By Michael Armstrong
Before I get started, you’ll need to know a little bit about me. I’ve been a diabetic for 62 years, and invariably I have candy around me. You’ll see me, even at church, say, “Oh, my blood sugar is getting down a little bit,” and I’ll grab some candy.
I’ll tell you a little story. This morning, Vickie and I went out on a hike. It was in the 100-acre woods, Christopher Robin, there are woods all around, and it was just so beautiful out there, so green. And I do my normal stuff. Vickie kind of gets ahead of me, and then I backtrack. Anyway, both of us have quiet time, together.
Well, this morning we were finishing up, and I decided to circle back. And I was thinking about this talk. I was thinking about all the nature. And, not realizing, I actually turned around and started going the other way. I’ve been on that trail 100 times, but my mind was so much into the life that was there. And it wasn’t until I got a text, someone who was at my car said, “I don’t have a key.” I can tell you, that’s how she said it, “I don’t have a key.” Now I’m thinking, well, yeah, OK, where am I? Luckily, there was a couple that I passed, or we passed, coming back to the car who was going out on the hike. And I saw them again, I said, “What’s going on? Are you going back to the car?” So I made it through it.
And my life is always interesting. Yeah, we’re in the middle of this Easter season of transformation. And that’s such a big word. People use it, but what does it mean? Does it mean repent? Does it mean, oh, I like what I’m going to do here? During Lent, we talked about joy. And I think the joy of Lent, of maybe feeling the suffering of Jesus, and then transforming and making a difference in yourself, making a difference in other people, and maybe even the world.
The first reading in Genesis I picked out because I like some of the words in it. I mean, God created all this animal life, these plants, and did it for you, for me and you. And He said it was very good. And so that was the sixth day, wasn’t it? And then I think if you read on, it says God rested on the seventh day. I think He actually took a nap. God took a nap. I mean, He didn’t fall asleep.
I think the eighth day is a continuation of the sixth day. We are in creation all the time. We’re still in that sixth day of our God being with us. There were a couple of words in there that I didn’t care for a whole lot, subdue and dominion. When I look at taking care of the earth, I look at it as taking care of one of my children. Now, try to subdue and dominion on your children.
Pope Francis and Pope Leo think differently about those two words. They call it stewardship and kinship. And I love the word kinship. I love that word because I feel like I’m from down south. And being kin to all that’s out there, the grass, the rocks, the plants, is very important. Pope Francis continues that in his encyclical about taking care of the earth, being in kinship with all this.
So how are we doing taking care of our child? Not very well. If you look at what’s happened. I’m going to pass out something after Mass, and you’ll see it.
If you had an x-axis, and that was the average temperature for the 20th century, the 1900s, and then you take the temperatures since we’ve been recording it, they’ve all been lower than that, all the way up to about 1950. Then the temperatures skyrocketed and we’ve had record temperatures for the last five years.
And you all know that. But on that graph, you’ll see it. Now, what could be causing something like that? Oh, it’s just natural. You know, we’ve just got record temperatures. We’ve only been recording temperatures globally since 1860. Or, you know, January was pretty cold, wasn’t it? So we must not have anything. Or like in March of 2015, when a Congressman took a snowball into the US House of Representatives, and they were all saying, oh, yeah, it’s no global warming. Look at that. We’re getting cold on March 15.
You know better than that, and so do I. It’s greenhouse gases. And if you look at this graph, it follows right along with that. And this is what you may not know: 80% of our greenhouse gases that capture the heat, not letting it go into the stratosphere, 80% of it is carbon dioxide, 10% of it is methane, and then there’s a few other gasses.
But that carbon dioxide graph that you’ll see it just perfectly matches where the heat’s going. We’re at 426 parts per million.
That doesn’t mean a whole lot to you or I, but then, when you know that for the 650,000 years previous to 1950, it was never above 280. It was between 180 and 280 because there was this perfect symbiotic relationship between the sequestering of greenhouse gases and fires and things like that up in the air with carbon dioxide. Think about that, 426 now.
