On Friday, we gathered in Filene Auditorium at Dartmouth, to be welcomed by Richard Crocker, Dartmouth Chaplain, and by Daryn Melvin ‘08, a Hopi student involved in the Native American Program. Barbara Rossing, Professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago, spoke on “Apocalypse and Ecology: Is This the End of the World?” Her challenge to us was to understand God’s loving vision for this creation, particularly as she has understood it from the Book of Revelation. She urged us to see that it is not only the wolf and the eagle who are endangered species, but the human race itself. Life on this planet is changing dramatically due to global warming,and at a much faster rate than we had thought.

After Barbara’s talk, members of various religious traditions on campus came forward to offer prayers before we ate a special meal. We began with Rabbi Ed Boraz of Hillel, who lit the Sabbath candles and chanted a prayer as the Sabbath began. Daryn Melvin offered a prayer in the Hopi language. Shanti, the Hindu association, dressed in traditional Indian clothing in celebration of the festival of Navratri, chanted a prayer together. Chaplain Anna Mae Mayer of Aquinas House (Roman Catholic) read prayers from the Benedictine and Franciscan Christian traditions. Then we waited for the moment of sundown to hear the Muslim call to prayer chanted and to break the Ramadan Fast with eating dates together.

The meal that followed was a wonder! Outside the auditorium the Hindu students had set up a display of images and had various Indian delicacies available for us all to taste. Next to it was a place setting of a monastic meal in the Benedictine style. A typical Iftar place setting for the breaking of the fast during Ramadan sat next to the Sabbath Candles on the Kosher/Halal table which had food on it provided by the Pavilion, a restaurant at Dartmouth that can offer food for those with religious dietary restrictions. And then Matt and Monte Peterson had gathered their forces, many from the congregation, to serve out beautiful baskets of Heirloom Apples, Vermont cheese, a lentil curry, delicious local breads and cider, showing us we can eat well and eat locally, limiting the environmental effect of foods needing to be sent thousands of miles in order to reach consumers.

Susannah Heschel, chair of the Jewish Studies department at Dartmouth, was our next speaker and she, in her lively and provocative style, made a link between the way we treat one another and the way we treat the earth. She wondered aloud if our view of the earth as “mother” has allowed us to treat the earth with little regard. If in most of the world the rape of women is condoned, it follows that rape of the earth might also be seen as acceptable.

Bill McKibben, writer and lecturer at Middlebury College, has written a host of books and articles on the environment. His talk, “How Big Should People Be” was not about obesity but about human population and the inordinate inequality of the use of the earth’s resources. The developed world has busily spewed out waste from carbon based fuels that no scientist now questions has caused or dramatically increased the current cycle of earth’s warming. Such a desire for “More” is killing us. Realizing that we are in a critical ten-year period before the damage is irreparable, he has devoted himself to helping people understand how radically we must change our human behavior NOW.

On Saturday morning, we reconvened for a breakfast with the speakers at Our Savior and then moved into the sanctuary to hear Jim Merkel, Sustainability Coordinator at Dartmouth, speak on “Radical Spirituality.” Not a religious person himself, he nonetheless holds the ideals of St. Francis (a 12th century Christian saint we commemorated during these days) to be exactly the ideals we need to live by today:

1. voluntary poverty (not using more of the earth’s resources than we need);
2. nonviolence (take a look at the environmental as well asthe human tragedies of our mechanized violent responses to perceived threat);
3. love for creation (obvious reasons!).

After a break, three of the speakers(Barbara, Bill and Jim) formed a panel to respond to one another and to the gathered group.

Finally, we made delicious sandwiches, grabbed an apple and carrot sticks, and trekked of on a “St. Francis and Friends Walk” in Pine Park between the golf course and the Connecticut River. It was the most glorious hour and a half of that day’s rainy weather — warm and bright. Along the way we stopped to read from various writers, poets, and thinkers, among them, of course, St. Francis.

It was our good fortune at OSLC to have Barbara Rossing stay over to meet with the Book Study (which is reading her book) and to speak with us at a Cana Hall conversation on Sunday.

The “All Together Now” event was really a huge success in terms of the relations forged between OSLC and Dartmouth, the multifaith work on campus, and the raising of the bar for our cooperation in the community as people of faith to see that we do our part to sustain the earth. We have much to offer to the world. Religious people understand that what is of greatest importance in life is not accumulation, the idol of “More”! The idol that has brought us to this pass.

Michael Thomas

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