Not long ago I watched a grey squirrel perched high on what seemed like a way-too-thin branch. The way it was bouncing and waving around made me nervous for the squirrel, but he calmly grasped the branch with his back legs, held a peanut from the feeder in his front paws and ate his breakfast. You probably know I’m a wildlife rehabilitator, licensed by the DEC to care for injured and orphaned wildlife, and I’ve raised a few litters of grey squirrels until they were old enough to be on their own. In fact, the squirrel I was watching was probably one of them. I know enough about squirrels and their ability to balance – helped by their fluffy tails – that I had no reason to continue to think he was in any danger, so I just watched and wondered at it all, as I do most mornings as I sit on the land.
I wrote the first version of this talk last year as a seminary homework assignment, inspired by the ministry-led climate activist organization GreenFaith’s “Sacred Season for Climate Justice.” They called on faith leaders to bring the message of the injustice inherent in human-enhanced climate change to our communities. The first place I brought it was to the place I bring everything – my outdoor meditation spot. For a few days last year, the intention of my morning meditation was to figure out what I might say about climate justice. I asked the squirrels, who were, as usual, little help, but were a delightful distraction from the work at hand. They would leap from tree to tree to feeder and back, and occasionally stop by my sit spot in case I had extra snacks with me – which I always do – and I was awed by their very existence. I always feel so much love during those minutes with the squirrels. Then I got it: “Tell them to love the world into balance.”
I paused after that thought came. The climate is changing at a breakneck speed and the effects on the lives of all species surely can’t be mitigated by love, right? I took a breath and turned my attention to a squirrel hanging completely vertically on a tree trunk, enabled by nifty one hundred and eighty degree rotating ankles and absolute faith that he was meant to be hanging there. What about me? What do I have such faith in? Love. Love is the thread that connects us, all the beings. Love is our essence. If we tap into that, you, me, all of us – we can love the world into balance.
Out of balance/injustice
And we need to start now. As the change in the average surface temperature of the Earth moves ever closer to 1.5 degrees Celsius, which scientists say is a tipping point, we are already seeing signs of injustice. The continent of Africa is losing the last of its glaciers, setting up drought conditions that will endanger 100 million of our fellow humans already living in extreme poverty. We only have to watch the news to see how more frequent and more extreme storms are affecting those without the resources to evacuate or rebuild. Not to mention the homes and lives lost in all the wildfires.
Non-human species are affected by those as well, of course, and as local temperatures get too hot for them, many species are shifting towards the poles. Biologists and ecologists are tracking the biggest redistribution of life since the last ice age peaked 25 thousand years ago.
The humble Virginia opossum is one example. The range of North America’s only marsupial was limited to places without harsh winters, but warming has brought them into new locales. Opossums have only been in New York since the 1950s, and in the last decade or so have reached southern Canada. With a lifespan that barely exceeds two years, there isn’t time to hibernate through the cold. Wildlife rehabilitators like me see many who have lost ears and tails to frostbite as the poor opossums try to adapt to our winters.
A few years ago I got a call about a downed vulture, who I assumed must have been a young turkey vulture due to his small size and dark head. He turned out to be a black vulture, a species unknown to me because it wasn’t native to the state – until now. Their shift north was so recent that their range maps hadn’t yet been adjusted to include New York. Humans and more-than-humans alike, more and more species are becoming climate refugees.
Insects are moving north, too, like Lyme-disease carrying deer ticks, which is bad news for humans and other mammals, like our dogs. Nobody wants to think about the next epidemic when we are still dealing with COVID, but, according to the CDC, mosquito-borne diseases are among the leading causes of illness and death in the world and they have been popping up in new places where warming weather is more hospitable to mosquitoes. Like the COVID pandemic, the impact on the poorest among us is highest. Those without the means to quickly adapt and protect themselves suffer the most – another example of the injustices related to climate change.
Even plants are moving. In Florida, the mangroves are dying off along the southern-most coastline, leaving those shores without protection from intensifying storms. And coffee growers are having to plant at higher elevations to find cool enough temperatures, threatening the supply of my only reason to get out of bed some mornings.
To restore balance to our world will take commitment, both to an equitable transition to cleaner energy and to embracing the climate migrants of every species. American biologist E.O. Wilson said that he doubted that most people with their short-term thinking love the natural world enough to save it. I hope he was wrong, and we might find some path to love, even if only for the sake of our morning coffees.
