tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38987574120531976202024-03-14T04:19:30.511-05:00Green SproutsRooting Creation Care in Faith CommunitiesBetsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.comBlogger380125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-48391885652517417672022-07-01T19:44:00.004-05:002022-07-01T19:44:43.241-05:00Do we want to be made well?<p> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;">Acts 16:9-15; Revelation 21:22-22:5; John 5:1-9</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">Yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling in West Virginia v. EPA was a prime example of putting lesser interests before the urgent task of doing all we can to mitigate the existential threat of climate change, a threat that looms ahead so large that it already shades our daily lives. As I worked in my garden weeding and watering and worrying about what lies ahead for our nation and our planet, I remembered this question from John 5:1-9: Do you want to be made well?<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">The parish where I serve, Church of the Resurrection in Omaha, worshiped outdoors on Rogation Sunday, May 22. I preached, using the texts for the Sixth Sunday in Easter (Year C) and focusing on that passage where Jesus asks the question that we might ask ourselves anew in light of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling. Do we want to be made well?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This question lingers in my mind not only because of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling, but perhaps even more so because of the reaction to it even by people who question the ruling. This SCOTUS decision, while affecting everyone, was spoken of as a political loss or a bad precedent apart from, and often with no mention of, its heartbreaking effect on all living things. It seems that we simultaneously don’t understand the magnitude of what is unfolding as the planet warms and also lack the imagination or initiative to make large-scale changes that would mitigate climate change. Like depressed medical patients, we know something is wrong, but don’t want to hear the diagnosis or do anything to feel better. (And maybe everything else going on from the pandemic to gun violence to the erosion of our democracy has us collectively in this mental state.)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Rogation Sunday comes to us in the Episcopal Church from the English tradition of processing around the boundaries of a village’s fields and pastures, marking the boundaries — a useful practice in a time when few people could read — and blessing the land while praying for a good growing season. Here’s the body of this reflection on boundaries and being open to Jesus’s offer of healing. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9IIWmE7vibbIoK-fu_V6uniQIUakS4Xs9I1D1a2R9otcY5lyyANC6onLKEaiXhsWYVbqS7qyYZQyud5QseUBhQiP8BefRRdOHgGKkpO6Eqtu3nzPm7ZPCADdOdmr5Ox9IwQZfdUklEptVyhklYJnGa1c-73dmBN6U5P3Q44dE_cc6DmwFDKrqLQz4/s852/IMG_9084.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="852" data-original-width="627" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9IIWmE7vibbIoK-fu_V6uniQIUakS4Xs9I1D1a2R9otcY5lyyANC6onLKEaiXhsWYVbqS7qyYZQyud5QseUBhQiP8BefRRdOHgGKkpO6Eqtu3nzPm7ZPCADdOdmr5Ox9IwQZfdUklEptVyhklYJnGa1c-73dmBN6U5P3Q44dE_cc6DmwFDKrqLQz4/s320/IMG_9084.JPG" width="235" /></a></div><br /><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 14px; text-align: left;"><br /></b></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 15px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><b style="font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had been there a long time, [Jesus] said to him, “Do you want to be made well?” </b><span style="font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">(John 5:6)</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">Our Scripture readings this morning are those for the Sixth Sunday in Easter, but happily for our Rogation Sunday observance, they contain images that resonate with being outdoors. <span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">There’s a place of prayer by the river outside the city gates in today’s reading from Acts.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">In Revelation, we heard about the light-filled holy city, not up in the clouds, but right here on earth. The river of the water of life flows right down the main street, with fruit trees growing together along the riverbanks. Scientists have in recent years begun to understand that trees thrive in community, communicating with and supporting one another through fungi along their root systems. it’s a lovely image to contemplate as we sit here under our own beautiful trees!</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Our Gospel lesson also provides an image of water, but this one works differently. The pool by the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem was supposed to contain healing water that became effective when the waters were stirred up or troubled. The belief was that the first person to get in the pool when the water was stirred up would be healed. That’s why the man who has spent his days lying by the pool for 38 years hasn’t been healed yet. With no one to help him get into the pool and an inability to move quickly, he never got in the pool at just the right time. But our Gospel lesson in the end isn’t a story about inaccessible healing water — about what doesn’t work — but about Jesus’s power to heal. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Jesus comes along and asks an important question, “Do you want to be made well?” It’s always best to ask, to find out if the man truly wants to be healed but has never been able to access healing, or if the explanation he gives Jesus is closer to an excuse for not leaving what may have become a comfortable routine after 38 years. A key moment in this story is when, after acknowledging the bleak reality of his situation, the man affirms his desire to be healed by trusting Jesus when Jesus tells him to get up, pick up his mat, and walk. The inaccessible water cure wasn’t working for him. Jesus offers a real choice, a choice between drifting along accepting the only daily routine the man could imagine after all those years and accepting instead a new way that offered hope and true healing.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">“Do you want to be made well?” is a good question for all of us to consider on Rogation Sunday as we tap into the tradition of marking boundaries and asking for God’s blessing. Alongside our Scripture texts this morning, what theologians sometimes label the text of the natural world — our observations and reason — science — can help us think about boundaries and our desire to be made well.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We don’t have village boundaries here where we’re gathered today, but we do have property boundaries and personal boundaries and, less well known but of primary importance, planetary boundaries. Johan Rockstrom and other scientists have looked at what it takes to maintain a “safe operating space” for humankind, a planet where humans — and the diverse network of other living things on which our lives depend — can thrive. They came up with a set of planetary boundaries in nine different categories. The idea is that in each of these nine categories, there is a safe zone — a stable place where we can thrive, a danger zone — a place of instability, and, beyond that, a point of no return — a place where we have marched right on through the danger zone boundary and done irrevocable harm to the systems on which we depend. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">There’s a Netflix film called Breaking Boundaries about their work. It’s sobering because we are far into the danger zone in some areas, but it’s also hopeful. As David Attenborough notes toward the beginning of the film, knowledge of the boundaries “gives us hope because they show us how we can fix things.” </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Several of us are old enough to remember when our knowledge about the dangers we faced from destruction of Earth’s ozone layer resulted in global policy changes about the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. That global cooperation pulled us back into the safe zone of that boundary before we barreled all the way through the danger zone.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">But we aren’t doing so well in other areas, such as climate change and loss of biodiversity. The possibility of our national and global political leaders cooperating on pulling us back into the safety zone in these areas seems less possible — though not impossible — than it did back in the 1980’s when we did the right thing about the ozone layer. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Do we want to flourish on a healthy planet? Do we want to be healed? Then we must acknowledge collectively, in our political institutions, our churches, and our economic lives that there is something that needs healing. A look at the top news stories each day and a listen in to our conversations with one another reveal a big hole where acknowledgment of the danger of environmental collapse should be heard.</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">*******</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">The man by the pool had his hopes so focused on the water in the pool that he nearly missed Jesus, the source of real healing. Later in this chapter of John’s Gospel, when the man is walking around carrying his mat on the Sabbath, the religious authorities ask him why he is carrying something on the Sabbath, and he says the man who healed him told him to do it. They ask who healed him, and the man doesn’t know who it was. The man hadn’t been looking for any source of healing other than the pool and hadn’t paid much attention to anything else.<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">This man had drifted along for 38 years doing the same thing day after day even though it wasn’t working. It was all he could imagine. We are doing the same thing with our planetary sickness, as it were. We say we want to be healed, but we don’t change anything. We passively accept the story we’ve been told about where we should focus our hopes, and we nearly miss Jesus and the life-giving alternative that his way offers us.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">If you listen to our national conversation, our parallel to the pool by the Sheep’s Gate, our idea of where our hopes lie, has to do with The Economy (with a capital E), a longing to return to a near mythical business as usual. If we could just get the system running a little better, we think, everything would be fine. And so year after year we chase after the same thing: the same systems of profit and loss, wealth for a few and, increasingly, poverty or near-poverty for way too many, winners and losers,</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">and ever increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>“The</i> Economy” in the sense of business as usual tends to sort us into groups. This is contrary to God’s kingdom, where there are no barriers between Us and Them. <i>An</i> economy, on the other hand, a more just economy that emphasizes the common good rather than wealth and power for a few, one that provides renewable energy, accessible healthcare, and robust public transportation, can bring us together rather than tearing us apart.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We aren’t making the immediate and full-scale change from fossil fuels to renewable energy because we cling to the old Economy. Too many decisions around Covid have placed the Economy ahead of the welfare of the groups of people — based on income, age, ability, and race — no surprises there — who then become more vulnerable to the disease. The Economy was a big piece of the Confederacy’s rationale for slavery. Now it’s the rationale for an unlivable minimum wage and a lack of benefits, including medical care, for many workers.