As a child, I worried a lot about death. Even as young as 7 or 8 years old, I would wake during the night in a cold sweat, absolutely panicked about my impending mortality. It wasn’t so much that I feared death or dying itself, but rather that I feared missing out on life. Oh, how I delighted in the sensory world! I savored the taste of grape popsicles in the summertime. I was intoxicated by the sweet, earthy smell of freshly mown grass. I squealed with glee at the sight of a rainbow formed when the sun shone just right over the sprinkler in our front yard. I loved the gentle sound of my father’s voice singing me to sleep each night, baseball games playing on our old radio, the mourning dove’s familiar reminder that all was right with the world. I was comforted by my mother’s hand in mine, squeezing it three times – one, two, three, for I, Love, You. Even the scabs on my knees brought some delight because they were my battle scars from a day of deep play, proof of my connection to the earth's surface. Quite simply, I was deeply and madly in love with the world - its pulse, its breath, and its rhythms.  I simply couldn’t bear the thought of not being a part of it – not smelling, feeling, tasting, experiencing the beauty of it all.

It recently dawned on me that facing the grief of climate crisis is much like facing our own mortality. In short, we wouldn’t grieve our ailing world if we didn’t love it so dearly, if it didn’t feed our very body and souls, if it wasn't woven through our memories and stories. Hey, if the earth were some junky old thing devoid of truth or beauty, we’d probably welcome its demise. But it is a far cry from anything so disposable. It is rich with abundance - air, water, sky, plants, animals, minerals – the very gifts of life itself. It is our home. And it is hurting. So we, too, are hurting. With every new U.N. report that it is released, with every headline crying “time is running out,” with every unheeded warning from scientists, our hearts sink a little deeper.  We are haunted by questions:

“Am I doing enough?”

“Can I do more?”

“Will our children be ok? Our grandchildren?”

“Is anything I do even going to help?”

“Is there still hope?”

"Is it too late?"

As I grapple with these questions and seek to avoid despair, I turn often to our UU faith values for grounding, guidance, and hope. Our seventh principle  - respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part -  reminds us how intricately we are connected to all of creation – not just to humans, but to trees, plants, insects, birds, moss, water, stones – all of it. We breathe the same air, we are made up of the same water, we live under the same big sky, the same sun and moon lights our way forward. While our interdependence can be daunting, particularly when it comes to climate change, it can also be empowering. Because if we’re all connected, if we’re all a part of the same delicate web, then it must follow that if you strengthen or repair your own strand of the web, then the entire web will be strengthened. This means, of course, that whatever you’re doing in your little corner of the world matters. Your tender care of your backyard garden matters. The local initiative that you rallied for matters. The signs you held up on the street corner matter. The trees you are planting that you may not live to see mature, matter. These actions are not meaningless drops in a bucket – they are powerful acts of love that are strengthening the web of life for all of us, including those yet to be born.

I take much inspiration from the activist Clarissa Pinkola Estes. She writes:

"Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. Any small, calm thing that one soul can do to help another soul, to assist some portion of this poor suffering world, will help immensely. It is not given to us to know which acts or by whom, will cause the critical mass to tip toward an enduring good. What is needed for dramatic change is an accumulation of acts, adding, adding to, adding more, continuing. We know that it does not take everyone on Earth to bring justice and peace, but only a small, determined group who will not give up during the first, second, or hundredth gale." 

So, when it feels like the world is spinning out of control, when we feel hope slipping away, we can look at where we are, right at this moment, and do what we can to recognize, strengthen, and protect the goodness that we find around us. Because every time we do this, the world heals a little more and we move a little closer towards wholeness and repair. 

Children understand this intuitively. My own daughter, when she was 4 years old, once built a tiny popsicle stick fence around a dandelion. (She couldn’t understand why grown-ups seem so determined to destroy these beautiful flowers!) When we took walks, she stepped carefully so as not to step on ants. She gathered up sticks and stones and feathers, her precious gems. She bent down low, her face just inches from the earth, to cup her hands around a small bug climbing a blade of grass, shielding it from the wind.  She saw beauty in her corner of the world and she sought to protect it. And that protecting part is key. As writer Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us in her gorgeous book Braiding Sweetgrass, “To love a place is not enough. We must find ways to heal it.” In other words, we must do our part to strengthen our strands of the web even as other segments are fraying before our eyes because, Kimmerer adds, “even a wounded world is feeding us…and we must return her gifts.”

I think back to myself as a child – full of joy and gratitude and awe and wonder for the bounty and gifts of this earth. I think of my young self fearing death, fearing the loss of it all. And I remind myself that we only fear losing that which we love; that love and grief cannot be separated; that grief itself is love. So, even as we weep for our changing earth, we can be grateful for all the ways she has nurtured us. And we owe it to her to nurture her back. We must build fences around our dandelions. We must commit ourselves to everyday acts of repair and renewal. We most see our grief as our deepest expression of love. We must keep caring for our hurting world as fiercely, bravely, and tenderly as we did when we were children. May it be so.