Harvard Divinity School the practice of wild Mercy something Deeper Than Hope March 4th 2024 I'm Diane Moore and I'm the associate dean of religion and public life here at Harvard Divinity School and on behalf of myself and our Dean Marla Frederick it's my pleasure to welcome you to this fifth installment of our six-part series entitled religion in times of Earth Crisis tonight we have the pleasure of hearing from our beloved friend and colleague Terry Tempest Williams this series is co-sponsore
d by the Salat Institute for climate and sustainability at Harvard University the center for the study of world religions the constellation project and Harvard X please pause with me for a moment as I now read out the acknowledgement of land and people for Harvard University Harvard University is located on the traditional and ancestral lands of the massachusett the original inhabitants of what is now known as Boston and Cambridge we pay tribute and respect to the people of the massachusett trib
e past and present and honor the land itself which remains sacred to the massachusett people webinars like this um take a village and or even a city and I would be remiss not to acknowledge my wonderful colleagues here at religion and public life who Bes the scenes have created the opportunity that we're all about to enjoy this evening I especially want to acknowledge relle sway Rema Tosi Tammy Lea and Natalie Campbell I also want to thank our office of communication here at Harvard Divinity Sch
ool with a special shout out to the amazing Christy Welch for her creation and uh uh design and creation of the beautiful posters that have animated this entire series and finally a shout out to K Lord from our it Department Who Behind the Scenes has made sure that we can deal with and not crash with the volume of people interested in a series so thank you all to my beloved colleagues this entire series was really inspired by our colleague Professor Myra Rivera who focused on these sets of quest
ions um what does religion have to do in times of catastrophe for her 2022 American Academy of religion presidential address she was elected uh president of of our body of Scholars of religious studies and use that occasion to really lay out a both an opport opportunity and a challenge for those of us in religious studies to take seriously the intersecting issues relevant to the Earth Crisis that we now face so I want to share a brief quote from that address from Myra Rivera who gave the first t
alk in this series and I also want to read a quote from amitav go from his the nut curse which is also relevant to our work and Inspire has been an inspiration for this series as well so from Myra Rivera we need a more capacious sense of collectivity that can only emerge when we are willing to honor our stories and tell the truth about injustices that have shaped both environmental Devastation and responses to it we need a world within our many worlds and from amitav go this is the great burden
that now rests upon writers artists filmmakers and everyone else who is involved in the telling of stories to us Falls the task of imaginatively restoring agency and voice to non-humans as with all the most important Artistic Endeavors in human history this is a task that is once aesthetic and political and because of the magnitude of the crisis that besets the planet it is now freighted with the most pressing moral urgency again that is from amitav go before I uh turn to introduce Terry I want
to just say a couple things to remind you all that this event is being recorded and we will be able to share that recording on our website as soon as it's available with transcript full transcripts I also want to say that um Terry will be speaking for approximately minutes and then we'll have time to entertain questions from the audience so I now have the wonderful honor of introducing in brief form uh someone who I am proud to call not only a colleague but a beloved friend Terry Tempest William
s I think for many in the audience Terry needs very little introduction and I'm only going to give a short one now um given her many accomplishments we would literally be here all night just speaking about um her prolific writing but relevant to HDs Terry Tempest Williams joined us as a writer in Residence in 2017 and is continuing to join us in that capacity through June of 2025 she's the author of numerous books including the environmental literature classic refuge and unnatural history of fam
ily and place she has has many many other Publications what Terry has been able to do here with us is she has um taught several courses primarily writing courses for our students and I've had the pleasure of co- teing two courses with her the most recent last semester called a wild Mercy um a wild promise I'm sure I'm sorry um this her talk tonight is partly wild Mercy a wild promise and that uh commemorated the endangered the 50th anniversary of the endangered speeches act which of course is wh
at we're celebrating this year I just want to say that what Terry Tempest Williams brings to every encounter that she um has whether it be public or private or personal is an incredible Integrity a deep deep deep in commitment uh and great heart to the issues of our time she has been a leader in raising Consciousness about the Earth Crisis for decades now and we are incredibly honored to have her with us as part of this speaker series so please join me in welcoming Terry Tempest Williams to offe
r her presentation tonight called a practice of wild Mercy something Deeper Than Hope and I'll turn it over to you Terry thank you so much for being with us thank you so much Diane uh it's such an honor to be here and I'm just going to get um the full screen here so I can imagine the audience Diane I love you you know that and thank you for bringing us here together I think one of the most radical forms of education is what's happening in religion and public life at the Harvard Divinity School a
nd I'm just so grateful for your leadership and the ways in which you're bringing issues of social justice and climate Justice um together as two hands in prayer and your commitment to peace good evening friends um all over the world it's daunting to be part of this series and like Diane I really want to thank um the community that puts This Together specifically Rachel sway thank you for helping with the visual aspects of tonight's program re thank you for your your integrity and hammy um for y
our care and certainly Natalie for helping to get the word out and all of our community that is so committed to um the spiritual access on which we turn on this planet we call home my deepest bows to our colleague Myra Rivera who inspired this series as Diane said and grounded Us in the importance of our own hom ground that these Global issues are in fact local issues personal she took us on her own journey to her own beloved hom ground of Puerto Rico in times of Crisis and who can forget the im
age of that young woman holding her dog both wearing Halos facing the flood in times of crisis it put a contemporary urgency on what is happening at this moment in time that in so many ways we are living toward the future a future that is uncertain terrifying but also full of evolutionary promise we don't know how we're going to adapt but I believe we will we will suffer losses but as Myra reminds us in her brilliant talk A procession of catastrophes that we need to honor our stories and tell th
e truth about the injustices that have shaped not only our lives but the Earth's we have seen when she talks about a world of our many worlds we have seen our many worlds through each speaker and I just wanted to give a recap tonight because I think it's important to know where we've traveled as a community together in these past um five weeks weeks Dan McAn challenged us to face our settler history realizing and I should say histories um realizing the harm we've caused in the disruption and des
