Spiritual Journey: Religion and Ecology
by Jenny Willis
Northern Hills Fellowship
July 11, 1999

There is a popular song that begs "Help me believe in anything, `cause I want to be someone who believes"—that's the way I have felt my whole life. No religion in its entirety has ever made logical sense to me, and I have not the gift of faith, but I have always ached for the things which most religions provide: for a community of kindred spirits, the outline of a path to moral and spiritual self-improvement, and some approach to those haunting big questions. So far the only approach I'm comfortable with is to accept that it's a mystery.

On the day I was born in 1962, the Los Angeles Times' astrological column advised that parents give all us new arrivals a "firm religious upbringing." My mother was a nominal Presbyterian who told all proselytizers who came to our door that we were Taoists. My father was descended from Puritans who moved from Massachusetts to Vermont at an early date, and was brought up in Burlington both Protestant and Yankee. He only held on to the latter. He is not interested in spiritual matters and doesn't think much of organized religion, but he does love to preach and practice the virtue of thrift. So I did not get what you would call a "firm religious upbringing."

I think I was born a skeptic, but also that the conditions of my early life made it especially hard to believe in a loving, caring, active deity or other comforting religious notions. My parents had few values in common, fought constantly without ever resolving anything, and divorced when I was 5. As I grew up, the beautiful hill in front of our house, originally covered with pungently fragrant scrub and inhabited by many creatures, was first lopped across the top for an evangelical station's radio tower, then sliced down the side to make room for the Glendale freeway, and then almost completely covered with homes which fill with mud every time there is a landslide, and threaten to burn down whenever there is a brushfire on what little open land remains. At some point the resident coyotes, who once sang me to sleep every night, began to eat neighborhood cats, and then either starved to death or perhaps moved on.

There were many days when the air was so thick with smog that we were advised not to play too much, and some even scarier days when we were advised the same even though the air seemed clear. I knew from my mother's explanation of a Kingston Trio song that nuclear holocaust was a possibility. I learned in second grade science that we were causing global warming and that this might lead to an ice age, though now I understand some consider runaway warming making the earth uninhabitable to be another possibility. I learned there were pesticides and other chemicals in our food and it was always obvious that there was plenty of chlorine in our water. (Later as a teen I would learn that we had "broken the sky," as the comedian Denis Leary puts it.)

It is hard to maintain faith when your environment is so degraded and tainted, the beautiful centerpiece of your neighborhood is demolished piecemeal before your eyes without your having any say, while most of your 20's and 30's bungalow neighborhood is bulldozed for a hideous mall, your parents hate each other, and your entire world could possibly explode at any moment.

As an adult I get to watch "progress" all over again, as the farms and forests of Southwest Ohio are paved over for nearly contiguous tract housing, minimalls, industrial parks and parking lots. As Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders wrote so sarcastically, "Way to go Ohio."

We did attend Presbyterian Church services, because my grandmother, who lived with us, had grown up Dutch Reformed in New Jersey, and had chosen the Presbyterian church as a close substitute for the one she knew "back east." My grandmother came from a long line of ministers — in fact her great uncle was the family black sheep for having become a semi-successful painter of the Hudson River School rather than a minister. She was keenly aware of her Dutchness, of being one of a special people who married mostly each other, who shared a faith, and whose Promised Land was the Hudson River Valley and northern New Jersey. I'm sure most of her ancestors would be saddened by the site of the "lunar landscape" Bruce Springsteen has captured in song, the fire, brimstone and ugly sprawl which now sit on their beloved farms and landscapes.

The ministers in my grandmother's family studied Hebrew and Greek so that they could read Scripture in the original languages, and their musty textbooks lined our shelves. Their lumpy Latin sheepskins covered our walls along with the beautiful landscape paintings of the outcast. My mother tried to impress upon me the value of the Protestant effort to get back to the foundation of Christianity—the texts in their original tongues, scraping away years of accumulations like conservators cleaning a painting. Once I came to know a little scripture however, that seemed as foundationless as anything superimposed on it, and the whole Protestant edifice fell down around me at a very early age. Our church tower really did fall down in the earthquake of '71, only adding to my doubts about a God who supported Presbyterianism.