Love and balance
Really, though, we have to love the whole of nature, not just the part that caffeinates us. But what does it mean to love? And how do we love the world into balance?
In Yoga philosophy, the Chakra energy center at the heart is the balance point of your whole system. Balanced is healthy, whether its your immune system or a relationship. And this is the breath center, giving and receiving air. Everything in balance.
But there is something deeper here. In Sanskrit, the heart Chakra is Anahata, which means “unstruck,” as in the sound of a bell untouched by a striker. The way I understand it, Anahata is the energy of love unstruck.
I don’t think it is possible to be a living being on the Earth without experiencing some sort of trauma or violence. When you consider it, even our births were traumatic, and it is unlikely that you or I got through life since then without getting hurt in some way, physically, emotionally, spiritually. But Anahata is unstruck. It is love unaffected by the traumas of living, the purest essence of life. This love is, I believe, the divine spark that animates life in all its forms but is, ultimately, unchanged by being alive in the physical realm. Unchanged and, therefore, the same no matter how it manifests.
Thomas Berry wrote, “The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees, all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.” A community of existence that is profoundly related. What is that relationship? How are we and all beings profoundly related? Pure, divine love is our essence, and the essence of all beings. If we were all created by a loving divine spirit, how could it be otherwise?
In his 1968 paper to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Senegalese forestry engineer Baba Dioum wrote, “In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.” I think he’s right, like E.O. Wilson, that we won’t save what we don’t love. I struggle with what I can do here, though, because I’m not sure I can teach you to understand the mystery that is unstruck love. But that’s the love we are all going to need to understand to motivate us to do the work that we need to do to slow global warming and create balance, equity, and justice for all beings.
Experience and engage
That kind of understanding comes from experience and, no offense to the scientists whose work in addressing the parallel crises of climate change and mass migration I admire, it has to be experience that gets us out of our heads, our ever-analyzing minds, and into our hearts. I don’t believe we can think our way into love and I don’t believe we are going to think our way out of the climate crisis unless we know our hearts first.
UK ecologist and anthropologist Peter Taylor names our current state of imbalance as “cultural severance.” In a 2015 paper he writes, “[Cultural severance] is the severance of the right brain from the left…of inner and outer worlds, of spirit and matter, of human from the cosmic, and above all the separation of heart from mind.” I would add, it is the separation of societal and scientific responses to climate change from the mystery of unstruck love.
Fear is a pretty powerful motivator. From outright climate change denial to the extreme “build a city inside a dome” doomerism, and even many of the more mainstream solutions being proposed to curb global warming, there is an undercurrent of fear – fear of change, fear of scarcity, fear of the unknown. I see a desire for predictable outcomes when trying to answer the question, “How can we get enough of what we need – food, energy, oxygen, safety – while keeping things feeling like they are the same as they are now?”
That question brings me back to the squirrels. Every morning as I sit, mindfully observing the comings and goings of my fluffy-tailed friends, I confront my own fear of change. What would I give up to more lovingly coexist with the squirrels and the birds and the opossums and all the other beings on this land? And I mentally cling to the laptop I used to write this talk and the electricity to run it that comes in good part, still, from burning fossil fuels. My laptop provides me a connection to the internet which helps me stay on top of the latest in climate news and also lets me order what I cannot locally source to be shipped across the country or even around the world with a huge carbon footprint.
My thoughts spiral like that often which, now that I’m saying it out loud, makes it sound like I am pretty bad meditator. What I am is another human trying to come up with solutions in my head. Just when those thoughts seem to be winning, though, here’s a squirrel who decides, instead of burying this nut, to sit and eat it right in front of me, watching me intently in case I shapeshift from peaceful provider of snacks to dangerous predator, but staying right there. Our eyes lock for a moment and suddenly I am not wondering what I should or shouldn’t be doing but I just am, and the squirrel just is, and what we are is pure, divine love.
In Judaism there is the practice of experiencing awe. Awe is reverential wonder, the practice of seeing the divine in everything, discovering hidden layers of holiness, to recognize the relationships between all beings and Spirit. Profound relationships, and the threads of these relationships lead us again to love. Awe is the work I do when I watch the squirrels or any of the woodland beings who arrive during my morning sits. It is the practice of experiencing divine love that is our essence. It is the practice I most often recommend to spiritual seekers and climate activists alike.
