Speech for Ecology
Ottawa – Ottawa East Pipeline Protest 2013 09 29
It is a
great honour to stand before you to talk about why I believe the environment
and our relationship to it is a matter of Faith. Thank you to the Algonquin people for their
permission for us to meet and speak together on this unceded land. My thanks to all the Unitarians across Canada
who have encouraged and supported me. Thanks
to ClimateFast and these activists from Toronto who are in day nine of a 12-day
fast. Thanks to Ecology Ottawa and Ben
Powless and to all of you for coming. Thank
you to the great mystery, the spirit of love, that gives us the capacity to
work together towards the common good of all humanity and indeed of all life.
I have to
come to believe that climate change is the great challenge of our generation
and it is our obligation to do what we can to solve it. When we read the
science we know that we are headed on a collision course with the life support
systems of the planet. We don’t know how
much time we have but we fear it is very little. It will take an enormous effort by all of us
working together to turn things around.
With politics in their current state it is difficult to believe we can
do anything. Pause. We must believe that if we take action we can
change things. As Maud Barlow puts it, hope is a moral imperative.
If we stop
hoping, we will do nothing. In two more generations half of the territory
that we now occupy as humans will be desert. The sea level will have
risen 6 feet. How many people will see their land go under water. How
many millions of people will die off? Will we lose whole cultures and
identities? Imagine Bangladesh, or Florida, under water! What will happen
to our civilization under these stresses? What kinds of costs will we
face? And what we do with the climate
refugees?
If you are
an active part of a faith community, then you know that religious community is
all about relationships: relationships
to yourself, to the rest of the community, to the earth, and to the great
mystery that none of us can ever really understand. Throughout time religions have served to help
people live together in peace. They have
taught us what is a good way to live and what is not. It is time to reflect on our personal and
collective relationship to the earth?
I and my
colleagues in ClimateFast are in our ninth of twelve days of Carbon Fasting or
food fasting on Parliament Hill. Our fast is as a prayer to raise
consciousness and political will to dramatically change our policies on
greenhouse gas emissions. We will not see the kind of political will
develop without a very broad change of
heart. How do we make that transformation?
We have to start with ourselves. What do we stand for? What is it that we
believe? What are we here for? What’s missing in my story? We each need a
strong sense of purpose and a deep understanding that our relationships with
each other and with the earth are the ground of our being.
From this
place, you choose to put your energy where it matters. You do what is under your control to do, to
move things in the right direction. If
all of us do this, the people around us will see it and respond. Some will join us and the energy will shift.
Standing
against these pipelines is a strategy to stop the tar sands from
expanding. We don’t want anyone to burn
all that oil and further pollute our atmosphere. Standing against these pipelines protects our
rivers, lakes and streams from dangerous spills of dilbit that can’t be cleaned
up. Standing against these pipelines defends the
traditional ways of our First Nations brothers and sisters. We are protecting mother earth, our only
home.
It is time
to move Canada into the twenty-first century – the renewable energy
century. It is time to build the
solutions rather than continue this terrible pollution from carbon energy. It is time for all of us to pull together, in
common effort towards a sustainable lifestyle for humanity on this planet.
Attending
this rally will not be enough. What else
can you do? Take inspiration from ClimateFast. Visit us on the hill. Join our closing circle next Wednesday at
7pm. Write politicians at all levels. Write the newspapers. And after Clayton Thomas Mueller’s comments –
write your First Nations communities and let them know you support them. Talk to your family and friends. This is not easy work. No one wants to listen. Try starting light. Ask them what they are doing to reduce their
own footprint and compare notes. Keep in
mind, you will need to be ready. You may
have to step out of your comfort zone and commit civil disobedience. Our fast is a prayer for a very big change of
heart all over the world. We have to
start believing that life on this planet is worth saving, and that we can do
something about it if we try.
Together
we can let our politicians know that their political choices matter to us and
that what they do is critical to the well being of our children and
grandchildren. When the people want it
enough, the politicians will follow.
Thank you
for listening. Thank you for giving me
the honour of speaking from my heart.
All Our
Relations
Rev.
Frances Leigh Deverell
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