About twenty-five years ago, cartoonist Tom Toles drew a picture of a lawyer reading a will to a group of people expectantly waiting to find out what their inheritance would be. This is what the lawyer read:

We could also add that we are leaving to our children and grandchildren a world that is dramatically more polluted than the one we inherited from our ancestors. And this has been in the pursuit of our economic self-interest and to feed our energy addicted life style. And the debt we are leaving behind will also be much higher than two trillion dollars.

"Does not wisdom call, and does not understanding raise her voice?"

The call is to learn the ways of wisdom and live a life that is good, wise, compassionate and responsible. The author of Proverbs tells us that whoever acquires wisdom acquires life and is blessed, while those who do not find wisdom injure themselves and end up loving death. Our world sure could use some wisdom right now.

Over the past six weeks we have watched with horror as millions of gallons of crude oil and gas have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico from the broken BP oil well. The latest effort to plug the ruptured pipeline failed and another engineering strategy is being planned. We still have no idea when the flow will be stopped. BP estimates that it won't be completed stopped until one of two relief wells come on line in early August.

The devastation to the ecosystem is catastrophic. It is already being called the worst oil spill in U.S. history. When it is all over it may end up being the worst human caused environmental disaster in history. I find it to be absolutely staggering that a well was drilled and brought into production without an adequate contingency plan for such a catastrophe as this. And last night CNN reported that this is the third major accident in the US that BP has been responsible for in the last few years.

Is it any wonder that we all feeling enraged and heartbroken? At times like this we need to come together to express our anger and sadness, our despair, outrage, fear and even our feelings of hopelessness. The act of lamenting is a sacred act that people since ancient times have been called to do in times of national disaster. Giving voice to the collective suffering of our time may be the only way to move through the despair into the compassion, respect and awe that will ultimately transform our way of life.

Joanna Macy, in her book WORLD AS LOVER, WORLD AS SELF, tells of a time that

This is the call to lamentation and a reminder that it is not the pain we feel for the world that is the problem, but our repression of it that leads to paralysis or panic. The pain of the world has a purpose: it is there to lead us to remedial action, to transformation and healing.

Another ancient concept that we would do well to remember and reinterpret for our time is the concept of covenant. The word covenant attempts to describe and express the mutual relationship between God and the people. It is far more enduring than a contract. It binds us together in a relationship that constantly reminds us that we belong together and live in a dynamic, changing, creative-responsive unity that does not come undone when someone messes up. We continue to exist in a mutually responsive network and we need to find ways to heal our wounds, reform our institutions, alter our destructive behavior, so that the foundational structure of our unity remains intact.

But the piece that needs to be added today is the inclusion of all life and all creation into the covenantal relationship that unites us and the Divine. We can not afford to continue living as if we are going to be whisked away some day to a heavenly life far removed from the earth and the world we know today. We need to take more seriously the words Jesus spoke when he said that the Kindom of God is all around us, only we don't see it. The Kindom of God is right here, right now, only we haven't entered it yet because we're still expecting it to come later. We can only enter it by creating it through our relationships with each other, with God, with ourselves, and with all life.

If all life and all creation are part of the covenant then the needs of the environment matter. The sustainability of our world is our responsibility, indeed it is in our best self-interest, but more than that, it is an expression of our true nature. The protection of the earth and everything that lives upon it is the protection of our very selves. Covenant calls us into a continual responsiveness; constant reformation and transformation.

In light of the disaster in the Gulf this specifically will mean real changes in drilling practice, in governmental regulation of the oil industry, and in our dependence on oil. This isn't going to be easy, or happen overnight.

To these tasks of lamentation and a renewal of the covenant I would add a third spiritual task for us today: prayer. By prayer I do not mean asking God to fix everything and make it right while we go about our daily business as usual. I use the term prayer to evoke an attitude of openness and trust. Openness to all the pain and to all the wonder of life, and trust that whatever crisis we are going through, we go through it together. Openness to being changed by our relationship with life and trust that we can indeed make the changes that need to be made. Something binds us to one another, to life and to the earth and within these bonds new possibilities emerge that we have not yet imagined. Prayer is openness to new possibilities.

I do not suggest that we simply pray for a solution. I suggest that the solution is already within our nature as creatures of love and compassion who are capable of transformation and change and of living responsively within the web of life. We need to help each other, our government and our corporations realize this. The challenge has always been to trust and to remain open to the call to live wisely, to love kindness, to do justice and to walk humbly with God and with all life.

Today Wisdom still calls, saying;

May we be people who find life by finding wisdom, walking in her way.

Does not wisdom call,

and does not understanding raise her voice?

On the heights, beside the way,

at the crossroads she takes her stand;

Beside the gates in front of the town,

at the entrance of the portals she cries out:

"To you. O people, I call,

and my cry is to all that live.

. . . .

God created me at the beginning,

the first of God's acts of long ago.

Ages ago I was set up, at the first,

before the beginning of the earth.

When there were no depths I was brought forth,

when there were no springs abounding with water.

Before the mountains had been shaped,

before the hills, I was brought forth -

When God had not yet made earth and the fields,

or the world's first bit of soil.

When God established the heavens,

I was there,

When God drew a circle on the face of the deep,

when God made firm the skies above,

when God established the fountains of the deep,

when God assigned to the sea its limit,

so that the waters might not transgress God's command,

when God marked out the foundations of the earth,

then I was beside God, like a master worker;

and I was daily God's delight,

always rejoicing before God,

Rejoicing in the inhabited world

and delighting in the human race.

And now, my children, listen to me;

happy are those who keep my ways.

Hear instruction and be wise,

and do not neglect it.

Happy is the one who listens to me,

watching daily at my gates,

waiting beside my doors.

For whoever finds me finds life

and obtains favor from God;

But those who miss me injure themselves;

all who hate me love death."