truction of communities both human and wild in his beautiful talk on the power of the local in ancestors and climate in our own Boston backyard he asked us to pay attention to the knowledge of indigenous communities who understand that to care for the more hum more than human world is inseparable for our care for our ancestors and then he asked the evocative question at the end can trees be ancestors paren Silla with his kaleidoscopic view of Muslim communities and the role of Storytelling answe
red Dan's question in his sering talk animal stories in crisis through Tales of tigers and snakes and the power of ritual to not only make peace with an animated world but engage in Acts of restoration through ceremonies and how our lives depend on these acts of reciprocity Taran asked the question can listening to these stories compel us to re-evaluate and reimagine our academic approaches to religion and environments and the relationship of religious pasts and presents in our time of Crisis wh
at do we now do with our grief as brokenhearted people Matt pots in his provocative talk apocalyptic grief Reckoning with loss wrestling with hope invites us to not look away to not fear our grief but embrace it as the moral ground of ethics and to hold loss as our moral Foundation he allows us to sit with the question from Judith Butler what is a grievable life and that haunts me still and in a beautifully contrarian PIV it critiques hope and reimagines hope not as something passive where we gi
ve our power to change the world and hope that it does excuse me I'm sorry about that we're in rural Utah and so there may be many surprises tonight I'm in Castle Valley uh ancestral homes of of the preown people and you people and I wish we could be sitting outside uh but what I love about Matt is the uh contrarian pivot that he made critiquing hope reimagining hope not as something passive where we give away our power to change the world and hope that it does but to put our love into action as
a moral and ethic ethical imperative so I wanted to begin tonight by remembering where we've traveled as a community who cares about the role of religion in these times of the Earth Crisis the the eyes of the future are looking back at us and praying that we might see beyond our time they are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint that we might leave room for the life that is destined to come to protect what is Wild is to protect what is gentle perhaps the wildness we fear
is the pause between our own Heartbeats The Silent space that says we live only by grace wildness lives by this same Grace wild Mercy is in our hands and wild Mercy is what I want to discuss tonight not in an academic way but in a personal way the place where I belong as I just mentioned is Utah in particular a small desert Hamlet Castle Valley along the Colorado River if you were here the coordinates that you would see would be East would be Castleton Tower 400 foot Sandstone monila that seism
ologists have told us has a pulse and when I remember going down to tell my friend Jonah Yellowman who is one of the spiritual advisers for Bears ear I said Jonah you won't believe this you've got to listen to this this recording tlon tower has a pulse and as he put it to his ear and listened he just nodded his head and he said yes I know if we were to look South which I am right now we would see the Lal mountains Rising close to 12 13,000 ft and round mountain of volcanic plug in a sea of sage
and to our West in the last light of day is porcupine rim and again North is the Rio Colorado the US Department of the Interiors Bureau of Reclamation report recently tells us that the average temperature of the Colorado River Basin is projected to increase by five to six degrees Fahrenheit during this century and even more in the Upper Colorado River Basin which is where we live with climate change heightening extreme temperatures drought fires and floods we find ourselves entangled in a Cascad
e of consequences we are experiencing what climate scientists are calling a mega drought not seeing for 2,500 years and I can tell you it this is not an easy place to live last summer there were places along the Colorado River just north of us that you could walk across temperatures last year in Castle Valley exceeded 100 degrees for 52 consecutive days the main average being around 107 degrees reaching as high as 116 degrees I remember a friend came we sitting on the porch drinking water as muc
h as we could in the shade and when I walked out to her car I heard something flapping and I realized my shoe had become D sold the so of my shoe had fallen off um that's where we're living and it's harrowing one's mind melts we've taken to night walks becoming nocturnal like so many of the desert creatures who live here and I've been trying to expand my night Vision my capacity to see in the dark and I think it's been a useful exercise both physically as well as metaphorically and then on Janua
ry 4th 2023 the briam Young University report on Great Salt Lake came out with the news that Great Salt Lake was in crisis quote emergency measures were needed to rescue Great Salt Lake from ongoing claps Ben Abbott the lead scientist said we have five years years I cannot tell you how that penetrated my heart I've known Great Salt Lake in flood and I am now knowing her in drought that is a day that marked a change in my life five years we've had two very large um years of snow and rain Ben just
two days ago told me that b is about two more years so when we talk about religion in times of crisis nothing could be more Germaine to those of us in the Inner Mountain West in particular and the American West in general the scientist said in very clear language Great Salt Lake is facing unprecedented danger without a dramatic increase in water flow to the lake in 2023 and 24 its disappearance could cause immense damage to Utah's Public Health environment and economy unquote boom this is where
our community is now Statewide this news came two months after a friend of mine um fuzzle Shake who's a photographer and I circumnavigated Great Salt Lake in November October and November of 20122 it just so happened that that was the historic glow of Great Salt Lake at elevation 4188 in 2000 excuse me in 1986 her historic high was at 4212 that is a difference of um 2300 square miles in 1986 to 888 square miles in 20122 that's rough Great Salt Lake is roughly onethird of the water body that it
was was in 1986 that's hard to imagine relle will you show us the comparatives those two maps please on the left you can see in 1985 1986 the size of of Great Salt Lake it was a liquid hand that exceeded the square miles of Delaware and Rhode Island it was wreaking havoc on highways and freeways um as well as infiltrating the Salt Lake airport now on the right you'll see Great Salt Lake in 2022 and you can see the white margins of where Great Salt Lake used to be and now she's a third of the siz
e why am I using feminine pronouns because those of us who live here see her as a sovereign being as a water body that has influenced all of our Lives including the weather that's why we have the greatest quote unquote snow on Earth powder skiing because of the lake effect that creates this moisture um a weather making machine around the lake that that allows this fluffiness to occur in the High Country in the mountains but I wanted you to see this map to understand um the case study that I'm go
ing to share with you tonight thank you Michelle so as you can see for those of us living in the Inner Mountain West this is a reckoning and an Awakening we can read this alarming story of Great Salt Lake and her Retreat not just as the cyclic nature of change but as The Narrative of now diversions drought and climate collapse toxic dust devils whipping up arsonic from the exposed salt bed of Great Salt Lake creating clouds threatening the health and well-being of two million people along the wa