And for the previous 650,000 years it wasn’t above 280. Have that sink in your mind a little bit.
And another thing, how are we doing on taking care of our soil? And I’m going to mention Dick and Sharon Lyons right now because they do regenerative farming. You should know that. And our group will be visiting them this month. And I’m going to call Dick a prophet right now, if you stick with me on this, because prophets are good. Dick loves to talk and thank God he does. But he’s talking about taking care of the soil. And that’s the kind of things prophets have to do. He talks to groups much more difficult than I do. He talks to farmers that have farmed the same way for 60, 70 years and asks them to change. About 10% of our farmers are regenerative.
Farming used to do this. It used to capture or sequester 30% of the carbon dioxide. Now, unfortunately, because they’re using so many fertilizers and things, those are very carbon-intensive type medicines for the soil, what’s happening is the soil is saying, well, you don’t need me. You’re just going to do all that stuff. I used to take the nitrate, and then I’ll take your carbon. Not doing that anymore.
I buried two pairs of identical underwear. One I buried in Vickie’s garden. We haven’t used any chemicals for the last 51 years there. And the other one I buried in the industrial farmer’s land across the street from me. 30 days later, I dug up both pairs of underwear. One you could probably wear. I mean, it was a little bit ruffled up. That was from the guy across the street. When I got my underwear out of Vickie’s garden 30 days later, all I had was the band. In 30 days, that soil was so alive, it was bringing carbon in and we need to get back to that.
You’ve heard what’s going on with oceans and glaciers. I won’t get too much detail here, but just think of the poor. That’s what the popes have been saying for years now, all of them, that our poor are suffering with these warm oceans and their food supplies. One third of the world depends on fish for food. And think about those islands that are starting to go under, as sea levels rise.
And then animal life, we’re not doing too well there, are we? Vickie will tell you that about five or six years ago during the pandemic, she started taking monarch butterfly seeds and caterpillars off the milkweed. She put them in some nets in our back screened-in porch, and she raised them. She did about 70 or 80 about five or six years ago. That number last year and the year before was 12 and 7. It’s not like she doesn’t look for them. She’s out there all the time. We’ve got milkweed all over the place. But monarchs are kind of a canary in the coal mine, aren’t they? Not to pun too much on this. And we better pay attention.
Teresa of Avalon in the second reading says, Christ has no body but ours. And the reason I like that is because the human side of Jesus, that human form, the clay, is gone now, isn’t it? I mean, he’s gone, but what’s left is, as Richard Rohr says, the universal Christ.
You know, God put his DNA in everything. And Richard Rohr says it better than anyone that we’ve got to pay attention to that. He believes, and I believe too, that it’s panentheism. And that’s a big word. It just says, I believe God is in everything. Don’t get that confused with pantheism, which means God is everything.
So the human side of Jesus is gone. We’re God’s eyes and what are we doing? What are we seeing? Well, let me tell you what Pope Leo says. He said, we’re talking a lot. He said, we need to turn this into action. So that’s what I love about this man. I think he’s going to be a real action pope, and he’s going to do things. He said, no more of this talking. Let’s get on it!
Now, Pope Francis wrote his encyclical, Laudato Si, 10 or11 years ago, and he redid it a couple of years later. He says so much in here that I could spend three hours, and I’d be glad to someday, and tell you all about it. You’re not going to be able to read it. It’s a little bit long, but you can look on the internet and read synopses of it, really good ones. There’s a Laudato Si website, and that’s a good place to start.
Did I mention Pope Benedict? I know we kind of beat up on Pope Benedict every once in a while, at least I do. But you know, he actually said the same thing in 2008.
He didn’t write an encyclical, but it was a letter and words that said, we need to do something now. He put solar panels in half the Vatican, and then Leo XIV finished it up because they see the world, they see the big picture. We see Springfield, Illinois, and we say, not too much is going on. Oh, it’s getting a little hot. I’ll turn the air conditioner up. We are just spoiled.
