In my hand I have a glass paperweight in the form of a globe, representing our living blue planet and our precious Earth, our only home so far among the infinite stars. What I do with this little replica is entirely up to me. I can hold it carefully in my hand. I can juggle it in the air and drop it by accident or throw it to the ground in anger. Or I can use it as a paperweight a pretty but outdated relic of the days when we lived by open windows and a strong wind could actually blow all your papers and your sermon away.

The fate of this little planet is entirely in my hands. And the fate of our big blue planet is in our hands and in the hands of everyone who inhabits this place of beauty and devastation, of bounty and hunger that we call earth. No, this is nothing new I am telling you, and likely you agree, at least in the abstract. As a species we human beings have utterly changed this planet and in this new century we are transforming it ever faster but into what? A place where we can no longer see the bright stars because of our own bright lights? Gleaming alabaster cities with shiny towers reaching into the clouds and homeless sleeping on the doorsteps? This is one reality: the contrast between rich and poor countries is unimaginably stark and the planet seems ever smaller. Even if I am preaching to the choir and you all agree we must do better how exactly we go about it is quite another matter. To quote Kermit, the frog sage: “It is not easy being green.”

First there is the sifting of truth and facts from fiction. Global warming in Phoenix seems like a rather obvious reality. Local climate changes certainly are. If you doubt it, just ask any Valley old timer or visit downtown Phoenix on a summer evening. Cool desert nights are a thing of the past there. Radiant heat from pavement and buildings continue to slow cook us long after the sun has gone down.

But it is not always that simple. We have baked at 110 and above for weeks now till at last the rains came and cooled us off blissfully. Only in the desert will you see a woman dressed to the nines, in high heels and silk dress with a newly done hairdo run out of a country club and dance around in the rain. Are these temperatures and changes our normal extremes or a result of global warming?

The huge White Mountain fires this summer were clearly caused by human folly and fear. The flames were both awesome and awful in their destructive power. Yet fires are part of the natural cycle in the forest. But this is what I think we can learn from this tragedy. In the aftermath voices were raised on all sides and blame spread around. Lumber interests, summer homeowners, people whose livelihood depends on tourism, fierce environmentalists, ranchers and developers all pointed fingers at each other. The White Mountain Apache tribe who lost not only their livelihood but part of their sacred ground have once again had to face hostility and racism. It seems to me to be a microcosm of the larger problem. The debate about how we treat the earth is too often captured in the media and in politics by the extreme viewpoints on either side shouting at each other across a wide abyss, each isolated on their own righteous mountaintop. Meanwhile the earth and our children’s heritage hang in the balance.

But if we saw and heard the problem in the angry voices and competing interests of the fire struck communities much earlier when the fires were still burning we also saw a glimpse of the solution. People came together and helped each other; firefighters risked their lives and all those compassionate acts reminded us of our interdependence, of what I would call the sacred community. To come to some sort of agreement and find a common ground is much harder work than shouting righteously. It requires that we shut up and listen to each other. As Unitarian Universalists we extend this community to include in our seventh principle the interdependent web of all existence. But then who speaks for the trees?

We, along with the Lorax of Dr. Seuss fame, do! I know some of you work hard to heal and help the fragile environment and keep some green spaces and breathing room for our children. I honor your commitment. But just by living in this society we are also inevitably part of the problem. We do not walk we drive cars. And are we really a green congregation? For that matter what does being a green congregation mean exactly?

These are questions for all of us. Sometimes it is hard to know what to do when science becomes politics and politics becomes science. To be green is plain hard work. One has to ferret out the facts and then figure out what the best action is. We do it because it matters, because of our deepest values and what binds us together. In other words: because of our religion. We know something about creating community because we hold lots of diversity and different strong opinions within one congregation. We are natural bridge builders. As long as we remember to listen, not just to the Earth, but also to each other.

Here in Arizona it seems as if we can learn from the tribal communities to honor the land. And I think we can and do have a lot to learn. But as the American Indian Linda Hogan writes that sense of the sacred has to come from within us. "Many of my non Indian students are desperately searching for spirits, for their own souls. Something in the contemporary world has left many Euro-Americans and Europeans without a source, has left them with longing for something they believed existed in earlier times or in tribal people. What they want is their own life, is their own love for the earth, but when they speak their own words about it, they don't believe them so they look to Indians. They forget that enlightenment can't be found in weekend workshops, they forget that most Indian people are living the crisis of American life. There is no such thing as becoming an instant shaman, an instant healer or an instantly spiritualized person."

She is right. We have to begin our search where we are. And as we learn be truly present with a good heart that allows you to become a good listener and observer.

After all our UU tradition often looks for the sacred in nature. To hold something sacred means to value it profoundly and see it as essential to a meaningful life. It means to treat it with respect. It means that we protect it. Is this what we do with the land? Is beauty sacred? Can you really capture a sunset?

A profound theological barrier to even seeing the sacredness of the web of life is the dualism so prevalent and interwoven with our Western culture. The notion that goes back to Plato and beyond to Descartes is simple: The body and the material is inferior to the ideal, the abstract and the spiritual. This was distorted over the centuries to mean that the holy was to be found outside this world, outside the beauty of ordinary life and nature. Think of solitary hermits on top of pillars in the desert, think of self-inflicted suffering, think of how women were feared and burned as witches because of how they were seen as being closer to the earth and all matter. The body became something to be despised, conquered and overcome. I am not sure we have gone far beyond that old ideal as our society seems to go in the direction of either over indulgence or its mirror image: starvation and anorexia. Yes, I do believe that how we treat our bodies has a lot to do with how we treat the earth. Earth images and body images are intertwined in poetry and religion, in literature and deep in our souls. The reason Genesis and many other creation stories uses clay as the material of which humans are made is I believe because of this deep connection.

