Ari's Planet

If I were a religious man, I might say the following to my fellow Jews on Yom Kippur, when Jews gather to pray and beg forgiveness, when they lament the wrongs that they have done.

On Yom Kippur, our prayers tell us that God will listen to our pleas and, we hope, will forgive us our transgressions against him. It is said, though, that God will not forgive our transgressions against our fellows—for this, we must make amends with those we have wronged. What if those we harm are all creatures, and the Earth, and those yet to be? We are causing the Earth to warm, and to change, and causing the deaths and the ends of many forms of the world. If we do not act to address this within the next few years, but instead allow atmospheric carbon concentrations to increase beyond a critical threshold, then the Earth will suffer massive changes. We may well ruin the Earth for the next 50 generations. Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge, but not from the tree of life, and we were banished from Eden for their transgressions. If we do not now change our course, then for 50 generations the Earth may well be turned into a place of "hell and high water", with terrible droughts and heat waves, extreme storms, rising seas, massive extinctions, wars between people fighting for the remaining scraps, and refugees fleeing an ever-changing climate. The creatures we destroy will never be restored and it will take untold years for the vibrant richness we may observe in our everyday lives to flourish once again.

There is a story that God's holiness was once held in sacred vessels, but that those vessels were shattered and his holiness scattered. Jews are charged with restoring those vessels through tikkun olam--through repairing the world. Look at this picture, for example, of a Cuban Red Macaw, one of the many creatures we have made extinct. See the luminous feathers, imagine them cupping the air as it moved through the canopy, calling to its flock, to its beloved. Alas, this bird no longer lives. Its voice is stopped up--the voices of all its flock are silenced. It, and all its kind, are lost forever, and none call to their beloved. This bird, and its kin, were as sacred vessels that man has shattered. The sacred life they contained is lost for eternity. Their feathers are scattered, their vessels broken, and no one can say how to make them whole.

Cuban Red Macaw by John Gerrard Keulemans

When the Temple was destroyed Jeremiah lamented for Israel:

How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of the whole field wither? For the wickedness of them that dwell there, the beasts and the birds are consumed... They have made it desolate, and being desolate it mourns to me; the whole land is made desolate, because no man lays it to heart. (Jer. 12: 4; 11-12.)

When we lament today, we lament for ourselves and for all Israel. Yet that is not enough. We must seek peace with those who we harm. If we knowingly choose not to halt the havoc we wreak, and the Earth is ruined for many many years, and the vessels of sacred life are shattered, then from whom do we beg forgiveness? What lamentation do we raise for the future? How will God forgive us for knowingly wronging those whose time has not yet come, for cutting the tree of life of so many creatures? Today, we know good and evil, and yet we wrong the tree of life. Therefore, because the time of our undoing is at hand, it is now that we must choose--that we do not lament that which cannot be repaired.

When Israel dwelt in Egypt, Pharaoh denied us our freedom. He denied God's will, he delayed Israel's release. Finally, his army was drowned by the sea. Pharaoh's time has passed. Today there are those who deny and delay. The sea is rising, their foolishness cannot stay its advance. Like Pharaoh, the time of these deniers and delayers too has passed. We are commanded to turn away from evil—now we must turn, for there is no more time. Which way do we turn? Are we lost in the wilderness? We know the way. Experts and leaders in their fields, in science, medicine, economics, engineering have identified the problems and their solutions. Not every detail has been worked out, they are surely wrong on some items, but such fine points are for histories yet to be written. We can address climate change. We can eliminate global extreme poverty. We can seek peace and end the terrible wars in which our nations, Israel and the United States, are enmeshed. We can stop destroying the creatures with whom we share the world. We know the problems. We know what needs to be done. We have the resources to implement the solutions. All that is lacking is the will to act.

Soldiers of Emperor Qin, their voices turned to clay

When our bones lie moldering in the grave, what prayer for our sins will issue from mouths full of dirt? Yet we live, today. Moses still leads us--away from delayers and deniers, toward the promised land. Like Moses, let us gaze at the promised land that lies in our children's future, and let us speak, and let light flow through our mouths that are filled with living breath, and let that light and that breath pass into the world and renew the life that shelters under the heavens.

You might read the poem The Old Man Is Like Moses by Vicente Aleixandre, translated by Lewis Hyde in A Longing for the Light: Selected Poems of Vicente Aleixandre, Copper Canyon Press, 1985.