First Unitarian Universalist Society Burlington
September 21, 2025
Reverend Karen G. Johnston
Plant lust.
I was familiar with the feeling, the impulse, the craving, but not the term. If you are gardeners or lovers of indoor plants, you may be familiar with it too, perhaps even more viscerally than I. The Urban Dictionary defines “plant lust” as
an uncontrolled desire or craving for any member of the kingdom Plantae
In late July, to celebrate our 14th anniversary, Tony and I spent a few days at a magical cabin in the Eastern Townships of Quebec. If there was a defining image of picturesque, this was it. There was a tumble-down barn across the street. The road we traveled to get there was a dirt one for the last mile. The cabin itself was situated between a roaring creek (we had to cross a foot bridge to get there) and on the other side, a somewhat steep hill filled with great pine trees.
On the soft decaying carpet of pine needles gifted the earth by those great pines, there were ghost pipes. They go by many names. Perhaps you know them as ghost plant. Or Indian pipe. The Latin name given them by European science is monotropa uniflora. In my research (thank you not only wood-wide web but also world wide web), I learned that they are plant, not fungi (as I had thought), though they are interdependent with fungi. Monotropa uniflora is a perennial found in Asia, North America and the northern reaches of South America.
According to Wikipedia, the word “monotropa” is Greek for “one turn” and “uniflora” is Latin for “one flowered.” It is a non-photosynthesizing plant, which I did not even know was a thing. It does not use the sun to nourish itself, hence the interdependence with fungi. While some specimens have coloration, mostly the plant can be described as “waxy white” and have a translucent quality. Their stems can be between 2 – 12 inches (the ones pictured here were about 4 inches high). Their leaves can best be described as scales, or sheath-like, as they emerge from the stem.
I pointed them out to Tony who showed cursory interest. I shielded them from our dog Vera, who was romping around. And I coveted them. The next day, I saw more. Not sure if that’s because more were emerging or because my eyes had become attuned to look for them, fed by my avarice, by my wanting, by my plant lust.
I fed that lust, googling whether it’s possible to transplant ghost pipe, since I have a small shade garden at the back of our yard. In the course of that googling, I came upon a blog post created, not by some company trying to sell me something, but by a lone voice, an individual lover of the earth, whose tone conveyed she knew she was screaming into the abyss. She said,
DO NOT PICK. DO NOT UPROOT.
The Eightfold Path in Buddhism includes Wise or Right Action. Basically, ethical behavior. Basic Buddhist ethical behavior – Right Action – starts with (but does not end with) five precepts. I’m going to raise up only the second of the five: do not take that which is not freely given. Sometimes, articulated in a less poetic but more pithy way, as “don’t steal.”
(DO NOT PICK. DO NOT UPROOT.)
This precept, as I understand it, means that there must be a commitment to doing no harm. This means there must be a sense of reciprocity, of mutuality, of interdependence, rather than just seeking to satisfy one’s own needs or desires. This means being in relationship. This means recognizing that our actions, even if done in secret, even if done with good intention, impact others in this interdependent web of all existence.
At that cabin in southern Quebec, Tony and I had already been talking about this precept because across the street from our cabin was a completely, not almost, and not nearly, but wholly and absolutely, collapsed barn. And lately, Tony has been having a hankering for barn wood, ever since he began creating furniture. Turned out, he had already gone over to the no-doubt-infested-with-poison-ivy site, yearning and, well, lusting.
Not plant lust. But plank lust.
And I had said, and not only because there was no room in the car for us to bring back weather-worn wood, “you’re not going to take something that is not freely given, right?” A marital question/statement. While Tony has been a Buddhist for nearly half a century, he remains thoroughly human, so following the precepts is very much an ongoing practice.
And here I was, appreciating the ghost pipes, noticing some that were fully aroused and others that seemed to just be peeking their heads out of the humus. And I was struggling with that very same ethic: I, too, am bound not to take that which is not freely given.
I think there is a delicious irony in my coveting this non-photosynthesizing plant – this plant that does not use the power of the sun – and talking about it on a day that has been declared Sun-Day – a day to raise up the worthiness of the sun and solar power in specific as well as sustainable energy in general. A day – Sun dash Day – to raise up as worthy our relationship with the sun. Because of the many things that are amazing about solar energy, one thing of which we can be sure is that sun-generated energy is freely given.
And, for the most part, we can harvest it with little harm to the world we share with so many other beings, sentient or not (like those mesmerizing ghost pipes and that roaring creek).
Fossil fuels are NOT freely given. Our ongoing use creates more and more harm: by their extraction and by their use. Fossil fuels are not freely given, but we keep shaking them out of the earth and taking them. Doing so at the cost of our very existence.
Now, you can let me know if this next part of the sermon veers far too far into the territory of fangirling about Bill McKibben. Vermont’s own. The Schumann distinguished scholar at Middlebury College. The founder of Third Act, organizing people over 60 for progressive change. The prolific author, including his most recent, published a month ago: Here Comes the Sun: A Last Chance for the Climate and a Fresh Chance for Civilization.
Today’s Sunday service is part of a wider national celebration of solar power specifically and renewable energy in general – that’s why the title of the service is Here Comes the Sun-Day. Nearly 500 different events across the nation:
— In Virginia, rooftop solar panels are being installed on Habitat for Humanity homes, part of a $40 million drive to help low-income families save money, accessing clean energy.
