After the very snowy, very cold winter, the warmer sunnier days have come as a welcome blessing. Every day the forecast calls for at least partial sun, my wife and I start googling various Trustees sights to see what trail we want to explore next. And once we find our way to the crowded parking lot, we are reminded this is not an original idea. And then I get to join in my other favorite spring past time…complaining about all of the other cabin-fever afflicted people who suddenly become John Muir when the temperature breaks 50 degrees. They don’t have good trail etiquette, their dogs are poorly behaved, there’s nowhere to park, the trails are too noisy. I may say I value the interdependent web of all creation, but when Saturday rolls around, suddenly I think I have some kind of right to an untouched forest that doesn’t extend to other people.

And I know I’m not alone in, sometimes, regrettably, viewing the “natural world” as my own private retreat and other people as interlopers. Travel sites list the top 10 places to escape the crowds, with one headline from Travel and Leisure magazine reading,“When you need to get away from it all, there’s nothing like total immersion in nature.” As though trees and lake views aren’t a part of “it all.” And as though we aren’t a part of nature. Over the past few years, there have been several high profile news stories about how our National Parks are being “overrun with tourists,” complete with pictures of selfie-taking families in tennis shoes and flip flops and overflowing trash cans. When I see these stories, I feel disgust and worry about the ecological impacts but it hasn’t stopped me from stocking up on new gear at REI and visiting those parks myself. If I’m not stopping, who is it exactly that I think should?

And I’m not dismissing the joy and wonder of finding yourself in the woods alone, the mental and spiritual benefits of escaping light and noise pollution, or of finding time for contemplation and solitude. Those are indeed good things. But I’m increasingly convinced that this attitude, that perpetuates a false division between humans and nature and sees other people as only threats to the natural world, isn’t actually going to help us protect this planet and it’s resources.

And I’ve been a bit lighthearted with my examples so far, but this kind of thinking is deeply embedded in our history and culture, often with tragic consequences. I think back to the early days of the COVID pandemic and the proliferation of social media posts showing wild animals in city centers claiming “nature is healing” and “humans are the real virus” Some of them were real, but many were fake. They may seem like a harmless way to bring people’s attention to the fact that our daily activities have a real impact on our environment. Carbon emissions after all, did go down during the pandemic. But at what cost? We were scared, isolated from each other, hoarding toilet paper and fighting over hand sanitizer. What does it mean to say “nature is healing,” while so many humans are dying?

This kind of language is not new. In fact it is tied to a long history of racism, sexism, classism, and ableism within some strands of the modern environmental movement. Indeed, many early conservationists were also supporters of the eugenics movement. The preservation of the supposedly “untouched wilderness” in the early 1900s ultimately resulted in the displacement and death of thousands of indigenous Americans. 20th century conservationists spoke in barely coded language about preserving wilderness as an escape from the so-called blight of modernity and urbanization, meaning cities with increasingly black and immigrant populations. And books in the 1960s and 1970s popularized the false idea that overpopulation in the global south was a main driver of environmental destruction. The real truth of the matter is that the richest 1% of the world’s population are responsible for more than twice the carbon emissions as the poorest 50%. And the harmful effects of climate change, from hazardous waste exposure to asthma diagnosis and economic losses after natural disasters, disproportionately impact people of color and low income populations.

At its most extreme form, this ideology painting humans, particularly poor, non-white humans as the enemy of the environment, is known as eco-fascism and it is especially violent and insidious, with at least three recent mass shooters citing environmental concerns in their manifestos.

Now there is a great deal of distance between being annoyed at the overcrowding in our national parks and embracing a violent ecofascism. But both have undercurrents of racism, ableism, and classism that dictate who is worthy of consuming resources, enjoying beauty, and taking up space on this planet. Both create a sharp and false dichotomy between nature and humans, seeing us as only the weavers of the web and not part of it, dependent on every other part, including each other. And both lead to an environmentalism that fails to see one another as part of the planet we profess to protect. As James Baldwin reminds us in our reading, “The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

Breaking faith with one another, viewing each other as the enemy, isn’t going to solve the climate crisis. In fact, it might even exacerbate it. Hatred, paranoia, fear, and distrust tend to have negative impacts on our planet. The United Nations concluded that the conflict in Gaza led to complete degradation of the soil, water, land, and agriculture of the area, and infrastructure damage meant raw sewage poured into the Mediterranean. The first three years of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine generated carbon emissions equivalent to the annual emissions of Austria, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia combined.