My mother's approach to religion was confusing—she treasured her Protestantism even as she didn't really believe it. Yet don't we see this continually all over the world? In nearly every global hotspot are wholly nonobservant people fighting for their so-called faith against anyone of a different tradition, even though they don't subscribe to and certainly don't practice its tenets themselves.

In spite of the fact that my mother did not actually believe Jesus was her savior or the son of God, she sent us to Sunday School so that we could learn these things. I never believed much of what the Sunday School teachers told me, especially the most unlikely miracles. My father loves to tell the story of how I came home from Sunday school kindergarten one day around Christmas and said "Daddy, I don't believe in Santa Claus, and I'm not too sure about this Lord Jesus guy either." In spite of my skepticism, there were things I loved about Sunday school. I loved songs like "Kumbaya" and "He's Got the Whole World in his Hands." The thought that some more powerful entity might come by if I were crying was comforting, the thought that someone had my crumbling world in their hands was comforting. I didn't really believe anyone would bother to soothe or help me, nor that anyone was protecting my fragile family or my fragile planet, but I really, really wanted to.

I also loved to pray, to pray that my parents would get along, and later, get back together. As I grew older and accepted the fact that my family was beyond repair, I began to pray for my future, for a good marriage and one or two children to love, the family I never had. I even prayed for two little boys, not because I have a real preference for that sex, but because I thought I might have better luck if my family were the exact opposite of the two-girl family I came from. I had little faith in my head that this praying did any good, but it made me feel better to allow my heart to believe in it.

Today I have all that I prayed for, mainly because of my own active and often very painful struggle toward my goals, but who knows? Maybe praying so hard set my unconscious to work on arriving where I am today. Some scientific studies seem to show that prayer has beneficial effects on bacteria in petri dishes, so maybe there is even more to it. Though I have faith in nearly nothing, I have a funny feeling there are more things going on here than are dreamt of in our philosophies.

I also loved the Lord's Prayer, which my mother had told me was the only formulaic prayer Jesus gave his disciples. I have read that just as many people who have lost their mothers at an early age find comfort in the figure of Mary, so do many children of divorce raised mainly by their mothers love the Our Father. Because even a child-support paying, Disneyland father is a lost father, and the one who is supposedly in heaven is often more accessible. Sometimes under stress I let the Prayer run through my head for it's calming effect. I don't feel too hypocritical in this, because to me it asks for a better world for all, for food, for forgiveness from others and the ability to forgive them in return, to not be tempted into things we will regret and to be kept from evils outside our control.

But maybe I am a hypocrite, because I'm not 100% sure there is any kind of God, and if there is a God, I'm not sure how to conceive of that entity but to me neither Father nor Mother seems quite right. As a child the image I had of God was of sunshine streaming through billowing golden clouds, like the Columbia label if you subtracted Columbia herself, not that that's any closer to what God might be than an old bearded man.

After rejecting my own tradition, I became a young explorer of various spiritual paths. I tried to learn Chinese and Sanskrit from books, I read the Analects of Confucius and Sufi parables, and I learned Tai Chi and Yoga from instructors on PBS. For a time I favored Zen Buddhism, as part of a complete obsession with Japanese art and culture. During this phase I begged my mother to let me dye my hair black, and despaired at being unable to become ethnically Japanese. I cooked (and tried to like) Japanese food, and made myself a kimono out of bedsheets. I practiced the monochromatic ink painting of Zen monks known as sums-e, creating an endless supply of pictures of clumps of bamboo, and I tried to attain enlightenment by meditating for five minutes on a bowl of water.

In my older schoolgirl days I delved into witchcraft, and got many strange looks from the librarian as I checked out stacks of books on this subject. I saved up my money for frankincense and was glad we had plenty of rose petals handy for love spells. These were my chief interest, though I could never figure out how to get the necessary fingernail clippings or hair from my potential boyfriends. I think I wanted to be a witch because I saw it as a way to get some power. I was tired of being buffeted by winds outside my control, and wanted some way to have a say over my own life. I especially wanted to command others' love and be free of the pain of its loss.