sach front the headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the life of Great Salt Lake the entire Watershed and ecosystem is at risk it sailing Waters its Healing Waters a reservoir for our spirit sunsets dazzling in the fullness of it day the migratory home of 12 million Birds this all of this is at risk but I think the thing that that pierced my heart the most happened on June 29th of 20203 Last Summer the white pelicans who have been nesting on Gunnison Island and have had
a present on other Islands in Great Salt Lake and Lake Bonville that stretch through Utah Nevada um a a prehistoric Lake 10,000 years ago white pelicans have been here for the last 12,500 years not to mention six million years of evolutionary Perfection on that day June 29th the white pelicans of Gunnison Island left when I was working on a book called refuge in the 80s 1980s I remember going out to Gunnison island with Ron Paul who was a a wildlife biologist it looked like a white beaded buck
skin 10,000 12,000 white pelicans were on that island one year ago in March there were 5,000 now no nesting white pelicans I hope they come back we all hope they come back but my question tonight is what do the white pelicans know that we don't and are we listening we are eroding and evolving at once Great Salt Lake is a living being even uton of the year in 2021 mentoring us on the nature of change our refuge in flood and in drought Great Salt Lake is bringing us to our knees how do we put our
love into action we can create new stories building from the past our mother lake is calling us home she is terminal her water body is disappearing in drought evaporating faster than clouds can promise rain or Rivers can rise abets and stilt stand in her shallows reflecting hope but that is not enough we need to bring water to Great Salt Lake this we can do and if we do nothing Death Becomes us we are the waterbearers of her future Great Salt Lake and the lives she supports depend on us and what
we choose to bring Let It Be Water not promises like dust Let It Be actions creative and bold Let It Be Love Great Salt Lake is a mirror of who we are shrinking or expanding birds are prayers with wings and we can hear their devotions at the water's edge we will bring water to Great Salt Lake this is our vow this is our work under our watch we can accept nothing less who will forgive us if we do nothing until all we can hear is the silence thank you for watching that you know amov go talks abou
t the burden of of writers and artists I don't see it that way I don't think it is a burden I think it's it's a privilege and I wanted to share that with you because how do we put our love in action and Eric Overton is a filmmaker um I'm a writer it was a weekend he sent me a friend sent me what he had been working on this this short film that was very rough and she decided I just want you to see how beautiful his work is and I'll be honest with you I was supposed to be grading papers Diane and
I just needed a break and I just started writing to this and I sent it as really just a note to Eric saying how much I admired what he'd done and he called back and just said let's just put it together and we did we did it over a weekend and then we just gave it away um to friends to nonprofits anyone that wants to use this it's 1 minute and 34 seconds and I feel like this is what each of us can do with the gifts that are ours how do we collaborate which I really believe is the way forward in th
ese times of C crisis and then offer it up in the name of community each in our own way each in our on time with again the gifts that are ours I'm haunted by that silence and when I saw the footage that Eric had done it was the silence that haunted me and I am desperate for silence in my life we live in the desert for that reason but this is not a restorative silence this is not a spiritual silence that nurtures and inspires us but it is a silence that unols us U NS o u LS and I've never known t
hat word until yesterday um I was in Salt Lake City and a young activist came up to me very discouraged about the what the legislature had done and not done and he said they are asking us to unso ourselves and that has stayed with me and that to me is what that silence this penetrating silence could be if we do not get water to Great Salt Lake and I'm sharing this story with you because this is not personal I told you it would be a personal rendering what I mean by that is every one of us in the
places we call home whatever Town whatever City whatever country whatever Community we are a part of you have your own Great Salt Lake a place that you love that is dying to come back to life and this is where I believe that Our obligation comes forth this is our wild Mercy In This Moment to ask the question how can I help and again how can we put our love into action there was something surprising about the Brigham Young University report on Great Salt Lake last year and it was on the last pag
e and the header was this what we need more than water that in itself was shocking because all of us thought we have to get Lake to the water whether it's which we will talk about in a minute whether it's subsidizing um Alfalfa Farmers where 80% of the water to Great Salt Lake is diverted and growing alphalpha to be exported out of the state to raise food for cows um or whether it's hoping that the Mormon church will release some of its um water shares which they have done and they are promising
to do more or conservation of water so many strategies what could be what do we need more than water when it comes to the revitalization of Great Salt Lake and I want to read you the first sentence and this is by scientists perhaps the biggest deficit we have in facing this crisis is trust trust is what we need more than water it goes on to read and I want to read you this paragraph conservation measures have been taken throughout the Watershed but many water users and providers do not yet trus
t each other to Shepherd conserved water to the lake we desperately need transparency and shared sacrifice to reinforce trust and solidarity we hope that this intention comes through in our writing many of us currently involved in agriculture or have farmer Heritage in the Great Salt Lake Watershed are asking this question C who can we trust TR as farming families and communities we will be most impacted by changes necessary to rescue the lake we need to ensure Financial legal and professional s
upport for farmers during this transition this also could be communities at risk this could be communities of color this could be all manner of people legislators who do not have trust so I I point that out because again I think I think as a species and I can say as a state in Utah we are always underestimated but I believe this is not just a political issue or even an ecological issue but a spiritual issue where is our devotion how can we help we can build trust together we can create together
we can create collaborations together we can mobilize our gifts each in our own way and offer them up in the name of community so I would ask you what is it in your community that is dying to come to life again and what are your gifts that you might offer up in the name of your community how might you help I think we need this kaleidoscopic approach in this beautiful broken world we call Home Science art storytelling poets and politicians enlightened compassionate public servants and religious l
