Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

Advent Season does not have very impressive special affects, just four candles, an evergreen wreath and possibly an advent calendar with simple little pictures behind each door. Not much razzle-dazzle, a bit anticlimactic for our present day culture. Yet with often hectic preparations taking place in the next month, it may be just what we need, a pause, time to reflect, breathe and focus on an old ritual that can generate new meaning and energy for the ancient traditions of Hanukkah and Christmas.

The Advent Wreath and lighting its four candles is the one ritual that I still hold onto from the religious tradition of my childhood. For some reason, I have always loved lighting candles on the Advent Wreath, one each week. It may have something to do with my mother making thousands of evergreen wreaths each year during November and December. The wreaths ended up hung on walls and doors all around the country. A few may have ended up as Advent Wreaths. I actually like making wreaths. None of them appear as nice to me as the ones my parents created. Still, they are my creation; no one else to blame.

Alison and I still get Advent calendars for our children. We open one tiny paper door each day prior to Christmas Day. Part of the excitement comes from performing some simple ritual that has us pause and helps us slow down and observe life in the present moment.

For religious liberals, Advent and Christmas do not have the same meaning they have for traditional Christians. Nor does the lighting of the Hanukah Menorah have the same meaning it has for traditional Jews. Yet, we love celebrating the meaning and symbolism of the themes, even if we do not agree with all the theological and miraculous claims. We love the beauty, poetry, symbolism and reverence that surround these rituals. With the decorated homes, trees, evergreen wreaths, roping, and our thoughts of fresh snow for the season, I invite you to think of the symbolism of the evergreen wreath in a new way, the advent of something crucially important for our world.

There is a climate-driven threat coming from a rice sized Pine Beetle or Bark Beetle that is unprecedented in scope. All around the west, people from Colorado to Alaska are watching their robust green forests turn red and die in a matter of years. Scientists believe the warming climate causes the plague of beetles. Bitter cold temperatures had kept the beetles in check, but the coldest temperatures during the winter are now as much as ten degrees warmer. Ten years ago, when a scientist brought up the possibility of global change as a cause, They told him that his idea was interesting, but he should do something that actually mattered.

The beetles used to stick largely to Lodgepole forests, now they have moved to the Whitebark pines in the higher elevations. Rather than attacking the weakened trees, they are attracted even to health stands. The National Academy of Sciences states that the rise in temperatures during the past several decades is “likely mostly due to human activities.”

This is not a Hollywood disaster movie. This is not a fictional story of a sudden tidal wave that sweeps over the east coast, but it is beginning to be ominously frightening, and to me bone chilling. In 2002 more than ten million acres of Lodgepole Pines — an area the size of Switzerland — were killed by this beetle. Since 1998, the outbreak has almost doubled in Canada where they have seen the mountain pine beetle moving beyond its normal range. It used to be that the beetles died down when the food supply ran out. However, the frightening thing is that now the beetles are sixty to one-hundred-twenty miles beyond the nearest stand of Jack Pine. Evidence suggests that the beetles will thrive on Jack Pine forests allowing them to move across Canada and into the Midwest to New England, to our Mid-Atlantic area and down to the Loblolly pine forests of the southeastern United States.

The United Nations Climate Change Conference starting in a few days, in Copenhagen, Denmark, is not a distant intellectual or political activity. Nations around the world need to make major changes in how they presently reward industries that produce high pollution levels. We, individuals around the world, need to force our leaders to recognize the warning signs. We need to change how we live, thinking more and more about the impact of our lifestyles on the earth that birthed us and sustains all life.

And yet, when I think of one more concern, I confess that I am tempted to say that there is no more that I can handle. There are already so many things to do and deal with. The window for gaining same sex Marriage Equality in New Jersey is very narrow. The window for achieving immigrant reform in New Jersey is equally narrow. The possibility of getting national health care reform is delicate. It looks like the war in Afghanistan will soon escalate. Also, of course, the economy is not in such great shape. How can we possibly focus on climate change too?

Seasonally, we are in the darkest time of year, despite the time change it is dark when we wake up in the morning. It gets dark before we are finished with our day’s work and daylight is continuously lessening. I can say the same about how humans are treating the earth.

We light the first Advent Candle at the beginning of the Advent Season and the first Menorah candle on the first day of Hanukkah (December 11 this year). They are symbols of light in a dark time. They are symbols of warmth amidst a cold time. They are symbols that point to our need to quiet down and take stock amidst a dark and challenging time. They are also symbols of hope and anticipation.

Advent can be a time of hope and inspiration. We need the hope that the children and grandchildren of tomorrow will still have evergreens from which to make wreaths. We need the hope that the children and grandchildren of tomorrow will have the materials from which to make Advent, Menorah and Christmas candles. The Copenhagen meeting will be a key moment when world leaders will be poised to make positive environmental changes, changes that can improve the health of evergreen trees, and future generations of sentient life, including human life.

Our actions may seem as small as lighting one little candle in an advent wreath or on a Hanukkah Menorah. Yet that is what we are called to do. We cannot simmer in a stew of skepticism and despair. We are called to act in defense of our environmental home. It gives life and light to all that we hold precious.

During this season of darkness, pause to light a candle, and then reflect on what is important in your life, in the lives of those you love, in our society and our world. Pause and remember, you are blessed, abundantly, blessed with the gift of life, the gift of awareness and the gift of time. These are gifts that you can try to hold tightly in your grasp, or they are gifts that you can use and enjoy to the benefit of present and future generations.

In the reading we, like Mary Oliver can, “… see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly; for example—“ And like her respond to the call, “… as I(she) reach(ed) down, not to pick but merely to touch–the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the daisies for the field.”

Advent gives us an opportunity to respond to the call, pause to light one candle of hope. Pause to hear the sound of life in the interconnected web of existence of which we are part, an important part.

Oh, let us pause – breathe and re-connect with our inner self, those near and dear to us, and the web of life.

Oh, let us pause and deeply reflect on the suitability of the earth for the life we live and the suitability of the life we live is for the earth.

May we live lives that love this earth —-
“…love it as much as life itself –
earth from which all life has come –
earth to which all life returns …”