Joel 1:10–12, 17–20

The fields are devastated,
    the ground mourns,
for the grain is destroyed,
    the wine dries up,
    the oil fails.

11 

Be dismayed, you farmers;
    wail, you vinedressers,
over the wheat and the barley,
    for the crops of the field are ruined.
12 

The vine withers;
    the fig tree droops.
Pomegranate, palm, and apple—
    all the trees of the field are dried up;
surely, joy withers away
    among the people.

If you follow the news, you'd think Europe's biggest crisis was the war in Ukraine, or tensions in the Strait of Hormuz. But this summer, water may be affecting more lives than ever.

The Danube, the most important river in Europe, which waters and feeds ten countries, is at historic lows. Hungary is especially hard hit as towns are running short on water, farmers’ fields are scorched and drying up, and the country’s largest nuclear reactor was shut down because there is not enough water to cool it. People are burning candles at night to save on electricity. Hungarian cyclist Gabor Kurti recently rode his bike for 30 kilometers along the dry riverbed of the Danube to highlight the crisis. In an interview he said, “I wanted to show that we are literally at rock bottom.”

Shallow rivers are also revealing hunger stones, rocks with markers chiseled on them years ago to show water levels of past famines. The Rock of Starvation has emerged in the Danube outside Budapest. Legend has it that if you see the rock, famine will follow. Today the rock is completely uncovered and dry. Along the Elbe River, another hunger stone has emerged with words not seen for years, “All who read this: weep.”

This summer’s drought is revealing our past and warning about our future. Lower water levels have exposed parts of lost history along the Danube. A destroyed Roman bridge commissioned by the Emperor Constantine, has emerged from its 4^th century resting place at the river bottom. Near Serbia, a fleet of Nazi warships has re-emerged. At the end of World War II, the German navy sunk nearly 100 ships to deter invasion from the Russian fleet. This has created a navigation crisis, especially since many ships contain unexploded ordnance, still, over 80 years later. Fascism is a peril that just won’t go away.

An even deeper level of history was revealed by the remains of a wooly mammoth in a sand bar. The Danube has not been this low since before World War II, the Roman Empire, perhaps since the ice age let go of this valley. All these revealed histories remind us that empires fall. Fleets sink. Even ice ages come and go. The Danube has seen it all, and is telling us to pay attention, beware, for as the rivers go, so does human history.

The prophet Joel already knew what it meant when the water itself gave way. He wrote this lament sometime between 400- and 500-years BCE about a combined plague of locusts and drought. Joel’s words are both precise to his situation and timeless enough to speak to our own ecological crisis.

The seed shrivels under the clods;¹

the storehouses are desolate;

the granaries are torn down

because the grain has dried up.

¹⁸  How the beasts groan!

The herds of cattle are perplexed

because there is no pasture for them;

I wonder how Joel’s audience received his words. Did they say, “Why are we talking about this in church? Can’t we just focus on more positive and hopeful things?” Some may have even said, “What drought? My well is fine.” That we still read Joel’s words 2,500 years later suggests they found an audience. His writing falls in the genre of communal lament. Nearly one-third of the Psalms are laments over some kind of hardship. Joel’s words give voice to the fears and suffering during an environmental calamity.

What happens when people lament together in worship? In biblical times people didn’t know why a drought occurred. But they had no idea about the El Nino effect, or others causes of drought. Some assumed it was a punishment brought by God for some kind of disobedience. The response was to lament the hardship and repent for their sins.

The strength of lament is bringing people together to create bonds in times of suffering. Lamenting leads to compassion for people who might be suffering more than us. Repentance stimulates openness to change, and a willingness to act in a different way. Lament and repentance can be a proactive and healing response.

The weakness of this action is it is easy to get the real problem wrong. Was God punishing people for idol worship, greed, or promiscuity? This reasoning quickly leads to finding scapegoats, depending on who you want to oppress. When in doubt, people tend to go for promiscuity, which has little effect on the weather. We have satellite data and climate models our ancestors could never have imagined, and we still reach for the same old scapegoats. We blame the world's poorest nations for a crisis the wealthiest nations did the most to cause. We call scientists liars. We point anywhere but to or collective responsibility.

This denial of reality is what makes facing climate grief and lament so necessary today. What does facing grief do for us? Grieving helps us face the sadness and fear of loss. We deal with the painful reality of the change that we did not want. As we move through grief, we realize that things will never be the same and we figure out how we are going to live in a very different future. We may not like it, and we will always feel some sadness, but we adapt and live into a climate changed future.

When we avoid the work of grief, we often stay stuck in the past. We look for someone to blame for our predicament, or we keep looking for some way to make things go back to the way they were. Denial feels good for a little while, but it seldom works out well.

I listened to a story last year at the Bangor Theological Center retreat highlighting the need for lament and grief. Blair Nelson worked for an environmental organization in the Amazon to preserve rainforest land. She saw the devastation of deforestation and the impact on indigenous communities. After months of challenging negotiations between government, corporations, and residents, a deal was struck to protect ecological interests while acknowledging economic interests. It felt like a success, but within weeks the deal was ignored, the destruction continued and laws and government action were too weak to stop it. 

Blair returned home devastated and hopeless. This depression dragged out a few months when she had an idea. She read an article where psychologists note the rising prevalence of people feeling climate grief. Many people are seeking counseling for climate grief. So, she joined a local group of the Good Grief Network, which support people working through ecological grief.  

You may wonder what an ecological grief group does. Like most grief groups, people tell their stories, listen to each other, and find support in their shared experience. In community we discover that our grief is not a pathology. It is a realistic response to loss and trauma.

When our illusions dissolve in front of us, we discover what was normal, safe, in our control, is now no longer viable.  It is crushing. The despair we feel when we first confront disastrous news is part of why denial is so powerful. Who wants to face the reality that we are on the edge of a global disaster? Maybe it won’t happen in our lifetime. Maybe some brilliant scientist will figure out a solution, so my life won’t have to change. Maybe the big oil companies were right all along, and climate change is a hoax. But denial has never been able to un-see what has already been seen.

The Good Grief Network helps people find ways to cope, heal and hold a new reality. Like all forms of grief, eco-grief doesn’t simply disappear, but we can find new ways to live and love our world.  Eco-anxiety might even be a moral response, an awakening to the reality of our world. And once we're awake, we can't un-see it.

The hunger stone that emerged as the Elbe dried up says, “All who read this: weep.” Perhaps that is not such a terrible word for us. Grief means we have allowed ourselves to see. It means we have loved something enough to feel its loss. And if we can face our grief together, perhaps it can keep us from denial, from blame, from turning away.

We do not know how this story will unfold. We cannot promise that everything will return to the way it was. But Scripture reminds us that weeping does not have the final word:

“Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” Psalm 30:1

Perhaps what we need now is not certainty, but awakening: to see what is happening, to feel what is at stake, and to let that seeing change us.

Because an awakened people can imagine a different future. We can make different choices. We can repair what we can, protect what remains, and begin to restore what has been damaged. And through the darkness, we keep watch—for the first light, for the dawn.