Profits? Prophets! | April 27, 2025 | Rev. Liz Olson

Having come through this Earth Day week, we have hopefully been reminded that in the midst of our national turmoil and threat to democracy, we are still needing to address the climate chaos that is threatening all of life. And yet, because we are interdependent, because our systems of existence are cause and consequence of each other, perhaps this trysting time in our democracy at the edge of global tipping points is precisely what brings us to an existential decision point: What do we value? Who do we want to be? In what ways must we transform ourselves and our ways of living in order to simply continue to exist on this precious planet? We are having to not only imagine but also step up and embody yet again fresh, new ways of being – both personally, inter-personally, and socially.

This is not your generic call to transformation. The jig is up. The time is now. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement – agreed to by nearly all countries of the world including the United States (except during Trump administrations) – it was decided that in order to protect us from the worst climate change outcomes, we would decrease our greenhouse gas emissions to keep our temperature increase to a 1.5°C cap over pre-industrial levels. But in fact, since then our greenhouse gas emissions have dramatically increased and this past year we crossed over the 1.5°C mark for the first time. (Know that we have to see this single breach as a warning sign, and that true temperature shifts are measured over a decade.)

Those of us on the planet who live in the Northern hemisphere, or the developed countries, are the most responsible - with 60% of total emissions coming from 10 countries. You might have guessed it: our per capita emissions are the worst.

This Earth Week we lost our beloved Pope Francis, a true champion of climate justice, a person who understood the intersection of the causes of climate chaos and the causes of poverty and exploitation.

 He was a prophet for our times and pushed the boundaries in his messages to humankind. In 2023 he issued an apostolic exhortation called Laudate Deum (Praise God) which was a kind of sequel to his more famous eco-encyclical Laudato Si’ (On Care for Our Common Home.) In it he minces no words. In his closing paragraph he points the holy finger:

If we consider that emissions per individual in the United States are about two times greater than those of individuals living in China, and about seven times greater than the average of the poorest countries*, we can state that a broad change in the irresponsible lifestyle connected with the Western model would have a significant long-term impact. As a result, along with indispensable political decisions, we would be making progress along the way to genuine care for one another. 

[* United Nations Environment Program, The Emissions Gap Report 2022 p.V]

Here the Pope is focused on individual responsibility, but per capita numbers are only one way of painting the picture as to the responsibility for this existential crisis. Corporations have manipulated the public conversation to make it sound like individuals are the ones who bear responsibility - it was British Petroleum that popularized the idea of individual carbon footprints to direct attention and action away from industry. Corporate and state entities are the ones who have the financial motivation to keep “business as usual” and will go to all extreme measures to make their profit. These are the perpetuators of our deeply embedded mindset of consumerism that normalizes extraction and decimation of any life forms. In this setting, profit is the most valued end goal in life. On the chopping block currently are our protected national parks and public lands as well as our international deep sea floors. An article in The Guardian last year pointed their middle finger to new data that shows “Just 57 companies linked to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions since 2016”, declaring that “This powerful cohort of state-controlled corporations and shareholder-owned multinationals are the leading drivers of the climate crisis.”

And…we know that there are reciprocal relationships between the profiteering corporations and the colonized consumer minds. We can have agency to change these systems by changing how we engage in the systems, which requires changing ourselves. Christiana Figueres is a powerful example of just that.

A Costa Rican and the former Executive Director of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Christiana was one of the key architects of the Paris Agreement. She attributes a good deal of her success to her Buddhist practice and study with Vietnamese monk and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village Community of monastics. Through her own personal transformation of spiritual practice and study, she was able to effectively interact with leaders from all over the world to help bring about a consensus on a united climate action goal. She says:

“We cannot reasonably expect the transformations that we want and need to see ‘out there’ without very intentionally and mindfully seeing those same transformations occurring inside of us.”

She said recently that what keeps her up at night now – more than climate change – is that “our societal and ethical bones are being broken.” She names three key actions for personal transformation that lead to social transformation: We need to move out of paralysis and step up into our own personal and creative power. We need to address our own judgments of others, our own othering. We need to deepen our humility, empathy and love, to be “working towards building communities of kindness.” (Her talk at Upaya Zen Center is here, starting at 27:19)

There’s that word “empathy” again! As Dr. Benton mentioned in her message last week, there seems to be a swelling tide that disparages empathy. I suspect that this might be because if we see the world with open eyes and hearts of empathy, it would demand of us a need to act and change what is causing the suffering …and that disrupts those who want to implement their visions at any cost. Empathy disrupts those who would profit from disposable inputs, like lives and ecosystems.

Similarly, the imperative for love as a vehicle for social transformation and the impediments to it are examined in depth by another prophetic voice - bell hooks. In her book all about love, which Fellowship’s Engaged Spirituality group is currently reading, she pulls together the work of Merton, King and Eric Fromm and holds up the social impact that comes from a foundation of love:

Loving practice is not aimed at simply giving an individual greater life satisfaction; it is extolled as the primary way we end domination and oppression.

bell hooks so artfully explains WHY people living patriarchy (men especially) are not able to have empathy or understand love.

Male patriarchy promotes lying…formed from early life where they are taught to mask feelings. It is part of being accepted, belonging. … Estrangement from feelings makes it easier for men to lie because they are often in a trance state, utilizing strategies that they learned as boys. This inability to connect with others carries with it an inability to assume responsibility for causing pain.… To embrace patriarchy they must actively surrender the longing to love.

I have another prophetic voice for you to guide us with this path of transformation. Sherri Mitchell - Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset - is an Indigenous attorney, activist, and author from the Penobscot Nation. She wrote the award-winning book, Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change, and is a contributor to more than a dozen anthologies, including the best seller, All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis. I feel lucky to have heard her speak in conversation with others through The BTS Center in Maine. (Link to her talk here, start at 10:45.) 

In Sherry’s message that night she gave specific teachings on how to make transformation happen. She said that our focus of attention in this moment is of critical importance to the future that we are going to walk into. She said that “how we direct our attention and our emotions simultaneously has powerful effect. …We can’t bury our head in the sand.” She explained how to proceed intentionally by walking us through the “80-10-10 rule.”

We need to take 10% of our time looking around and seeing what’s been set in motion that’s causing harm. Then we need to expend another 10% of our energy standing in the path of that, stopping that harm from occurring. And that stand has to be a stand that is steeped and grounded in an awareness of the sacredness of life. … not a violent force, it’s a force that is just enough to stop what’s coming towards you …without purposely harming another. And then we need to use 80% of our time focusing on breathing life into the world that we actually want to inhabit… and actively taking steps to build that world to make sure that we can walk into it as flesh and blood.

I’ll cede my time and space for any last ramblings to one more prophetic voice – Dan Wahpepah of the Red Earth Descendants. Dan is an Indigenous elder and leader in the Rogue Valley and I came to know him when I lived in Oregon. I was involved with the making of a community documentary called Voices of the Valley that interviewed different local people about how climate change was affecting them, their businesses, their lives. We placed Dan’s deeply spiritual message at the close of the film and I’ll close with his words again here. (9 mins.)

https://youtu.be/ma_DNeod3Ko?si=OYnWxnKLRfCz-sQX