THIN PLACES: CLIMATE CHANGE AND SEEING EARTH WHOLE

Published on the winter solstice, 2025 - a thin time for reflection and turning.

tt

Last Month, I stood beneath Terra - a massive suspended globe of Earth - in Saint Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and delivered a keynote on climate change and spiritual transformation. The room was full. People had come, I think, because something in them knew this crisis is sacred work, not merely technical work.

After the talk, people came forward. They were grateful - not for answers, but for permission. Permission to see the crisis whole. Permission to grieve and hope at once. Permission to gather, rather than scatter into isolated guilt.

One thing became clear: people want to come together around what’s true. Not around false solutions or platitudes, but around honest seeing and collective work.

This talk is my effort to convene that kind of gathering - bringing together Earth system science and multiple wisdom traditions, prophetic witness and the long view, the clarity of data and the poetry of cycles. It’s about eco-conversion: moving from ego to eco, from extraction to belonging, from individual action to collective transformation.

I’m sharing it here, in full, as the inaugural post of this Substack. Because the work of convening can’t stop with one night in one cathedral. It has to continue.

So gather here. Read, reflect, comment, share. Let’s practice together what it means to see Earth whole and live from that vision.

OPENING: WE ARE STANDING IN A THIN PLACE

We gather tonight in a thin place.

We gather beneath Terra, our planetary home suspended above us.

We gather in this cathedral, built to lift our eyes upward, to remind us we inhabit more than just the material world.

We gather because something in us knows this climate crisis is sacred work, not merely technical work.

And we gather with wisdom from across traditions - because thin places, liminal spaces where heaven and earth grow close, are recognized everywhere:

We learn from Celtic Christianity about mountains at dawn, shorelines at dusk, ancient groves and sacred wells - places where the veil between material and transcendent grows permeable.

We learn from Indigenous peoples across the world who have always known sacred sites where the ordinary becomes luminous - where ancestors walk close, where the land itself speaks, where we feel held by something larger than ourselves.

We remember with Jewish mystics those moments when the curtain between worlds parts - Moses at the burning bush, Jacob dreaming of angels ascending and descending. “How awesome is this place!” Jacob says upon waking. “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”

We learn from Buddhists about bardo - threshold spaces, in-between places where transformation becomes possible.

We recognize with Japanese wisdom the word yū-gen - a profound awareness of the universe that triggers feelings too deep for words, often experienced in nature’s liminal moments.

Across traditions, we know this: there are places and moments when reality’s deeper structure becomes visible. When we see truly. When the ordinary reveals itself as holy.

Tonight, we stand together in such a place. Not to receive answers, but to let ourselves be changed. Not for solutions, but to open our eyes.

So let us begin by seeing.

I’m going to ask us to do something together - something that might feel uncomfortable at first, but I invite you to stay with it.

Look up at Terra. Really look. Let your eyes soften. Notice the blues - how many shades can you see? The swirls of white cloud. The browns and greens of continents against endless blue of the world’s ocean.

Just gaze. Breathe. Be present to what you’re seeing.

THE OVERVIEW EFFECT

What you just experienced - that shift in seeing - astronauts describe something similar when they first glimpse Earth from space. They call it the Overview Effect.

From orbit, borders vanish. The lines we’ve drawn on maps, the divisions we’ve made between nations, peoples, ecosystems - none of them are visible. What you see instead is one interconnected whole.

The atmosphere - that thin blue line protecting all life - looks terrifyingly fragile from space. You can see how delicate it is, how precious. Every human conflict, every war over territory or resources, suddenly seems absurd when you’re looking at our shared home suspended in the void.

Astronauts don’t return from space just wanting better solar panels or more efficient cars. They return changed. They describe feeling a protective love for Earth, a sense of profound connection to every living thing, an understanding that we are all - every single one of us - part of one body.

This is a thin place experience. The veil drops. Reality’s deeper structure becomes visible. And once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

As a climate scientist, I can tell you: climate science gives us this same view, but through data instead of orbit. We don’t need to leave Earth’s surface to see what astronauts see from space. The science reveals it.

EARTH SYSTEM SCIENCE AS REVELATION

When I was an early career scientist, I encountered a diagram that changed my life. It’s a diagram of Earth as a system - the Bretherton diagram, named after Francis Bretherton - showing atmosphere, ocean, land, biosphere, and ice, all connected by arrows showing the flow of energy and matter between them.

It was a spiritual experience. While sitting in a university auditorium.

The NASA Bretherton diagram of the Earth System. Reproduced with permission of National Academies Press from NASA (1986) Earth System Science Overview. A program for global change. Prepared by the Earth System Sciences Committee, NASA Advisory Council. 48pp.

Because what I was seeing was the same truth mystics have always known: there are no separate things. There is only relationship. Only flow. Only infinite exchange.

The ocean breathes carbon into the atmosphere.

The atmosphere weeps rain onto the land.

Plants drink light and exhale oxygen.

Ice reflects sunlight, preventing heat absorption that would otherwise warm the planet.

Tiny phytoplankton in the ocean produce half the oxygen we breathe - every other breath you take comes from organisms you’ll never see, in waters you may never touch.

