The Stories of our Lives
Jack Weinhold
November 29, 2015
In answer to the question, “What is the 7th Principle Project?”
We live by and through our stories.They’re the stories we imagine about the future.
Let me illustrate thatidea with a story:
Buster, our cat, and I are on our doorstep. Bustercautiously proceeds into the yard;he takes a couple steps and freezes in place. He smells, looks, and listens to his surroundings, and that pattern continues for 10 or15 minutes until he comes to the far side of the yard, hops on a bench, and curls up for a nap.
I,on the other hand, look out on a beautiful summer day, and seea lounge chair in the shade of a tree. I can literally feel myself curled up on the cushion, relaxing intothe warm summer breeze; I walk directly to the chair and do exactly what I envisioned.I lie back on the lounge chair and take a nap.
Whether it is at the end of the next second or the end of next week, both Buster and I must first check out how safe it will be once we have arrived in future time and space. Not Buster, not me and not any living thing, will willingly put itself in danger. If we don’t feel safe about what we think will happen, it’s not going to happen.
Buster can’t imagine past the end of his nose, the future for him is the next instant, and he must be certain thatevery next moment is secure and safe.
Unlike BusterI ‘m capable of cognition. I look out from the front door and think… front yard… two words that instantly encapsulate all the experience and knowledge I have of front yards, and especially mine. So while buster is feeling his way around, I name what I see in front of me and my brain declares it “a very low risk, you may proceed.”
Taking a nap on the lounge chair was a different matter for me, it would not be happening in the next moment. Taking the nap would be far enough in the future that I had to get a picture in my head of what it would be like, and whether or not it would be safe.Although I usually feel secure in my daily surroundings, I spend half my time imagining the unknowable future so that I may go there.
When evolution gave humans a cerebral cortex we received a big gift… knowledge of the passage of time.Our imagination of the future is what makes ushuman. It makes our path through the world safe to explore and gives us a space in which to be creative.
Those imageswe construct of the future are, our stories.
What gets us through our days and our entire life,are those storiesof the future
We have stories for everything that is going to happen. Here’s a sampling:
I receive an invitation to the Smith’s party. And I think to myself, I can’t go; I know Harry is still angry with me about how long I took returning his chain saw.
I know life is long and hard, but when I die I will go to heaven and live happily forever after.
What do you mean Global warming?This is coldest winter I’ve ever seen.
As with people,groups alsohave stories.In facta culture isthe shared stories of its people.And vice versa; individuals and cultures alternately leading the way to the future throughstory making.Weare assembled in this roomtodaybecause of Unitarian Universalist stories, and also because of the stories we have about our relationships with each other.
Following WW II our country had transformed its cultural story from a low point at the end of the depression to a new high of “we won the war and we can do anything.” It became permissible to question old norms. Storiesabout the future,both individual and cultural,became creative, fluid and accepting of new ideas.
At the beginning of the 1960s our national cultural story was about the dawn of a new age. John F. Kennedy told us it was no longer the time to ask what our country can do for us, rather what can we do for our country. That energy gave birth to an age of books questioning the paradigm of the American Way of life; stories that suggested new ways to look at everything, from conservation of the planet and food, to business and finance.
Think back to Rachel Carson’s 1962 book “Silent Spring”, E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”, Frances Moore Lappé’s “Diet for a Small Planet”, and the Club of Rome’s prescient report on the trends of the world titled, “The Limits to Growth”.
Unitarian thinking was cooking all that time in thecultural pot of changing stories.We merged with the Universalistsat the 1961 General Assembly where a statement of 6 principles was adopted to answer the question… “what do Unitarians, and now Unitarian Universalists, believe”. Put simply that meant,“What’s your story?”
The adoption of those principlesprovided Unitarian Universalists with not only an elevator speech to answer the question, but with a guide, notably in the 4th principle, to the inevitable change and growth of our UUcultural story.
Please join me in reading the first 6 principles. They are printed on the back of your order of service.
The 60s counterculture of individual freedom, and the economic and social changes of the 70s continued stirring up Unitarian Universalist thinking. At the 1979 General AssemblyPresident Pickett clearly made the point of needing to change our denomination’sstory in order to be pertinent to contemporary culture.
The 1985 General Assembly answered Rev. Picket’s observationwith not only a rewording of the 6Principles but alsoan addition; the 7th Principle.