I gave a talk last Thursday in St. Charles, Missouri. I was with one of my best friends from high school who lives in near North St. Louis. He talked about how difficult it was for poor people, even in the United States. They live in those concrete buildings in downtown Chicago and St. Louis, those three-floor brick buildings. They can’t afford a lot of turning up the electricity with the cost being so high. I mean, it gets hot in St. Louis. And he lives right there among the poor. And a lot of people in his neighborhood don’t have air conditioning. And people die.
And he was talking about the tornado that went through St. Louis last year. We’re getting more and more tornadoes because of the hot weather. And he said, if you go down to some of the richer areas, where that tornado traveled, they’re all rebuilt now. But if you come into his neighborhood and places like that, they’re not.
Now, why aren’t they? Shouldn’t they have insurance? What’s the matter with these people? Well, who’s going to insure some of those buildings? I mean, the insurance companies don’t. They have a system that’s set up, and they can buy insurance kind of through the government, but it doesn’t pay for everything. So some of these houses that maybe say, well, you’ll get 70% or 90%, but the people there can’t afford the rest.
Climate change is affecting all of us, but the poor especially. Francis says in Laudato Si, every consumer decision is a moral decision. He says, stop making your stock market a deity. And we have really done that with capitalism that’s run amok in this country. We have put the stock market before God.
OK, I’m a little worn out. You can see I’m very passionate about this. I talked about we being the eyes and ears of God.
Everything is good. The creation story is good and we know what our popes are saying.
So if I was talking to the Rotary Club, there’d be some people probably agitated by now and a few people walk out. I’m not done yet. I’m only halfway through. Stick with me.
Well, how do we change? How do we do this transformation? Well, in the Gospel, it says, I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life.
Let me start with the life. I got this little piece written by Gerald Manley Hopkins from Sacred Space.
And it says: the world is charged with the grandeur of God, that splendor, that majesty, that dignity. Every little flower, every singing bird can say to us, whoever sees me sees the Father, God, God’s DNA. Whoever sees me when you see a bird, how many of you say, oh, I see God over there.
I want you to get transformed into some of that. When you see a rock that looks really big and you say, hi, old boy, you’ve been around a long time. What’s your story? And try to get yourself in to that story. I do that. I’m not trying to tell you to do it, but you can if you want. I sound like a third-grade teacher, don’t I?
OK, so how about the truth? I am the truth. It’s a tough one when you’re talking to civic clubs, because a lot of them watch Fox News, and they’ll come up with something crazy.
And I am the truth. Now, that just doesn’t mean I tell the truth. A lot of people just tell the truth. But think of Jesus. He told the truth. But lots of times when he was questioned, he sent a question back, didn’t he, because he was seeking the truth. Seeking the truth and telling the truth are different. We need to seek the truth.
Here’s the problem with climate. Somebody will come to me, some of my best friends, and they’ll say, we’re going to figure out it. In a couple of months, we’ll have a something. We’ll take hydrogen, and we’ll infuse it, and we’ll have the cars will run on all this. Don’t listen to that stuff. It’s not going to happen, because part of it is the damage is being done now.
There’s a Doomsday Glacier in Antarctica that’s lost 1 trillion tons of ice since the year 2000. Now, so let’s say tomorrow there’s a miracle and everything happens. What about all that water? Are we going to have another ice age? Do we going to pick the water back out? No, we’re still damaging things.
And that’s what we have to work on the truth.
In a news conference after the Artemis astronauts came back, they said that they had a shift in consciousness because they got to see the whole world all at once from that distance.
I had a shift in consciousness, and we need to have that. Other people need to follow us.
A Russian woman was on a Zoom call with me about climate during the pandemic right during the invasion of Ukraine said, you know, “I’m sorry about Ukraine. I’m sorry what we’re doing”. I hope it wasn’t recorded. I hope she didn’t get in trouble.
But I was in a separate room with her on Zoom. And then she said this at the very end. This taking the climate on, why isn’t that the world’s common enemy? Wouldn’t it unite us if we could do this? And we need that unification.
Jesus said he was the way. Jesus is not the end. I mean, don’t sell him short of this. Jesus is the way. Jesus is a work in progress with us. Don’t just listen to what he says, but think about what his emotions may have been. Be part of that. Be his eyes and ears and heart. That’s the kind of thing that I think is going to get us there.