Just as treating the planet poorly leads to negative impacts for our fellow humans, treating our fellow humans poorly leads to negative impacts for the planet. That can feel despairing, like dominoes ready to fall, but there’s hope. There’s hope because the inverse is also true. If we can show care for the earth, we’ll all benefit. If we can show care for one another, our whole planet benefits. If fear and disconnection exacerbates the climate crisis, then cooperation, mutual care, and love can help mitigate it.

And that’s why I think we need to talk about this in church. If we’re going to have any kind of hope of protecting this one world we’ve been given, protecting one another, we need to embrace a radical ethic of interdependence. We need to understand, not just in our heads but in our hearts and souls that we are interconnected with the earth and one another. And we need to delight in that fact! We should see it not just as something perilous, but as something hopeful, something beautiful and extraordinary. Then we can move into our work for environmental justice from a place of deep love and delight rather than fear, anger or scarcity. Love for the earth but also love for one another. And that kind of soul and spirit work can’t happen just from reading science journals and UN reports.

We need theology. Poetry. We need language of wonder and awe and mystery and grace and joy. We need the artemis astronauts going to the moon and telling us they still choose earth.

We need Feminist and eco-theologian Sally McFague’s radical incarnation theology that talks about Creation as the Body of God. She writes, "The body of God is the entire universe; it is all matter in its myriad fantastic, ancient and modern forms, from quarks to galaxies. More specifically, the body of God needing our attention is planet Earth, a tiny piece of divine embodiment that is our home and garden. In order to care for this garden, we need to know about it; in order to help all creatures who constitute this body flourish, we need to understand how we humans fit into this body. We need to understand the earth's most basic law: that there is no way the whole can flourish unless all parts are cared for. This means distributive justice is the key to sustainability; or, to phrase it differently, our garden home, the body of God, will be healthy long-term only if all parts of it are cared for appropriately.

Our UU faith offers helpful language here too. The newest conception of our UU values presents them not as a numbered list but as ideas that are interlocking and inseparable from one another. “We covenant to cherish Earth and all beings by creating and nurturing relationships of care and respect” is intertwined with the idea “that every person has the right to flourish with inherent dignity and worthiness.” And love sits at the center holding those statements together. Unitarian Universalism says we are a part of this web of creation, with a responsibility for protecting it but also worthy of protection ourselves.

Once we’re clear on our theological commitments, we need to do things that help us see the daily, lived reality of that theology. We need to find those spaces where we can lean into joy and delight in the natural world and each other and remember what it is we’re fighting for in the first place. Maybe it’s gardening and playing in the dirt with a little kid, or working with an organization focused on improving safe access to the outdoors for LBTQ+ people or people of color. Find out more about the people who grow your food. Clean up a stream with some friends. Talk to someone else you meet out on a hike and find out what they love about that place. I’m not claiming any of these actions are going to reverse climate change, but they will help orient us towards an ethic of communal care that rejects fear, greed, and individualism. They help remind us in concrete and material ways that we belong to one another, we belong to this extraordinary planet, and this extraordinary planet belongs to us. And that is a joyful, remarkable kind of existence! It is nothing but grace. How can we not revel in it? How can we act out of anything other than fierce and holy love.

Before her death, environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy commented on her deep commitments to people and planet in spite of the pessimistic forecast for our species and the earth we inhabit. Even if it’s too late to save us, she says, “It’s embarrassing to go out as a species when we’re treating each other and the world so poorly.”

I found this oddly comforting, because it gave me reason to love fiercely even when I’m at my most pessimistic. It gave me reason to perform acts of love for people and planet, even when it would be easy to say “what’s the point? Too much has already been lost. This small act won’t make a difference” Because even if we were too late to save any of it, I don’t think we’d regret having loved more until the very end. And if we’re not too late, and I hope to God we aren’t, well then I think that kind of fierce love is our best and only shot.

So Love the planet, love one another, wholly and completely and without reservation.

Hold each other.

Keep faith with another.

That’s how we’ll keep the sea from engulfing us.

That’s how we’ll keep the light from going out.

May it be so. May we make it so, through our living, Amen.