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Business as usual isn’t working for us, just as the pool wasn’t working for the man lying on his mat. And this misplaced faith is worse than useless, because it keeps us from fixing things, from doing very doable things, to prevent environmental collapse and a whole host of other problems.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">We as the Church as well as individual followers of Jesus must decide whether we continue to trust and enable the powers that be — business as usual — or follow Jesus in a more focused way than we have in the past. This is, I think, the root of the tension in the Episcopal Church as we continue to navigate and, I hope, find our way out of these turbulent years in our nation. Our ability to thrive, to have abundant life, depends on our marking and choosing to stay within our planetary boundaries, and that’s incompatible with choosing business as usual instead of Jesus’s vision of God’s kingdom. The Episcopal Church’s historic deference to wealth and privilege while Jesus waits for us to follow the healing ways of God’s kingdom is as useless to us as the Sheep’s Gate pool was to the people languishing beside it.</span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">*******</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">Our sign out here on 30th Street describes Church of the Resurrection as a “culturally diverse family united in God’s love”. As we live into that vision our parish lives into being a little piece of God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom brings us together instead of keeping us apart. <span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">I suspect more and more that the unity of God’s kingdom is not only God’s dream for humankind in all of our wonderful diversity, but for all living things. The old Man vs. Nature idea goes out the window when we consider our place in the web of life. When studies of animal behavior show planning, logical thinking, and, most of all, compassion among other animals that we used to think were so different in kind from ourselves, when we find evidence of trees living in complex forest communities, that’s reason to suppose that the kingdom of God would have us living not only as a human family but as a widely diverse community of living things united in God’s love. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">Do we want to be made well? Let’s mark our planetary boundaries well and thoughtfully, let’s pray for God’s blessings, and when we get discouraged, let’s remember the promises embedded in today’s Collect: God’s promises exceed all that we can desire, God has prepared for us such good things as surpass our understanding. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;">When we focus on following Jesus instead of the things that aren’t working for us, we can thrive in ways we can’t even imagine. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i>Preached by Archdeacon Betsy Blake Bennett at Church of the Resurrection, Omaha, Nebraska, May 22, 2022</i></span></p><div><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-kerning: none;"><i><br /></i></span></div>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-39838411108569696602022-04-15T17:07:00.001-05:002022-04-15T17:07:44.349-05:00Good Friday Grief<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Our observance of Good Friday brings us into the reality of grief. Through the Good Friday liturgy, we deepen our sense of Jesus’s suffering and of the profound grief of his mother and his followers. Jesus’s trial and crucifixion happened long ago and far away, but because Jesus is for us a very real presence whom we name as both Lord and friend, the story touches us deeply.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Often as we allow ourselves to enter into the story and share in the grief of his followers who witnessed this event firsthand, we find ourselves connecting this deep, cosmic grief — our sorrow at the brutality that nailed God Incarnate to a cross — to our own personal experiences of loss and grief. Sometimes we experience a connection with a familiar grief around the death of a loved one, while other times we are surprised by what surfaces. Sometimes we find ourselves consciously grieving a loss we had kept at arm’s length, something we weren’t even conscious that we were grieving. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Some of us are conscious of our grief around the losses of life and place connected to climate change. Psychologists are aware of a growing number of people experiencing grief connected to climate change. The combination of species extinction with the loss of human lives to climate-related floods, storms, and fires is layered in with all the other global concerns that are connected with grief: the pandemic, the loss of life and the lack of humanity in Russia’s gruesome attack on Ukraine, gun violence here in the United States. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">I know that few people I’ve talked to since the most recent <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1115452"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">UN IPCC working group repor</span></a>t came out have heard anything about it, and I’ve noticed that the floods in South Africa — the result of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/south-africa-floods-deadliest-storm-on-record-kills-over-250-people"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">the “deadliest storm on record”</span></a> in South Africa — haven’t received much coverage in the United States. However, since the same global changes that contribute to the large-scale catastrophes being experienced now and forecast to occur in the future to some degree — depending on how well we respond to the warnings in the IPCC reports — also contribute to changes close to home, I expect there is some degree of awareness even if we ignore the bigger picture when the seasons seem “off” or the weather seems “really strange”. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Good Friday focuses on Jesus’s death on the cross. The full meaning of the Easter message of hope, of love having the final word, depends on Jesus death being real. If we try to deny his death on the cross, the Easter message is diminished. Good Friday invites us to experience our grief so that we might fully live into the salvation story we proclaim at Easter.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Acceptance of the realities that bring grief near is a necessary part of healing. Certainly we will not begin to heal our biosphere until enough people feel the grief of what we are losing. For me, and I suspect for others who pay attention to climate change, the death of Jesus on the cross is connected with the unnecessary deaths resulting from catastrophic events related to floods, storms, drought, and melting ice, with the loss of entire species, and the loss of places and nuances of seasons that will never again be the same in our lifetimes. Good Friday teaches us that we can somehow bear the grief, that it’s okay to open our eyes and see the reality all around us.</span></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-61545320705961900722022-04-14T10:26:00.003-05:002022-04-14T10:26:15.727-05:00Maundy Thursday<p><b><span style="font-size: medium;"> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";">Love in a profit-driven system</span></span></b></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We call today Maundy Thursday because we focus on Jesus’s last evening with his disciples when he washed their feet after supper and then gave them the commandment — the <i>mandatum</i> — to love one another.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Our Maundy Thursday Gospel (John 13:1-17, 31b-35) also tells us that before the Last Supper had begun, Judas had decided to betray Jesus. Matthew (Matthew 26:15) says that Judas had agreed to betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Hearing the story of Judas’s betrayal alongside the biblical account of Jesus’s last evening with his disciples, including the commandment to love one another, makes me wonder how Judas could have valued Jesus’s life so little. How could Judas betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver? How can any of us place a price on the life of another person? When we have a choice between loving one another or getting some money, why do we so often choose money? </span></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The most blatant examples in our modern world of selling out someone’s life for a profit aren’t a temptation for most of us. We would never think of trafficking another person for a handful of money or hiring ourselves out as hitmen. However, we are tempted to tolerate, and sometimes even advocate for, policies that put a price on human life.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Not very far into the Covid pandemic, as vaccinations were just becoming available, there was some discussion about whether older Americans should be willing to sacrifice our lives for the sake of the economy. This rested on the premise that the main reason for businesses shutting down and for workers and students being told to stay home was to protect the people most vulnerable to dying from Covid — the elderly and people with certain underlying medical conditions. Those advocating sacrificing us for the sake of the economy were engaged in a more sophisticated form of placing a price on the lives of other people. Even now, with vaccinations available to everyone age 5 and above, economic concerns are driving decisions that set aside practices that decrease the spread of Covid even though our youngest children remain unvaccinated and adults with certain medical conditions are similarly vulnerable. We are placing a price on the lives of our little ones, choosing money instead of love.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Similarly, our willingness to choose short-term profit over life itself underlies the political and economic policies that have brought us to such an urgent place in the work of keeping our planet habitable. (See <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1115452"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees</i></span></a>.) A 2019 study found <a href="https://www.audubon.org/news/north-america-has-lost-more-1-4-birds-last-50-years-new-study-says"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">a shocking loss in bird populations in North America</span></a>; we have lost 1 in 4 birds in the past fifty years. Climate change coupled with habitat loss and other environmental stressors has us in the midst of the <a href="https://earth.org/sixth-mass-extinction-of-wildlife-accelerating/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Sixth Mass Extinction</span></a>, with accelerated loss of both plant and animal species. Our lives, of course, are intertwined with the lives of all other living things. We are placing a price on the lives of all living things — ourselves included — choosing money instead of love.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the Gospel account, Judas realizes too late the reality of what he has done. He had allowed the lure of an immediate profit to take his focus from what he knew deep down was the right and loving way to live. It was too late for Judas. While the distortion of our priorities has resulted in much permanent loss, it’s not too late for us to change course and give love priority over immediate profit. In the long run, societies that value the welfare of all living things will be better off than societies where some people make big profits while others, both human and non-human, suffer. </span></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We can create new systems that prioritize life over short-term economic gain. We can love one another.</span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLEI0d5w4tP7rNnuGdWIq49gDBBtbBUb9RY8_5-XZzrzQnVZzTrVXIZis2PNyC_JDs3u5zaY5yzJ1KsYwkfFAGWCk0aXE4Gq2pSTQXNIJj6_NJUn-Fj2ThUOz2HGZopCzUdwIs2H3g4vOhmzPlsen2RFu4sYTVLE_JfvwV2c3VUOItlJ8o6Ft0_Apl/s3264/IMG_3470.