@HomewithDean – Homily 04/09

I started this weekend by talking about the concept of displacement. Displacement is what happens whenever any creature on planet earth makes for itself a dwelling. Something that was there before gets moved aside. A gopher digs a hole and soil is displaced. A beaver builds a dam and the stream is displaced. We build our homes and they displace. And yet somehow both the gopher and the beaver have found some kind of synergy with the world around them while we have not.In my thinking that doesn’t mean humankind is some kind of disease, or that we don’t somehow have the right to be here. Such views set humans apart from the world when in fact we are a product of this world. Of course we have a right to be here. As much as anyone or anything does. But we also have to look at ourselves honestly and soberly and accept that when it comes to the natural world and our brand of displacement, we have a well earned reputation for being the proverbial bull in the china shop. I think that’s a fitting description because, like the bull, for a very long time we were not conscious of the consequences of our movements or just how fragile everything around us was. And even now, like the bull, I believe most of us have absolutely no intention to do damage to our world. The difference between us and the bull is now we are beginning to realize how fragile everything is. And unlike the bull, if we choose to we can stop breaking things.So why do we break things? Again, I have to disagree with many of my fellow nature lovers on this. I don’t think we break things because there are too many of us, or because there’s not enough room for us. And I don’t think it’s because were naturally destructive. I think we break things because we’re running from something. Or more to the point, being chased by something. You and I both know what that is. Right now, all across the western world, Easter Sunday celebrations are retelling a story of a triumph over death in the hope that we too will somehow defeat death.Death is chasing us—it’s not really, b