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Father Dibble did a really terrible thing a few weeks ago. Do you want to know what he did? You do? Well, when he was preaching he talked about these little bubbles that appear over everybody’s heads, like for instance, I was sitting watching you all, as he said he does, and the bubbles appear over your heads. For instance, I know that it’s her hundredth birthday this month. Give her a big round of applause! (What’s your mom’s name? ... Ruth!) So, she is probably thinking “They are going to throw me a great birthday party!” I look at other faces like who was singing and who wasn’t during the responsorial psalm, and she made a comment to her husband, Phil. I noticed that. Did you notice that I noticed? Yes, you did. So, all these little bubbles appear.... Father Dibble should not introduce these concepts. It’s a bit like getting a tune caught in your brain and you cannot stop singing it. One other thing that he did several months ago was reading us childrens’ prayers. Some parishoners sent me these e-mails. (Now, I really hate these e-mails that say “Pass this on or you will get bad luck for ten years.” Don’t you get those?) But some of these are good!

After the christening of his baby brother in church, Jason sobbed all the way home in the car. His father asked him three times what was wrong. Finally, the boy replied sobbing, “ The priest said he wanted us to be brought up in a Christian home and I want to stay with you guys!” From the mouths of babes, huh?

Six-year-old Angie was with her four-year-old brother in church and they were sitting together, and Joel giggled and sang and played the whole time. Finally, his big sister had had enough of it. “You’re supposed to not talk out loud in church.” And he said, “Why? Who’s going to stop me?” Angie pointed to the back of the church. “See those two men standing at the door. They are hushers!”

A wife invited some people over to dinner, and, at the table, she turned to the six-year-old daughter and said, “Honey, would you like to give a blessing?” ...”Mom, I don’t know what to say,” the little girl replied. Her mom said, “Just say what I say.” (Laughter!) Some of you have experienced this. Have you? The daughter bowed her head, piously, and said, “Lord, why on earth did you send these people over for dinner?”

I like some of these traditions that Father Dibble and others introduce to us. Today, in the gospel, we hear, and in all of the readings we hear, a very special message that is rooted very much in Catholic teaching. A wise man once asked Jesus, “Lord, show me heaven and show me hell.” So the Lord took him to two doors, and in the first door they go and there is this great big round table with lots of people sitting around and there is a great big pot of delicious Irish stew. (Well, it could be pasta if you are Italian.) And the people are looking very miserable and sad and they are not talking and the atmosphere was really nasty. And on the ends of their hands were big spoons, longer than their arms so when they try to eat the food, it’s over here. They can’t get it. So, the man looked and said, “I don’t understand, Lord.” He said, “Well, they are trying to feed themselves. This is hell.” So, they go to the next room. The door opens. Same thing, big round table, lots of people, very happy, laughing and talking and just really excited, looking a little larger than the others who were thin, and the holy man just didn’t understand. They all had the same large spoons attached to their hands. The holy man said, “Lord, what’s going on here?” The Lord said, “Well, in the other room they are trying to feed themselves. In this room, they are feeding one another.” (Silence) ... Do you get the concept? OK!

So, in the reality of our human community and the reality of our community, the Church, we’re called to take care of one another. We do this when we take care of the earth. And so, it’s in that vein that we talk about the gift of creation, the “Promised Land,” as you have heard about in the first reading.... We are in the promised land in the gift of the earth. We are called to be stewards of that earth. We are called in the second reading in James to walk the walk and talk the talk. And the law then as written in the gospel, in our hearts, and that law is to take care of God’s creation and to be good and compassionate because we are all made in the image and the likeness of God, and God made the world and the world is good. So, in the light of that, when we think of creation in this moment in time, (I am not even going to attempt to wrestle from the left wing or the right wing or any wing of the political divide.) what is truly Christian tradition, taking care of this gift of the planet, is what we are called to do. Right from the beginning of creation, all the way through, there are, I think, twenty-seven thousand times in the Old Testament that the environment is mentioned, and three thousand something in the New Testament. And you find yourself here, with this gift of our planet, and that is the thing that I am bringing to the fore this morning, our gift and our taking care of the planet. Now, you could say to me, wherever you stand on the political spectrum, some of the more right wing people will say, “Yes, there’s a problem with the environment but it’s not as exaggerated as the left-wingers say.” And then the left-wingers say, “It’s just a huge problem!” But, somewhere in the middle of all of that lies the truth. And we are called to be good stewards of this gift that we have, of the planet. And we are called to be good stewards of it, so that we can hand on the legacy of a planet that has clean water and clean air to our children and our children’s children.