Let’s read together the 7th principle…
By the turn of the millenniumour national culture had embracedstories about caring for our bodies and our psyche’s, and even stories aboutour relationship to earth were being published. The7th Principle’s message of interdependency of all existence was creeping into the national culture.
A decade later Al Gore’s movie,“An Inconvenient Truth” putthe story of climate changeon center stage for the world. The Internetgave meaning to the phrase “the story went viral”when it fostered, reported on, and gave nourishment to, the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street.The term global warming, from one perspective or another, is now part of the vernacular language, and cultural storiesofmost of the planet.
Throughout all this…Unitarian Universalists kept up with the changing stories of the larger culture. Since the 7th Principle Project was formed 26 years ago,more than 25%ofall Unitarian Universalist congregations throughout the country,have become part of the program. They joined the 7th Principle Project, now known as the Green Sanctuary movement,in order to proclaim and live out their commitment to the Earth. Each congregation is actively makingthe 7th Principle… and environmenta justice a key part of their cultural story.
Last year our localGrass Roots Nantucket project had already begun working toward environmental justice through our own initiatives when Gary Langley discovered theUnitarian Universalist Association’s7thprinciple project.We were delighted to find that many of our recent activitiesclearly fit under the banner of the movementand our hope is to become a Green Sanctuary Congregation in the near future.
The story contained in the 7th Principle has become increasingly important since it was drafted30 years ago. And I believe we can thank that story for giving birth to the concept of environmental justice.
The story of environmental justice in turn provides a moral framework for dealing with the issues effecting earth’s ecology;the exploitation of diminishing resources, excessive fossil fuel use, industrialized farming, and out of control population growth, that highlight how we humans have become the single dominant force of change on the planet, threatening the survival of homo sapiens, and movingthe science community to rename this current geologic period, from Holocene, meaning entirely new, to what we are now living in, the Anthropocene, meaning the Human Age.
There is more to be done… the story of the interdependent web of existence isnot yet common enough in people’s minds.Marilyn Sewell in a UUA Blog post on the reasons people don’t talk about climate change says,“Our species is hard-wired to pay attention to the present. We are more motivated by our emotions than by rationality, more by the moment than by the future. So we tend to pay attention to current problems, both personal and civic, and put climate change out of our minds.”
Which leads me back to our mind/body imperativeto imagine a safe and secure story of the future before we can step into the future. The only way we will turn the world around is with stories that show everyone it is safer to act than to ignore the problems.
Two key words are associated withsolving these enormous global issues.Sustainable and resilient. We think of sustainable when we usesomething… without using it up. Think of organic sustainable farming, like the Sustainable Nantucket Community Garden on Hummock Pond Road, where the soil is continually refreshed and renewed through conscious farming.
Resilience, on the other hand, is about the ability of a system to maintain it’s fundamental nature and form, during and following a disturbance.Think of our Meeting House that wasconstructed by shipwrights for the long haul.We knew, when we recently restored the sanctuary, that the wallswould develop cracks in the plaster… because the building sways with the winds of the island. The Meeting House was built to be resilient, and has survived intact through many storms for 206 years.
Sustainability and resilience; two words, two concepts, that in the midst of earth’s systemic chaos,tell us the story of a secure future…opening the doors for us to get on with the work that needs to be done.
Earth IS getting warmer, the seas ARE rising, and the storms HAVE gotten larger, which is one of the reasons resiliency is the primary focus of the initiatives under our 7th Principle Project. Our program assists people from the congregation and the community at-large on connecting with projects of interest to them… projects that strengthen community infrastructure and build resiliency for the island.
Initiatives that have come from our program include:
- A Home-kitchen compost bucket and pick up service.
- A community garden plot that uses that compost and then supplies produce to the food pantry.
- Clothing drives and distribution assistance at the food pantry.
- Organization of a meeting for the Safe Driving Bill, bringing together undocumented workers and state officials.Over 100 people attended.
- Organization of meetings for all interested parties on the issue of immigration.
- Voter registration drives targeting minorities. Ballots are printed in Portuguese, Spanish, and English
- Beginning-Spanish language classes at the parsonage.
- And several more are in the works
Let’s hear it for the 32members and friendsof our congregation who are transforming ideasinto action and made these initiatives happen. I hope each one of us can find, or create, a resiliency initiative that stirs our blood, and then join the adventure.
As you leave please take the story of resilience with you, and tell it to everyone you know. The politicians and government are not going to do it. The corporations won’t do it. It’s up to each one of us, one story telling at a time, to save the earth’sinterdependent web of existence.
1