Memorial Service Speech - December 16, 2009

I learned three lessons from Christine Sevilla. I want to share them with you. They are lessons about how to manage uncomfortable disagreements; what it means to have an ethical relationship to the land; and, finally, the transcendent and invaluable magic that may happen when we invite deep connection to our natural world. 

Lesson One needs a confession, a difficult admission for me. I hold grudges. Grudges, those long-remembered slights or disagreements, are mean little devils gossiping in my ear, edging out any gentler, truer whispers from my better self. 

I could hold a grudge for 60,000 years. 

And the grudge I held about Christine until this spring was about the Great Governance Conflict at the First Unitarian Church of Rochester. (And if you sniff at this and wonder what great passion could possibly get people all upset about bylaws, then you don’t know Unitarians.) Christine and I had been on opposite sides. I’d worked to write new bylaws in order to establish policy governance; Christine believed the way we had worked – with congregational consensus guiding essential decisions – was a much better system. 

So imagine, me the expert grudge-holder meeting Christine two years later at the Perinton Town Democrat’s candidate designating meeting, this spring. I’d decided to run for county legislator. Christine had joined the town Democratic committee and I needed committee members’ votes in order to run. So when I saw her at the meeting, I nearly panicked. I thought she’d speak against my nomination. That devil grudge was chattering at me, full of unkind suspicions. 

But Christine was not unkind. She voted for me! After the meeting, she congratulated me. And then she wanted to confer about mountain biking in county parks. We talked for twenty minutes – enough for me to know that beyond the Great Church Governance Conflict, we would find common cause. 

That common cause grew and blossomed, until we conferred nearly everyday about this corrupt county and the profound risks an untrustworthy old boys club posed to our natural world. Christine held no grudge against me. Her remarkable ability to overlook our past differences allowed us to walk new ground, to support each other’s better impulses, to celebrate each other’s gifts; to become true friends. 

So, Lesson One from Christine Sevilla: Time may be too short to hold onto grudges for 60,000 years. Let go of old hurts and slights. Look with new eyes on old enemies. You may find surprising, essential support and invaluable reward. 

Lesson Two is this: Chrisine, like Aldo Leopold, a naturalist, author, and originator of the Land Ethic, believed that our ethical relationship to the natural world had not fully evolved. Leopold compared our use/abuse of land to slavery. We see land as a commodity, something to exploit, resources to serve our goals for power and dominance. But here’s what Christine knew and taught, in Leopold’s words: 

“The land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land. This sounds simple: do we not already sing our love for and obligation to the land of the free and the home of the brave? Yes, but just what do we love? Certainly not the soil, which we are sending helter-skelter downriver. Certainly not the waters, which we assume have no function except to turn turbines, float barges, and carry off sewage. Certainly not the plants, of which we exterminate whole communities without batting an eye. Certainly not the animals, of which we have already extirpated many of the largest and most beautiful species. A land ethic of course cannot prevent the alteration, management, and use of these ‘resources,’  but it does affirm their right to continued existence, and, at least in spots, their continued existence in a natural state. In short, a land ethic changes the role of Homo sapiens from conqueror of the land-community to a plain member and citizen of it.” 

Christine lived this ethic. It inspired her art, her deep love of animals and plants, of wetlands and woods. It inspired her uncompromising activism. 

Finally, Christine believed and taught that a quiet, receptive, open connection to our natural world could lift us up, enrich us and even transform us. 

I turn to E. B. White for explanation. 

You all know Stuart Little – not the movie, erase it from your mind -- but the story you may have read or heard as a child about a small and gentle mouse, Stuart, born to a human family. His adventures in the wider world found him making friends and common cause with a bird named Margalo, described as either a “young wren” or a “wall-eyed vireo.” Margalo stays for a while with Stuart’s family in NYC, but then White says “it was springtime, and she flew north, just as fast as she could fly, because something inside her told her that north was the way for a bird to go when spring comes to the land.” 

At the end of the story, Stuart also leaves his family and sets off in a mouse-sized car, in search of Margalo, his truest friend. 

“Stuart drew up to the northbound road and got out to look the situation over. To his surprise, he discovered there was a man sitting in a ditch, leaning against a signpost. Stuart realized he must be a repairman for the telephone company. 

“Good morning,” Stuart said in a friendly voice. The repairman raised one hand to his head in a salute. Stuart sat down in the ditch beside him and breathed deeply of the fresh, sweet air. “It’s going to be a fine day,” he observed. 

“Yes,” agreed the repairman, “A fine day. I am looking forward to climbing my poles.” 

“I wish you fair skies and a tight grip,” said Stuart. 

“By the way, do you ever see any birds at the tops of your poles?” 

So the repairman answers yes, Stuart explains his search, and the repairman asks what Margalo looks like and where she comes from: 

“Brown,” said Stuart. “Brown with a streak of yellow on her bosom. She comes from fields once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; she comes from vales of meadowsweet, and she loves to whistle.” 

They sat for a while in silence. Then the man spoke. 

“Which direction are you headed?”
“North,” said Stuart. 

“North is nice,” said the repairman. “I’ve always enjoyed going north.” 

“Following a broken telephone line north, I have come upon wonderful places. Swamps where cedars grow and turtles wait on logs but not for anything in particular; fields bordered by crooked fences broken by years of standing still; orchards so old they have forgotten where the farmhouse is. In the north I have eaten my lunch in pastures rank with ferns and junipers, all under skies with a wind blowing. My business has taken me into spruce woods on winter nights where the snow lay deep and soft, a perfect place for a carnival of rabbits. 
I know warm hours with warm smells. 
I know fresh lakes in the north, undisturbed except by fish and hawk. 
I know all those places well. 

They are a long way from here – don’t forget that. And a person who is looking for something doesn’t travel very fast.” 

“That’s the way I see it,” said Stuart. “I rather expect that from now on I shall be traveling north until the end of my days. Thank you for your friendly remarks.” 

“Not at all,” said the repairman. “I hope you find that bird.” 

Stuart rose from the ditch, climbed into his car, and started up the road that led toward the north. The sun was just coming up over the hills on his right. As he peered ahead into the great land that stretched before him, the way seemed long. But the sky was bright, and somehow he felt he was headed in the right direction.” 

Christine was headed in the right direction. 

Her three lessons are these: The search for Margalo -- for true friendship, for ethical relation to people and the land, the impulse to seek deep meaning and transcendent connection – that search is why we are here. Christine has left us to continue her journey and to find that bird “in fields once tall with wheat, in the pastures deep in fern and thistle.”

To honor Christine Sevilla, we will continue in the right direction.