So, what are some of the ways in which the planet is being compromised? Come on, don’t be shy. ...Shout it out loud! She’s too shy. OK, I’m not going to do this. ...Global warming, who said that? Thank you, brother! Global warming. Our bishops here in the United States in 2001 released a document called “Global Climate Change,” a plea for dialogue, prudence and common sense. Talking about this very fact that we, of the United States, are a contributor of thirty-seven percent of the pollution. At two hundred sixty million people within six billion, it’s a little off. Isn’t it? So we have a responsibility for all our technology and our experience to be able to help change this environment. Even now, we were a country of all the countries of the world, all signed onto the Kioto Agreement and the United States did not, and one other country. So, there are some issues out there in terms of Global Warming.

Here are some of the other issues that are going on. We have agriculture and husbandry and all of the different things that are going on and agricultural practices that make a difference to our environment. Anybody drive down Highway 5 past all those cows? ....Don’t open your window. It’s very smelly. Can you imagine what that’s doing to the environment? Not only that, in the way that we make our purchases, we should be making very conscious good choices about how we make purchases. Biodiversity, energy efficiency. We could all be invited to buy energy efficient appliances. We should all... Do you know right not that in Ireland and in Europe they are paying nine dollars a gallon for gas? Can you imagine what size of car you would all be driving if it were nine dollars a gallon? Small, very small, I would think. You might even be walking to BART or you might be doing “Spare the Air Day,” taking public transportation and walking and doing healthier things for ourselves. Buying a hybrid (a suggestion from the congregation)! It’s funny you should mention it. The last Mass, a man came up to me and said, “Father, I have a biodiesel car,” and I didn’t know what that meant. So he took me to the far end of the parking lot. His car is a regular diesel car, not gas, and he buys this biodiesel in Berkeley and in Oakland and it is three dollars a gallon, and he goes forty-five miles on it. So there’s lots of technology out there. Did you know that Brazil this year is claiming energy independence? Thank you, Brother. Somebody is informed. Well, what that means then is that way back in the oil crisis in ‘79 the military government passed a law that, by this year, they would have half of their cars and half of their energy running on ethanol. So the other half of their oil is coming from what they produce themselves. So, for some reason, and you can see the volatility of the big faucet of oil that is going on in the Middle East, if that faucet is turned off, Brazil will be energy-independent. What’s going to happen in the United States? We’re going to be in big trouble. But, yet, we have the technology here to really change what’s going on in our country and to be energy-independent. It makes you wonder what agenda or what’s going on.

What else do we have up there? We have industry. A man was telling me this morning that he just got back from China and they are oil dependent and their industry is growing exponentially. He said, “You can’t even see the sky. It’s so smoggy, as it would have been years ago in some of the industrial parts of Europe.” Do you know that, at this point, that smog and that pollution is starting to come over and affect us on the west coast of the United States? The trees up in Seattle are dying because of acid rain. And so, there are a lot of things going on in the world. Habitat loss and deforestation.... In Brazil, they are losing the lungs of our planet at a really fast rate. And that also affects habitat loss for the animals. We have lost, since we are keeping records, a million different species. We’re losing twenty thousand species a year on our planet. What are we leaving for our children’s children? And the atmosphere is gradually getting warmer and warmer. The Polar caps are melting and the sea level is rising, and some of these island nations are beginning to lose some real estate. Can you imagine the real estate that would be lost in San Francisco if the sea level rose just one foot. There would be a lot of really unhappy people. Wouldn’t there?

So, lets think about a few things that we could do in our own lives to (I know this sounds really vague.) but we could do things in our own experiences. So, how many of you recycle? ....Oh, we’re good at Christ the King! Our water use: I know we’re not having a water crisis right now but there is a water crisis on the planet. And that ties into the population growth. We are growing at an incredible rate. There are now six billion people on the planet, and they think by 2025 there’ll be ten billion. And we have to sustain all of those people in terms of water, agriculture and industry. We can save energy by just turning off lights in our own houses, by using energy efficient appliances. And you could go on and on and on. Solar energy, we could be doing. What else? Hydroelectric power, wind. Father Brian and I are going to put a big wind thing up on the roof, just atop of the cross there. He’ll probably send me up first. We could honor “Spare the Air Day.” I don’t know if you’ve noticed this past year. It’s happening more often, when we call for a “Spare the Air Day.” So we can use public transport, and we don’t have to wait for a “Spare the Air Day” to do that.

Who (Only four people at the last Mass owned up to this.) brings a shopping bag to Safeway or Albertson’’s? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven..... There are twelve saints amongst us! We are contributing by the loss of paper and plastic and oil and all of those things, just with that simple act. And another thing is not to use aerosols or any of those things. You know, going to the roll-on things. Why are you laughing? Using the roll-ons or using something that is not putting those fleurocarbons into the atmosphere is really important. And one of the last things is, we should be advocating for energy independence. And I think one of the greatest things is being able to vote with a Catholic conscience that is rooted in our creation and in our ability to know what our Church teaches, know what we are supposed to do in this law that calls us to treat the world well and to leave something really healthy for our children and our children’s children. So, I would like to invite you as we come to this altar table to be energy efficient, not to pollute the environment and to live life more simply. And so I would like to invite you to say this prayer together with me.