eaders who are coming together in the name of wild Mercy is what can Inspire us if Grace is something God grants us unearned undeserved freely given then mercy is what we as human beings can offer to Earth to our fellow citizens and all those beings with whom we share this planet with including rocks rivers mountains and an inland Sea called Great Salt Lake we can put our love into action through the gifts that are ours there's a woman in our community named Nan Seymour she's a poet she has used
her Gifts of language to ignite a community what she said to us last year was we can become a lake facing people we have not been a community of Lake facing people we have faced the mountains never the lake when Brigham Young said this is the place what he also embedded was that this was a lake of wasted water water in the desert that no one could drink we can become aik facing people but she didn't just speak her words she embodied them and for the past two years 2021 2022 no 2022 2023 and now
this is the third year for the last two years she created vigil she camped on the shores of Great Salt Lake from January through March throughout the Utah State Legislature that is not easy to do Brook and I went to visit Nan last year and we are hardy people you know we've we've camped everywhere in the West in the Arctic Etc we brought our sleeping bags we brought our tent it was so bitter cold well below freezing reaching single dig digits that Nan at that point was staying in a camper and o
ffered us the kitchen table to sleep on which we did um three months this year she took her vigil to the state capital relle could you show us these slides and let's talk about them what I can tell you so far is when the legislators heard about Nan keeping vigil they invited her to pray it's a largely Mormon legislature this year she took her vigil to the capital itself and invited the public to join her this is an image on on January 20th it was the beginning of the Utah legislature their legis
lative session and 1,00 people showed up it was so exciting it was so joyous it was diverse it was a there there was so much love I cannot tell you next slide there's Nan with her green scar darf greenh hat she was the host of this uh rally with many other nonprofits everything from um the Sierra Club to save our Great Salt Lake to friends of Great Salt Lake uh to Center for biological diversity um to Mormons for the environment to indigenous voices to marginalized communities um lost students f
or the lake everything you can imagine and it was powerful what was also powerful next slide please is that Nan told me not long ago if you would have told me that in my 40s 50s I would be a puppeteer I would not have believed it for the past year she with an incredible um artist named Eli Nixon from Rhode Island together they created waves and a community that would be Making Waves so that every time the legislators would have to come to the Utah State Capital they would have to see people maki
ng waves and walk through the water next slide please not only that but on the edge of the lake they created species from the lake community so you see Redwing blackbirds you see brine shrimp you see bison you see eared GPS you see California Golds our state uh bird all manners of species and next slide please those species showed up at the state capital and every day of every session you know how unions have a union line a picket line that you can't cross well every day our state legislators ha
d to cross the species line and then again cross the Waters of people making waves before they could get to their desk in the capital next slide please that might be the last one um what I can tell you is this there were people that thought that this was Superfluous that this was silly that it was Child's Play Fun and Games but what they didn't realize is that this organized a community of radical Joy it was not superficial it was unbelievably subversive and what I can also tell you is at that r
ally one of the great Joys and privileges of my life was to come dressed as an eared greeve and I can tell you it was not child's play it was an omage to what I saw last January when Bri and I went to spend the night and keep vigil with Nan we walked down to the edges of Great Salt Lake it was at least a mile walk the water has retreated so far and there was a stench I was not familiar with at the lake and the lake has its own smell believe me but as we started walking it was Nan and I and anoth
er friend um single file evenly spaced every 3 feet was a dead eared greeve we walked for a quarter of a mile 496 dead Greaves why because it was 27% saline salt uh content in Great Salt Lake they eat 30 thou One Eared gree eats 30,000 rine shrimp a day they were hungry they were malnourished they didn't have the strength to leave when they were supposed to leave in the late fall they left in January when the storms hit and they were slapped down into the water to be able to come as an eared GRE
with golden feathers on either side of my eyes a pointed beat red eyeliner for their red eyes thank you for those slides Michelle there is something Deeper Than Hope engagement Community embodiment compassion for those creatures we live among at that same rally that I've been speaking of forest cutch a youth leader revered and respected stood before the citizen and said this is our sacred Lake this is all of our sacred Lake and then from the steps of the Utah State Capital he faced Great Salt L
ake on the western Horizon glistening like a line of Quick Silver and said join me so she can hear our love our sacred Lake our sacred Lake our sacred Lake 1500 people chanting our sacred lake so we could become a Lake facing Community would you believe me if I told you that in that moment the clouds opened up and a golden light flooded the sky Great Salt Lake shimmering on the horizon do you know what one of the first actions of the Utah State Legislature was in this season of 2023 HB 249 House
Bill 249 known as the rights of nature or the socalled legal personhood Bill what this Bill said was you cannot Grant personhood to a lake they did not explicitly mention Great Salt Lake but we all knew what they meant you cannot Grant personhood to a lake or a mountain or a river or a nonan animate object never mind that we've granted personhood to corporations H Bill 249 passed that house in a vote 58 to 11 that's how scared they are of this movement that's how scared they are of the species
line that's how scared they are of our pronouns that we are calling Great Salt Lake our sacred Lake our mother Lake she not the Great Salt Lake Great Salt Lake People Making Waves scientists calling for trust again as Jonah yellow man the spiritual ADV visor of Bearer said to me not long ago and to a group of students it is time it is time we Grant selfhood to Great Salt Lake to rivers to mountains to beings we are not the only species that lives and loves and Grieves on this planet last Friday
there was a public celebration of Harry balon's life at the Riverside Church in New York City it was open to everyone one it began with drumming Chief Bob and Neil Clark and The alumi Ensemble proceeding down the aisle of the famed and historic Riverside Church calling forth the ancestors Reverend Dr James Forbes opened his sermon with four words in his honoring of the great activist and singer and so many other things a great human being Harry bellanti what he said in these four words were We A
re One family we are one family he said quote God is love God is freedom and Justice God is power God is power to bring about change God is building Community unquote and then sweet honey and the Rocks brought forth breath they asked us to breathe together and they sang the voice of the waters into being to welcome the ancestors for the next three hours the love and music and activism for civil rights for human rights for freedom and justice for all brought together through the life of Harry Bel
