to waste it, I figured I'd just suck it up and suck it down.
But I liked it.
Just to test this, I had a cup of coffee, black, with my friend Miss Ruth while visiting her in the nursing home, and another cup of coffee, black, during my early morning drive to Baton Rouge for a meeting yesterday.
And I still like it.
I've always thought myself to be a reasonable blend of my parents, though perhaps more strongly resembling the Spains in many ways. However, despite my lack of blue eyes, despite the fact that I'm kind of average height, this is a clear, direct connection to my mother and her people. I can't believe it either, but I like my hot coffee pollutant free now. (Iced coffee will still require milk. Mmm.) (And let's be clear: I still really, really like tea.)
Growing and changing is good. As I mentioned, I preached in Lafayette last weekend. I also preached in Morgan City this winter, and this morning, I preached at Bayou Blue. It's changed a little bit each time, but I've generally been preaching about my work in the wetlands in South Louisiana, and water issues in general. I'm a little nervous, but I thought I'd share a sort of composite of my sermons. Consider this a Presbyterian environmental geography lesson:
Isaiah 43:16-21
Acts 2:14a, 36-41
Psalm
65Psalm 104:1-13
Romans 8:18-25
John 1:1-5
John 4:7-15
I am here
today to talk with you about water. April 22 was Earth Day, and with a little
help from curriculum put forth by Creation Justice Ministries, many churches
are celebrating creation through the lens of water.
Now, I love
water. I grew up in coastal New Jersey, a town
called Toms River, nestled between two rivers, a bay
and the ocean, as well as a beautiful stretch of brackish wetlands. My
childhood memories of summer are almost entirely connected to these beautiful
places. Surely there are a few rivers, lakes and bayous, or perhaps even the Gulf of Mexico that you have similar memories of. The
other connection I had growing up to water in my hometown is that it was very,
very polluted—a chemical company had buried hundreds of drums of waste, drums
that were not sealed properly and leaked toxins into the local water supply.
There were high rates of childhood cancer that weren’t “officially” traced back
to our drinking water supply until I was in high school. There are some areas
of Louisiana
that can relate to this experience, too.
As an
adult, I’ve studied geography and natural resources, making an effort to take
an active part in conservation. God called me here for a year of service
through the Presbytery of South Louisiana, to advocate for the wetlands here.
This has involved a lot of hands-on conservation, planting cord grass in old
canals and eroded spaces to help capture loose sediments and rebuild the area;
planting trees in urban spaces to help improve water quality and reduce the
effects of runoff; planting trees along fresh water diversions to help speed up
the natural reconstruction of long gone wetlands. This also involves teaching
volunteers who are visiting New Orleans about
coastal issues in Louisiana,
to give them greater context to their work. I network with organizations like
Presbyterians for Earth Care and the First People’s Conservation Council, I run
an online newsletter every month and a half or so to keep the story of
Louisiana’s wetlands fresh in people’s minds, and I try to help others organize
to learn about and take care of the incredible wetlands and waterways of this
region.
I also get
invited to preach once in a while.
One of the main reasons that we are so able to inhabit this
planet is water. The average human body is about 2/3 water, which regulates
body temperature, carries nutrients and oxygen to cells, and overall helps
organs to function. A human can die from dehydration in three days, as opposed
to three weeks without food. The earth we’re living on is also about 3/4 water,
over 97% of which is salt water, with almost 99% of the remaining fresh water
locked up in glaciers. If you’re keeping up with the numbers here, that’s less
than 1% of all the water on the planet—the same water that was on the planet
billions of years ago—that is actually accessible to us. We should obviously
take some interest in water as individuals.
As a
church, there are certainly spiritual interests in water. Water is some form is
mentioned in the Bible 722 times, as streams, wells, rain, rivers, and so on.
For your reference, I’ve only mentioned water 35 times so far. God created
water on the second day, right after creating light. Jesus is baptized with it,
uses water as a conversation piece with a Samaritan woman by a well, turns it
into wine, and later walks on it. The Psalms are full of references to being
lead beside still waters, and our readings today all discussed springs and
rivers in the wilderness. Many, many verses in the Bible talk about living
waters, about never being thirsty again if we would just drink God’s living
water.
So as it
turns out, water is pretty important to the church, plus you need something to
make your coffee with for fellowship and meetings.
I am often asked how my work with the
wetlands is relevant to the church. When people ask why the Presbytery is
sponsoring a Young Adult Volunteer to focus on wetlands issues, I generally
start with the simple answer: creation. God created the earth. If we are going
to honor God, we should honor His creation by showing respect and practicing
conservation to the best of our collective ability.