This is what Earth system science reveals: we live inside a body. We live inside a body.

We’re in church, not a science classroom. It’s okay to respond together.

So, say it with me, quietly: we live inside a body.

Not on a planet. Not using a resource. Inside a body.

A planetary body with circulatory systems - ocean currents moving heat and nutrients around the globe.

Respiratory systems - the carbon cycle breathing in and out across seasons and centuries.

Regulatory systems - climate feedbacks that have sustained life on Earth for billions of years.

It’s not metaphor. It’s measurable, quantifiable relationship. Poetry written in chemistry and physics.

THE SACRED GEOMETRY OF CYCLES

Look at Terra again. What you can’t see from here but what the data reveals:

Water moves from ocean to cloud to rain to river to ocean - the same water dinosaurs drank, the same water that will quench the thirst of your great-great-grandchildren. Nothing is wasted. Everything returns. This is resurrection.

Carbon cycles through rock and ocean and atmosphere and bone and leaf - you are made of stars, yes, but also of ancient plankton, of Cretaceous ferns, of your grandmother’s last breath released to the sky. This is communion.

Nitrogen fixed by bacteria, taken up by plants, eaten by animals, returned to soil by death and decay, lifted again into new life. This is the paschal mystery - death feeding life, life returning to death, the wheel always turning.

Earth system science doesn’t diminish the sacred. It reveals the sacred’s inner workings.

It shows us the face of God in differential equations.

It proves what faith has always proclaimed: all things hold together. There is one web, one body, one breath breathing through all.

BUT WE ARE TEARING THE WEB

Here’s what else Earth system science shows us – and this is where the thin place becomes uncomfortable, as thin places often do:

We are pushing Earth’s systems past the boundaries of safe operating space.

Scientists have identified nine planetary boundaries – thresholds that, if crossed, could trigger irreversible changes to the Earth system. Think of them as the body’s vital signs. We’ve already crossed several:

• Climate change – the fever is rising

• Biodiversity loss – vital organs are failing

• Nitrogen and phosphorus cycles – the blood chemistry is dangerously imbalanced

• Land system change – living tissue scarred and hardened

We’re not just changing the weather. We’re destabilizing the relationships that make life possible. We’re breaking the cycles. Interrupting the breath. Severing the connections that have held for millions of years.

The Bretherton diagram showed me a body – intricate, beautiful, whole.

What we’re doing is dismembering that body.

THIS IS WHY TECHNOLOGY ISN’T ENOUGH

You don’t heal a body you’re actively dismembering by giving it better bandages.

Technology treats symptoms, not disease.

New technologies - renewable energy, electric vehicles, carbon capture - these are wonderful. Truly, they matter, and I say this as someone who has spent decades working in the solution space.

But they don’t address why we consumed so relentlessly in the first place.

We can swap out every light bulb and still carry the same insatiable hunger that created the crisis.

The illness is spiritual - a belief that more is better, that Earth exists for our extraction, that we’re separate from rather than part of creation. We’ve worshiped at the wrong altars.

Technology without transformation just makes us efficient at the wrong things.

Here’s what I learned after decades as a climate scientist: we’ve had the technology for years. The barrier isn’t knowledge or capability.

It’s will. It’s values. It’s what we love and what we’re willing to sacrifice.

As a climate scientist, I can give you the data. But as a deacon, I can name what this really is: it’s a crisis of the soul.

ECO-CONVERSION: FROM USING TO BELONGING

Pope Francis, in his encyclical Laudato Si’, calls for what he terms “ecological conversion” - a fundamental reorientation of how we see ourselves in relation to creation.

Not managers or consumers, but members. Not users, but belongers.

This isn’t about adding environmental concern to our existing worldview.

It’s metanoia - the Greek word for repentance that literally means “to change your mind,” to turn completely around.

It’s a transformation of perception that changes everything downstream.

When we truly convert - when we move from seeing Earth as resource to recognizing Earth as kin, as the body we inhabit, as sacred - then our actions flow naturally from that new seeing.

We don’t have to guilt ourselves into better behavior. We respond from love, from relationship, from recognition of who we really are.

Renewable energy flows naturally from ecological conversion - when we see Earth as kin, of course we want to stop harming it. But the reverse doesn’t work. Installing solar panels doesn’t convert your heart.

This is the work thin places call us to: see truly, then live from what we’ve seen.

GAZING AGAIN, DIFFERENTLY

Look at Terra once more.

But this time, see it as Earth system science reveals it: a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects. Every part in relationship. Every element in exchange. One breath, one body, one sacred whole.

Now ask: What would it mean to live as if we believed what we’re seeing?

Not alone - you can’t hold this vision alone, can’t live it alone.

But together. As communities. As the Body gathered. As people who’ve stood in this thin place and let it change us.

THE CALL: WHAT DOES COLLECTIVE CONVERSION LOOK LIKE?

Thin places reveal what’s always been true: we need each other. We were never meant to do this alone.

The climate crisis is calling us back to an ancient truth that both science and faith proclaim: we are one body. What hurts one part hurts the whole. What heals moves through the whole.