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLEI0d5w4tP7rNnuGdWIq49gDBBtbBUb9RY8_5-XZzrzQnVZzTrVXIZis2PNyC_JDs3u5zaY5yzJ1KsYwkfFAGWCk0aXE4Gq2pSTQXNIJj6_NJUn-Fj2ThUOz2HGZopCzUdwIs2H3g4vOhmzPlsen2RFu4sYTVLE_JfvwV2c3VUOItlJ8o6Ft0_Apl/s320/IMG_3470.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-58363127715131039052022-04-08T21:40:00.004-05:002022-04-08T21:40:36.780-05:00 Palm Sunday 2022: Silencing truth<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Luke 19:28-40</b></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, order your disciples to stop.” He answered, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.”</b></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">According to Luke's Gospel, Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey and people shout, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!" But right away, some of those with religious power in Jesus’s day tried to silence the truth that Jesus lived and taught, the Living Truth that is the Christ. </span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">History shows us that those in power will go to great lengths to hide the truth if the truth might get in the way of what they want. Sometimes they silence the truth directly, by forbidding speech — “Teacher order your disciples to stop” — or censoring the written word. Often there will be active promotion of the opposite claim, the lie, in a way that makes people question the truth. Russia’s campaign at home to convince people that Russian soldiers are conducting a “military exercise”, not a war, combines the tactics of forbidding the truth to be published or spoken with an advertising campaign. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">In the United States, the truth can simply be buried when major media outlets ignore it. On Wednesday this week <a href="https://www.salon.com/2022/04/08/scientists-arrested-for-peaceful-climate-around-the-world-say-climate-revolution-now/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">climate scientists around the world protested</span></a> to being attention to the urgent message in the IPCC report that was released on Monday. You may not have heard about this, as it was covered by few major news outlets. I knew about it because I follow climate scientists on social media. Climate scientist Peter Kalmus wrote <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/apr/06/climate-scientists-are-desperate-were-crying-begging-and-getting-arrested"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">a moving piece for The Guardian </span></a>about the frustration — the desperation — of trying over and over again to get us to pay attention to the facts about climate change that should be spurring us to immediate large-scale action. How do we counter indifference and purposeful silence?</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Jesus said that if his followers who were calling out “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!” were silenced, all of creation down to the stones, the earth itself, would cry out. Nature has been crying out close to home for Americans this week, with another round of violent storms in the southeastern United States and dangerously high winds and wildfires in the Plains. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Many people affected by these storms won’t connect them to climate change, and it’s not possible to connect any particular weather event to climate change. What we do know is that overall, warmer global temperatures result in the sort of instability that products violent storms and high winds. And what I’ve discovered in talking with people who aren’t particularly attuned to climate change is that they do know that something is different, something is “off”. Older people are eager to tell you what they have observed about changes in storm patterns and planting seasons and bird migrations in their own lifetimes. The people I talk with might not say the words “climate change”, but because they observe what happens outdoors, they are aware of climate change on some level. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The hymn “My song is love unknown” (#458, The Hymnal 1982) breaks my heart open every year as I listen to music during Holy Week. The words, written by Puritan minister Samuel Crossman in the 1600’s, name the mix of grief and love in the Passion Gospel that is typically read after the Liturgy of the Palms in Episcopal Churches. The third verse of the hymn says:</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Sometimes they strew His way,</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and His sweet praises sing;</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">resounding all the day</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> hosannas to their King.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Then 'Crucify!'</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> is all their breath,</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> and for His death</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"> they thirst and cry.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We often act irrationally when we are grieving. We deny the grief, even the truth of the cause of the grief, at the same time that our knowledge of the grief and loss we are denying runs deep. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">As Holy Week progresses, we turn liturgically from the hosannas of Palm Sunday to the demands for Jesus’s crucifixion, and to his trial, the mocking and torment, the carrying of the cross, and the crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, the incarnation of truth and love. As the story continues, the truth is not completely lost. One of the men crucified beside Jesus, the centurion keeping guard, and the women who had followed him from Galilee and stayed where they could stand in witness all see and acknowledge the truth. The story we tell during Holy Week can help us see more clearly what is happening now in the world around us and discern how to serve in the name of Christ at this weighty moment in history.</span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEeKD089NcY87N8WhSuMe7sXZ3X2Mp5V3XGK_uTFONGMPtX6rREC_196TruHpfA8SzmwjneFCJKPBv3kjsciJb83xRuH2X7ESlj-xY0soRR0HBbdaswi7rsyIwSIrX4Qrlw29EfmOCl9AdhrZveHcDZZAiQ1EcwK4t206GZgQrQ_EZe0HMLOmDuDo3/s1600/Feb%20V%20Day%20Kauai%202011%20023.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEeKD089NcY87N8WhSuMe7sXZ3X2Mp5V3XGK_uTFONGMPtX6rREC_196TruHpfA8SzmwjneFCJKPBv3kjsciJb83xRuH2X7ESlj-xY0soRR0HBbdaswi7rsyIwSIrX4Qrlw29EfmOCl9AdhrZveHcDZZAiQ1EcwK4t206GZgQrQ_EZe0HMLOmDuDo3/w400-h300/Feb%20V%20Day%20Kauai%202011%20023.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-45852975704078082122022-04-07T20:44:00.003-05:002022-04-07T20:44:43.908-05:00Looking Toward Holy Week 2022<p> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;">Monday of this week, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published the conclusions of Working Group 3, the group of scientists looking at what humankind needs to do to reduce the effects of climate change. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">From one perspective, the report was hopeful, as the group did indeed list specific actions we can take and a timetable of when we need to have these actions in place in order to escape the worst consequences of climate change. From another perspective, the report was disheartening, emphasizing the urgency of making big policy changes and the nearly unthinkable consequences of failing to act quickly. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The UN News published this article —<a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/04/1115452"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i> UN climate report: It’s ‘now or never’ to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees</i></span></a> — summarizing some of the key points and the comments of UN leaders.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The next three years are critical, and we know the world is occupied with other matters — matters both significant and trivial — that make it hard to imagine that the world’s governments and corporations will make the large-scale changes that the challenge demands. And yet, we also know that even if it is unimaginable, it is still possible.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The timing of this report in relation to the church calendar called me to reflect on places where the elements of both our hope and our despair about climate change intersect with some of the themes of the texts and liturgy we will be meeting during Holy Week. Climate change is one of several big, serious issues that make this point in history more challenging than most, and all of these issues are intertwined with one another. We come into this Holy Week different people in a different church than we knew in years past, a church coming to grips with an ongoing pandemic, national and global political instability, a new awareness and admission of racism, and, underlying it all, a knowledge that seasonable weather as we knew it when the 1979 Book of Common Prayer first appeared is becoming rarer even as destructive storms, droughts, and fires increase. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Even people who never read or hear the often buried news stories about the IPCC reports know on some level that something is different, something is off. There is unacknowledged, often unconscious grief; there is anxiety; there is a yearning for hope, for a feeling that we can do something meaningful to meet this crisis. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">I know that for me, any attempt to skate through Holy Week and Easter without engaging this crisis at least in my own reflections as I prepare, if not also in my preaching and conversations during the week, would result in a failure to share the Good News with a world more in need of good news than ever. In the days ahead, I hope to share some of those reflections as we prepare to tell each other again the story that has formed us into a people of hope in the face of despair, of love in the face of hate. </span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDb1nW93gklf14ypTvtAGBbhZPxg5wjNmTH5lifV5hXEorBm92NKwQFpeSycBWcoqae0AgnN9_4jKmizo4abA6fR24RJSkvgIr1LIPPv6byU9pBdEPwALHqdeDFVtZgU0LFXZ4AClPI6kTEzsglxnSkrq0_N-G8oOOZ5iuKNAFw4d3NWYnTGn1uqkq/s4000/Kauai%2009%20139.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3000" data-original-width="4000" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDb1nW93gklf14ypTvtAGBbhZPxg5wjNmTH5lifV5hXEorBm92NKwQFpeSycBWcoqae0AgnN9_4jKmizo4abA6fR24RJSkvgIr1LIPPv6byU9pBdEPwALHqdeDFVtZgU0LFXZ4AClPI6kTEzsglxnSkrq0_N-G8oOOZ5iuKNAFw4d3NWYnTGn1uqkq/w319-h140/Kauai%2009%20139.jpg" width="319" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span><p></p><div><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-76515468217166489372022-02-02T16:01:00.001-06:002022-02-02T16:01:56.317-06:00Candlemas 2022: Shedding Some Light and Finding Some Hope<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Call it Candlemas or the Presentation of Our Lord (as we do in <i>The Book of Common Prayer 1979</i>) or even, as most people in the United States do, Groundhog Day, this day forty days after Christmas and midway between the Winter Solstice and Spring Equinox marks a subtle turning of the seasons. Even this year, when February 2 finds most of Nebraska in frigid temperatures and other parts of the Midwest and Plains under winter storm watches and warnings, there is a noticeable difference in the slant of the sunlight and the length of days that helps us know in our bones that spring is on its way. </span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This day on the church calendar offers rich stories and prayers for reflection. Even though the church’s texts for the day have no immediate connection to concerns for caring for the planet or its people and other creatures, a subtle connection is there. I wonder whether these texts with images of fire and light connect so easily yet indirectly to caring for the earth because some old European calendars considered this the beginning of spring.