You know, I’m pretty passionate about things. Be ambitious with your passion. I’m closing in on it. Sometimes I get to I do a lot of tabling at events, like at the Earth Day, and those are good people. Sometimes at farm markets, you don’t always get everybody who agrees with you.
A lot of people think I’m number one. I found that out with a different finger than I’m used to seeing. I’ve had a few people use some four-letter words at me, not love, but other things. But you know what? I think they’re just angry because they don’t want to change. Things are going pretty well for them, and I can understand that.
At the end of this Gospel, it talks about my Father’s house has many rooms. And I know that when this Gospel is read throughout all the churches in the world this weekend, the majority of the Father’s house is in heaven, and it’s got many rooms for all of us and good messages.
I want you to think a little bit different about this. I think the Father’s house that he’s talking about is on Earth. Don’t we say the Our Father? My kingdom come, thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven. I think he’s talking about all the rooms on Earth, this heaven on Earth that we have. We need to open our eyes and see it. It needs a repair job right now, but we’re still going to get there.
I’ll end with a couple of things here. M-M-M, many, mini, miracles. See the many, many miracles that we have in our life. I’ll tell you one I saw the other day. It was right after the storm came in, and suddenly the sun came out, and I’m in my office. I was actually preparing for this, and Vickie’s in the other room probably watching the Cubs play. And so I look up at the sky, and I see these beautiful clouds, teardrops in the sky. I think they’re called mammatus clouds. They’re so rare, we were on the national news. I was just about ready to go in and talk to her, and she’s running into me. She says, you got to come out to the back porch. Look at all this deer. So here we go for the next 10, 15 minutes. We’re out on the back porch. About 100 feet away from us are nine deer. It’s like they just took a bath, and they are jumping all around. They’re just playing. I’ve never seen deer playing tag the way they did.
And then I looked again at the teardrops in the sky, and they were just kind of hanging down. It just looked so beautiful. I mean, that was a big miracle, by the way. No doubt about it. Big miracle in my eyes. Some of the other minor miracles, I could go on forever, but I’m going to end it.
There are so many minor miracles, aren’t there? I was walking along my drive, and I have C6 rocks in there. And I picked one of the rocks up the other day, and I said, where have you been, brother? Where’s your life been? What quarry did you come from? Were you stuck there 2,000 years ago? How long have you been around? And then you got picked up and cut up, and now you’re in my yard. You know, welcome. Thank you for what you’re doing. I know it sounds crazy, but even crazier is this.
Having a grandchild, two and a half years old, living in Springfield now has been a lot of great effort. We have loved this. The other day, we were in my bedroom. We had all the lights turned out. We were playing tag with flashlights, just laughing and scratching right there in bed. And then we were pretending there were meteors flying across the top of the ceiling. So his meteor went there, and I would try to chase it. Did you catch it? Yeah!
And then Grandma Mima comes in, and she’s sitting by the bed. Of course, the lights are kind of out, and he flashes his light on her. She says, Augie, can you catch the meteor? And he kind of gets away from me a little bit, but he’s in the bed. Then he gets three inches away from her face, and he’s got the flashlight on. I got the flashlight on him. And he looks at her, and he goes, I can do this. Now, as a two-year-old does, he had to do it about 10, 15 times in a row. So I got to see this many times.
I could do this. And I want to leave you with that.
We can do this! – We can do this!
There’s going to be a lot of stuff we might have to change about our lives. I don’t expect you all to go out and get electric cars, but we need to do some things to make this happen.
At the end of Mass today, we’ll pass-out a sheet with some easy things and some hard things we’ll pass out to you and talk to you a little bit about that.
I’ll end with one word, and that’s this. The word is not very big, three letters, but it’s something that I want to just send to everybody I know. Please be in awe, A-W-E, of life, of this beautiful life, God’s DNA that walks around with us all the time. I know we get caught up in so many things, but this is what a great way to live.
Please be in awe!
Amen.