*Join Planet Fitness* I have been in the Chicago ICA Community about a year and half. When I first arrived, I asked Terry Bergdall about where the closest gym and he recommended the Swedish Hospital and showed me how to get there. Great ride. A little expensive but great service at about $73 a month. Because of inflation they just raised it to $83. Anyway, I was talking to Martin a fellow community member about biking, and he said he biked to his gym. Great ride and only $10/month. $10/month!! So, I go to Planet Fitness and it is great and is a two mile bike ride. Joined. Love the name because I am into PLANET fitness or maybe the lack of it. My Congregation has run a series of sessions on sustainability after worship over the last 6 months. The last session was on Palm Sunday and Dr. Michael Hogue, Professor of Ethics, Philosophy and Theology spoken on Death and the Planet Earth. It turns out he is writing a book on death. He proceeded to lead us in a guided exercise on facing death: · What does facing death (our own, and others) free us to know and conversely, what ignorance does death aversion bind us to? · How does facing death help us to notice what really matters, or what we ultimately value? And conversely, what duties/responsibilities/obligations does death aversion lead us to evade? This was an amazing conversation with about 20 people for an hour and a half Death aversion is big. Especially ecologically. The earth is impermanent and when we discount the future, we externalize the cost of what we are doing to the planet. This is why Dark Ecology wants us to face the abyss. We can’t avoid the uncertainty of life, the world. And then I found myself reading a section of the New York Book Review called “Hastening the End” “We humans, one writes, are an essentially “parasitic” species, our growth and dominance has been a uniquely disastrous process for the planet and for those other species who must live on it”; “that the end of humanity’s reign on Earth is imminent and that we should welcome it” Yes, so what does facing death free us to know and do? Some say we are living the age of death- the great extinction. This is why confronting death is most needed in our time. How is facing our own death and civilizations so needed? First, death helps with our life focus. What do we want to accomplish with this life? As Becker in The Denial of Death points out, “this question gives hope, because it holds open the dimension of the unknown and the unknowable, the fantastic mystery of creation that the human mind cannot even begin to approach” But death also releases the great perplexity of our time: ‘The plain debasing and silly heroics of the acquisition and display of consumer goods, the piling up of money and privileges that now characterizes whole ways of life.”. Second, knowing you will die helps you focus on the now. Death enhances the ability to live in the present. And from being right at all costs. If one thing relatives our anger and conflicts, it is death. You appreciate more fully our wonderful life when you truly know that your time is limited. You don’t want to waste it. Third, dead tends to release us from an inappropriate sense of self-importance. Death avoidance feeds human hubris and our earth- destroying fantasies of conquest and consumption. The antihuman revolt shares the convictions that the page has been turned on the final chapter. Death releases us from the absorption with our life, out to the big picture of life. It releases us from the immediacy of our life to embrace the vastness of existence that we are part of. It is said that death releases love. As one article titled: “Think about your death and live better.” It is like self-emptying, making yourself nothing to make yourself available to all. By leaning into the reality of one’s own death, one finds happiness- one loses the trivial life sucking care of everyday life. In facing death, one finds the marvelous, the absolute mystery of life. Dick Alton ICA GreenRise since 2021 -- Richard H. T. Alton ICA Global Fund Methodist Eco-Sustainability T/F T: 773.344.7172 richard.alton@gmail.com Make Plain the Vision, Habakkuh 2:2 Won't you be my neighbor?