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifykqpMMwMrwYCATmioPAkiw4eNyMx5WKrj8Dbd7fi2BQH2hS_5rOnh1tsfRF-TvOfeAvHFmIWu6ztudBD9jdHCknEWo7d4Vp_p1RD1z9DErHY1-G9dxlvQlNl8iXehHW6dByeHmD9b3r4KNQ5z8v8UPOf3Rn0yeQScKANd85z0PtMEsAY6omzD2Mg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="140" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEifykqpMMwMrwYCATmioPAkiw4eNyMx5WKrj8Dbd7fi2BQH2hS_5rOnh1tsfRF-TvOfeAvHFmIWu6ztudBD9jdHCknEWo7d4Vp_p1RD1z9DErHY1-G9dxlvQlNl8iXehHW6dByeHmD9b3r4KNQ5z8v8UPOf3Rn0yeQScKANd85z0PtMEsAY6omzD2Mg=w200-h140" width="200" /></a></div><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Today’s Eucharistic reading for the Presentation of Our Lord (<a href="https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=510836186"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Luke 2:22-40</span></a>) tells the story of Mary and Joseph taking the infant Jesus to the temple. Simeon recognizes Jesus as “a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel” and blesses him, and Anna, an elderly woman who is a prophet living in the temple, begins to praise God and talk about the child.</span></span><p></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Denise Levertov wrote a short poem called <i>Candlemas</i>. (Read the poem <a href="https://www.journeywithjesus.net/poemsandprayers/625-denise-levertov-candlemas"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">here</span></a>, or find it in Levertov’s collection <i>The Stream & Sapphire: Selected Poems on Religious Themes</i>.) Speaking of Simeon, Denise Levertov wrote:</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What depth </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">of faith he drew on,</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">turning illumined</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">towards deep night.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue;">Simeon’s turn towards the deep night brings us beyond his joyful declaration that he has seen the Lord’s salvation to his words to Mary: “This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed…and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” It takes a certain depth of faith, a firm foundation, for Simeon toilet himself look beyond the wonder of the moment with this blessed infant to the difficult times Simeon sees in Jesus’s future.</span></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Deep faith like Simeon’s offers a place to ground ourselves in times like ours. This week HBCU’s have endured threats of violence, we heard about books being banned from school libraries and classrooms, and even though the number of Covid-19 cases is finally heading downward again, deaths from the omicron surge continue. And, of course, we face the effects of climate change, which are both unfolding around us in ever more apparent ways and yet, because of their magnitude, exist nearly beyond our imagination. Awareness of the reality of what is happening as our world warms can result in feelings of hopelessness. This hopelessness slides easily into cynicism, a feeling that there is nothing to be done and no reason to do anything significant to try to change things. On the other hand, some people handle the situation by embracing false hope, either denying that anything significant is happening at all or supposing that a few changes here and there — but nothing that changes our way of life very much — will be sufficient to magically return our climate to stability. (False hope is the coinage of greenwashing and of political crumbs thrown to environmentalists.)</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Deep faith offers an alternative to both cynicism and false hope. Deep faith turns to the darkness, the “deep night”; deep faith sees the reality of the loss of species and climate stability and acknowledges it. But instead of turning away or being swallowed by the darkness, deep faith allows us to be illumined and reflect some of that light into the reality of the world around us. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Deep faith tells us that our prayers and our actions will have some profound meaning, that our efforts are worth something even if we don’t get the results for which we fervently pray. Deep faith assures us that God is good and all will be well even when we can’t envision what “all will be well” could mean in a rapidly warming world. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Deep faith sustained Mary after Simeon told her, “a sword will pierce your own soul too” and in her future when she experienced the pain of seeing her son suffer. It can be our sustenance in 2022 and in the years ahead. Being intentional about tending to our souls, to growing our faith deeper, is essential to the church’s response to environmental degradation and to all the other challenges that we cannot ignore if we follow Jesus’s commandment to love our neighbors.</span></span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">****</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">This post is updated from one published on<a href="https://nebraskagreensprouts.blogspot.com/2015_02_01_archive.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> February 2, 2015</span></a>.</span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiiJhAz4BKOygRkle_CCUO1ipIRK3OA4gUFhtmah1eUjqIMfX-sPXQzpZb1UDXGpDX3cKD73A3-Ghu2ppUDX8U03DFslODrj4SEtGnRSKGU32sxcm0RWJp1x-BjFm76nVGFyH1UBRs38M2mpubbwcaKImH7yoFV5gnvYpfR5ECTm2yU94QbQ-dgNFVM" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="3024" data-original-width="4032" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiiJhAz4BKOygRkle_CCUO1ipIRK3OA4gUFhtmah1eUjqIMfX-sPXQzpZb1UDXGpDX3cKD73A3-Ghu2ppUDX8U03DFslODrj4SEtGnRSKGU32sxcm0RWJp1x-BjFm76nVGFyH1UBRs38M2mpubbwcaKImH7yoFV5gnvYpfR5ECTm2yU94QbQ-dgNFVM=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></span></div><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br /></span><p></p><div><span style="font-kerning: none;"><br /></span></div>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-70958585451561697312021-12-28T15:15:00.001-06:002021-12-28T15:15:12.159-06:00Holy Innocents 2021: Covid and Climate Change<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-size: medium;">Today the church remembers the Holy Innocents, the children who died when Herod ordered the slaughter of all children in and around Bethlehem who were two years old or younger (Matthew 2: 13-23).</span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Holy Innocents 2021 comes with news of a Covid surge from the omicron variant causing a sharp increase in pediatric hospitalizations. Covid vaccine is now available for children who are at least five years old, but the youngest children cannot yet be vaccinated, pediatric vaccination rates are low, and unvaccinated children living with unvaccinated adults are at especially high risk. The urgency of protecting our children has reached far too few parents, and the failure of our leaders to require vaccinations or mandate mask-wearing or do enough in any way to protect children and others has not only directly made our children vulnerable, but has contributed to a misguided idea that Covid isn’t dangerous for children. Churches that gathered families for unmasked Christmas services and children’s programs bear responsibility also, again not only for the children directly infected from such gatherings, but from the unspoken message that it’s okay to gather as if our wish that this pandemic were over had magically become a reality.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Holy Innocents 2021 comes also after a lackluster COP26 gathering in November made little progress toward mitigating climate change. In an<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/magazine/2021/12/27/greta-thunberg-state-climate-movement-roots-her-power-an-activist/" target="_blank"> interview by KK Otteson</a> published in <i>The Washington Post</i> , Greta Thunberg says:</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: medium;">Right now, what’s holding us back is that we lack that political will. We don’t prioritize the climate today. Our goal is not to lower emissions. Our goal is to find solutions that allow us to continue life [as it is] today. And, of course, you can ask, “Can’t we have both?” But the uncomfortable truth is that we have left it too late for that. Or the world leaders have left it too late for that. We need to fundamentally change our societies now. If we would have started 30 years ago, it would have been much smoother. But now it’s a different situation.</span></i></span></p></blockquote>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Greta Thunberg is one of the younger climate activists who know that climate change will be a dominant force for the rest of their lives because of our failure to recognize the danger and address it responsibly before we got to this point. When I read about expected changes in sea level rise and loss of species and food production as the earth continues to warm, I often imagine a baby born this year and how old that baby will be as these changes, challenges, and catastrophes unfold. (When my heart can bear it, I calculate how old my own young grandchildren will be as these changes occur, and try to imagine how their lives might be impacted.) </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Throughout this pandemic, I’ve sensed parallels between our response to climate change and our response to Covid. The parallels are becoming starker and clearer as 2021 comes to a close and our remembrance of the Holy Innocents points to how little children have mattered to too many powerful people throughout history. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">What do the two crises have in common? A few of the parallels are a desire to hold suffering —especially the suffering of the most vulnerable people in our world — at a comfortable arm’s length, an inability to acknowledge and grieve the enormity of the loss of life (both human and nonhuman), a puzzling concession to people who bully us with their “right” to spread disease or pollute the atmosphere with greenhouse gases or otherwise undermine the public good with their own willful ignorance and greed, and an overall failure to love our neighbors as ourselves and to care for the little ones — the most vulnerable ones — in our communities and our world.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">The people with power in this world and those of us who passively allow them to continue doing what they do differ from Herod, of course in this: No one intends to cause the death of thousands of children. The objective instead is to maintain political power or a sense of “normalcy”, which rightly or wrongly is taken to entail inadequately addressing a difficult problem. The objectives are to accept (and not look to closely at) a high number of hospitalizations or deaths for some people so that others can have a sense of “getting back to normal” and to ignore the effects of climate change so that we older people can continue enjoying the sorts of comforts and conveniences to which we are accustomed while allowing the wealthiest among us to make huge profits producing and selling carbon intensive energy resources. We don’t intend to harm the children; children are simply the collateral damage of our failures with respect to Covid and climate change, just as children are so often the collateral damage of wars. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">However, we do have something in common with Herod: Herod didn’t care one way or the other about the children who were slaughtered. His objective was to eliminate one child; the others were collateral damage to his cause. When we look the other way and refuse to acknowledge what is happening as a result of our failure to really see and work to end the Covid pandemic and climate change, we aren’t really all that different from Herod. And the grief of the mothers of today’s innocent victims is no different from the grief of the mothers of Bethlehem or the grief of Rachel or of mothers throughout history who have seen tyrants treat their children as expendable, as collateral damage to their own selfish schemes.