Answers can
certainly go more in depth than this. One of my favorite ideas concerning our
responsibility for creation has to do with how we behave as humans in the first
place. If we are created in God’s image, and we are reflections of God, and God
has greatly blessed us, then we should be blessing others. When we bless
others, “others” is not limited to people. I like this idea from the Iroquois Nation, that maintains that
there are many persons on the plant, and humans are just some of them. If we
are to be reflections of God, we should love and cherish all of creation just
as God loves and cherishes each one of us and every part of creation. He knows
every grain of sand, He knows every hair on our heads, and He knows each one of
us by name. That’s a pretty big charge to reflect, but we can at least do our
best by starting with the world surrounding us.
I want to
encourage you to think about water three different ways today: as a local
resource, as a global system, and as a form of spiritual capital.
Locally, I
think there are two problems with water: too much of it, or not enough. I’ve
heard many stories about how different areas used to be high and dry but now
stand as open water. I’ve heard about the flooding that happens after big
storms, or maybe not even such big storms. I’ve seen it pool on my street in New Orleans after an
average thunder storm. The Gulf of Mexico is
slowly creeping north, gaining speed and opening up new pathways through the
marshes and swamps. Between erosion, subsidence, and industry cutting open
canals, this region loses land faster than anywhere else in the world, nearly
two football fields an hour disappearing being overtaken by the water.
But this
water has its limits. The Gulf brings salt water, which kills trees, grasses,
and freshwater creatures. It threatens the drinking water supply, and is hardly
the only thing doing so. About a month ago, my friend Lindsey and I
participated in the Paddle Bayou Lafourche canoe trip through the
Barataria-Terrebonne National Estuary Program, or BTNEP. The trip is intended
to raise awareness of Bayou Lafourche, which is the main drinking water supply
for over 300,000 people in this region. As we paddled 50 miles from Donaldsonville
to Lockport, we
passed under many bridges. The grated bridges caught my attention, as cars
passed over. What could those cars possibly be dripping into the bayou,
straight into the drinking water supply? As we passed over countless oil and gas
pipelines, I thought about the Department of Natural Resources’ orphaned well
program. I find it interesting that it has such a cute name, like we should
feel sorry for this pipelines that don’t have parents, like they’re some kind
of Disney character that might grow up to be a fantastic princess. Truth is,
there are over 3000 wells that have no obvious owners, no paperwork filed, no
one keeping track of them. That’s 3000 potential slow leaks that the state is
very slowly checking up on to see that they are properly closed. That’s not to
mention thousands of other pipelines that could be leaking without companies’
knowledge.
Don’t get
me wrong—tap water in this country is very strictly regulated, much more so
than bottled water. Bottled water is good in times of emergency, but there are
many facilities cleaning water before it comes to your home. It’s still
critical that we remember what’s going into our water, because it has to go
somewhere if it’s not going to our sinks. There is a lot of pollution, too—BTNEP
hosts a bayou cleanup a few weeks before the paddling trip. The totals haven’t
been published yet this year, but in March 2013, several hundred people pulled
over 24,000 pieces of garbage from Bayou Lafourche. This ranges from cigarette
butts, which aren’t biodegradable and need to be disposed of properly, to empty
drink containers, to tires, to toilets, to couches.
Thinking on
a larger scale, let’s consider the Mississippi River
watershed. The waters that come down by New Orleans
originated in 31 different states as well as 2 provinces in Canada. Most of
those states are in the major agricultural areas of our country, so aside from
whatever random litter and mismanaged pollutants, there are also a lot of
chemical pesticides and fertilizers washing off the fields and heading this
way. Scary thought.
Globally,
water is just as precious as it is here and still carrying the precarious
status of being both threatened and threatening. We heard about major flooding
along the Gulf Coast
in Alabama and Florida
last week, with those storms that largely missed us in Louisiana. There were also major floods in
the Middle East in the past few days, affecting refugee communities in Syria and causing a landslide in northern Pakistan. The
rainy season in some African countries has caused a surge in mosquito
populations, carrying diseases like malaria. The Carteret
Islands of Papua New Guinea in the Pacific
have been completely and permanently evacuated because the seas have gotten too
high too consistently to stay any longer.
And what
about pollution? It’s a scary world out there. We have giant floating islands
of trash collected in the Pacific. Oil spills don’t just happen in Alaska and
the Gulf of Mexico, they happen in Kuwait in the Middle East, in Russia, in Scotland,
in Nova Scotia in Canada. Over 800,000 people around the world lack access to
safe drinking water, leaving people susceptible to waterborne illness like
dysentery, which can kill in days if left untreated. 3.4 million people die
each year from water-related illnesses. That’s like 75% of the population of Louisiana dying every
year.