lon was celebrated he was at Selma he was at the March on Washington he was for fighting he was fighting Justice in the prisons and against hunger nationally and globally it was his idea to gather musicians for We are the world we are the children creating community and a song the whole world could sing he was wherever he was needed for eight decades and he called all of us to be there too the public Memorial was deeply inspiring and I thought about our community at the Harvard Divinity School I
thought about our community at Great Salt Lake I thought about the Earth Community how we are eroding and evolving at once the cosmic of his devotion the poet Aja said of ban the original Dream Defender the choreography of care and then she said the artist's assignment is to love to love to love these beautiful chanting sentences that were proclaimed by a poet Harry Bellon said each generation is responsible for its own Liberation and then he said in C they shared we have to love so fiercely so
dangerously oppression melts and as whoopy Goldberg said it's why we need to care we all left singing and dancing as one family with wion Marsalis and the New Orleans band paying playing oh when the saints come marching in down the aisles of the Riverside Church and we followed them singing and dancing carrying the joyous d dangerously loving resistance onto the streets may we all love better it struck me that as we were singing when oh when all when the saints come marching in that's the same
song with different lyrics that Nan and her species line and all the People Making Waves were singing also on the state capital steps in Utah social justice climate justice justice for all these are all one movement to love to care to engage in something deeper than hope this is the open space of democracy we can engage we can bear witness to this Burning world and there is something we need more than water and that is Trust may we trust one another not to look away if we are present we will kno
w what to do with the gifts that are ours this is wild Mercy I want to share with you a piece that I wrote in the middle of the drought on Great Salt Lake and when for the first time I stood at out in the wetlands no longer wet but dry baked clay plias um at the record low of Great Salt Lake I am searching for Grace if the facts don't matter anymore and misinformation does if we fail to listen to indigenous wisdom of First Nations and remain unmoved toward another way of being in right relations
hip to Earth and the stories and statistics that scientists are bringing to us do not stir us to action on behalf of a living world that is suffering and if the lives of our children and the future of their children's children are not first in our minds and thwarting the easy sleep of our privilege then the question must be asked are we too dead to the world to feel alive believe the long-legged bir Birds who are circling above us desperately looking for water believe the forests that are burnin
g whose surviving trees will later stand as Sentinels hard witnesses to animal bodies reduced to Ash believe in flash floods roaring through burnt Canyons Gathering debris in Rivers Running black in the desert even in times of drought believe Great Salt Lake is retreating in plain sight leaving what's left to the dust devils whipping up clouds of chemicals resting on the dry lake bed as we inhale the toxic world we have created we leave in the once shimmering bodies of water on the horizon that
are now nothing more than a mirage made of heat waves death dancing on the Salt Flats believe in the silences before we can save this world we are losing we must first learn how to savor what remains this is more than an ecological crisis or a political crisis it is a spiritual one the Earth Will Survive us we are the ones being baptized by fire what is the role of religion in this time of Earth Crisis how can we put our love into action how do we build the capacity to not look away how do we bu
ild trust how do we engage the gifts that are ours and offer them up in the name of community each in our own way each in our own time in the places we call home Myra Riv again her words we need to honor our stories to tell the truth of our injustices that have shaped both environmental Devastation and our responses to it our world of many worlds our sacred Lake We Are One family I hope that together each in our own communities around the world we can find holy resistance that we can make waves
that we will not remain silent that we will find the courage of a sustained focus on behalf of our Earth Community it is time while Mercy is in our hands I want to close with a prayer and I again it's another collaboration with a dear dear friend Rosalie Ward she is an Exquisite photographer of birds one of the First photographers Believe It or Not of Great Salt Lake who focused on the birds who came to know who these species were of the 12 million Birds migrating through we've known each other
for two decades we call each other bird sisters and she put these IM Imes of hers together last night for this um Gathering and I'm so grateful this is what collaboration looks like I pray to the birds I pray to the birds because I believe they will carry the messages of my heart upward I pray to them because I believe in their existence the way their songs begin and end each day the invocations and benediction of Earth I pray to the birds because they remind me of what I love rather than what I
fear and at the end of my prayers they teach me how to listen wild Mercy is in in our hands thank you Terry thank you for that eloquent invocative deeply heartfelt prayer I think your entire presentation was a prayer and a calling forth of our of our own agency to connect to reconnect and to be attentive to all that is at stake in this time so thank you deeply for those moving words I wanted as you were speaking I um had the voice of Chief Orin lions in my head and um I believe you actually wer
e the person to introduce me to his work and his important witness and I was especially um came to mind his his particular talk on saying that we would be so much better off as a United States citizens if rather than a Bill of Rights we had a bill of responsibility and the reason that I was thinking about that is the the notion that responsibility is about the ability to be present and respond to be responseable and that requires exactly what you're calling forth in US is a sense of presence and
attentiveness and uh and recognition of the profound interdependence that we have with our own context but and your context the power of what it means to be deeply wetted and rooted in a place that includes the Great Salt Lake and then your own experience of Sorrow at what's happening to that beautiful powerful entity so I I just wanted I just wanted I wanted to share that with you particularly because those those words of a sense of responsibility as oos to rights which of course are about the
internal and the individual as opposed to a sense of the recognition of our profound interdependence and then the accountability that that calls us to Rise um to meet so I so thank you for that I I I'm going to invite people to please put questions in the Q&A at the bottom uh but Terry we I wanted to ask you a few things that you and I you and I discussed there's so much that you represented and so much that we would love to hear from you more that we would love to hear from you around I want t
o start with actually the third question you and I talked about which is what does it what does it actually mean to Bear witness in your in your experience what you're you're calling us to do so you've done so but can you can you elaborate on your own experience of what it means to Bear witness not only what it calls forth in us but what it does to us when we're able to Bear witness di I'm going to do something that I didn't plan on doing this is about bearing witness I saw this flash I'm going
