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| Image by Christophe Michel |
Rising Sea Levels: 1
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A Greeting
God is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?
God is the stronghold of my life.
(Psalm 27:1)
A Reading
Elijah went up to the top of Carmel; there he bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees. He said to his servant, ‘Go up now, look towards the sea.’ He went up and looked, and said, ‘There is nothing.’ Then he said, ‘Go again seven times.’ At the seventh time he said, ‘Look, a little cloud no bigger than a person’s hand is rising out of the sea.’ Then he said, ‘Go and say to Ahab, “Harness your chariot and go down before the rain stops you.” ’ In a little while the heavens grew black with clouds and wind; there was heavy rain.
(1 Kings 18:42b-45a)
Music
Meditative Verse
When I am afraid, I put my trust in you.
(Psalm 56:3)
A Poem
Some days I prefer
to ignore your assurances,
pave my own path, lose my own way,
cross quicksand if I have to --
anything but
relinquish my will.
Remember the blistering, narcissistic desert,
the devil who taunted you there?
You know it well - the desire, the drive
to conceive and control, predict and prevail.
You, too, have wrestled the egoistic impulse,
the credit-hoarding greed of spirit
that flares within and keeps me,
on some days, from offering praise,
stops me from seeking your face
or following your excellent way.
I'm left to my echoing solitude,
murmuring my own name.
Jesus, teach me to pray. Lend me your hand,
Talk to me of forgiveness until
all my dear falsehoods fall way.
Mend the cracked compass of my mind,
and guide me to my true desire.
- from "All My Dear Falsehoods" in Oblation: Meditations on St. Benedict's Rule
by Rachel M. Srubas
Verse for the Day
In the daytime God led them with a cloud,
and all night long with a fiery light.
(Psalm 78:14)
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| Image by Christophe Michel |
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In today’s reading, the prophet Elijah is waiting for the coming of rain that will end a long drought and terrible famine. God has promised him rain and Elijah sends his servant to watch out for the coming of storm clouds on the horizon. The servant returns saying he sees nothing, but Elijah keeps sending him back to wait for it. Eventually a cloud “no bigger than a person’s hand” is spotted and the rain comes. What no one could see or believe, but Elijah knew, came to pass. It is possible to recast this story for our own times by imagining our scientists and some of our artists, as being like Elijah in our own contemporary story. Time again they have sent us warnings and documentary evidence, and yet we largely do not really want to see or believe that the problem is there or is as grave as they say. It is not until the rain cloud appears on the horizon that the servant believes Elijah. We are currently in that storm cloud phase. Right now one of the biggest concerns to climate scientists is the condition of the Thwaites glacier, one of the largest glaciers in the world, in West Antarctica. A glacier is notable for being snow and ice on the move, traveling as it gathers and accretes snow to itself. In January of this year, the ‘grounding line’ of the Thwaites Glacier, the place where the glacier meets the ground, was observed underwater by a robot which revealed that the glacier is leaking, or melting, from underneath, sending fresh water into the sea around it. Warm water has come underneath the glacier causing it to melt. The whole glacier is known to be unstable, even in the best of times, because it sits unevenly, but as long as it remains frozen, is not a threat. This sighting has raised alarm among climate scientists. It is, for our world, a small black cloud, but not one that brings a long awaited relief, but rather vivid danger. Because of its size, the collapse of this glacier has the potential to raise sea levels around the world by as much as ten feet. As we saw on Friday in Andrea Sparrow’s film about Greenland, glacier recession is happening everywhere. In 2014, British photographer and videographer Simon Norfolk visited the Lewis Glacier on Mt. Kenya, for a project he calls When I am Laid in Earth. In a series of epic photographs, he measured, in fire, the front line of that glacier as it once was in different moments over the last one hundred years, to illustrate how much of it has disappeared. He created his pyrograph by running with a lit torch, while being photographed at a slow speed. In the documentary below, we see this process documented. How do we make something so abstract — like the melting Thwaite and Lewis glaciers — relevant to the choices we will make in our own daily life today? One small decision (to take transit to where we are going, to choose not to purchase single use plastic) every day is a radical gesture if we all do it. What will be yours today?
Are you the servant? or Elijah?
A CREATIVE PROJECT
with grateful thanks to Simon Norfolk for his permission to share.
If video does not appear, please click on "Watch on Vimeo" link to view.
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In both 2012 and 2015, the Lutherans Connect projects visited Antarctica on the first Monday of Lent. In 2012 it was to profile the beautiful Trinity Russian Orthodox Chapel on King George’s Island. It was noted then that the chapel is near to “an industrial landscape” but the pollution concerns were not a focus. (See that page here.) In 2015, we visited Bellingshausen Station near the chapel and explored the problem of waste that is going on there. (See that page here.) Just a few weeks ago on February 7, an environmental report was released documenting the increased problems of pollution at the Bellingshausen Station, particularly from heavy metals combustion and fossil fuel.
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LC† Reimagining Justice is a project of
Lutherans Connect / Lutheran Campus Ministry Toronto,
supported by the Eastern Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada.
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