And to
think, we as a planet share exactly ONE supply of water.
I don’t
tell you all of this to scare you or keep you up at night. I tell you this
because to fix it, we have to start somewhere, and I think learning about it is
a good place. Creation is ongoing. Romans 11:36 reads, “For from him and
through him and to him are all things.” God created the world in Genesis, and
will create a new world according to Revelation. The world we are in now is not
static, but ever changing according to the actions taking place on it, for
better or worse.
The good
news is, God’s forgiveness is also ongoing. It seems like forever ago, but it
was only two weeks ago that we celebrated Easter, the penultimate example of
forgiveness. God did not leave us here to suffer from our own miscalculated
actions. God loves us so much, that we received Jesus as a sacrifice to wash us
clean from the terrible things we have done to each other and the earth we live
on.
However,
this free and clear doesn’t mean we get to keep coasting and just keeping doing
what we’ve been doing. We need to take this truly awesome gift of forgiveness
and new life to create a new life here and now. As a church, we have a great
network set up to handle these injustices. I attended a conference for the
Presbyterians for Earth Care group in October, an association of members of
PC(USA) who are focused on caring for creation, seeking environmental wholeness
with social justice. One morning, our keynote speaker asked the room, “What are
you experts in?” The answers were varied. Biology. Chemistry. Architecture.
Education. Geography. Engineering. Art. Pastoral care. Political science. Math.
Agriculture. The list went on. Our keynote speaker pointed out, “Where else
will you just find this diverse a group of experts already together?” That really resonated with me.
Right here, in this church, in this congregation, in this denomination, we have
a diverse group of experts. Environmental injustices happen in many ways, for
many reasons, with many results that can be measured using many methods. We as
a church hardly need to outsource to get help combating these types of
problems. We have a network of experts right here who can approach such issues
from the many angles they present.
So from our
diverse group of experts, certainly there are some lawyers and judges, but even
people without law degrees can seek justice. Academically speaking,
environmental justice goes far beyond regulations and governance, including
environmental science, political science, planners and policy makers, as well
as ecologists and other environmentally inclined fields. As geography major, I
studied environmental justice as problems with sustainability and access to
resources vary across space according to local environments, customs and
governments. But environmental justice is a bigger social movement that
includes anyone who wants to see a fair distribution of environmental benefits,
like having access to good farmland and timber wood and oil reserves, as well
as the burdens, like soil erosion, deforestation and the many pollutants that
come with petroleum exploration. That means no matter who lives in a community,
whether they are rich or poor, young or old, conservative or liberal, Catholic or Protestant or
something else entirely or nothing at all—doesn’t matter. Just
as we want to be included in the wealth of resources, we need to share the
weight of the side effects, too.
Seeking
environmental justice in this community might come in different forms. There’s
something for every expert! Maybe you have a heart for the pollution that
affects the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers.
You can support organic agriculture or practice it at home in your own garden.
You can participate in watershed clean up projects. You can support
organizations that raise awareness and affect policy change to protect these
precious waterways, as well as countless other bayous and lakes in this region.
There are many organizations planting grasses and trees to replenish areas
affected by erosion. Consider driving a more fuel efficient vehicle or finding
other alternative sources of energy for your home and car. Contact elected
officials encouraging policy change to protect the people who work so hard to
supply so much of this country’s energy, and the land they live on and live off
of.
It’s about
much more than just “going green” though—it’s about being aware of the people
and places we don’t always see, and how they might be affected by our every day
choices, and then finding ways of partnering with them so that we can all share
in the glory of God’s creation as well as our shortcomings as the temporary
managers of it all.
We share a
very finite amount of water on this planet. It can be easy to forget about the
injustices in the world and the mismanagement of our natural resources when
it’s so readily and safely accessible in this country. It is important to
remember the source of these waters upstream as well as our neighbors
downstream who will be affected by our every action. Isn’t that what our
baptism in this church is? Remembering our Creator as well as our neighbors.
When we
accept the living waters that Jesus is talking about with the Samaritan woman,
and we accept new life in Christ, we accept a new life and a new creation here
and now. And we share that new life with the entire world around us, no matter
how nearby or far away or similar or different they are, just as Christ was
ready to share a drink of water with a Samaritan woman, who was startled that a
Jew would come to the same well at all. As God’s forgiven people, let us use
that blessing to bless and honor others, whether those “others” are people, the
plants and animals that surround us, or the water that we all survive and
thrive on.
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