to take the um computer and see there are aund deer just right outside and I just want to see if if we can just a minute if you can see them hello Dian can you see them yes yes we well yes we can yes yes we can that back oh my gosh how beautiful look at these and they're all just hello hello gorgeous hello little ones thank you for Diane can you see them we can can you see the bucks on the ridge there's it's harder to tell and see but we can see the look at this one can you see that butt oh yes
yes so I think that's what um bearing Witnesses look at the light on Castleton tower that has a pulse and look at them they're just staring beautiful metal LS so I just you know it's not abstract it's not an idea I think bearing witness is knowing where we live knowing who we are and who we're not um you know I think we're accustomed to I'm just out of breath because I'm so excited I'm so excited to see that everyone and they stayed can you believe it um you know I think we're accustomed to thin
king bearing witness is a passive act when it's an act of extreme attention um it's bearing witness is an act of consequence an act of conscience and Consciousness and when we bear witness it it comes into our DNA how can you not care about those deer these are mu deer threatened um they're on the decline of the Sage Brush step if you would have told me as a child that mule deer very different from white white tell deer you have in New England would be threatened I would not have believed that b
ut it's because of the oil and gas you know so we bear witness of their gentleness they didn't run because they feel safe here um so I want to share with you Michelle will you um share with our audience and Diane the eyes of bearing witness those are eyes to me that do not look away and this is a mask a piece of sculpture made by our beloved Mary Frank I thought so like her work isn't that powerful 91 years old and she just made that to remind her we cannot look away that we can ask for a ceasef
ire in the name of our Humanity beautiful powerful and I I hear what you're saying that it changes us to pay to be deeply and radically present which is also what is required for to Bear witness is to be present and to be attentive and doing so I think does then change us um it does I think it changes us on a cellular level and you know as you were saying it is in that witnessing um that is an act of reciprocity you know we were witnessing the deer but they were witnessing us you know it's it's
not one way um that is that one plus one equals three that third moment that third point of Engagement takes place abolutely oh thank you well we've got we've got some excellent questions that I want to I want to turn to here um Karen root Watkins thank you Karen um Karen ask do you know of places where rights of nature legislation has been successful um I think I think you're raising what the Utah legisl did to protect against exactly this and your comment about um the power of the movement to
encourage that required that counteraction which I want to just say is a really powerful I would say success recognizing the power of of of the organizing influence that you so beautifully demonstrated so but Karen wants to know um how can individualistic Americans come to see the natural world as family but so I think she's got two questions here one is about legislation do we know of successes and then what what does change us I think you've you've already answered that in one way but if you h
ave further thoughts that would be lovely to hear um the rights for other species is taking hold all over the world um in bbia in uh Costa Rica in South America it's in um different countries constitutions there was actually and I don't have the exact um did but there was actually um laws that were passed for the rights of uh natural beings it passed and then it was defeated you know so it's it's a it's still a radical idea but it's going to happen it's where we're evolving to and um Robert McFa
rland who's a terrific art um author is his next book is on the rights of beings um and I'm really looking forward to it how do we create a sense of community both human and wild I think we just did you know entering the community of of mule deer um again it's paying attention the other night uh I was up at 5:30 it was early in the morning um for meditation and I heard this chirping and I thought what bird is chirping so wildly like that in Pitch Black you know it wasn't going to be sunrise till
7 or so and I thought I don't know that bird and when we were just outside you know you can hear say feebies are arrived um metal arks Ravens um and I did not know that species I went out in my night gown opened the door nothing quiet I heard some rustling and maybe 20 feet away I heard this hair raising snarl and then a scream and I realized it was a m mountain lion and and I've always heard they chirp but it never dawned on me there was one right literally in the corner of our door by our bed
room and it was so thrilling and so incredible and I thought you know we had a house guest essentially and know in the morning when the light struck oh you could see the tracks wow but um if you're interested you know I would go to one of the first books written on the rights of of other beings is um do trees have do trees have standing and there's a lot of literature um right now about this very movement the most recently that I thought was the most provocative is by David Abram who was uh a vi
siting writer at the uh Harvard Divinity School at the center for the study of world religions he just uh wrote a piece for um emergence magazine so if you Google gole David Abram emergence magazine and he argues why do we want to give personhood to Lakes mountains rivers streams and animals when do you they really want to be a person like us and so he's asking instead of calling a personhood selfhood which I think is really interesting so there's already these kinds of discussions going on wond
erful thank you uh we've got a couple questions on um on despair uh and so I'm gonna I'm just choosing an stetson's question thank you an uh thank you so much Cherry for this beautiful call to action my question for you is how do you how can we hold despair at a distance when what we you we must love is both what provokes Despair and offers the greatest Solace the deer the lake the eared GRE the Pelicans and thank you so much for the work you do and you know your work at at HDs I think grief Bea
rs us to love once more and a grief shared is a grief endured that every one of those 1500 people in the steps of the capital could have easily been weeping as they were cheering and chanting and grief is love Matt showed us that last week in his talk I I want I I asked Michelle to show one picture and I I'm showing this because I want to tell you a story um can you show the picture that is my illustration of grief relle with Ben Abbott beautiful this one and we are laughing so hard it is a bell
y laugh and I'm still in my AED gree headdress you know Ben is the author the lead scientist who wrote that report it was Ben who is a devout practicing member of the Church of Jesus Christ of lday saints who asked about trust and we could just as easily be sobbing together which we have done as we were laughing thinking today was joyous and all we know is where we are in the moment that we have and so again I think it's about being present about finding the joy in the moments you can about cryi
ng together in the moments when you must and I remember saying to Ben in August he he is wasting away I just I he was getting thinner and thinner and thinner and I said Ben you need to you need a steak and he said Terry I'm a vegetarian and I felt so disrespectful and um about three weeks ago I was sent a video by his father that said this is a picture of Ben eating a steak and he was ravenous you know and I just think it's the humor it's taking care of each other it's Ben is one of the most bra
