Multi-faith earth week; pope francis, z"l

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​Multi-faith is where it’s at.  At least, that’s how it should be.
 
If the horrors and hopes of the past century – and for that matter, the rise in ecological consciousness (at least since 1962, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring; 1968, Spaceship Earth / Apollo 8’s ‘Earthrise’, and 1970, first Earth Day) – have taught us anything, it’s that everything and everyone is connected. 
 
No longer can any one nation or group or race – or religion – plausibly or ethically claim that theirs is ‘better’ than anyone else’s.  Rather, our factions within global society are like a bunch of kids in grade school:   aware of ‘multiple intelligences’, we see each excelling in certain ways, while lagging in others.  Each group, including each faith tradition, has unique and holy contributions to make to the collective whole – and each (mine and yours included!) has its blind spots, with much yet to learn, and areas for growth.  We are truly all in this together.  Consider these wise perspectives:
 

•     “All that has soul-spirit-breath, will sing praises to the One / כֹּ֣ל הַ֭נְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּ֥ל יָ֗הּ”  (Psalm 150)
•     “All God’s critters got a place in the choir”  (Bill Staines)
•     “Until we are all free, we are none of us free”  (Emma Lazarus, 1893, echoed by Maya Angelou and others)
•     “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”  (Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1963)
•     “One glorious chain of love, of giving and receiving, unites all creatures – the One for the All; the All for the One”  (Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, 1888)

 
The creative tension between the universal and the particular is a defining characteristic of Judaism, as it is for all faiths.  The sage Hillel’s dictum (Mishnah Avot 1:14) for personal orientation works just as well for the collective:  “If we are not for ourselves, for ‘our people’, our subgroup, then who will be for us?  But if we are only for the people most like us, and stand not for others too, then what are we?  [Not who, but mah, what – we’re inhuman when we aggrandize just the narrow ‘us’, at the continual expense of the larger ‘we’].  And if not now, when?” 
 
We can make beautiful music together when we our groups sing in unison, each in our own language, harmonizing with and never drowning out our neighbor.  And this multi-faith choir must practice regularly, and perform together often, straightaway – with zerizut (alacrity, a core attribute we’re bidden to develop in ourselves, via the ethical-spiritual-psycho-Jewish approach of Mussar) – channeling what Dr. King called ‘the fierce urgency of now,’ which still applies equally to racial equity, to interreligious comity, and to the climate crisis.

My own most rewarding and hope-inducing times are those I spend doing just that (while representing the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, and/or Interfaith Power and Light) – singing, as it were, with advocates and activists of other faiths, in common effort to safeguard our Common Home.  This Earth Week has afforded three such opportunities, gems all. 
 
It’s not too late to sign up for and join us at the third one:  this Thursday 5/1, at 2pm, as part of DC Climate Week, at the Methodist Building next to the Supreme Court.  A Hindu friend will open, and I will close; the Lutheran-moderated panel in between will include a Mennonite urban farmer, the head of the Catholic Climate Covenant, and hopefully  a leader of Eco-Sikh.  (With ice cream and chocolate to follow!).  That’s how it should be.
 
This past Sunday a number of groups at the University of Maryland, led by Hillel (go Jenna Heisman!), sponsored a multi-faith eco panel.  I was honored to present alongside Kobi Ramadan of Green Ramadan; Bob Simon of Maryland Catholics for our Common Home; Anjali Gulati of Green Dharma and the awesome indispensable www.IPLDMV.org; and Dayenu’s new ‘young people organizer’ Rocky Stern, with Adamah on Campus’ even newer organizer Jared Richie there too.  Special shout-out to UMD’s Dahlia Newman and her team for organizing the event; an Adamah on Campus student leader extraordinaire, Dahlia will be interning with Adamah this summer.  (Get to know both Adamah.org and Dayenu.org, two key groups, if you’re not yet familiar).  It was an amazing insightful diverse lineup, with dandy deen and dharma, green genesis and gospel, Tanakh and true togetherness – and that’s how it should be. 
 
And on Earth Day, a team from the Energy and Environment Working Group of the Washington Interfaith Staff Community organized a powerful Capitol Hill Earth Day gathering, in the Russell Senate Office Building.  Planning it alongside Bahai, Catholic, Jewish and Presbyterian peers was a delight.  Presenters were Muslim (thank you Dr. Sara Tariq!), Jewish, Quaker, Bahai, Catholic (thank you Laura Peralta Schultz!) and Protestant.  [see photo at the top of this post].  And many of us had just been together on a field-wide call that also featured Buddhist and indigenous American voices.  That’s how it should be.  

        Zichrono Livracha, Pope Francis             Let's make his memory an active blessing for all 

​It escaped no one that Pope Francis died on the eve of Earth Week.  His impact on ecological thought, and on society at large, cannot be overstated.  At the multi-faith event on Capitol Hill I cited his still-essential encyclicals, Laudato Si and Fratelli Tutti, noting how he put his sacred stamp on the very same core teachings that we Jews have long lifted up.  In short, we must hear and heed “the cry of the Earth” (by being land-guardians or shomrei adamah) -- “and the cry of the Poor” (becoming rodfei tzedek, pursuing justice for the most vulnerable and marginalized) -- as well as the cry of our progeny (which the Holy Father calls ‘intergenerational solidarity’, and we call l’dor vador). 
 
I ended those remarks, as I end here, with the story of a remarkable statue.  As the archetypal “other” in much of European history, Jews were often denigrated; medieval art and gothic church architecture had a (sexist as well as antisemitic) theme of “Ecclesia e Synagoga”, with Christianity and Judaism embodied by female figures: respectively upright, and drooping; or sighted, and blindfolded; or young-healthy-attractive, and old-‘ugly’-inferior.  This was rooted in supersession, the problematic notion that a new chosen group can and did take the crown, replacing the formerly chosen.  And from Crusades to the Doctrine of Discovery, horrible acts were ‘justified’ by such a rationale.
 
The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) did what every group and faith and nation should do:  it confronted the painful past; renounced hateful theories and theologies; and revised liturgy and doctrine in line with what we now know to be “the right and the good.”  By another name, it did the holy ‘JEDI’ work of Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion.  (And as a proud Reconstructionist rabbi, it’s worth noting that the work of liturgical inclusion and equity, replacing references to Jews as the ‘chosen’ people with being among the ‘choosing,’ is far from complete across the liberal Jewish world, though it’s getting there). 
 
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its important Nostra Aetate, St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia commissioned a new statue, titled “Synagogue and Ecclesia in Our Time.”  Here, two same-aged women of equal stature and appearance, both crowned, sit together – one holding a bound Bible, and one a Torah scroll, each looking to, admiring, and absorbing the other’s wisdom.

Friends:  That's how it should be.  Always.

This remarkable statue, by Joshua Koffman, was dedicated in 2014.  Soon thereafter, on his first papal trip to the U.S., Pope Francis made an unscheduled stop at St. Joseph’s to bless the new statue, and to amplify its message.  The same champion of the poor and of the Earth was also a champion of decency and respect and co-existence – values which are bound together, as are we all, in that inescapable network of mutuality. 

May all religious leaders and all people of faith and conscience try in our own way to now pick up Pope Francis’ fallen standard, and march forward together with it.  That’s how it should, and must, and inshallah / b’ezrat Hashem / please G!d will be.