As we make our commitments of how we will take a stand for climate justice, it’s worth reflecting on the courage that will be required to hold on to those commitments.  

There are always plenty of reasons to abandon our commitments to justice. Sometimes it’s inconvenient; sometimes we’re tired; sometimes we forget.  

How do we bridge from I to Thou and on to We?

More than any other challenge we’ve faced in the history of humankind, the unfolding climate catastrophe requires us to collaborate. Survival of our species and countless others demands that we tap our higher order capacity to muster compassion and inspire community on a global scale.  

That may feel like an overwhelming challenge, but Commit2Respond offers a simple way forward: we must each make three commitments.

Dear ones,

As human beings, we go in and out of our commitments.

The Jewish tradition has a formal process every year of returning to their commitment to living in right relationship with the whole. Last week, we read Thomas Berry’s questions: Is my next thought, word or deed sustainable for, an expression of greater intimacy with, a celebration of Earth?

As climate justice Unitarian Universalists who braid the first and seventh principle together, we ask ourselves: Is my next thought, word or deed sustainable for, an expression of greater intimacy with, a celebration of The Whole? Are we in right relationship with The Whole?

Committing to climate justice has never been about sacrifice in my life.

In 2009, my friend Roseann and I created InterGenerate, a small, food-justice organization in the exurbs of NYC. InterGenerate starts community gardens for people across a variety of diversities to grow our own food. We have three gardens and a chicken co-op.

We hoped InterGenerate would create environmentally and socially sustainable communities. We didn’t know it would become a catalyst for transformation.

Why should one seek outwardly for a treasure,
when the field of the body has its own bright jewel?
—Pao-chih

I have come to believe the change necessary to transform cultures and institutions for the good, both on the personal and on the systemic level, requires embodied intimacy.

One of the three pillars of Commit2Respond is “Grow”—growing the climate justice movement and growing our capacity to create change. As our contribution as one of the groups leading Commit2Respond, the Unitarian Universalist College of Social Justice is organizing GROW Climate Justice: the Grounded & Resilient Organizers’ Workshop.

Among the greatest blessings of my life has been the mentorship of the late geologian, Father Thomas Berry.

Of the many things he has left us are is his masterpiece The Great Work. Under this rubric, Thomas offers us three questions, three “koans” that we would work with over and over until they transform our way of seeing Earth, our living, communal body.

The Earth has returned. She is living, breathing,
Realizing her breath was leaving. She
was needing us to remember her worth,
to recognize her worth all over again.

When I was a kid, I gobbled up book series like The Chronicles of Narnia and The Lord of the Rings. The thing that most captured my imagination was that these stories were about exceptional people acting under extraordinary circumstances who save the world. And I wondered, if faced with similar circumstances, whether I could prove myself a hero like they were.

We are told that we were made in God’s image. Sometimes I think that means that we started out as trees.

We are told that God is nearer to us than our breath. Sometimes I think that means that God was the soil that cradled our roots and the rain that showered upon our leaves and the sun toward which we turned our branches.