ve people I know and what I love about Ben is he is fierce and he is faithful and he is infiltrating the powers that be and I feel that it's it's really encompassing the full range of what it means to be human and that also um Embraces the idea of sacred Rage which we talked about with Myra um anger has its place too and how do we uphold the the practice in this country of Civil Disobedience of Daring to cross the line with a community um upholding our values that are ultimately ethical and spir
itual on behalf of life um and I don't know I cry every day if you want to know the truth and there are some days that I feel like I don't know how I'm going to get out of bed but what I'm aware in those moments of Despair is the limits of my own imagination and imaginations shared as you saw tonight with Eric Overton and Rosalie Bernard imagination shared create collaboration and collaboration community and in community anything is possible wonderful thank you I I think your representation of D
an and you and that beautiful picture uh brings me back I want to um I want to highlight Dan McCannon our our friend and colleague's question uh Dan you Dan says you spoke eloquently about the importance of trust and I think I understand what you mean by the by trust connecting all the activists gathered together outside the Utah state capital and Dan asks could you say a bit more about what trust means in our relationships with the legislators who voted to deny the personhood of Great Salt Lake
and they are counterparts in all of our diverse sacred spaces it's a great question Dan and um I think you so fully embody that kind of compassion in in differences you know we're bringing 15 students from the Harvard Divinity School to Great Salt Lake um they arrive on Saturday in snow I might add um we're having thear the Great Salt Lake commissioner come to talk to us I'm not sure I agree with him on all things but what I do agree is that he is trying and I agree that he is having to hold bo
th sides at Center and I'm so excited that he's coming to talk to our students and I'm grateful that he trusted me to be fair um you know we're also bringing in Tim Hawks who's representing the Bryan shrimp Coalition and Industry we're also meeting with two alphalpha farmers who have invited us to their farm so I think for me it's about conversation and relationship you know I'll never forget during the Edward Abby monkey Ranch game of which I was a part um I needed a ride with one of the legisl
ators from Southern Utah um and he was from a very deep Mormon conservative and we're talking right of right and he had this big Cadillac and I needed a ride down to Southern Utah and I said Hardy can I have a ride with you and he goes what if someone sees you in my car and we be gff's friends you know and my uncle was a state senator and we we agree on nothing except for that we love the land and I I think it's about relationships Dan and I think it's really important in this country that we ca
n disagree and still maintain relationships and and Nan uh Seymour is a master at this I mean I can assure you the Utah legislature has never asked me to pray and they did ask her you know so so I think I think it's about being human and finding out where our common ground is I think that comment about loving the land is so key because it's about also again I I I keep coming back to this in my own it's a challenge but there's also a gift of really uh the or or the call to be deeply present is al
so the call to be to recognize the inner inner again interdependency of our lives with uh with with more than human species and and I think I think for me that becomes a vehicle because the that recognition of that deep interdependency is something that the the in dependency is something we all have and share we don't always have consciousness of it and I think something about the invitation to that Consciousness can open doors to uh Bridge barriers that are bridge bridge bridge the divisions th
at are so profound for us now particularly in this political climate I I want to go ahead sorry say quickly you know broe and I have been doing these um we call them dinner parties and we invite people that don't agree yeah and it's amazing what happens with a group of eight people that disagree when you serve food you know because people for the most part have good manners and that I think that had a lot to do with a lot of the politics that has been shifting um and we're not the only one a lot
of people in southern Utah are having these uh dinner parties and we call it casserole diplomacy and you know out here you can't afford not to be in relationship with your neighbors because a flash flood is going to take both of your homes so I I think again building relationship sharing food um being good neighbors yeah some basic things that some seem somehow to um muddle befuddle Us in in times of great um in times of great division let me um Grace uh Gallagher asks a beautiful question uh c
an you talk about the world excuse me can you talk about the word wild and how it describes Mercy or Grace or trust or hope how does wild add to our religion religious understanding what a great question a great question I agree you know Grace I take wild that word for granted because you know what we just experienced with the deer that is a moment of wildness um wild to me means unrestrained um unrestrained Mercy um a fearlessness even though and it's full of paradox you know I I look at our ja
ck rabbits around here I say are because they're our neighbors you know jack rabbits and cottontails a Cotton Tail can die out of fear you know so they're wild are they Fearless they're Fearless in how they live their lives knowing that they're so vulnerable you I'm being anthropomorphic but um you know I think wild means of holding one's Integrity let's say that but but the wild here in the American West um and I'm thinking about you know the the wildlife creatures um Against All Odds they cont
inue I mean as they're like landscape and territory shrinks they're still here um adapting so wild Mercy um to me it it's the Integrity the um the sustained Focus that you continue Against All Odds wonderful I'm gonna think about that thank you it's a it's a beautiful question there's another uh kind of just uh Jesse Taylor right after Grace's question asked a related question I'm not sure Jesse if you POS this in relation to Grace's question but um he says you say human and wild quote unquote h
ow do you feel about a shift toward human with wild thinking about feeling beyond that distinction altoe and then she he asks or or they ask I'm sorry Jesse I don't want to presume they put another uh put another way how does perpetuating a distinction between humans and others impact movement building yeah I think that's a great question and I am so aware of the inadequacies of language um I mean we are animals you know Diane and I we had class on that and so thank you for that um human with wi
ld I mean we have our own wildness is right right and it go both directions so the this is why these conversations this series is so evocative and provocative because I think we're all struggling language is so for me language is so inadequate um and more and more I find I'm relying on music I'm relying on Art um I just took a class on calligraphy where uh this Zen Master T Hashi um PA the first day said here's how you hold the brush we're going to make one line and the line in calligraphy begin
