Gandhi said, "Please, bring your son back in one week, and I will tell him."

And so the woman did. When she came back a week later, Gandhi simply told the boy, "I want you to give up sugar." Then the woman pulled Gandhi aside and asked. "Couldn’t you have told my son what to do last week? Why, teacher, did you require me to go away, only to return a week later?"

"Because," said Gandhi, "last week, I had not given up sugar."

As we begin our focus month on, Sustaining the Spirit/Sustaining the Web, I wish I could stand before you and say that I’ve given up the sugar. The truth is, I can’t say it, because I haven’t. Yes, I put my recycling out every Monday morning; yes, I try to conserve and reuse resources. But I sure can’t claim that I live the simple life. I think that, maybe like some of you, and certainly like much of our culture, I’ve grown a bit too comfortable with the way things are. Comfort doesn’t often till the soil of change.

During our focus month, we’ll be looking at how we, as individuals, are a part of the larger picture of this planet. We’ll be looking at how the belief systems and institutions of our cultures are a part of that big picture, too. The challenge to create a sustainable future needs to be posed on many fronts. Since religion has done so much to produce our current predicament, perhaps a religious response is a good place to begin.

A few years back I did a question box sermon where I asked those present to write down questions that I then attempted to address in some meaningful way. One of the questions, some of you may remember, was, "Given that humanity has known for a long time that we are abusing the earth, squandering its resources and assuring our certain demise, why do we keep living so irresponsibly?"

My answer at that time, which I didn’t really mean to be flippant, was, "Because we’re really stupid." More to the point, I felt that we were ignorant about the ramifications of our behaviors, and that our indifference to that ignorance was a matter of choice. Choosing to be ignorant, it seemed to me, was pretty stupid. I’m not so sure I still feel completely the same way.

The Apostle Paul, who is not one of my favorite religious figures, once wrote something I do find to be quite profound. He said, "I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do the things I hate. Though the will to do what is good is in me, the power to do it is not; the good thing I want, I never do; the evil thing which I do not want — that is what I do." How many of us might say the same thing about ourselves, if we were to be really honest?

I think the issue is much larger than ignorance or stupidity. We know full well the ramifications of our behaviors, but we choose to believe and to act on something else. The reason that we are so comfortable abusing the earth, squandering its resources and assuring our certain demise is much more a reflection of our spiritual status than it is a measure of our intelligence.

In a sermon delivered this past April based on Ed Ayer’s book, "God’s Last Offer" I cited four enormous trends in the physical world that are currently spiking out of control. These are trends that are the result of human behavior, and left unchecked, they are trends that will surely end life as we know it on this planet. They are:

1. The Carbon Gas Spike, which is — despite any political or commercial myths to the contrary — promoting global warming;
2. The Extinction Spike, which is responsible for a drastic reduction of our planet’s biodiversity;
3. The Consumption Spike, which reflects a consumption rate of resources up to 10,000 times faster than the earth can reproduce them; (Please note the headlines coming out of California this past couple of weeks.)
4. And the Population Spike, which even though we are nearly reaching a zero population growth, will still show a doubling of the number of human beings on the planet within the next 50 years.

The scientific data supporting these claims is overwhelming, and we’ll spend some time in the next few weeks becoming more familiar with some of that information. Still, scientific data — information — isn’t enough. The spikes that I’ve just listed are external manifestations of internal truths. We don’t need to change our minds about things; we need to change our hearts. If we are going to do our part in sustaining the web of creation, we will need to be about the business of sustaining the spirit within. We’ll need to reconstruct the bridges that connect the inner to the outer.

The spiritual illness that threatens each of us, and collectively all of us, is one that’s been developing for a longtime, especially within the Western tradition. It has been blessed by the church and it’s been sanctioned by the state. It is the reason we are willing to believe what our knowledge can not sustain. That spiritual illness, to a very large extent, is the very misguided theology of individualism.

Individualism is the thought that I exist of my own volition, or of my own luck, or as a result of my own personal relationship with some creator. Individualism is the thought that I exist solely for my own benefit, or to benefit only that of my choosing. It is the thought that my particular experience is my exclusive experience. In the end, individualism is the thought that we can separate and isolate ourselves from one another, and from the world around us.

We didn’t just invent this dualistic perception of the universe. It has taken centuries for us to get here. Even if we deny our acquiescence to it, it is part and parcel to the thought that has developed into our own thought. Its manifestations are all around us. Here and now is a place and time though, where mistaken notions of individualism, fueled by seemingly limitless technology, can preclude the possibility of a future.

So where did this dualistic notion of identity come from? There are probably many more, but there are clearly three theological themes in Western thought that have done much to promote both the human disregard for the planet and ultimately the degeneration of the human spirit. They are the ideas of Gnosticism, dominion and individual salvation. Each of these ideas has something of value to offer in understanding the human experience, but each has left a legacy that also promotes destruction.

Gnosticism rose up in the Greek culture and had a strong influence on both Judaism and Christianity. It held that the universe and everything in it had two natures: the physical and spiritual. One was evil the other good. The spiritual nature was viewed as pure, but the world and all things physical were seen as corruptible and corrupt. This very fallible view of the universe left us with three unsustainable remnants: 1) a clear devaluation of the physical earth and all of its components; 2) an inflated concept of the human mind and spirit as being superior to all things and therefore to the rest of creation; 3) a schizoid self-view that separated a wholeness of being into a competition of disparate parts.