Thomas Berry told us, “The human venture depends absolutely on this quality of awe and reverence and joy in the Earth and all that lives and grows upon the Earth.” If you can find that awe and feel the pure love, the unstruck love that connects us, you are going to want to meet E.O. Wilson’s challenge and save all of this.
And after you discover the presence of love in meditation, you can maintain your connection to divine love through service. There is a tremendous call for those of us who are able, to reciprocate for the actions we take that contribute to imbalance – like me using my laptop – by caring for the Earth and all of the Earth’s beings, including our fellow humans.
The World Health Organization predicts that within the next decade climate change will contribute to an additional quarter of a million deaths per year, due to more frequent and more extreme weather events, like heatwaves and storms, food system disruptions, and diseases transmitted to humans by animals, insects, and through tainted food and water supplies. Meanwhile, those same things mess with what helps us to remain resilient, like our livelihoods, access to health care, and connection to social support. The most vulnerable and disadvantaged among us are at the most risk, such as women, children, older people, minorities, poor communities, refugees, and anyone who already has a health condition. It’s easy to say, “that’s not me” and let yourself off the hook for changing anything. But if you recognize that divine love is our essence and we are all one, well…it is you. When you reach into that place of love and have the experience of oneness, caring for others becomes imperative. And creating just solutions to the climate crisis before it spins even more out of control is simply what we must do, no matter how uncomfortable those of us who might otherwise say “that’s not me” end up feeling in the short term.
When you extend that sense of oneness to all of the world’s beings, and even the Earth herself, the opportunities to serve expand exponentially, and all are needed. I was called not only to ministry but to wildlife rehabilitation, to care for orphaned squirrels and an occasional opossum, to rescue injured vultures and other birds of prey, and, especially, to help the broken turtles. Every year during nesting season, freshwater turtles leave their shrinking wetland habitats for egg-laying sites and are often forced to cross roads while cars and trucks whiz by. Each one injured or killed by a car is an example of injustice and how out of balance we humans are with the natural world. Conservation scientists tell us that turtle species x or species y is threatened and there are a bunch of them in this one place so we should protect this place from development. As a wildlife rehabilitator, I am not caring for the whole species, or even this one population of turtles. I am holding a turtle, a unique and precious being, who is bleeding and in pain. I enter into relationship with each turtle in my care and experience first-hand that divine essence that is love, and I do my best to save her. Then I bring that experience of love here, to you.
Call to climate action
Once you have experienced the oneness, what do you do? This is your time to love the world into balance. I know you know we must slow global warming, which means we have to cut fossil fuel consumption and those emissions in a hurry. But we also have to consider how our transition to cleaner energy can actually contribute to imbalance. It is up to us to come together as a faith community and demand that those who suffer most under the fossil fuel economy don’t take on the burden of clean energy as well. People of color, the impoverished, and animal species whose habitats are also prime oil drilling real estate have been disproportionately affected by fossil fuels, from air pollution and oil spills and the placement of dirty processing facilities. When those in poor neighborhoods listen to the whine of wind turbines twenty-four seven and desert tortoise habitat is destroyed for solar farms, injustice continues. I’m asking that we take the time to learn about the inequities inherent in our energy system and speak out against them, to ensure a just transition to a clean energy future. That is a world in balance.
Love also calls us to recognize that oneness has no borders and to embrace climate migrants of every species. Droughts, floods, wildfires, and extreme storms will continue to make places on our Earth unlivable. The great migration is already in progress. Will you welcome refugees from all over the globe into this community? Will you coexist with species whose home environment no longer supports them? Will you need to know how their presence benefits you or can you make space for all of them just because they, like you, are divine love?
Conclusion
The answers to those questions and slowing climate change won’t come from your head. Trust in this like a squirrel trusts he can sit on a thin branch high in a tree. Trust in the profound relationship between you and the person next to you and all other beings. It’s love. Love is the thread that connects us all. Love is our essence. When we know this with our hearts, we can love the world into balance.
Listen to Debbie give this talk in My Shamanic Life podcast episode 118.