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><b>We remember today, O God, the slaughter of the holy innocents of Bethlehem by King Herod. Receive, we pray into the arms of your mercy all innocent victims; and by your great might frustrate the designs of evil tyrants and establish your rule of justice, love, and peace; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with your in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.</b> (Collect for The Holy Innocents, <i>The Book of Common Prayer</i>)</span></span></p></blockquote>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Lord, have mercy on us.</span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhHfu2pylsMm3IUmuCeKxOxKRgU2yz7sPMmWK4nGgvTpt4rC7iIg2k4em75_v5KSoOmx6m6J_RBPW7qxSSaVprZVH-VNaXBZiBr16roCPjopAN09PzOSzBid1-ZMaVlAedckoV4uyPvb5vLrSrlvXRQuOpPhwoevyq5IiFcVMZ1-LYDBlXNZA9PC8VG=s320" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="240" data-original-width="320" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhHfu2pylsMm3IUmuCeKxOxKRgU2yz7sPMmWK4nGgvTpt4rC7iIg2k4em75_v5KSoOmx6m6J_RBPW7qxSSaVprZVH-VNaXBZiBr16roCPjopAN09PzOSzBid1-ZMaVlAedckoV4uyPvb5vLrSrlvXRQuOpPhwoevyq5IiFcVMZ1-LYDBlXNZA9PC8VG=w400-h300" width="400" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span><p></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-57126307122988153862021-11-12T20:49:00.000-06:002021-11-12T20:49:51.401-06:00Falling stones and failing climate policies: a reflection<p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue";"><span style="font-size: medium;">The COP26 climate conference is finishing its second week, and the negotiators for the nations represented are trying to reach an agreement. In the first week of the conference, delegates and heads of state talked about the need to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C.; this second week was when they discussed how to get where we need to be. So far, the sorts of agreements reported to be under consideration fall far short of the goals set forth during the first week of the conference. The Church should be watching this closely, and we should be talking about what is happening this Sunday and throughout the months ahead.</span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We should be watching and speaking because those who pay attention to the issue of climate change and know where we are headed are among our members and live in our wider communities. If the Church is aware of a longing among people in our communities to hear messages of deep hope amid profound grief and despair, and if we can take the focus off our parochial concerns — parochial in both senses of the word — and offer both words of hope and comfort and the means for public lamentation, we can help carry Christ’s light into the world in this moment. <span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We in the Church should be watching and speaking because each fraction of a degree of global warming brings with it an increase in the number of people needing the sort of help faith communities have traditionally helped provide; increased climate change means more people without adequate food or clean water, more people who have lost their homes, more disease, and more refugees whose lands have become uninhabitable. The church has always provided help to people who are hungry, homeless, sick, or who have become refugees looking to settle in a new place. Our own relief efforts and advocacy for better governmental and community wide services for people in need must expand in anticipation of the climate chaos ahead.</span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We should be watching and speaking because a failure to talk about the climate crisis and the seriousness of our situation this Sunday or in the weeks, months, and years ahead is an admission of the failure of the Church to love God, love our neighbors, and love God’s creation. As our governments miss one of the last opportunities to mitigate climate disaster to a degree that allows us to imagine a continuing “normal” state of some kind for human civilization, the Church has a window of opportunity to decide and declare whether we stand on the side of the powers-that-be in the corporate and political sphere, the powers that put a short-term satiation of their own goals and desires above the welfare of everyone else and even above their own long-term well-being, or if we stand on the side of the well-being of humanity as a whole, which is interconnected with the well-being of all living things. </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">We in the Church should be watching and speaking because the destruction of the temple foretold by Jesus in Sunday’s Gospel lesson (Mark 13:1-8) can help us reflect on the aspects of climate change that are more immediate for some of us: the effect of climate change on our own church buildings, our own homes, our own neighborhoods, and the livelihoods that sustain our faith communities. What might we do when severe storms, extreme temperatures, and a declining ability of or inclination for people to spend money repairing, revamping, or rebuilding church buildings make another way of being the church a necessity rather than a choice? How can we start creating a more sustainable way of being the Church now? </span></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;">Perhaps most importantly, we should be watching and speaking and praying and advocating for more significant climate action because love for our neighbors matters, truth matters, and justice for people forgotten by the wealthy and powerful matters. We should be watching and we should be talking about what we see, because a church that fails to speak, a church that has lost its courage to declare love, truth, and justice, is a church that has lost its very soul. </span></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><br /></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="font-size: 14px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7MCAPw_V9y6dxtOJ1pjKvhVvfBIoLERkKvzxUKEjMwHynX-eK-wXJpjx6WPHAVqOXpRkEAADP64841aSB086AKvZJyzmf67T3fD22XawwxTlUvEKf_RGjvo3w9P1ys-ejyTF3a0jzQU/s1136/Evening+lake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1136" data-original-width="852" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7MCAPw_V9y6dxtOJ1pjKvhVvfBIoLERkKvzxUKEjMwHynX-eK-wXJpjx6WPHAVqOXpRkEAADP64841aSB086AKvZJyzmf67T3fD22XawwxTlUvEKf_RGjvo3w9P1ys-ejyTF3a0jzQU/w150-h200/Evening+lake.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-7930360778067612372021-09-29T16:39:00.000-05:002021-09-29T16:39:30.685-05:00All the Angels / All the Birds<p> <span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;"><b>September 29</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;"><b>Saint Michael and All Angels</b></span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;"><b>Morning Prayer</b></span></p><p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;">The Psalm appointed for the Daily Office today (Psalm 8) tells us that we humans are just a little lower than the angels, that we have been given mastery over everything God created, including “the birds of the air” and “the fish of the sea” — all the living things in all the places plants and animals can live.<span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Today, September 29, in the early morning I saw the headlines about the declaration of the extinction of the ivory-billed woodpecker, the collective death of every last one of these birds that were called the “Lord God Bird”. (The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/29/endangered-species-ivory-billed-woodpecker/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Washington Post reporter, Dino Grandoni</span></a>, explains that the name “Lord God Bird” comes from the reaction of those who saw this big, beautiful bird: “those blessed to see it blurted out the Lord’s name”.) </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2021/09/29/endangered-species-ivory-billed-woodpecker/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">same article </span></a>also tells me that the scientist who wrote the report declaring the Lord God Bird extinct cried, and that 22 other living things were removed from the endangered species list because none of them can be found in the wild. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This is a pivotal week in the United States in many ways, a standout week even during a period of weeks on weeks and months on months of pandemic in the shadow of climate change, all complicated by the attempts of white nationalism and authoritarianism to rise again (as if the resurrection applied to fascism). There are plenty of unanswered questions, incomprehensible events, complex proposals, and truth-revealing testimony to give us pause, more food for thought than any one of us could ever consume. This early morning, though, I wonder chiefly about two things.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I wonder about angels on this feast of Saint Michael and All Angels.</b> </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The Psalm seems to assume some sort of familiarity with angels. Do we want to know our place in the world? It’s a little lower than the angels, explains the Psalmist. I have no firsthand knowledge of angels. Considering angles is a little like considering alligators and bears for me, in that I’ve read accounts and seen some pictures and, I think, would know one if I saw one, and part of me would like to see such a thing for myself, and part of me knows how frightened I would be if I saw one “in the wild”. What would it be like to see an angel? What sort of experience is that? What sort of knowledge is knowledge of angels?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>I also wonder about what sort of “mastery” we humans have demonstrated</b> when that over which we were given mastery is dying, when we have destroyed that which was entrusted to us. The master of a ship does everything possible to avoid wrecking the ship, the headmaster of a school has a duty to oversee the health of the institution and the welfare of the children in the school. We seem to be more than “a little lower” than the angels; we seem to have failed at serving as masters. What does it mean for us to given “mastery” over the other living things?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Wondering about these two things creates more questions as the morning quiet is broken by a raucous blue jay’s sustained call. The Psalm suggests a hierarchy with angels above us and birds below us, but this blue jay is high up in our hackberry tree, way above where I sit on my kitchen porch. What sort of hierarchy is this? I know Jesus supposedly said our lives are worth more than those of the sparrows, but this bird up above me is managing to survive and be exactly what a blue jay should be, and my heart — and I suspect Jesus’s heart — is broken by the knowledge that some of the birds and all the other birds like them are gone, forever gone. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We, compared to this blue jay that seems alarmed about something, don’t seem to be managing very well the task of being human, of being just a little lower than the angels — whatever that means for those of us who have never seen an angel. We don’t even have the good sense to be alarmed about all the death around us. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Humans and birds and what we are and why we are seem as mysterious as angels today. Sitting with mystery seems appropriate at the beginning of this day when we consider the angels and at this pivotal point in our history as a species and, more prosaically, as a nation when so much is at stake. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-61324950947330856112021-03-28T22:42:00.002-05:002021-03-28T22:42:38.118-05:00Coming in the Name of the Lord: Thoughts on the Church's Unique Work in the Climate Crisis<p> <b style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px;">Then those who went ahead and those who followed were shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!” (Mark 11:9)</b></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVbL39_wj9XPSWWi6w0r7s2PrLvKybtsUJvSPXBH-kofejXwU9DK44D_OTnm1q53snknJYSNf3XFQz0NnJh6dETwk1FLna1J7d8q5HuQJyeoU0Trg1Y6gKPVhwvMhOZC7LVwAM9psbrE/s2048/Feb+V+Day+Kauai+2011+030.