Mountaintop Removal

Psalm 90 (NRSVUE) A Prayer of Moses, the man of God. Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. You turn us back to dust and say, “Turn back, you mortals.” For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past or like a watch in the night. You sweep them away; they are like a dream, like grass that is renewed in the morning; in the morning it flourishes and is renewed; in the evening it fades and withers. For we are consumed by your anger; by your wrath we are overwhelmed. You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your countenance. For all our days pass away under your wrath; our years come to an end like a sigh. The days of our life are seventy years or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then their span is only toil and trouble; they are soon gone, and we fly away. Who considers the power of your anger? Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due you. So teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart. Turn, O Lord! How long? Have compassion on your servants! Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love, so that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us and as many years as we have seen evil. Let your work be manifest to your servants and your glorious power to their children. Let the favor of the Lord our God be upon us and prosper for us the work of our hands-- O prosper the work of our hands! Picture Last Sunday I observed morning worship by my car on a roadside in the place that once was the town of Monson, West Virginia. Today it is the crater of a hollowed out mountaintop, the site of strip-mining for coal. The mountain is blasted away, the town evicted and buried, and only a barren landscape remains, criss-crossed with access roads to active strip-mining further down the horizon. I read Psalms 90 from the crater’s edge, and was both comforted and disturbed. I hope this poetic reflection on the psalm invites you as well into this ambiguous precipice of encounter and pleading. …. Oh desolation, look at the work of human hands this blasting, this blasphemy Before the mountains, you are God After the mountains, we plead, be our God again though we quake at what that could mean Oh dread these human hands have wrought this machine, this greed, this gnawing hunger devouring hills this churning and spitting, these boil water advisories this sucking the delicate thread of life into a shop vac, this “project” How long, oh God? …. Not long, children of wrath A thousand years like a sigh, like a slip off the cliff these mountains will see your demise and rejoice Not long, children of toil Binding lie that the continued humming of the machine keeps us safe yet from the hollows flows a trickle of doubt, a stream, a slow rusting of chains in just a few short years, sweet rainfall can rust to vapor every death-machine and fill our cups to overflowing Not long, children of trouble. Old man Moses looked on the promise land settling into the dust he breathed out blessings, saying, “May the Lord bless his land with the precious dew from heaven above and with the deep waters that lie below; with the best the sun brings forth and the finest the moon can yield; with the choicest gifts of the ancient mountains and the fruitfulness of the everlasting hills;” Not long, children of dust. …. Oh LORD the way You use your hands even here, years after the desolation Midwife hands, Dancer hands whirling, writhing, shaping, squeezing, swirling, birthing fashioning, forming adorning After the mountains, we plead, with hands lifting up be our God again Resources Photo by Duke Ecotoxicology- https://sites.nicholas.duke.edu/ecotoxicologylab/research/mountaintop-mining/ More information on resistance to mountaintop removal: https://grist.org/article/reece/ Words inspired by the People’s Pastoral Letter Catholic committee of Appalachia: https://www.ccappal.org/pastoral-letters