As a teenager I wanted to be anything other than a pasty, whitebread Presbyterian. I tried to get a tan and flirted with Catholicism for the shallowest of reasons. My main experience with it came from our annual trek to my great uncle's beautiful 18 acres in Sonoma county, when we would leave the smog behind and travel slowly up the coast in our little white Fiat sedan. (This was before Detroit brainwashed everyone into thinking that having one or two kids means you need a bus or a tank just to survive a trip to the grocery.) On our way we would visit gorgeous beaches, adorable towns, and the old Spanish missions which reeked sweetly of candles and old, damp adobe. These visits were accompanied by my mother's righteous indignation over the fact that the missionaries regularly beat unsubmissive Native Americans, which sort of took the luster off the gold-embroidered vestments in the glass cases. (Protestant atrocities somehow never made it into our history lessons.)

In spite of history, and in spite of the fact that the Pope seemed to be trying to destroy my future by encouraging profligate reproduction, I was attracted by the wafers, wine, holy water, ashes, and all those candles. It all seemed very romantic compared to our antiseptic, bloodless church with its Saltines and Welch's communion. I also wanted to be able to cross myself in a crisis, like Catholics on TV—to have some kind of quick, protective gesture to perform in a state of anxiety, the state I was usually in. But mainly I wanted to irritate my mother, as teenage girls love to do—Buddhism and witchcraft didn't rankle her, but I knew Catholicism was another thing altogether.

In my senior year of high school, I wanted desperately to be Jewish, partly because I was infatuated with a Jewish boy. I also had a girlfriend whose family kept kosher and I imagined how wonderful it must be to follow such ancient traditions. I imagined myself, head draped, lighting the candles for the Sabbath meal for my imaginary future family. I thought briefly of converting and changing my name to Sarah, but I wanted the boy and the ethnicity as much as the faith, and inside knew I could never have any of them.

I also knew that, being the all or nothing kind of person I am, in becoming Jewish I would give up the few things about my heritage I actually enjoyed—especially Yuletide's pungent evergreens and other happy holiday memories from childhood. Although I am not a pagan, I think almost all of the beautiful and enchanting traditions and celebrations I grew up with have their origin in the practices of my Germanic and Celtic tribal ancestors, and I am at least as interested in learning about those traditions as I am about exotic ones. My maiden name was Thurber, which mean's Thor's Something, so I know at least some of them honored that popular god.

At 18 I went to college at the University of Chicago. First year students there are treated to the Aims of Education Address, which is a lecture given by some notable scholar who tells you what the next four years of your life should do to you. The speaker in the fall of 1980 wished us an "unsettling" education. He said that what you should learn in college is that nobody really knows anything at all, which is one of the few things I firmly believe. I also believe that it is in large part our cocky overconfidence in what we think we know that often leads to ecological and other disasters.

At Chicago I became convinced there was no grand point to anything, that everything that ever happened was completely determined from the big bang, that we are only very complicated molecular accidents and that it only feels like we have free will. This did not bother me in the least, and my friends called me "the Happy Nihilist." I also believed that a healthy earthly environment and justice were the highest of goals, but that the environment was being progressively destroyed, mainly by the one-two punch of overpopulation and overconsumption, and that justice was very difficult to define, let alone create. There were religious groups on campus and I wanted to belong to one, but not knowing about Unitarianism, I didn't think there was one that I would have or that would have me.

The dominant religion at Chicago is the cult of abstract thought anyway. Its main church is the library, and its gods teach even undergraduates. I was an English major, and my favorite readings included Wordsworth and Thoreau, men who feel to me like kindred spirits. Wordsworth especially seemed "in love with the whole world and all that lived in its rainy arms," and like me was deeply saddened by its incremental demise at the hands of those focused only on "getting and spending," especially by the railways beginning to cut through his beloved landscapes.

