An Earth Day talk given on April 21, 2024, for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Pensacola
Sometimes I panic about our ecological situation.
I’ve gotten better at coping, but still. Sometimes a rogue fact will fly across my field of vision—some well-meaning statistic or off-hand comment—and bang, there it is. “That funny feeling,” as Bo Burnham calls it. The dropping sensation. The O God. It’s going to end. How did I forget? It’s like the anxiety waits until my guard is down and then, when I least expect it, it pounces.
I know I’m not alone in this. Statistics tell me that at least 68% of the population knows what I’m talking about.[1] Maybe you’re one of them. That’s a percentage, by the way, which has climbed about 600% in the last decade, and which I imagine will continue to climb one major hurricane, wildfire, and “unprecedented event” at a time.[2]
The first time I felt that sinking feeling was in March 2019. I was 29. Don’t ask me how I put it off so long. I know some of you eco-anxiety veterans out there want to pat me on the head. Oh, you’ve only been panicking for four years? How cute. When it hit, though, it hit hard.
I was sitting in a lawn chair on the quad of a small college in Texas, attending a festival for activists and spiritual leaders. The festival promised to offer “inspiration through stories and celebration,” which felt like a welcome and rejuvenating space after a season of anxiety-provoking change. I’d gone with two close friends, and we all sat together in the dry Texas heat, waiting for the next session to start. Finally, the facilitator stepped up to the gazebo and took up his mic.
“Thank you for joining us,” he began. “We’re going to get started.” The small crowd quieted down. “This morning, we’d like to start with a conversation on sustainable ways to engage in ecological justice. My co-facilitator and I,” he gestured to another man who had stepped onto the stage—a man I would later learn identified as an “eco-theologian,” “thought it’d be helpful to take turns sharing our experiences, diving deeper where need be, and exploring what comes to the surface. Sound good?”
The crowd murmured approval, and he sat down. As promised, they began their back and forth, and as promised, it was helpful. Insightful. They were both experienced in their fields, and I was captivated. At a certain point, though, things took a bit of a turn.
“So,” the facilitator asked, “this is obviously an emotionally taxing work. Where do you draw hope from?”
“Oh,” the eco-theologian laughed, “well, first I think it’s important to clarify what we mean by ‘hope.’ If we’re talking about hope, I want to be clear that I really don’t have any hope for the continuation of human civilization.”
There was a pause. A few nervous laughs.
“Really,” he went on, smiling to the crowd, “I made a career by being very optimistic, but as I’ve watched trends and dynamics over this last season of my life, I’ve honestly come to a point where I feel confident that we are in a moment of contraction. It’s a historically documented consequence of an overextended civilization, and that seems like where we are. I mean, seriously, we talk about total collapse like it’s some far-off thing, but if, for example, a drought were to hit the breadbasket next week, it’d pretty much be lights out for us. We’re right on top of the irreversible tipping points and there’s no going back from that. The ice caps alone—responsible for reflecting a huge amount of heat from the sun—are so significantly compromised at this point that the amount of heat we’re absorbing is about to increase exponentially and that pushes us right over the cliff.” He shrugged. “It’s over.”
The facilitator fidgeted. “So… hope?”
“Sure,” the eco-theologian nodded.
“I find hope in accepting that fact. I also find hope in the belief that I’m not the center of this story. Life is. And in this grand cosmos, life will go on just fine without us.”
I must’ve gone a little pale because one of my friends nudged me, asking if I was okay.
I was not.
I’d like to pause here for a second. Just a quick time out. Reader, this is a lot to process, and while it might sound alarmist, there’s a scary amount of truth to what that speaker was saying. We’ve been careening down this path for centuries, and at this point, it would take a miracle to turn this ship around. It’s bad. I had some impression of this before the festival, of course, but this man made it real. His words pushed me to the brink of panic, ushering me into a chronic experience I would later learn to call “eco-anxiety.”
I am not a psychologist. Nor am I an ecologist. I’m an ordained Christian pastor and a practicing Buddhist. I currently serve as a chaplain in a hospital where I help people face their shadows and deal with overwhelming feelings. I am sensitive, then, to the fact that eco-anxiety is a spiritual issue, and coping with it will probably require an expansion of our spirituality.
