The “Totalitarianism” of Lawns

Yesterday, The Rev. Joseph Lane alerted me to this New York Times op-ed reprinted from 1991 about the destructive American obsession with creating and maintaining lawns.

The writer of that “classic op-ed,” Michael Pollan (author of the fantastic book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma) urges then-President George H.W. Bush to pull up the iconic White House lawn and replace it with either a meadow, a wet-land, a vegetable garden or (his personal favorite) an orchard.

All of these options would be much better for the environment than is a lawn and perhaps, he argues, such a small physical act might have a profound symbolic effect upon the habits of Americans and their own work to preserve their ever-problematic lawns.

His argument reminded me of what we have learned while working to rehabilitate our local watershed, specifically the swath of land we have adopted in the Palo Alto Baylands–our very own Bede’s Bog–as well as what we will explore during our upcoming Eco-Camp this August.

We must seek to understand the complex power of our ecosystems so as to work collaboratively with them to provide for humanity in a way that doesn’t subjugate and ultimately destroy our natural environments. In so doing, we are not only collaborating with birds and worms and dirt and water and fish and plants, we are collaborating with God.

Writes Pollan:

Beginning in the 19th century, at the urging of such landscape designer-reformers as Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing, we took down our old-world walls and hedges (which they had declared to be “selfish” and “undemocratic”) and spread an uninterrupted green carpet of turfgrass across our yards, down our streets, along our highways and, by and by, across the entire continent.

Sermon: Jesus Christ, Anti-Venom

To this day our guild of professional healers, trained at the best western schools of medicine, use a symbol as their professional standard bearing two snakes coiled upon a sword. The allusion in the emblem is to the Greek God Aesclepius, son of Apollo (aha, a son of a god), aka the Roman god Aesculapius, both divinities associated with medicine and healing. You will find this symbol in your doctor’s office…

The Latin word serpent means creepy crawlie, but the Hebrew scripture refers to the serpent as capable of flight. They’re said to infest the Negev and to sting like blazes. The pests are probably poisonous insects that can crawl and fly. To counter the uproar among the bitten Israelites, God tells Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and affix it atop a staff, perhaps the famous staff of the Red Sea crossing, to serve as an antidote.

We might make an analogy to inoculation theory or perhaps to the placebo effect. Whatever, it works. It helps people heal. As we know, healing is complicated and mysterious and full of grace all at once. The serpent aloft became for the people a sign of their purgation and salvation…

Let’s imagine in our mind’s eye an amalgam of every crucifix we’ve ever seen, only Aesculapian. Picture Jesus, son of man and son of God, entwined with Adam the earthling, in an embrace, affixed atop a pole, let’s say upon the cross, uplifted on a highly visible hill outside Roman occupied Jerusalem. Like Isaiah in the temple, we in this sanctuary are given an image of the divine potential, of divine power, made accessible to humankind, in the embrace of our progenitors in flesh and spirit. Like the first, Jesus is called the second Adam, Everyman, or preferably, Everyone. And the flying serpent, the seraph, stings our lips with pentecostal fire, giving the gift of the gospel proclamation…

[Click below for the complete sermon.]