Sermon January 22 2023
“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.” ― Aristotle
How well do you know yourself? You probably know a lot about your body such as the color of your eyes and hair, your weight and height, and things like that. But Aristotle says that knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. The scripture today was all about Wisdom, and how she existed before anything material. She is hidden, and we are seeking her.
Your body is part of the material realm. So, I guess these quotes are saying that before your body was, your wisdom and all wisdom existed. The next question in my mind is, how can I learn about me? The me that isn’t the body? My consciousness, my soul, my real thoughts, my own wisdom on important matters?
A friend of mine says, “To know but not to do is not to know.” This speaks to me of wisdom as well as knowledge. A wise person would be one who acts according to their beliefs, and one who behaves consistently with desiring what is good for them and others around them ultimately.
This morning’s scripture finished with Wisdom speaking:
32 “And now, my children, listen to me: happy are those who keep my ways. 33 Hear instruction and be wise, and do not neglect it. 34 Happy is the one who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. 35 For whoever finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord, 36 but those who miss me injure themselves; all who hate me love death.”
We want to be happy, right? We don’t want to injure ourselves, right? We don’t love death, do we?
This month we have been talking about the earth, our relationship to her, and how we can behave in such a way as to help her heal, and therefore, to keep us alive and well.
So, the question bridging this Sunday to the last two is, what wisdom do I seek, what wisdom do I have or can realize, that can help this material world heal and prosper naturally?
Let’s consider last Sunday’s sermon. If you weren’t here, we thought about what we can do to reuse, reduce and recycle. And doing these things out of love for our Earthly Mother as opposed to feeling shame for past mistakes. Can you remember what you pledged to do? Or if you weren’t here, can you think now of something you can do differently?
So that is a start. Yet the question remains – what is the wisdom that we are asked to find?
I went through a period of time when I decided to go inward to see what I felt about certain difficult issues. And not accept the stance of my registered political party. Or what my friends and family felt. Or my favorite news outlet. Or what my church said. And what I found astounded me. My beliefs on abortion, gun rights, balancing the federal budget, entitlements, war, and so much more do not run along the exact lines of one political party, although I certainly lean left. What astounded me was the reasons I felt the way I did about each issue. For me, the most important base line qualifier on how I felt was: how does this issue perpetuate love and life?
For example, once I put this to the test on the issue of vaccines for COVID, I could understand why my nieces chose not to vaccinate, for fear of infertility. For them, love and life meant not vaccinating. A personal decision. And I can appreciate and understand that. Personally, I choose to stay updated on my vaccines to protect those around me. Through this time spent looking inside for my reasoning behind my opinions, I then understood that not all people have to have the same opinion. For me, I found that I could be more loving toward these nieces once I understood their position.
Now, back to the earth.
Today I want to tease out the wisdom relating to the use of fossil fuels. First let’s look at corporations. Because there is little we can do to change their policies globally, we can instead look at our own lives and how we can act locally.
Fossil fuels consist of oil, coal and natural gas. These are non-sustainable, once they are used, they are gone. And they all contribute to global warming, which is making this earth less inhabitable for all forms of life.
Oil is used for transportation, heat, and the generation of plastic. What can we do about reducing these necessary things? How does wisdom play into this?
First, we have to remember why we would do anything different. Why we care. We can remember that favorite place of yours on this earth. Remember loving it. And now, thinking about preserving it. Or you might think about the generations that follow yours, and what that place might look like if we continue to use fossil fuels at the same rate. This can be your underlying reason for changing any behavior, especially those that are going to be difficult to change.
Wisdom was here before the earth was. We had wisdom before we came into being. We can turn to wisdom now.
We learned how to very quickly turn around climate change on our planet. The whole world acted with oneness, and in a very short time, the air cleared, animals and birds were seen where they had been missing before. It felt like our Earthly Mother could breathe again. Remember? It was in 2020, when we all stopped driving and flying. We cared so much about other people that we isolated ourselves. And in the process, we saw the solution.
This was Wisdom herself, speaking loudly and clearly. Yet, we, being human, went right back to where we were before COVID, and have even made up for that lost time, and our Mother is suffering greatly. Whatever wisdom we collectively obtained during that time has been lost.
Ok, so governmental wisdom didn’t make the difference. Will corporations make changes? Well, the oil industry raised the prices of gasoline last year to record highs, while making record profits. Corporations are run by their boards who are responsible to their shareholders. These shareholders are people like you and me, who have their 401K’s and IRA’s in the stock market. The only way to continue to give us the stockholders a good return on our investment is to look at the short term, to only care about what they can do in the next quarter or the next year. They are not focused on the future of the earth.
So what can WE do, individually?
We can boycott the service station that charges more than the others. We can change our savings in the stock market to invest in sustainable options.
Twenty years ago, I found I could afford a very fuel-efficient new car on the savings I would realize at the gas pump. Today, let’s look at the comparable cost of charging a fully electric car to driving that same amount in a car that gets 30 miles per gallon.
Kelly Blue Book put this into perspective by giving an example. Let’s say you drive about 1,183 miles per month (Americans drive an average of about 14,200 miles annually). For an EV, you will use about 394 kWh in that timeframe. Using the U.S. household average from June 2022 of about 15 cents per kWh, it would cost about $59 per month to charge an electric car.
Today gas is about $3.50 per gallon. To drive that same amount getting 30 miles per gallon, it would cost $137 per month. So, driving a Chevy Volt, for example, would save almost $80 a month on your budget. That is knowledge, data. Using your wisdom, now, think about the savings on the earth. And if you have solar panels, that electricity is also using renewable energy. Or, you could be purchasing your electricity from a solar farm, which is readily available.
The next examples of how to use your knowledge and wisdom to help are based on some of the things I do to reduce or eliminate my dependence on fossil fuels. I am sure you can think of many of your own.
I purchase my pasta sauce in glass jars and reuse them when I can. I have not bought a plastic bag in 3 years. Instead, I use a paper bag for dry garbage and empty food bags, like from chips or cereal, for the wet garbage. I drink from a reusable water bottle and try to avoid buying plastic water bottles. Of course, I recycle, but I also compost.
This is what I do. I’m trying, I’m certainly not perfect.
So, what is wisdom? Perhaps it is matching our will and our behavior to God’s will. Perhaps it is living a life that is mostly free from guilt. Perhaps it is doing what we can to ensure the best future we can provide, even if it is only based on what one person can do. Perhaps it is seeking solutions, and finding them in our heart, instead of out there somewhere outside ourselves.
We may not be able to change the entire earth in a couple of months like the COVID isolation did, but we can start at the grassroots level, and maybe, just maybe, we begin a revolutionary movement that can change the world. After all, Jesus did, right?
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