On Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:00 to 12:15 p.m. there is a chapel service in the hospital chapel. The inter-faith service is provided by the Pastoral Care Team and we each have been assigned a service. I am on for Thursday, June 17. Brock Leach, a Unitarian Universalist who is currently in year's residency offered the following homily this past Thursday.
Opening Words:
Small as is our whole system compared with the infinitude of creation,
Brief as is our life compared with the cycles of time,
We are so tethered to all by the beautiful dependencies of law,
That not only the sparrow’s fall is felt to the uttermost bound,
but the vibrations set in motion by the words
that we utter reach through all space,
and the tremor is felt through all time.
Rev. Maria Mitchell
The Interdependent Web
"I imagine that by this point, everyone here would agree that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a tragedy on pretty much every dimension. It’s a tragic loss of 11 mostly young men who were husbands and fathers and dedicated employees. It’s the potential loss of livelihoods for thousands of fishermen and business people who cater to tourism on the Gulf Coast. It’s a threat to some of America’s most beautiful and fragile coastal environments-- those marshes and barrier islands of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and now the Florida Panhandle. And of course it’s a tragedy for all manner of sea life throughout the whole region.
"From where we sit at the moment, it’s really hard to find any enduring meaning in what’s happened in the last six weeks. But like in most tragedies, there are inevitably some small blessings hidden in the folds of this larger disaster if we can only be aware. They lie mostly out of view, and they don’t justify the price. But they are calling to us to take notice nonetheless.
"For me, if there’s any meaning in this event it’s as a dramatic reminder of exactly how interconnected we are to each other and to this world we live in. Consider this: One mistake—a set of oversights, really-- made by a handful of people trying to take a few shortcuts, creates a leak only a few meters wide, 100 and some miles from the nearest shore and 5000 feet below the surface of the water. In the scope of the world’s geography, this is a tiny thing, an infinitesimally small speck. And think about what has been wrought!
"In just a matter of days, this spill has become the largest man-made ecological disaster in U.S. history; it has effected millions of people economically; it has brought powerful corporations low, including British Petroleum—the fourth largest corporation in the world. The company’s total market value has fallen by 40% or $74B since this disaster began. This single event has called upon the President of the United States and virtually every state and national office holder—from Cabinet Secretaries and Attorneys General to Governors-- to take action. Virtually the entire world has not only heard of this disaster, but has watched the unstoppable gusher on live video from the ocean floor. The global economy—stock markets and commodity prices all around the world-- have reacted hour by hour. It has even expanded our vocabulary overnight; we’re all suddenly conversant in “containment domes”, “junk shots”, and “top kills”.
"And those are just the human impacts. When all is said and done, they may well pale in comparison to the toll taken on all other forms of life in the Gulf.
"Our first human instinct is to turn this catastrophe into an exercise in blame. Is it corporate malfeasance or bureaucratic ineptitude? Is it a few roughneck outlaws or some pencil-necked regulators that messed this up? Is it the greedy capitalists or the tree-hugging leftists? It’s hard to know how the blame will all get meted out, but it’s very clear that there will be plenty to go around.
"But for me, all the focus on blame misses the larger point. What we have unfolding right now for all the world to see is a vivid illustration of exactly how every action we take in our lives, no matter how seemingly inconsequential or isolated, has repercussions far beyond our knowing. And those repercussions are growing in direct proportion to our need for limited planetary resources we share and for the support and care of each other. If there’s a lesson in this disaster, it’s that at this moment in human history our individual destinies are so tightly bound up with the natural resources of the Earth and with each other on this small planet, that every move for good or ill has consequences for the whole. And every action we take has a magnified ability to either destroy or heal on a scale we’ve never experienced before.
"The Deepwater Horizon oil spill; the Upper Branch mine disaster in West Virginia; the failed levies of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina; the failed infrastructure of Haiti during the earthquake. They’re all tragic reminders of what happens we overreach the planet’s limited resources or when we exploit our fellow human beings-- or, as in some of these cases, when we do both at the same time. If we pause to listen deeply, we can recognize that these as not just random, isolated events, they are a series of direct messages from the Living God of All Creation.
"They’re all messages calling us back to the magnificent interconnectedness of all existence, and to the crucial importance of all our individual actions— both the isolated and the far-reaching--in fulfilling our common destiny.
"By pulling on just one strand too hard you and I can stretch the whole web of existence out of shape. But by nurturing, and inspiring and loving one another and the planet we can build a stronger web together. The answer really doesn’t lie in who we choose to blame, but in how you and I choose to live each day.
"As. Rev. Mitchell would say, we are so tethered by all the 'beautiful dependencies' of our existence, that the tremors of our actions will “reach through all space” and be 'felt through all time'."
Brock Leach
Thursday, June 3
Tampa General Hospital Chapel