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIVbL39_wj9XPSWWi6w0r7s2PrLvKybtsUJvSPXBH-kofejXwU9DK44D_OTnm1q53snknJYSNf3XFQz0NnJh6dETwk1FLna1J7d8q5HuQJyeoU0Trg1Y6gKPVhwvMhOZC7LVwAM9psbrE/w200-h150/Feb+V+Day+Kauai+2011+030.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><br />At the end of this Palm Sunday morning, I joined a Zoom conversation with some members of First Congregational UCC in Hastings, Nebraska, at the end of their Lenten series about creation care. Their service included a sermon I had recorded earlier in the week. I’ve adapted the manuscript for that sermon here in order to share some of my current thinking about the wider church’s potential to respond in significant ways to the climate crisis.<p></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">It’s heartening to see more and more churches considering how this relatively new challenge of climate change fits into the work churches have traditionally done, work like serving people in need, providing Christian formation for our children, and, most of all, the essential work of discipleship, the work of worship, prayer, and study. In recent years, creation care has become an integral part of the social justice work in many churches.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">While churches in the United States have a history of connecting an appreciation of nature with respect for God the Creator, especially through summer camps and occasional outdoor worship in the summer, our history of advocacy around policies regulating clean air and water is very limited. This is relatively new work for the church, and we have had to find our way forward while being pulled backward by a fairly recent narrative claiming that environmental efforts are a political hot potato best avoided, that a desire to keep our levels of pollution and our levels of climate change within the range that allows life as we know it to be sustained is, rather than an urgent concern for everyone on the planet, some sort of side issue that is either supported or opposed according to political affiliations. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Unlike the sorts of social issues with which the church has historically engaged, climate change comes with an urgency dictated not by the limits of our energy and compassion, which too often have served to slow our efforts, but rather by the limits set by the laws of physics and chemistry, which should serve to accelerate our efforts. And so at the same time the narrative about care for the environment being a trivial political issue was pulling us back, the reality of how rapidly climate change is unfolding and what its effects actually look like has demanded we move ahead more quickly than many leaders in faith communities or in other sorts of institutions found comfortable or even doable. </span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We are used to the church engaging in social issues very deliberately. We like to take small steps, doing just enough to stay engaged with an issue while not offending those who aren’t ready for change, and not putting too much time and effort into something many churchgoers see as an unnecessary extra. But because of those pesky natural laws, the luxury of making this work more palatable by advocating for small, incremental changes over many years is not available to us. As this congregation’s Lenten focus on creation care drew to an end, it was wonderful to learn about the efforts of this particular congregation.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We began Holy Week today with Palm Sunday. The Romans in Jesus’s time would process into the cities in their Empire with great pomp, especially after a military victory, the arriving dignitary accompanied by soldiers. Jesus arrives in Jerusalem armed with a heart of compassion and unconditional love, armed with the truth, grounded in prayer, and with deep discernment of God’s will in the week ahead. He is riding not on a warhorse but on a colt, a pile of cloaks for a saddle. More cloaks and leafy tree branches cover the road in front of him, serving both to keep the dust down and to show respect for this humble-looking man who arrives on a colt. And the people who walk ahead of Jesus and behind him are shouting, “Hosanna! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the one the crowd knows is from God. Christians — at our best — come in the name of the Lord, and groups of Christians who go to serve somewhere, perhaps on a mission trip to another country or somewhere in their own community to serve people in need do so in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus entering Jerusalem, however, was the perfection of what it means to come in the name of the Lord: perfectly loving, perfectly faithful.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></p>
<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">When we show up in the name of the Lord, we present ourselves to the world as followers of Jesus, as people trying to follow his perfect example as best as our imperfect selves can. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">This congregation learned a lot in recent weeks about creation care and climate change and ways we can best respond to it, and many of us in the church have learned enough in recent years to be able to give some meaningful thought to the direction in which we wish to proceed. What’s next? The images and story of Palm Sunday, of Jesus coming into Jerusalem in the name of the Lord, might point us in a direction for the church’s response to climate change. What does it mean for us to come in the name of the Lord at this point in human history?</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Palm Sunday show us Jesus entering Jerusalem in a way that is both significant and humble, a way that makes us aware of his authority and power while also reminding us that it’s a mistake to confuse his authority and power with that of the secular officials. Jesus’s authority comes not from military and political structures but from God. It’s both easily ignored and discounted by the secular authorities and also more powerful than the secular authorities can imagine. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Some reading this may still be wondering about whether the church should direct time and resources toward responding to climate change, while others may be wondering about how the church might best continue that work.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Why should Christians care about climate change? Jesus’s power is love. The reason the church has always cared for people in need is because Jesus taught us to follow his way of love. Climate change is destroying people’s homes and well-being, from Pacific islands made uninhabitable by rising sea levels to Arctic villages built on permafrost whose foundations — and traditional ways of hunting and fishing — cannot hold as the ice melts; from the bitter cold that caused suffering and death in Texas just last month to the floods in Sydney, Australia, this week, as homes were washed away, thousands of people were evacuated from flooded areas, and spiders and snakes swarmed into homes to escape the floodwaters. As I write this post on Sunday evening, I’m seeing news of heavy rains and very destructive flooding in Nashville, Tennessee. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Here in Nebraska, we may feel secure for the moment, far from seacoasts and experienced in dealing with all sorts of weather, but even if we live somewhere where we feel secure for at least the short-term, we cannot follow Jesus and ignore the suffering of our sisters and brothers. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We should care about the integrity of God’s creation because God created all that is out of love. If we love God, we should love the gift of life and all that sustains it that God gave us.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">What, then, can we do? There are so many wonderful ways we can practice better stewardship of our resources in our churches and our homes, and most of us are familiar with at least enough of these to begin putting some into practice if we haven’t already done so. Good and useful as it is to put some of these suggestions into practice, we need much more than solid individual stewardship to get us to a point of feeling more certain of a sustainable future. Advocacy — being in touch with our elected officials at all levels of government to encourage them to support legislation and policies to help improve the environment and mitigate climate change — is another area where we might put some time and energy. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">However, this Palm Sunday and Holy Week, I hope we can do something more, something bigger that only the church can do. Anyone can adopt better stewardship practices and advocate for better energy and environmental policies — and we need a lot of anyones to do just those things — but there is something more that only we as followers of Jesus can do.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We are truly in a time of environmental crisis, of climate crisis, that’s happening along with and that intersects with other crises that also need attention. In this time of crisis, I believe that the church, the body of the followers of Jesus, is called to do something more than (and perhaps different from) what environmental organizations ask of us when they come to the church hoping we can help promote their efforts: </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We are called to deep prayer, acknowledging and offering to God our most terrifying truths about climate change and everything connected with it, and listening for God’s response.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We are called to proclaim God’s sovereignty over all of creation, to grow in our love for God’s creation and our ability to find God through the wonders around us, and to teach our children and others to love and respect and find joy in what God has made.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We are called to give voice to grief and lament, to help ourselves and our neighbors acknowledge the losses of human lives, of plant and animal species, and of places. The church knows how to help people process grief. We may not often acknowledge it, but there is grief not only about the incomprehensible losses of lives, income, and family celebrations from this pandemic we are still enduring, but also about the even bigger losses unfolding from climate change. But once we have given voice to our grief and lament, we are called to our most unique task.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">We are called to proclaim hope through our faith in the resurrection. We are Easter people; we preach hope and believe in hope even when everything looks hopeless. The hope we are called to proclaim isn’t a false hope. It’s not thinking that everything will magically turn out all right in the end. Hoping for everything to stay as it is, as we’ve known it, is false hope at this point. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">But we can hope for something good that we can’t even imagine. As Paul wrote in his Letter to the Romans, “hope that is seen is not hope, for who hopes for what is seen?” It’s what the philosopher Jonathan Lear terms “radical hope” — a sort of hope beyond hope. As Easter people, we live in radical hope. As followers of Jesus, we share that with the world.</span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Discarding the word ‘radical’ for the moment in favor of the perhaps less loaded word ‘deep’, I see the church’s call at this time as a call to deep prayer, deep discipleship, deep grief, deep faith, and deep hope, It’s a time for us to look beyond the institutional church and return to our ancient roots in the life and teaching of Jesus. </span></p>
