Past Sermons by Rev. George Smith, Retired

We Leave Footprints

Reading: 488 from SINGING THE LIVING TRADITION

Hold fast to dreams
for if dreams die
life is a broken-winged bird
that cannot fly.

Hold fast to dreams
for when dreams go
life is a barren field
frozen with snow.
--Langston Hughes

We leave footprints.
Where ever we go,
Be it on the sandy beach,
The pebbly path,
Or bog's deep mud,
Our feet touch
The being of this world,
We leave footprints.

Several years ago an anthropologist, possibly one of the Leaky's, discovered fossilized human or human-like footprints in East Africa along the bank or beach of some long ago body of water. The creature was recreated in drawings that showed him or her walking along the water. Interesting that after hundreds of thousands of years, these footprints affect us, still, today.

We do leave footprints and they do have an affect.

One aspect of our leaving footprints is our affect upon the environment, for better or for worse. I want to caution you at this point. I'm not here this morning to tell you what to do ecologically. I am here, though, to help you sort through the complexities of dealing with the environment.

Indeed, if what I contend is true, that we leave our footprints on the environment, then we need to make choices as to how to place these footprints. I don't know about you, but the more I read and study about the environment, the more complex it seems to me--the more difficult to make choices. Sometimes I throw up my hands in despair and say, "I can't choose." I do the correct environmental things. I do the obligatory recycling. I return pop bottles to the store along with the plastic bags. I try to find the cleanest burning gas car. I try to walk instead of drive places. I make sure my home is well insulated and free from leaks. I do all the correct things. Am I just being complacent by just following the routine?

Back at the turn of the last century in New York City and probably elsewhere, there was a huge environmental problem related to the use of the horse-the removal of its feces. With the advent of the automobile, it was heralded as the savior of the environment. No longer would there be such a horse problem. Now, many years later, we are faced again with a monumental task of dealing with a pollution problem from the savior of the early last century. Consider the concern for the clean up of the Hudson River and the PCB's that exist there. Should these be dredged up and if so how will it affect the environment? This is not simply answered. It is a complex problem. There are many more examples.

Each turn in the way in our struggle with protecting the environment raises some very complex issues. It is not just a simple do "this way response" to a problem. Complexity does get in the way of our making choices. And by choosing or not choosing we do leave footprints.

But it seems to me that it is hard to choose when the issues are so complex, especially when I can see both sides of issues and each has their own amount of truth.

I have a great deal of respect for Buddhists and Hindus who live a vegetarian life. I have found trying to be vegetarian is very difficult to do even when I know it is probably a much healthier life style. Their will not to kill animal life except as a last resort as an ethical vegetarianism is certainly on a higher plane than my health conscious vegetarianism, at least when I attempt the same. However, I feel uncertain about their position when I consider the idea that killing is killing be it of an animal or a vegetable. I do understand their view of sentient beings. Sometimes when I pick up my hamburger at the local hamburger heaven, I may look at it and see that this is the remains of a once living steer. I can imagine him being forced into the killing line at the slaughterhouse. Sense him smelling death before him. Feel his anxiety in waiting his turn. Then he is dispatched with a blow to the head, throat slit, strung up, eviscerated, and then cut up. (Yes, I sometimes do put the hamburger down and not eat it.) Then I look at my vegetarian meal. If I eat a raw carrot, I am eating something that is alive. Though it doesn't have the same impact on me as the killing of the steer, it still causes me to wonder about my choices. First, it is clear that there is no sanctified choice. Either way I am killing something in order for me to survive. Either way I am affecting life. Either way there is no clear-cut choice.

Consider in this same vein our vilification of viruses and bacteria. It is easy from our point of view to consider them as villains, all except for those in our intestines, those that work wonders in our compost piles, etc. However, from a universal point of view, they are just as important to livingness as we are. Again, there is no sanctified choice. There may be a human choice and even more specifically an individual human choice based on survival.

It seems to me this sense of no sanctified choice along with the complexity of environmental problems affects our making choices.

Another possible solution has been to look for heroes or heroines who can give us advice or lead us to the promised land. The Public Service Announcement of the Native American man looking out over a polluted environment with that sad tear falling down his cheek-certainly expressed our longing for a environmentally pristine America, ala, Pre-Colombian America. However, as much as I revere the Native American philosophy of "Mother Earth", we being caretakers of the land and not owners, I need to be cautious because some of the Native American groups were as much despoilers of the environment as we are. The Iroquois of Upstate New York had to physically find a new location for their villages about every 20 years because they had so fouled their environment with their refuse dumps and had killed all of the game within easy walking distance. Maybe the lesson here is the philosophy is good, but we do not apply it in our daily lives.

But still, we do leave out footprints.

To make the choices even more difficult, there are always competing forces when we come to make environmental decisions both on macro and micro levels, and we are deeply involved in each of these depending upon where are interests lie. On a macro level, we consider economic, biologic, social, geologic, political impact, just to name a few. It goes without saying, that each has its own agenda and each has a certain claim to the truth about any given situation. On a micro level, it is how it affects my standard of living and well being-my own survival. Does it disrupt my status quo-my comfort!!!!

Regardless, we still leave footprints.

It is clear that there are no sanctified choices, the issues are complex, the hero/heroines have the philosophy we need (can we take the step to make it part of our action?), and there are many competing elements to the truth about a situation.

I raise all of this as I said at the beginning, not to give you answers, but to encourage you to wrestle with the issues-to not give up so easily-to not get comfortable with the past-but to make some new choices-to begin a new step into the environment-to dream again-to get out of the dead field-to find where your footprints can have the best affect on the environment-to consciously, conscientiously, and consistently step into this world.

What we do, does affect others. Sanctified choices are not there. Philosophies are, but we need to live them. Complexity is there, but we can't use it as an excuse not to act. It, indeed, is our decision.

The footprints we choose
Are our dreams
Made real.
Make the effort
To choose to do,
To step forth.