MMUUS Earth Day Service The Sun

MMUUS Earth Day Service      The Sun 

Today we are celebrating and giving thanks to the sun on our Earth Day service. In ancient times many cultures considered the sun to be a deity. Worship of the Sun was central to civilizations such as the ancient Egyptians, the Inca of South  America and the Aztecs of what is now Mexico. In religions such as Hinduism, the Sun is still considered a God. Many ancient monuments were constructed with solar phenomena in mind. For example, stone megaliths such as Stonehenge, accurately mark the summer and winter solstices. Some of the most prominent megaliths are located in England. Newgrange, a prehistoric human-built mount in Ireland, was designed to detect the winter solstice. The pyramid of El Castillo at Chichén Itzá in Mexico was designed to cast shadows in the shape of serpents climbing the pyramid at the vernal and autumn equinoxes.

But today we have a tendency to take the sun for granted. It comes up every morning and goes down every night, and it's nice to have some warm sun when we have weather like it is now. That's all most people think about the sun.

However, it's far more important than that. Our one and only sun is the center of our universe about eight light minutes away and we and the other planets revolve around it. The important thing to remember about the sun is that it provides all of the energy to sustain all of human, animal and plant life on the planet other than a finite amount of nuclear energy. It gives us the energy for photosynthesis and plants to grow which provide all of the food that both we and the animals eat.

The sun also creates all of our weather. It warms the oceans, lakes and earth, which gives us our wind.  And the warming produces evaporation that then can fall as rain and snow. The sun also heats up the earth every day. Our cold-blooded friends, the reptiles, relish the sun even more that we do to warn their bodies.

For millions of years before us, the sun provided the energy for photosynthesis to grow the billions of tons of trees, bushes and plants that fell down and eventually consolidated to create all of the oil, coal and natural gas in the earth which we are now extracting to generate our electricity and run our vehicles. Since 1857 when oil was first discovered, we have used more than half of the oil deposits in the earth. So now we are realizing that we need to seriously look at what we need to do when all of those hydrocarbons are gone. But how do we do that?

Fortunately, we do know what we should be doing and in many cases we have started. We need to transition all our energy sources to renewable ones like solar and wind. But we need to get going; time is short to make the transition. Bruce and Lee Macbeth, long time May Memorial members, already have solar panels on their house, but all of us would have been well advised to apply for solar panels under the recent Solarize Syracuse program. Please consider doing that if the program starts up again. We applied for May Memorial, but they haven't gotten back to us yet.

In order to reduce our use of precious hydrocarbons, starting 10 years ago many of us at May were a pioneers in switching to hybrid gas saving Priuses; but now with every manufacture offering electric cars, it’s time to be a leader again. An electric car charged at night when electricity from renewable energy like water and wind power are available, can make an amazing six-ton reduction in the amount of yearly climate change causing carbon dioxide compared to a gasoline car.

But before we leave the sun, we should think about some of its pleasurable, therapeutic and spiritual benefits. If there is a spot of sun coming into your house on a cold day, like we are having recently, we all know that a pet cat or dog will find that spot and revel in an enjoyable sun nap. We too enjoy the warmth and spiritual upliftedness of the sun shining upon us. The bright light has a magic quality that can dispel winter blues and depression. And it is such a joy to wake up in the morning and see that wonderful yellow ball in the sky shining down upon us.

So with that, we celebrate and give thanks for our one and only sun.