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<p style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-size: 14px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; margin: 0px;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">What we in the church can offer during this time of environmental crisis is exactly what the followers of Jesus, from those who threw their cloaks down on that dusty road to all of us, have always had to offer: our prayers, our compassion, our hope, and ourselves, all sustained by our faith in the Easter promise of resurrection.</span></p>Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-73025031020135102382020-04-02T14:14:00.002-05:002020-04-02T14:14:13.624-05:00Praying the News<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">April 2, 2020</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">One way to stay grounded in God while reading or hearing the reports about the spread of COVID-19 is to pray as we process the news. This week we pray for the sick, those who have died and those who mourn, those who care for coronavirus patients, prisoners, those who are working in necessary occupations, and those without work, ever mindful of the connections among us and our global siblings and among we humans and everything else in creation.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O most mighty and merciful God, in this time of grievous sickness, we flee unto thee for succour. Deliver us, we beseech thee, from our peril; give strength and skill to all those who minister to the sick; prosper the means made use of for their cure; and grant that, perceiving how frail and uncertain our life is we may apply our hearts unto that heavenly wisdom which leadeth to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality (The Book of Common Prayer 1928, p. 45)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Please pray especially this week:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>For coronavirus patients in our own communities and around the world, and for everyone dealing with the effects of COVID-19.</b> </span></span><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/01/coronavirus-kills-1-000-single-day-u-s-double-flu/5100905002/">More than 215,000 Americans</a></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> are known to have had the coronavirus as of Wednesday, April 1. According to the <a href="https://nebraska.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/4213f719a45647bc873ffb58783ffef3"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services data dashboard</span></a> for COVID-19, 214 Nebraskans have now tested positive for the coronavirus. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and great to your servants who are ill the help of your power, that their sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Recovery from Sickness (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 458)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For those who have died from COVID-19, and those who loved them. </span></b></span><span style="font-size: large;">A week ago, we had passed 1000 coronavirus deaths in the United States. This week on Wednesday, April 1, more than 1000 </span><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/04/01/coronavirus-kills-1-000-single-day-u-s-double-flu/5100905002/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Americans died on that day f</span></a><span style="font-size: large;">rom COVID-19. As of Wednesday evening, there had been more than 5000 coronavirus deaths in the United States. </span><a href="https://nebraska.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/4213f719a45647bc873ffb58783ffef3"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Four Nebraskans</span></a><span style="font-size: large;"> have died of the disease.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Almighty God Father of mercies and giver of comfort: Deal graciously, we pray, with all who mourn; that casting all their care on you, they may know the consolation of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">(<i>From The Burial of the Dead II, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 505</i>)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>For medical professionals and other healthcare workers caring for coronavirus patients or preparing for a possible wave of hospitalizations in their communities.</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Sanctify, O Lord, those whose you have called to the study and practice of the art of healing, and to the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them by your life-giving Spirit, that by their ministries the health of the community may be promoted and your creation glorified, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Doctors and Nurses, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 460)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For prisoners and others confined to crowded and unsanitary spaces. </span></b></span><span style="font-size: large;">There has been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/us/coronavirus-prisons-jails.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">growing concern for prisoners</span></a> and the effects of the spread of disease within prisons to surrounding communities. Some places are beginning to release nonviolent prisoners. </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Lord Jesus, for our sake you were condemned as a criminal: </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Visit our jails and prisons with your pity and judgment. </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Remember all prisoners, and bring the guilty to repentance </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">and amendment of life according to your will, and give them </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">hope for their future. When any are held unjustly, bring them </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">release; forgive us, and teach us to improve our justice. </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Remember those who work in these institutions; keep them </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">humane and compassionate; and save them from becoming</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">brutal or callous. And since what we do for those in prison, </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O Lord, we do for you, constrain us to improve their lot. All </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">this we ask for your mercy's sake. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Prisons and Correctional Institutions, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 826)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For those are working in necessary occupations and those who are without work. </span></b></span><span style="font-size: large;">We pray in gratitude for people working in grocery stores, pharmacies, child care centers, transportation, and other occupations that meet our basic needs while many of us are able to stay home. We also pray for those who have suddenly lost their jobs because of the pandemic.</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Almighty God, you have so linked our lives one with another that all we do affects, for good or ill, all other lives: So guide us in the work we do, that we may do it not for self alone, but for the common good: and, as we seek a proper return for our own labor, make us mindful of the rightful aspirations of other workers, and arouse our concern for those who are out fo work; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Collect for Labor Day, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 261)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As we pray for others, let us pray for our own hearts to be open so we can see the needs in the world around us and gladly respond to those needs. As springtime arrives even during this pandemic, pray that we find refreshment and inspiration in the beauty of God’s creation:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814</span></i></span></blockquote>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-14096807635977552552020-03-26T11:10:00.002-05:002020-03-26T11:10:56.865-05:00Praying the News<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>March 26, 2020</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">One way to stay grounded in God while reading or hearing the reports about the spread of COVID-19 is to pray as we process the news. This week we pray for the sick, those who have died and those who mourn, those who care for coronavirus patients, journalists, and those who are alone, every mindful of the connections among us and our global siblings and among we humans and everything else in creation.</span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O most mighty and merciful God, in this time of grievous sickness, we flee unto thee for succour. Deliver us, we beseech thee, from our peril; give strength and skill to all those who minister to the sick; prosper the means made use of for their cure; and grant that, perceiving how frail and uncertain our life is we may apply our hearts unto that heavenly wisdom which leadeth to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. </span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality (The Book of Common Prayer 1928, p. 45)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>For coronavirus patients in our own communities and around the world, and for everyone dealing with the effects of COVID-19.</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none; text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.omaha.com/livewellnebraska/health/more-covid--cases-reported-saunders-lancaster-counties-see-first/article_f1a9b0f6-6b07-5cc3-a933-d378acdff42e.html">Six more cases</a></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> were identified in Nebraska on Wednesday. Local news sources have begun updating information for our communities regularly. Earlier this week, the United States had more than 55,000 cases. The <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Centers for Disease Control updates </span></a>the numbers for the United States daily, while the World Health Organization <a href="https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200325-sitrep-65-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=ce13061b_2"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">provides updates </span></a>from around the world. Of course, the numbers alone can’t convey the severity of the disease or its effects on patients and their families and communities.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and great to your servants who are ill the help of your power, that their sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Recovery from Sickness (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 458)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For those who have died from COVID-19, and those who loved them.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The United States has now had <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2020/03/25/coronavirus-usa-death-count-dead-1000/5079442002/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">more than 1000 death</span></a>s known to be from this virus. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Almighty God Father of mercies and giver of comfort: Deal graciously, we pray, with all who mourn; that casting all their care on you, they may know the consolation of your love; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">(<i>From The Burial of the Dead II, The Book of Common Prayer, p. 505</i>)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>For medical professionals and other healthcare workers caring for coronavirus patients or preparing for a possible wave of hospitalizations in their communities.</b> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Read about the experience of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/26/nyregion/coronavirus-brooklyn-hospital.