Paradise itself can be experienced as a sacred place where we are not aware of being separate from nature. Paradise lost for some of us are the gardens, mountains, seashores that have been changed beyond all recognition. Last Friday someone told me that her child hood girl scout camp had been sold to be used for a housing development And that it had affected her so much that she dreamt about it. I can understand that. Fire pits, swimming holes and plenty of s’mores, nature up close and frogs under your shirt, a sacred summer camp gone deserve at least a dream and a decent period of mourning. How many of you remember such places now lost? How many of you who are parents wish for such places for your children? Will they be there?

In Japan there is a new kind of hotel. It is made of shelves, layers of small cubicles outfitted with a tiny TV and radio. Once you check in you put your clothes in a locker, put on a provided robe and climb a ladder to your assigned shelf. You can only sit and lie down in this small cocoon like space, not stand or walk around. People are above you, beside you and below you like human books in a library. I find this concept, though efficient in terms of space, frightening. Will we grow out of space and food? Will there be enough to go around? Will we have wild places to go to and parks to play in? How many humans are we now?

Yet this very fear is another barrier to living in harmony within that great web. The heated arguments about conservation versus consumption are, most of them anyhow, based on the assumption of scarcity and not abundance. It grows from a theology and philosophy based in fear and not in love and generosity. What if there really is enough to go around? Not so that everyone will get all they may want but enough to lift entire populations out of poverty and hunger. It is not the resources we lack or even the knowledge it is where we spend those resources and how we spend them.

Our wilderness is a good example. Our Sonoran Desert, so very fragile, is littered, God help us, with bodies of people who wanted to get into this country and get a piece of this American Pie. Instead they die of thirst and heat. How do we deal with that? Coyotes and drug dealers and immigration officers all also leave their tracks in the Sonoran desert. It seems as if the wilderness itself must cry out. After September 11 are we allowing our fears, which are real, to over ride our principles? Can the earth ever belong to anyone? In our ever more interconnected world with rapid travel are borders in fact becoming obsolete? Can these laws be enforced or are we just playing a horrible game of act and mouse with lives in the balance? In Europe borders are abolished within the European Union. The flag draped metal barriers, fences and gates that once divided ancient enemies that fought for centuries over a small piece of land are now down and people move freely. Is it safe? Who knows, but it is realistic.

And here is another problem. To believe that the earth is part of the sacred and interdependent web, a sacred trans species community is likely healing. But to believe that one person or one people have the exclusive sacred right to one piece of land, well that belief has spilled enough blood to make an ocean of grief. To whom does the earth belong? Can any sacred place belong to anyone but God? The litany of nations and people who have laid such claims and paid the price in blood is as long as history itself. Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Germans, Danes, French, English, Israeli, Palestinians. I pray that we may learn someday that land is only ours on loan and sacred to all of us.

Ok, these are global questions. Good to ponder but not where we live most of the time. If we want to leave a legacy, a heritage for our children then it is in the here and now we must do so. So I will end this sermon with one of my favorite stories. You may have heard it before but it bears repeating. Not far from Chicago in Northern Indiana there is a sacred place called the Dunes. This place has become a symbol of the fate of too many of our sacred places in our times, encroached upon and nearly, but not quite, overwhelmed by humanity. Surrounded by all the ugliness that modern, or by now rather old-fashioned, industry can produce, intersected by the giant Bethlehem Steel plant and harbor, the Dunes still sing. They are moving sand dunes that under the right wind and weather conditions emit a singing sound. In “Sacred Sands” Ron Engels writes: "The primordial act of creation goes on continually in the dunes. It is at the water's edge where lake and sand meet, that generations have found the continuing miracle of creation most vividly reenacted. Here the four elements of air, water, fire and earth combine with pioneering plants to create the dunes. The rolling waters of lake Michigan are constantly tossing the yellow sand upon the beach where the sun dries them and the wind swirls them about until they find a resting place. Sand has an infinite number of particles. One picks up thousands of them in a single handful. Yet each grain is unique, as is each configuration they make together. And each day, each dune is different from the day before. Sometimes in a strong wind the dunes change their shape in minutes. They are endless variations on the theme of unity in variety. The sand is older than man's most ancient ancestors."

Bethlehem Steel wanted all of the dunes. It was in an era where progress and industrial development were society’s Gods. But the community rallied. Ordinary working class people had long visited these dunes to find relief from the gray city and they along with artists, writers, ministers and progressive politicians could not let this happen. This was a place of special beauty, a sacred place where one could still imagine what the coast looked like before the city came. It belonged to all of us. The struggle to save the Dunes lasted more than fifty years and they lost part of the place to bulldozers. But they saved most of them. It was an act of faith. The late Illinois senator Paul Douglas led the fight, saying: "When I was young I wanted to save the world. When I was middle aged, I wanted to save this country. Now that I am in my sixties I shall consider my life well spent if I can save the Dunes."

So my final question to you this morning is: What must we each save? What can we save? How will you live your faith with Earth in the balance?