— In Portland, Oregon, there’s a parade with giant puppets, Aztec dancers, and marching bands.
— In New Paltz, New York, they are celebrating a net-zero fire station.
— In New Hampshire, the Mallett Brothers are giving a concert powered by the batteries in Ford F-150 Lightnings, e-trucks.
Here in Burlington, Local Motion held a Kidicle Mass Bike Ride this morning. The Echo Center is holding a family-friendly festival until 2pm today. This evening at 5pm, at UVM, there is a new documentary about Greenland’s Ice Sheet based on the work of UVM professor Paul Bierman. And we, as part of Sun-Day, are raising this topic up as worthy.
I subscribe to McKibben’s Substack, titled The Crucial Years. I don’t get to read everything he publishes there, but I am always glad when I do. Not that there is always good news there, but there often is. And I feel like I come away a slightly better world citizen for having read what McKibben tracks and lets his readers know.
Such as, and these data points come directly from McKibben:
· about two-thirds of emerging markets now have a larger share of solar power in their grids than the roughly 9% in the US;
· EVs (electric vehicles) are being adopted in Turkey, Indonesia, Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates at a pace to match or even exceed developed markets;
· soaring renewables generate three times more global electricity than stagnant nuclear power, whose 9% world and 18% U.S. shares keep shrinking;
· Pakistan, which has for years treated gas generation as the backbone of its power network, has been asking suppliers to defer shipments of liquefied natural gas after a surge of solar imports suppressed grid demand;
· across Africa, solar panel imports from China rose 60 percent in the last 12 months, and 20 African countries – this is not rich South Africa – imported a record amount over that period;
· Saudi Arabia is facing one of the fastest declines in petroleum usage anywhere as photovoltaic farms replace fuel oil generators; and lastly
· China has pledged more investment across green manufacturing projects than the equivalent, in today’s dollars, of the investment, by the United States in the Marshall Plan ~ that key driver that made the U.S. economy prosper mid-20th century.
Maybe it’s not that in reading this, I become a better world citizen. Maybe that’s the wrong description. I think what I come away with is recognition that THIS America, the one we are in now, the one that is bribing and extorting us into a fossil fuel frenzy, is not the only thing happening on the globe. As such, I feel some hope.
McKibben is no Pollyanna. He knows that even as China is the driving source of this global shift, that China is a problematic world actor (he notes that the activism he has done as an American would have gotten him locked up there).
McKibben spent all last year in the run up to the election traveling the land connecting the authoritarian encroachment with the climate emergency. He knows that the current regime is doing everything in its power to kill renewable energy, not only in this country but all over the world, and doing so in thuggish ways, using tariffs as bludgeon.
Yet, more and more, he reports, always citing evidence-based studies, that renewable energy (solar, wind) has become too cheap to contain and too big to ignore.
Too cheap to contain and too big to ignore. I love those two phrases.
He quoted one European study that insisted that if the current exponential growth of renewable electricity continues, it will so outpace the use of fossil fuels, the global demand for oil and its relations will fall off the plateau it has already reached these past few years.
As you may know, residential solar installations are out of reach of most Americans. Tony and I are installing solar at home this fall, taking advantage of that tax credit that has been ended by the current administration, and we can just barely afford it. Still, we have decided it is one of the ways we are choosing to live into our values and ethics, acknowledging that in so many other ways, we do not or cannot. It is one of the ways we can live our 21st century American life by stealing less, by taking less of what is not freely given. However, many cannot make this choice. It’s just not economically feasible. And once the tax credit is gone, far fewer.
A few weeks back, I heard McKibben on public radio’s Science Friday. He mentioned the concept of “balcony solar” which was unfamiliar to me. I have learned that in some parts of the world, you can go into the equivalent of a Costco and purchase a solar panel that you hang from your apartment balcony, plugging it into a wall outlet! For instance, in Germany, you can do this and not be blocked by an arduous permitting process, like we are here in the United States, which contributes to the high cost of any solar installation, often doubling it.
It turns out that there IS one place in the U.S. where balcony solar is now lawfully permitted. Do you know where that is?
Utah.
Yeah, I was surprised too. Even more surprising, and delightful, the elected official who wrote the bill, Raymond Ward? He’s a Republican. And the legislature that passed the bill? Republican-led. And the governor who signed the bill into law? Republican. This law marks the nation’s first significant step of this kind to remove barriers to portable and affordable – there are other barriers, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
And if they can do balcony solar in Utah, I wondered, why not Vermont?
Well, it turns out that in the coming legislative year, there will be a bill that gets introduced that brings Vermont into company with Utah, that would widen the economic accessibility to solar energy via these “balcony solar” panels. Wouldn’t that be a great thing for our congregation, and others that share our values, to advocate for? Heck yeah!
And then, once such a bill is passed, supporting a way to make such balcony solar panels easily available across all communities, renters and owners of all class stripes and all political-party stripes,in our Brave Little State? Wouldn’t that be dreamy?
Friends, let us remind the world – or let the world remind us! – that we live on a planet where we can experience and cultivate the beautiful, liberating power of the sun, no longer enthralled to the fossil fuel industry and their ever-rising bills and ever deepening harm. Let us remember in our spirits and in our communities that we can thrive while still living by an ethic of not taking what is not freely given.