I should explain what I mean by that, as “spirituality” is an incredibly vague term in this cultural moment. People use “spirituality” to talk about all kinds of amorphous things, but when I talk about spirituality, I’m talking about the canon of stories through which we experience the world.
Spirituality, to me, refers to the collection of stories we tell that connect us (or disconnect us) to ourselves, others, and Something Greater.
A healthy spirituality tells a story expansive enough to make meaning of our experiences and cope with adversity in a way that promotes well-being for ourselves and those around us. Unhealthy spirituality, by contrast, tells narrower stories—stories that can leave us numb, in denial, or pushing our fears off on others.[3] When faced with adversity—like, for instance, a man in a gazebo telling you that your world is about to come crashing down—the spirituality we’ve cultivated can serve as either a resource or a liability.
By the time I attended that festival in Texas, I had developed a fairly expansive spirituality. This wasn’t by choice, lest you think I’m bragging. It was by necessity. I would’ve been happy to stay in my narrow little exclusive spirituality forever, but the problem was that, in my early twenties, I’d had my first bout with generalized anxiety and depression. It was an experience that shattered my narrow spirituality and left it scattered to the wind. The experience forced me into the wilderness—past the boundaries of my small spirituality story—and when I emerged, it was with a more open-palmed spirituality rooted in mindfulness and self-compassion. I think this is the way spiritual expansion usually works. Few go willingly. More often, we’re driven into the desert kicking and screaming. And it doesn’t just happen once. It happens over and over, over and over until we leave this earth—and some argue over and over again even after that. This was certainly the case with me with eco-anxiety.
As I returned home and tried to go back to my “normal life,” I found that my spiritual story, as expansive as it was, had stopped working. No matter how hard I leaned into my coping practices—no matter how often I meditated or “noted and let it go”—the panic kept coming back, knocking at the door of my awareness. To make matters worse, I felt increasingly alone. I was confused about why everyone else wasn’t panicking too. I mean, didn’t it make sense to panic? Had I lost my mind? Had they? I was serving as a pastor at the time, and in all my pastoral wisdom I started to think that maybe the best thing I could do was help others start panicking too, so I started preaching a series of sermons that might be best summarized as: “Look. If we don’t get it together, we’re doomed. Understood?”
As one might imagine, this approach didn’t get me all that far. The most I managed to do was get a small pocket of anxious people together so we could talk vaguely about solar panels. Highly prophetic.
Now, I can see that experiences like this can be a sign that we’re approaching the outer edges of our spiritual story. They’re signposts warning us we’re approaching a wilderness we have not yet learned to navigate. Far from a commandment to stop, however, these experiences can carry with them an invitation to widen the boundaries of our story—an invitation to a more expansive spirituality.
So, what might it look like to cultivate a spirituality that helps us deal with eco-anxiety? What might it look like to water the seeds of a story that doesn’t paralyze, but helps us take agency? One that doesn’t lead us to despair, but hope?
I think that eco-theologian was on to something, even though I didn’t have ears to hear it at that moment. I find hope in accepting that fact, he’d said. I also find hope in the belief that I’m not the center of this story. Life is. And in this grand cosmos, life will go on just fine without us. I wasn’t sure what this meant until several months later, reading the work of activist and Zen master Thích Nhất Hạnh. In The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching—a fantastic book I will never stop recommending—Thích Nhất Hạnh describes poetically what the eco-theologian was trying to describe directly:
When we look at the ocean, we see that each wave has a beginning and an end. A wave can be compared with other waves, and we can call it more or less beautiful, higher or lower, longer lasting or less long lasting. But if we look more deeply, we see that a wave is made of water. While living the life of a wave, it also lives the life of water. It would be sad if the wave did not know that it is water. It would think, Some day, I will have to die. This period of time is my life span, and when I arrive at the shore, I will return to nonbeing. These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish. […]
Thích-Nhất-Hạnh. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching: Transforming Suffering into Peace, Joy & Liberation: The Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and Other Basic Buddhist Teachings
A wave can be recognized by signs — high or low, beginning or ending, beautiful or ugly. But in the world of the water, there are no signs […] when the wave touches her true nature — which is water — all her complexes will cease, and she will transcend birth and death.
