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We are grateful to share this article as part of Sustainable Faith: An Interfaith Season of Creation, a series from MassIPL in which leaders from across Massachusetts' religious and ethical traditions write, in the first person, about how their faith connects with climate. New essays are published each Sunday through October 11th, 2026. Read all reflections here.
The beauty of our planet and its beings is beyond words. And the current suffering on our planet is heartbreaking. It makes me want to alternately celebrate and mourn, give gratitude and organize. Three questions arise for me:
When we were small, my guess is that many of us had a secret or magical place in nature where we went for refuge, where we felt safe. For me, I lived on Puget Sound in a small town near Seattle, with water and mountains all around. When I felt lonely or lost, I would climb the willow tree and look out at the Olympic Mountains. Their solidity and calm soothed my agitation. When I was 13, I built a kayak and would float for hours, watching seagulls and clouds. I felt whole, embedded, happy. Do you have such a memory?
Most environmentalists started because of love. Across the political spectrum, when asked what makes them care about the environment, they talk about the creek they loved where they fished as a child that's now polluted, or the forest they roamed which was cut down to build a shopping mall, or cypress trees in a bayou they call home, now dying because of oil sludge.
Finding ways of renewing our love for the natural world is a starting point that helps us look squarely at the climate catastrophe facing us. I try to take daily opportunities to pause in my hurried pace, take a slow walk in the woods or around the block to look at the trees, or sit by a stream, trying to let the earth elements penetrate the cells of my being.
Even though I have been conditioned to feel separate from nature, it is impossible for me to be separate. My actual relatedness to all of creation is infinite. My Buddhist teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, would hold up a piece of paper and ask if we can see the sun in a piece of paper, and the rain which nourishes the tree from which the paper is made, and all the elements that were necessary for the paper to manifest, like the micro-organisms under the tree, the soil itself, the logger, the food that sustained the logger, and so on without limit. Take any of these elements away and the paper would not exist.
A short poem by Rumi sums it up:
If God said, “Rumi, pay homage to everything that helped you enter my arms,” there is not one experience in my life, not one thought, not one feeling, not any one action I would not bow to.
I sometimes sit and feel into how the forest is me, and I am the forest, or the ocean, or the sky, or the desert. We are descendants not just of our human ancestors, but also plant, earth, mineral, and star elements.
One way I try to keep my awareness alive is by reciting these contemplations with my meals, courtesy of Thich Nhat Hanh:
This food is a gift of the earth, the sky, numerous living beings, and much hard and loving work.
May we eat with mindfulness and gratitude so as to be worthy to receive this food.
May we recognize and transform unwholesome states of mind and learn to eat with moderation.
May we keep our compassion alive by eating in such a way that reduces the suffering of living beings, stops contributing to climate change, and heals and preserves our precious planet.
We accept this food so that we may nurture our community and nourish our ideal of serving all living beings.
You have your own ways of feeling your love for nature and the earth. The encouragement here is to go to your well often and deeply.
In Buddhism, there is a teaching that the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows exist side by side. We can enter deeper dimensions of life through either entryway. Sometimes when we are in the Love-for-the-Earth state of mind, we are overcome with great feelings of gratitude, of awe, of yes! Sometimes seeing the sunset or looking deeply at a flower, or watching a butterfly, or smiling at a baby duck trailing its mama makes tears roll down our face.
Sometimes we contemplate the immensity of the catastrophe that climate change is bringing.
Think about this. If we are even halfway awake, and don’t turn away from this suffering, then we are going to feel heartbreak, deep grief, maybe loads of anger and waves of despair, and probably bouts of confusion and doubt.
How do we allow ourselves to face and feel the enormity of what is upon us? Because if we don’t allow those feelings to arise and heal, then we are in danger of shutting down, distracting ourselves, or playing small. Most of us reading this know that something is fundamentally out of right alignment. Because everything is interconnected, we hurt inside when we even read about things far away, like refugees fleeing rising sea levels, or the loss of another beautiful species gone forever, or the explosion of an oil rig that coats the shoreline for hundreds of miles with sludge. Our hearts break, whether or not we can express it.
Feelings of despair, depression, and sadness are natural responses to suffering we witness in the world, but as passing states, not as reasons to give up or not act. Life is still miraculous. Even as suffering deepens, there is still so much to love and protect.