s and ends with a do drop and you must Master the do drop before you can continue and so for four days I did nothing but do do drops that first looked like tadpoles then commas then teardrops and it was a meditation um and I finally was able to do one character which was tree and it brought me into relationship and Dan if you're you're still there with the Divinity tree but thank you Jesse again I'm going to be thinking about that because I think it's the distinction the separation that has caus
ed the crisis that we're in I I just have to say it gives many many of it certainly gives me pause to have you in your eloquence speak about your frustration with the limitation of language you can only imagine how the rest of us who struggle with with that as well um but I hear exactly what you say as language of course is just itself a symbol that is itself a distancing so something again about I think presence and silence yeah and I think that we're coming up with new language I mean I'm seei
ng that all the time and I think that's so powerful yeah new words new words new new uh new ways to express what we know deeply is another way that I think about like how do we how do we get in touch with what we know deeply which again returns to radical presence and um Payton ho uh ask a Rel a really critical question here as well Rel to that I'm so moved by the call to deep presence and the prophetic call quote before we can save this world we're losing before we can save this world we're los
ing we must first learn how to savor what remains from you it seems this invites us as a people of Faith to develop intentional spiritual practices of Engagement with our local ecosystems what do you um what do those practices look like for you and how do you engage that uh in a spiritual in spiritual Community thank you so much for your question you know I think it was three Sundays ago I got a call from this wonderful naturalist friend we've known each other for years and he just said Terry ha
ve you ever been and you have to keep this a secret um have you ever been in this Canyon of flaming hearts and you know anything in the west that's within in four hours is close right it's not the same as in New England and I said I haven't and he said would you like to to go to church and I said yes so a group of us who have been doing Sunday walks that as our spiritual practice went to this Canyon that none of us had been to that we're calling you know um the canyon of flaming hearts and it's
the sight of an earthquake it's never been um described his daughter's a geologist she came and his son and there was a kind of a localized earthquake that created this liquefication with seeps in the paracity of the sand and it's like a mini upheaval or incline anticline and relle would you show us that image I brought it because I think it's so stunning that look like a heart of a flaming heart stunning and not to mention I think it's so erotic but and um every I would say 30 feet there was an
other one and that's a spiritual practice for me and I love how my friend Mary O'Brien I Saidi cannot believe I've never seen this before and in fact I had been to that Canyon that has another name and she saidwell Terry it's not hard to miss there's Hearts hanging Hearts every step of the way and I loved how my friend who was the naturalist said well it depends on what you're looking at and probably I was just looking at the ground you know um One Foot In Front of the other so I think a spiritu
al practice can be a group of of neighbors and friends um agreeing to do meditation walk each Sunday I think it can be um like the Unitarian Church in Salt Lake city that has been keeping visual with Nan every single day at the Capal and also when she was on analou island um that is their commitment also they are committed to uh climate change and when a former student of the Harvard Divinity School um relle you can change that now um you know him to Christopher came to the Divinity School after
spending two years in a federal prison for buying oil and gas leases as an act of Civil Disobedience that was a spiritual commitment that that community in the Unitarian Church which was Tim's Church took on for two years supporting him in prison so I think it's the full gamut of how one chooses but I do think that it's coming from the people themselves asking their spiritual leaders to align themselves with these Earth practices of an earth community local and Global wonderful Terry we have ti
me for one more question I think this is a beautiful one to end with and I want to thank you Graham and Clair for for raising it for us please can you discuss Grace as you experience it today and in your vocation this is question to you Terry it seems to me Grace is never over supplied but often under supplied and how do you keep offering yourself Grace as you watch nature be treated worse and worse thank you for this session thank you and that question moves me to tears because that's the quest
ion I'm thinking about and that's the question I'm writing around is what are encounters with Grace um I took Charlie H's class on Grace because in Mormon tradition we don't talk about Grace um but I think that idea of what is undeserved um freely given I feel that that the deer are an example of Grace um freely given unexpected unex undeserved and and they stayed with us that was a moment of Grace and I know Diane well enough to have experienced her grace that she wouldn't mind if I broke set a
nd took the computer outside to see if we could see them you know but I'm just trying to figure out what Grace is but I think it's these surprises that take us into a state of mind where awe fills our souls and at a time to use the activist word where everything around us this the rapidity with which we live the speed the distractions the despair um the fear even especially of our own democracy at risk we are being unsold and how to remain Soulful I think is also an act of Grace of slowing down
of paying attention um of developing our own practices and in the name of reciprocity I would just like to close if it's okay with you Diane with one paragraph um with so much gratitude for the presence of all of you um on Zoom with us Diane for you for creating this open space of consideration um of the role of religion in public life in this time of Earth Crisis and to your staff and um to the land itself grief is love how can we hold this grief without holding each other to Bear witness to th
is moment of undoing is to find the strength and spiritual will to meet the dark and smoldering Landscapes where we live we can cry our tears will fall like rain in the desert and wash off our skins of Ash so our pores can breathe so our bodies can breathe back the lives that we have taken for granted I will mark my heart with an ex made of Ash that says the power to restore life resides here the future of our species will be decided here not by facts but by love and loss hand on my heart I pled
ge allegiance to the only home I will ever know wild Mercy is in our hands thank you so much and please take special Care thank you Terry uh for this Exquisite conversation thank you all who joined us this this evening and please return to join us for our last session two weeks from tonight on uh March 18th at 6: am 6 PM sorry uh here in Eastern time where we'll have all five of our present present uh present ERS together and we'll close in a conversation about all we've learned and what it mean
s to engage this critical question of what can an expansive understanding of religion provide in these times of Earth Crisis so thank you again for being with us thank you Terry for this wonderful talk and I hope to see all of you back with us in two weeks from tonight good night sponsors religion and public life at Harvard Divinity School the Salata Institute for climate and sustainability at Harvard University the center for the study of world religions the constellation project and Harvard X
copyright 2024 the president and fellows of Harvard College
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