The first time I read this, these words gave me chills. “…and she will transcend birth and death.”
By this image, the wave is living by two stories simultaneously: the small story of the wave, and the grand story of the ocean. In one, the wave is the center of the story—a story characterized by existential dread as she faces the prospect of crashing on the shore. But in the other, the center of the story is not the wave. It’s the entire ocean. In this story, the wave is only a supporting character in something much bigger—something that was going on long before it was born and will continue long after it’s gone. By keeping its awareness rooted in both worlds, the wave transcends notions of birth and death.
This, I thought as I read this the first time, seems like the truest meaning of “eternal life.” Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?
This was the “hope” that the eco-theologian said sustained him in his otherwise hopeless work of ecological advocacy—that this story wasn’t his. It was life’s. What are each of us but a temporary manifestation of the one, unified universe? The “Ground of Our Being?” Like the wave on the ocean? That eco-theologian was living, not as the main character of a small story, but as a supporting character in the much more expansive, cosmic story of life. He was a part of a greater body with a unified, creative purpose. Looking back now, I can see how this story kept him going.
At the same time, I can also see a significant problem.
Having dealt with hundreds of people desperate for a spiritual way to bypass suffering—myself being one of the worst—it seems clear to me that such an approach can become just another spiritual-sounding way to avoid our feelings. Nope, you could say, hands over your ears. No need to feel my feelings of fear or sadness! They’re not real! The wave isn’t real! I’m just the ocean! La la la la la! Such repression, however, can only ever cause us problems down the road—our fear and sadness coming out in unexpected and indirect ways. The trick, as Thích Nhất Hạnh advocates, isn’t to replace one story with another. It’s to hold both in tension.
We are waves, and also, we are the entire ocean.
We are individuals who will die, and also, what we truly are will live forever.
Our ecological and societal system may collapse, and also, it was always part of a much bigger story.
I feel sad and scared, and also, on a cosmic scale, it’s all okay.
I think the spirituality that will best serve us in this moment—the spirituality that will best help us deal with eco-anxiety—is an and also spirituality.
It’s a non-dual approach to the reality that more than one story can be true. Such an approach doesn’t “fix” anxiety—nor should it—but it does help us cope. It helps us move out of paralysis and find agency. Knowing that our story will end and that we serve a much bigger story, we find ourselves free to ask: So, what is my unique work in this moment? How can I be a unique manifestation of the creative outpouring of the universe?
With an and also spirituality, we find the freedom to accept our situation and do our work with non-attachment—contributing what we can, then letting go, knowing the story will go on without us. That, I believe, is the expansive spirituality that can help us right now.
Sometimes I still panic about our ecological situation. Sometimes I forget what I know and find myself sliding back into the fearful story of the wave. That’s normal, I think. What’s different now is that the pangs of panic don’t always feel like a gateway to despair. Instead, they feel like an invitation to expand my story.
Whatever lies ahead of us, it will be painful. There’s no avoiding feeling that. There’s no escape from the consequences of our choices over the last three centuries. And also, this story is bigger than that.
Our wave will crash, and also the ocean is beyond birth and death.
It is scary, and also we are bigger than our fear.
It’s my hope, moving forward, that we might cultivate a spirituality that holds the tension of both stories—one that expands our stories to make room for the possibility of climate catastrophe.
It’s my hope that we can cultivate a spirituality that makes space for suffering, and also recognizes that anything can become the compost to nourish greater awakening and well-being.
[1] Schreiber, M. (2021, March 1). Addressing climate change concerns in practice. Monitor on Psychology. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2021/03/ce-climate-change
[2] Scher, A. (2018, December 24). “Climate Grief”: The growing emotional toll of climate change. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/mental-health/climate-grief-growing-emotional-toll-climate-change-n946751
[3] Religion, by contrast, is the form taken by the substance of spirituality. It’s the common language we learn to speak to express what we’ve experienced to be spiritually true. In that regard, no religion can claim superiority over another, as each one is capable of fostering healthy as well as unhealthy spiritualities.