What has helped me is to remember that those feelings were there long before I ever knew about climate change, or racism, or oppression. When we were children, we witnessed or experienced things we knew were wrong, or a violation of life, but we were too small to stop them. We didn’t have the power. We internalize feelings of powerlessness and carry them into adulthood. So now, when facing big challenges, those old feelings are triggered for many of us and we say “It’s too big.”
These unwholesome feelings are waiting to be healed. Such healing requires safety, courage, and intention. Crucial for my own healing has been maintaining a co-listening partnership where my friend and I exchange undivided attention. I listen to him for 45 minutes, then he listens to me respectfully and warmly, which allows old memories to surface. Often I find myself crying with grief, or shaking or shivering with fear, or trembling with anger, and other signs of emotional release. This safe space has allowed me to heal much of my inhibiting distress and feelings of powerlessness.
I encourage you to try developing a co-listening partner. You can begin by exchanging just 5 minutes each, and build up from there. Just a few guidelines: each person takes an equal time turn; the listener offers no advice, no comment, no judgment, no trying to fix the other person.
Releasing old feelings and healing old habit energies will not in itself reduce global warming or stop environmental damage, but it will allow us to think more clearly and act more boldly regarding climate change.
This question follows from the first two. First, a deep bow of gratitude to many of you who are very engaged in climate justice work. Thank you for your devotion and hard work.
And, like me, I suspect you ask yourselves what more can I do to help make things right? What am I willing to do in the face of near-certain kinds of collapse? Tinkering at the edges will not transform our collective suffering. Refusing to look directly at the seriousness of our situation gives us false hope that somehow we can avert the worst; this keeps us numb enough to go along with accepting things as they are, or just advocating for mild, piecemeal reforms, thereby sealing our fate.
Actually, there’s a huge menu of things we can do. Here are a few interrelated elements.
Like, “What if total climate catastrophe is not inevitable? What if we are big enough to tackle this? What if this is just the right level of challenge to slingshot us through to the next level of collective consciousness?” What would we do differently if we adopted this view?
We need each other. Maybe we can develop an “Earth Buddy” to check in with, think with, feel with, act with. Maybe join a green committee in our church or synagogue, or local town sustainability commission. Maybe gather around ourselves a small group of friends who agree to care about each other’s well-being, practice a common set of spiritual teachings or rituals, study the climate justice situation, and commit to engaging in mindful action together as a group. Here’s one model for this called Beloved Community Circles.
We can see clearly how climate change highlights the interconnection among issues that were previously viewed as fairly separate. Climate change is a racial justice issue; a food security issue; a national security issue; an economic justice issue; a public health issue; a population issue; a democracy issue; an immigrant issue; a technology issue; a patriarchy issue; a species loss issue; a rights of the earth issue; and so on. Anything we care about is somehow related to climate change and environmental degradation.
This interconnection also means that we can start anywhere, like planting a garden, caring for our children, nurturing our church community, standing for racial justice, protesting the pipelines, contributing funds to climate justice organizations, supporting a carbon tax at the statehouse, joining a mass civil disobedience action, working for climate-friendly political candidates, advocating for the Green New Deal.
Each of us has family, a network of friends and acquaintances, or maybe a work setting, social media community, and so on. We probably have more influence than we know. Maybe this week, you could arrange a think and listen session with a friend about how you might add a climate justice lens to whatever you are currently involved with.
Big things, yes! But surely worthy of the better angels of our nature. The Dalai Lama puts it squarely in our lap when he says, “We are the pivotal generation.”
In closing, here is a short poem by Zen teacher Robert Aitken Roshi that points to the longing I think many of us have for the right relationship with the Earth.
Hearing the crickets at night,
I vow with all beings
to find my place
in the harmony
crickets enjoy with the stars.
Bowing in gratitude,
John Bell
John's essay is itself an invitation to reflection, built around three questions. You might notice that they come in an order: love first, then grief, then action, as if each gives rise to the next and informs the others. We encourage you to sit with them this week, whether all three in turn or simply the one that speaks most to you, perhaps alone, perhaps with a friend or a small grou
Leaders from across Massachusetts' religious and ethical traditions on how their faith connects with climate.
Stories from a month of faith and climate action, plus three fall events to put on your calendar.
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For Khan Shairani, the freedom to choose comes bound to obligation. A reflection on non-violence toward the world we share.