After college I moved to Boston, where I worked in private banking and did not think much about spiritual matters. I was too busy serving the financial needs of New England's wealthy, and enjoying the power and freedom of earning my own income, while living in a city that I loved and where I felt like I belonged. I sacrificed money, time and effort for good causes by writing checks and attending creative black tie charity events for young people. These events allowed you to feel very noble while sipping a sea breeze, dancing to the Fine Young Cannibals and flirting. My aunt Laurie scolded me about this, feeling that my good works quota could not be met in this way.

I was always learning, and always meeting interesting, smart, funny people. I worked hard, enjoyed deep friendships which continue over long distances today, took vacations in Mexico and Italy with my girlfriends, and went on many first dates. Recently I was telling my sister-in-law about those days. She said it sounded just like the TV show Friends. I said it was except we were not so good looking, we had better jobs and of course smaller apartments.

In 1989, after five years of dating I finally met Chris, whose calmness and goodheartedness I quickly began to appreciate. After seven months we became engaged, and I turned into a frantic Martha Stewart-like creature to the point that Chris might have questioned my sanity. I knew enough about Unitarianism at this point to know that a Unitarian wedding would be one way to create a powerful ceremony with all the seeming binding force of what was decent and familiar about my own tradition, without our having to lie and say that it would be that Lord Jesus guy or even God holding us together. We could instead express faith in our own commitment to each other, to our future children and to the larger society. It was a way to throw out the bathwater without throwing out the baby, and to do it all in the perfect, white-steepled New English meeting house.

Soon after getting married we moved to Cincinnati, where I have felt like a stranger in a strange land, like a self-conscious Morticia Addams in a Carol Brady world. The Enquirer used to get me so riled up that I spent all my time firing off letters to it, so that now we get the New York Times and have no idea what is going on here. Nearly 40 years after Silent Spring my neighbors are continually poisoning me and my children with Diazinon, herbicides and who knows what else, and don't seem to notice the high rate of cancers around here, or even to care in any way about their impact on the wider environment, much less about achieving sustainability.. And while my congressional representative in Boston was a Roosevelt who fought to reduce packaging and for other environmental measures, my representative here consistently has the worst record on environmental issues of any congressperson in the country.

I get very tired of being asked why I hang out my wash, why I grow trees, food and wildlife habitat in place of the all-important grass, why I generally don't use air conditioning, why our house is a little nippy in winter, why we have so little garbage, and why I use a reel mower on what grass has so far escaped my planting schemes. I want to say "Duh!, Have you not read the news over the last three decades?" Mark Twain once said that if the world were ending, he would move to Cincinnati because everything happens ten years later here, but I think the delay must have widened in the last century.

I was a faithless optimist in the 70's, when everyone was talking about stemming overpopulation and all the environmental problems it drives. I am a faithless pessimist today, because the big environmental problems have only worsened since my childhood, with populations mushrooming, and forest loss and fossil fuel use mushrooming even faster. (Per capita energy use has octupled over my lifetime, and there are a lot more capitas.)

I thought these problems would be solved by the time I had kids, but today I wonder if the smelly chemicals always wafting in the breeze are damaging my little boys more or less than Los Angeles' smog damaged me. I wonder whether their translucent skin and light eyes are getting more or less solar radiation with the thinner ozone and less airborne debris but a higher latitude.

So as an environmentalist and a mother and sometimes just as a person I feel a sense of being completely out of place, like the Midwestern "Pleasant Valley Sunday" culture is completely out of harmony with my soul, and is one of many unsustainable societies which pose a threat to my children's future. Northern Hills is really the only place I feel like I can just be authentically myself—with my lack of faith, my wide-ranging search for wisdom, and my concern for the planet's future, and I am very grateful that it exists. When I am here on Sunday I feel the glimmers of hope I need to keep going, and meet the interesting, thinking, questioning people I rarely come across anymore.

Reader Response
Did you like this publication? Was it helpful to you? What elements do you agree with? In what ways do you have a different view? You may send your comments and thoughts to Jenny Willis at jwillis@uunhf.org.

Copyright ©1999 Northern Hills Fellowship