So the question isn’t “what can I do?”

The question is “what can we become together?”

Here’s where the usual climate conversation goes profoundly wrong. It sends us home to change our light bulbs, calculate our carbon footprints, feel guilty or virtuous in isolation. It focuses relentlessly on individual action.

But thin places don’t reveal isolated individuals making consumer choices. They reveal interconnection. They show us we’re woven together - with each other, with creation, across time.

The spiritual transformation we need isn’t just personal. It’s communal. It’s ecclesial - which means “gathered assembly,” people called together for common purpose.

When we stand in thin places together, we remember who we actually are: the Body. One living whole.

So what does collective conversion look like? Let me suggest two movements that matter:

PROPHETIC WITNESS: SPEAKING TRUTH TO POWER

The Hebrew prophets didn’t just teach personal piety. They challenged systems. They stood in public squares and named injustice. They spoke for those who couldn’t speak - the widow, the orphan, the stranger, the land itself crying out. Jesus stood in this prophetic tradition, proclaiming good news to the poor and challenging systems of power.

Climate change is a justice crisis. It hits hardest to those who contributed least - island nations drowning, communities on the frontlines of extraction, species with no vote and no voice.

Personal lifestyle changes can’t address systemic injustice. We need collective prophetic voice.

This means:

Faith communities using our moral authority to demand policy that protects the vulnerable, not just the profitable.

Learning from frontline communities and standing with them in solidarity - in how we vote, what policies we support, where resources flow.

Disrupting business as usual when business as usual is dismembering the body.

Naming what we see - not softening it, not making it comfortable, but telling the truth about what Earth system science reveals: we are in crisis, and it demands transformation.

The prophets didn’t whisper. They didn’t stay polite. They loved too fiercely for that.

Our planetary boundaries being crossed? That’s the land crying out. Can we hear it? Will we speak for it?

THE LONG VIEW: BUILDING CATHEDRALS

Look around this space. This cathedral carries a tradition: the great medieval cathedrals weren’t built for quarterly earnings. They weren’t built for the people who laid the first stones - construction often spanned generations, with builders dying long before the roof went on.

They built for centuries they would never see.

They understood something we’ve forgotten: faithfulness means living for a future beyond our own lives. It means planting trees we’ll never sit under. Restoring soil that will feed children not yet born. Protecting species that will outlive us - if we choose to let them.

The long view is a spiritual practice. It’s the antidote to despair and to the frantic short-termism that got us here.

Collectively, we can hold time horizons individuals can’t hold alone:

Congregations that steward land across generations - restoring, rewilding, holding it in trust for those who come after.

Endowments invested not for maximum return but for seven generations forward.

Liturgical rhythms that reconnect us to deep time - marking solstices, blessing seeds, grieving extinctions, remembering we are part of cycles far longer than our individual lives.

Intergenerational witness - elders teaching what they’ve seen change, children asking us to account for what we’re leaving them, all of us holding the story together.

We sustain each other for the long work - because individuals burn out, but communities can carry the vision across decades.

This is what the cathedral teaches: collective work, beauty as offering, building toward a future we trust even when we can’t see it.

BOTH/AND: WITNESS AND WORK

Prophetic witness and the long view.

Speaking truth to power and planting for centuries ahead.

Disrupting systems and building alternatives that can outlast us.

Not individual actions taken in isolation and guilt.

But communities practicing resurrection - the ancient art of bringing life from death, hope from grief, new possibilities from systems that seem immovable.

CLOSING

We are being called to do what the cathedral builders did. Not with stones, but with our lives, our choices, our love - offered not alone but together.

To stand as prophets: speaking for what cannot speak, challenging what must be challenged, bearing witness to both the damage and the beauty.

To take the long view: building for futures we’ll never see, holding hope across generations, sustaining each other for work that won’t be finished in our lifetimes.

This is what collective conversion looks like. This is what thin places call us toward.

Not consumers making better individual choices in isolation.

But the Body gathered - seeing truly, speaking boldly, building faithfully, holding each other as we learn to live as if we believe what Earth system science and faith both proclaim:

Everything is connected. Everything belongs. We are woven together in a web so vast and beautiful it can only be called holy.

And what we do together matters.

Across time. Across species. Across the thin boundary between heaven and earth.

The question is: will we let ourselves see it? And having seen, will we gather together to live from that vision?

Say with me: We will gather. We will gather!

Not scatter to individual action. Not retreat into private guilt.

We will gather - as prophets, as builders, as the Body that sees truly and acts together.

That is the invitation. That is the call.

Not to fix things alone, but to become together what this moment requires: communities of witness, communities of the long view, communities practicing the ancient art of resurrection in a time of profound dismemberment.

The cathedral builders knew: we build for what we love, across time we’ll never see, with others whose names we may never know.

So let us build.

Together.

For love.

For the body of Earth.

For the thin places where heaven meets earth and everything becomes possible again.

Amen.

If this resonates, subscribe to join the ongoing conversation. I’ll be writing about the intersection of climate science and spiritual practice, about communities of transformation, about what it means to take the long view in a time of crisis.

We will gather. Not scatter. Not alone.

Welcome.