Earth Day 2025 and 1963 and 19963

 1963

We hereby demand more Jobs!

We hereby demand more Power!

Let us go on record right here and now that we hereby pledge

to Tame This Treacherous Torrent!

[applause.]

We hereby demand more Recreation!

We hereby demand more Reclamation!

We hereby demand more ECONOMIC GROWTH!

We hereby demand more…PROGRESS!

[thunderous applause.]

Spin the wheels. Faster. Hum whirl flash rumble hammer revolve

explode.

Grease the gears with outboard oil.

Grease the gears with the fat of beaver who aren’t any use.

Grease the gears with the blood of deer who aren’t any use.

Grease the gears with dissolving cottonwoods and the sickly

sweet perfume they wear when they drown.

Grease the gears with the stale slime on the shore as the banks

fall over and as the grass and the moss and the brush and

willows and reeds and seeds and pods sink underwater.

Grease the gears with my and your blood and the blood of

everyone who floated down and lost himself in the side

canyons and on the riffles and sand bars

And left part of himself on the walls.

We’re all under water now, and drowned.

We burst the ranks of the walking dead, and the killer goes

Unscathed.

19963

“No, it wasn’t always this nice.

Most always, yeah, but for a little while the water didn’t flow.”

He shook his antlers and went back to browsing.

Jerry and Renny Russell: On the Loose; Sierra Club-Ballentine Books, 1967.

-  -   -

From 1968 to 1970, I served as Assistant Pastor of Westminster Presbyterian Church in Medford, Oregon. As a newly-minted young minister, one of my primary responsibilities was youth ministry. As my too-brief time in Medford neared its end, several of the senior highs and our adult advisors and I took a short back-packing trip into California’s Marble Mountain Wilderness.

As our trek ended, they presented me with a copy of On the Loose, in which those who made that hike wrote expressions of appreciation for my being with them. I’ve treasured the took and the memories it holds since then, but was recently reminded of it, and have reread it.

The two entries above struck me as even more appropriate for Earth Day, 2025, than perhaps ever before as our government abandons all pretense of caring for our home planet. I am quite sure they were written in response to the building of the Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River, completed in 1966 despite long and passionate opposition.

Singing for joy while anger rages

I was privileged recently to be a chorus member in a performance of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Church-goers who do not know the work itself likely know the main melody of the fourth movement because of the hymn, “Joyful, Joyful, We Adore Thee.” It’s a tune that’s hard to forget.

The words Beethoven (1770-1827) set to music are by German poet Frederich Schiller (1759-1805). Schiller and Beethoven were products of the Age of Enlightenment. Both the American and French revolutions happened in their lifetimes, and concern for the freedom and rights of all men was utmost in their minds. (Beethoven famously tore up his Third Symphony’s dedication to Napoleon Bonaparte when he learned Napoleon had crowned himself emperor.)

Schiller’s poem, “Ode to Joy,” is reflected in the words of the hymn. But the poem’s words are themselves worth our attention as our country is dragged into authoritarianism by a political party intent upon dividing us from one another in as many directions as it can.

What is the joy Schiller celebrates in his ode? What gives humankind joy? Schiller is very clear that joy comes in knowing that one day “all men will be brothers,” because “a loving Father” above us all has made us all, and intends for us to live as true friends to one another.

Not trusting and living according to such a hope for all is the enemy of joy.

That explains to me why the men and women who are today using their positions in government to divide us often look grim and angry. It is a sad business to despise and denigrate your siblings 24/7.

You cannot know joy when your hold on power depends on your ability to separate and isolate the members of your human family by class, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, or anything else you might dream up. When, in order to hold onto your position, you have to keep finding new targets of your fear and wrath, you must make sure no one ever sees a spontaneous spark of pure joy flash from your eyes. Your eyes must look like the eyes of a bird of prey, always searching for its next victim. You dare never relent!

Ever-fearful vigilance leaves no room in the human heart for joy, or even for simple happiness.

The words of Schiller’s poem invite his readers to see that all of us are siblings because all of us are offspring of one creative process (to put it in inclusive and non-theological terms). In our concert, Beethoven’s music pushed our voices into impossibly high ranges as if singing in the stratosphere would finally make us and those who heard us listen, and look, and see the truth to which custom and habit blind us.

Our chorus sang together the joyful hope that one day “alle Menschen werden Brüder”—that one day, all men will become brothers. We all must choose whether we will continue to nurse and feed anger fueled by division and distrust, or embrace the joy of loving the humanity that all of us share. The world is weary of anger. I dare to hope it is not too late for more of us to try the way of joy.