Many Unitarian Universalists are inspired by our faith to work toward a social goal of healing the environment. The calls to action of Earth Day have been with us for 50 years, made now all the more urgent as we face the effects of climate change.

Two months ago
Before the world changed
We were exploring in worship
personal spiritual goals
The kinds of goals spiritual people hope to achieve for themselves
Through having a spiritual life,
Following a spiritual practice,
belonging to a spiritual community

Goals such as:
Wisdom, Joy, Strength, Peace…
And so on.

Now, for the weeks I have remaining with you, 
I want to explore some of the larger goals of religion
Not for individuals one by one
But for all of us together
The kinds of goals spiritual people hope to achieve for all people
And for our human societies
And for the planet

I want to start today with the religious goals of Unitarian Universalism
Where are we going?
Where do we hope this religion will eventually end?
For all of us?
What do Unitarian Universalists hope to achieve for all people
For our human societies
And for the planet we share?

Unitarian Universalism has an explicitly stated goal
It’s the sixth principle of our seven principles
“The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
But I’ve always been attracted to another kind of mission statement for our faith
That we used as our opening words this morning.

This was written by The Reverend David C. Pohl, 
He says this..

“We come to this time and this place:
To rediscover the wondrous gift of free religious community;
To renew our faith in the holiness, goodness, and beauty of life;
To reaffirm the way of the open mind and full heart;
To rekindle the flame of memory and hope;”

And then this last line that sounds like a social religious goal:

“To reclaim the vision of an earth made fair, with all her people one.”

David Pohl was born in 1930
From 1954 to 1971
He served as a minister in Massachusetts, Ohio, and Ottawa, Canada
Then, from 1971 to 1997 he worked for the UUA
He retired in 1997
He is still living,
Just turned 90 a few weeks ago.

I love the poetry of that line
“An earth made fair, with all her people one.”
(And as it turns out, it was written by a poet, not David Pohl
As we will see)

The goal in our sixth principle is only a human goal
“The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”
And I think our Unitarian Universalist goals 
Are bigger than merely human goals

David Pohl gives us a human goal, 
Balanced with what could be interpreted as an environmental goal
“an earth made fair, with all her people one.”

Because Earth Day is coming on Wednesday
I want to focus on the environmental goal today
And I’ll look at the human goal, the next time I’m in worship with you
May 10

An earth made fair

As human beings have moved into our homes
In the last few weeks
We’ve been treated with images of animals re-taking urban spaces

You may have seen videos of goats nibbling flower boxes in a Welsh town
Or seals, or deer, or dolphin, or geese, or camels
Some of the videos aren’t exactly what they claim to be
But I was charmed by those videos
And perhaps you were, too

I keep looking out my apartment window in downtown LA
Hoping to see a herd of giraffes strolling up the empty street
But so far only cars and buses (though fewer of them)
And scooters
And people wearing face masks.

But it is true that wildlife is reclaiming spaces in Yosemite
Where they had been pushed away by humans

And it is true that the air in Los Angeles
has in the last month become some of the cleanest of any major city in the world
A combination of both cool weather
And an 80% reduction in traffic.

You need only look out your window to see it:
An earth made fair

Human beings currently face a short-term crisis:
The Covid-19 pandemic
While we continue to face the long-term crisis of climate change
Covid-19 requires us to change our behavior in the short-term
Climate Change requires us to change our behavior for the long-term

But it’s been interesting to see
As the short-term crisis has forced us to make temporary changes
How the long-term goal might also be addressed.

We cannot stay home forever
Eventually we will need to re-take our city streets
From the goats and the geese and the giraffes
And I hope to re-take Yosemite, too
Or at least parts of it.

But the short-term demands of responding to the Covid-19 crisis
While not providing a long-term strategy that would address climate change
Have been beneficial in making us see
that our societies could be structured in different ways
And that we are capable of making even radical changes
And making them quickly
And that some of those changes we could choose
Could have a large effect on our environment
And the planet we share

We can do this.

Who would have thought, a month ago
That churches could meet through video-conference
Or ministers could preach from their living rooms?
How many people who thought they had to drive to work everyday
Now discover they can telecommute?
Maybe we don’t need to fly around the world, as much as we thought.

Maybe we can use this short-term crisis
to re-think what is really essential, long-term
and maybe when we have survived this short-term crisis
we can recreate our society in a way
that also helps address the long-term crisis.

What has been really helpful, in this last month
Is not that we have made some lasting achievement in addressing climate change
But that
With the clean air in Los Angeles
And the bears in Yosemite Valley
We have been reawakened to the value
Of making lasting achievement in addressing climate change

We are seeing, and saying,
“That’s the kind of world I want to live in.”

And we have awakened a new sense of hope
That the vision of that kind of world is possible
That we could change our behavior, sufficiently
To bring that planetary vision to reality

I realized as I started to write my sermon for this week
That I had slightly mis-remembered the final phrase of David Pohl’s words
I had remembered the line, “An earth made fair, with all her people one.”
The complete line is actually:
“To reclaim the vision of an earth made fair, with all her people one.”

That is why “we come to this time and this place” says David Pohl
To reclaim the vision
That is our mission
That is where we start
With a vision

And with that vision leading us and inspiring us
Then we go on to make that vision reality.

That’s the goal

May it be so