This compelling image by Italian freelance illustrator, Andrea Ucini, appeared back in July, 2023 in the New York Times Book Review. It was the illustration for a piece on global warming by Zoe Schlanger, novelist and staff reporter at The Atlantic.
Of course I’m concerned about the issue of global warming, labeled “an inconvenient truth.” by former President Bill Clinton’s, Vice President, Al Gore, Democratic Senator from Tennessee. Gore was a Rhodes scholar and a 1973 graduate of Yale Law School. He ran for President unsuccessfully in 1988 and 2000. In 2000, Gore won the popular vote by 500,000 votes, but lost to Republican George W. Bush, because the Supreme Court intervened in Florida. The result was Bush’s win via the Electoral College outcome rather than by the popular vote. I bet Gore cried, but he didn’t give up.
Gore made his documentary, film “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006, four years before I retired from active professional ministry myself, and just after I was diagnosed with emphysema. I had been tested by a Boston pulmonologist who glanced at my test results and said, “Well, I don’t see emphysema.” Feeling free and rejoicing, I went out to lunch with a good friend to celebrate. As we dined my phone rang with a call from the Boston doctor to tell me that I did, in fact, have emphysema. I heard nothing more than that. My tears flowed as I hung up, saying “thank you” of all things.
When I saw Gore’s movie I cried. Suddenly, I saw that our Earth breathed —inhaling Oxygen and exhaling Carbon Dioxide. When the exhale of CO2 exceeds the inhale of O2, the planet has trouble breathing. It has emphysema. We earthly residents are only now beginning to understand and to weep, even as we rejoice at the Easter message.
Below is the perfect icon—a crucifix without a body—to capture the Easter paradox.
The more we Christians grieve the death of the earthly Jesus, the more we experience the Risen Christ alive in our midst, in our own fleshly hearts. It is surely an inconvenient truth.
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