Dominion is a theme that comes out of the Jewish tradition. Dominion holds that an all-powerful god created the world and everything in it to be at the disposal of his highest creation — humankind. Like Gnosticism, it deems humanity — especially the spiritual nature of humanity — to be over and above all the rest of creation. Different from Gnosticism though, dominion holds that the rest of creation is worthy of humankind’s consideration and care. The unsustainable remnants are similar: 1) a divinely established hierarchical stratification of creation; 2) an even more inflated self-concept of humanity in which humankind now sees itself in the image of God; 3) further promotion of separation and the deterioration of wholeness.

And from Christianity we have this dangerous theme of individual salvation. In this theological construct, if a person separates him/herself (in a very Gnostic fashion) from all that is evil, and aligns him/herself with the divine creator, salvation is won, at least for that one person. The idea is if you’re right with God — you get to go to heaven. Not only is there a Gnostic separation between the physical and the spiritual, not only is there a separation of the elements of creation and a hierarchical ordination of divine favor among them, but now, if you turn your back on the rest of creation, you get the biggest prize of all — eternal happiness.

Is it any wonder our modern culture promotes separation? Is it any wonder we have no qualms about striving to be Number One? Is it any wonder that we misuse the earth for our own gratification? Gratification is what we’re after in the long run, and as that thinking goes, we might as well have it here for the time being as well.

You may say, "I don’t believe in Gnosticism, or dominion or individual salvation." But if we look closely, aren’t they indeed the underlying spiritual constructs that uphold the cultural view that is hell-bent on mass consumption and destruction? Aren’t they the spiritual constructs that allow so many of us to believe that this mess we’ve created will somehow be taken care of by something or someone else? And even though they are spiritual constructs, aren’t they incredibly, spiritually bankrupt? We can’t afford to sit this one out, no matter how high we try to hold ourselves above the fray. We are in it and our actions will have a great impact on how the world will continue to turn.

There is no separation between the physical and the spiritual; we are one. There is no separation, no superiority of humanity over any other form of creation; we are one. There is no divine salvific power that holds any one individual in higher regard than any other; we are one. Life as we know it, will survive only as we come to realize that we are one.

If we’re going to correct the theological errors of the past, if we’re going to sustain a spiritual integrity that can sustain the world, we need to adopt — with our minds, with our hearts, and with our hands — a theological view of the world that transcends separation and builds upon the unity of all that is. Without that, there will be no web of creation to sustain. Without that there is no spirit to be upheld.

In his book, Original Blessing, Matthew Fox writes, "Without a New Creation, which means a new heart and a new consciousness in people and in new structures, humanity will exterminate itself and put an end to 20 billion years of providential art and history."

It seems amid our considerable comfort that we live in dark and scary times. The future itself seems dark, but maybe that is where our hope lies. My colleague, Marilyn Sewell, writes, "...real hope is born of darkness. It needs a womb-space for gestation. It needs patience while it grows. And [hope] will never come without the paradox of pain…"

Hope is what sustains us; hope, always hope. Hope is the opposite of denial. It is the reason to build the bridges that can carry us and our children into a future that is sustainable.

What feeds our hope? Not egocentric notions of elitism. Transformation and sustainability are not elitist activities. What gives us hope is a responsible relationship with reality, one that bridges us to a future.

A spirituality that denies our connections to each other and to the world around us is false and treacherous. Spirituality means breath; breath means life and life means all life. We affirm and promote the interdependent web of all life, and that’s what holds us in living. What more meaningful work could we be called to then efforts toward a new creation, efforts toward a new ecology, efforts toward reconstructing the bridges of unity? Therein lies our hope.

What can we do? We can take the time to relearn of our connections with this earth, and teach and invite our children to do the same. We can find and develop effective and efficient uses of resources that can be regenerated, reused and recycled. We can utilize personal energy wherever possible, support efforts to cease reliance on fossil fuels, and promote the preservation of precious topsoil.

We can each take personal responsibility for public policy. We cannot afford for any one of us to stand back and say, "I’m not involved. This doesn’t affect me." We are all already involved. This affects each of us, as well as all our progeny. Together, we must steer a shift from an economy of liquidation to an economy of restoration.

What can we do? We can let go of old notions that lead us toward alienation and isolation, that lead us away from ourselves and each other. We can let go of ideas of superiority and humbly take our place in the cycles of creation. We can let go of our arrogance and pray instead for the faith, the energy and the commitment to make the changes in our hearts, our thinking and our actions so that we might promote sustainability. We can let go of misbegotten notions of perfection and embrace contrition, retribution and recreation. We can embody a new spirituality of sustainability based on a new found love for this wonderful, beautiful, old world who wants nothing more than to give birth to future generations of life.

As we begin our focus month on, Sustaining the Spirit/Sustaining the Web, I wish I could stand before you and say that I’ve given up the sugar. The truth is, I haven’t. My hope is that together we can learn to do just that, and to reconstruct the bridges that will sustain us — spirit and web.