The Meaning of This Hour

I first "met" Rabbi Lawrence Troster about six years ago, when I discovered GreenFaith, Interfaith Partners for the Environment, on the Internet.  I sent Rabbi Troster (Fellowship Director) an email inquiring about the new program established to provide an avenue to the faith communities, about turning their church communities "green".  I even talked with Pastor Dr. Jeff London about participating in the program GreenFaith had launched to create Fellows to go out and spread the "green" word about God's Creation and what we as humans were doing to the planet.  It was decided the timing was not at that time, mostly due to the responsibilities with my day job and the conflict of timing.
I read an article in HuffPost Religion, written by Rabbi Troster and I wanted to share some of his thoughts.

In March 1938, Abraham Joshua Heschel delivered a speech to a conference of Quakers in Frankfort called "The Meaning of this Hour."  It was later published in 1943.  Heschel was speaking out and witnessing the horrors of war.  He was arrested in October 1938 and sent to Poland.  Six weeks before the invasion of Poland he was sent to England and than to the United States.

Heschel warned of the coming cataclysm in vivid and forceful language, evoking images of the demonic.  He said, "At no time has the earth been so soaked with blood.  Fellowmen turned out to be evil ghosts, monstrous and weird."  He asked the question,"Who is responsible?"  We are, he said, by not fighting for "right, for justice, for goodness."  He said we should be ashamed, and after the war, when the full horror of the Holocaust was revealed, he said that we should not ask, "Where was God?" but "Where is man?"

We are not facing a world war, but we are facing something even worse. What we are doing with carbon is against the least of these.  It's the people on the small islands and other countries without the means to protect themselves from our personal actions.  "What we do to the least of these", as Jesus said. But we can stop the situation from getting worse.

In the published version of his speech, Heschel wrote, "The Almighty has not created the universe that we may have opportunities to satisfy our greed, envy and ambition.  We have not survived that we may waste our years in vulgar vanities."  These words can easily be applied to our lack of action on climate change.

Climate change is one of the greatest moral disasters of human history, because the people who will suffer the most have been the least responsible for its cause.

The meaning of this hour is that we must recognize what we are doing, admit our fault, and bring about the changes necessary to prevent further damage.

Fifty years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of the "fierce urgency of now."  Once again, that is the meaning of THIS hour.  Thank you, Rabbi Troster.