Why do we offer Fabulous Sainthood this week at our Earthalujah! church to a hero of the housing rights movement, Ms. Marina Metalios? Aren’t housing and the environment two different issues?
No, we no longer have “issues.” Not stand-alone issues. 2011 is too late for that. When we are all drawing our last breath, there will be only one issue: life itself. If all the fires and floods and winds and our own accumulated poisons leave us without air to breathe, and at that last moment we ask ourselves How did this happen? – we might blame our demise on the refusal to shelter our fellow human beings.
When so much of today’s information culture reports that the Joplin tornado is a disconnected event, “natural,” and fitting logically with death tolls of 1953 and 1925, then we know that extreme weather is matching extreme blindness. It is the same blindness that accepts homelessness, imprisonment of immigrants, and a racist justice system.
When cruelty becomes shrugged off as inevitable in a realistic world – our common sense breaks down. We suffer cracks in the lens of our perspective. Climate science denial doesn’t come from stupidity. It comes from the de-coupling of cause and effect that we have in the common sense of keeping our loved ones safe.
So, in honoring Marina Metalios – life-long defender of housing rights – we are healing our view of the Earth. Her work helps us to take care of our communities first, and then we see the interconnected community of the whole Earth open before us. Of course we will house the people of Joplin, Missouri. And also we will care for the Earth that shelters us. The Earth should not be driven to destroy our homes with the fierce winds of our broken love.
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Join Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir with special guest Marina Metalios this Sunday at The Church of Earthalujah! LIVE in NYC and online via webstream: http://bit.ly/...
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