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">medical staff at one Brooklyn Hospital </span></a>to get a sense of the huge challenges they face when coronavirus cases surge. The health workers in the emergency department at this hospital are beginning their morning shift with prayer, and we can pray with them and all the other medical professionals, hospital workers, and first responders putting themselves in harm’s way to care for others.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Sanctify, O Lord, those whose you have called to the study and practice of the art of healing, and to the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them by your life-giving Spirit, that by their ministries the health of the community may be promoted and your creation glorified, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Doctors and Nurses, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 460)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For journalists who go out to gather news to keep us informed.</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As journalists interview government authorities, medical personnel, and people in places most affected by the coronavirus, they expose themselves to potential infection. In a democracy, their work is crucial especially when the decisions of those in power carry the power of life and death as directly as they do in a public health crisis. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Almighty God, you proclaim your truth in every age by many voices: Direct, in our time, we pray, those who speak where many listen and write what many read; that they may do their part in making the heart of this people wise its mind sound and its will righteous; to the honor of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer For those who Influence Public Opinion, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 827)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">For those are alone. </span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">More people than usual are alone and feeling lonely as care facilities bar visitors, older people are advised not to visit with grandchildren and adult children who are unable to practice social isolation, public worship is suspended, and friends cannot gather. Along with our phone calls and notes to people who are alone, we can assure them of our prayers.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Almighty God, whose Son had nowhere to lay his head: Grant that those who live alone may not be lonely in their solitude, but that, following in his steps, they may find fulfillment in loving you and their neighbors; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer For Those Who Live Alone, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 829)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As we pray for others, let us pray for our own hearts to be open so we can see the needs in the world around us and gladly respond to those needs. As springtime arrives even during this pandemic, pray that we find refreshment and inspiration in the beauty of God’s creation:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</span></b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814)</span></i></span></blockquote>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-9393544667173426802020-03-20T06:30:00.000-05:002020-03-20T06:30:02.406-05:00Praying the News<div style="font-family: "helvetica neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">March 20, 2020</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>Ecosystems are by definition infused and intertwined with all the living things included in those systems.This year, the introduction of a new virus into humans has resulted in a major shift by causing a rise in human illness and mortality along with a rapid modification of several of our habits and activities in response to this threat. </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>The interconnectedness of all people and of all living things on our planet has perhaps never before been so acutely understood as it is now. Acting as if care of creation and care of all the other things we hold dear are separate concerns has always been based on false assumptions that humans could somehow opt out of a world created to follow natural laws. (Our failure to reduce carbon emissions despite all we know about the physics of global warming illustrates the folly of these false assumptions.) Now more than ever we need to break out of the categorical boundaries that so often dominate our thinking and be aware of the whole of creation and our part in it (not our part apart from it). </i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><i>During the coming weeks and months of this pandemic, I’m renewing the Praying the Earth’s News posts that were a regular feature of this blog for a couple of years, paying particular attention to the connections among us and our global siblings and among we humans and everything else in creation.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>O most mighty and merciful God, in this time of grievous sickness, we flee unto thee for succour. Deliver us, we beseech thee, from our peril; give strength and skill to all those who minister to the sick; prosper the means made use of for their cure; and grant that, perceiving how frail and uncertain our life is we may apply our hearts unto that heavenly wisdom which leadeth to eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. </b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Prayer In Time of Great Sickness and Mortality (The Book of Common Prayer 1928, p. 45)</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><b>Coronavirus patients in our own communities and around the world, and for everyone dealing with the effects of COVID-19.</b> This map from the <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Our World in Data</span></a> coronavirus website shows the spread of the disease from its beginning to early this week.
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">The Centers for Disease Control website <a href="http://cdc.gov/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">cdc.gov</span></a> provides lots of useful information about the coronavirus, including <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/cases-updates/cases-in-us.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">this page</span></a> with updates about the number of cases in each state. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>O God, the strength of the weak and the comfort of sufferers: Mercifully accept our prayers, and great to your servants who are ill the help of your power, that their sickness may be turned into health, and our sorrow into joy; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Prayer for Recovery from Sickness (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 458)</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><b>Healthcare workers caring for coronavirus patients or preparing for a wave of hospitalizations in their communities.</b> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/us/coronavirus-nebraska-biocontainment.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">This story</span></a> about the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha gives a look at what hospitals across our diocese are facing on some scale. All of our doctors, nurses, other healthcare workers, members of hospital staffs, and first responders will be working long hours under unprecedented conditions. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Sanctify, O Lord, those whose you have called to the study and practice of the art of healing, and to the prevention of disease and pain. Strengthen them by your life-giving Spirit, that by their ministries the health of the community may be promoted and your creation glorified, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Prayer for Doctors and Nurses, (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 460)</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><b>People who are unemployed or losing businesses or customers because of the pandemic.</b> Most of us have observed some piece of the economic impact either personally or somewhere in our communities. Here’s an overview of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socio-economic_impact_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_coronavirus_pandemic"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">the wider socio-economic impact.</span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfilling employment, and receive just payment for their labor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Prayer For the Unemployed (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 824)</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;"><b>For the church as we find new ways to be the church and serve those in need.</b> The Diocese of Nebraska is maintaining a list of remote resources https://www.episcopal-ne.org/remote.html offering alternative ways to worship and pray together during this time when we cannot gather in person. Several parishes are finding creative ways to continue their usual outreach ministries while maintaining social distancing, while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/15/smarter-living/wirecutter/5-ways-to-help-during-coronavirus-while-social-distancing.html?referringSource=articleShare"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">this article from Wirecutter</span></a> suggests five ways to help our communities at this time.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>Everliving God, whose will it is that all should come to you through your Son Jesus Christ: Inspire our witness to him, that all may know the power of his forgiveness and the hope of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.</b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Prayer for the Mission of the Church (The Book of Common Prayer, pp. 816-817)</i></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none; font-size: large;">As we pray for others, let us pray for our own hearts to be open so we can see the needs in the world around us and gladly respond to those needs. As springtime arrives even during this pandemic, pray that we find refreshment and inspiration in the beauty of God’s creation:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"><b>O heavenly Father, who has filled the world with beauty; Open our eyes to behold your gracious hand in all your works; that, rejoicing in your whole creation, we may learn to serve you with gladness; for the sake of him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.</b></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><i>Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814)</i></span></span></blockquote>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-64625273845837251092020-01-02T22:20:00.000-06:002020-01-02T22:20:33.683-06:00Australia: Prayer and Action and Apocalypse<div style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The new year has begun with news of the growing Australian wildfires, with thousands of people fleeing the fires and heading to beaches for safety and evacuation and an estimated 480 million animals dying in the fires so far. Headlines about the fires in recent days have described the fires as ‘apocalyptic’; <i>The Times</i> of London <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/thousands-trapped-on-australian-beaches-by-apocalyptic-fires-hw779kcwh?region=global" target="_blank">on December 31 said</a> “Thousands trapped on Australian beaches by ‘apocalyptic’ fires”, while a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/31/world/australia/fires-red-skies-Mallacoota.html" target="_blank"><i>New York Times</i> article </a> bears the headline “Apocalyptic Scenes in Australia as Fires Turn Skies Blood Red”. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">While it’s understood that this use of the term ‘apocalyptic’ does not line up formally with the theological sense of the term, it’s an apt word for what is happening in Australia for the people whose world as they have known it does seem to have come to an end. When your home, your land, the familiar plants and animals are all gone, it feels like the end of the world, and it is certainly the end of a way of life in a place that is forever changed. These fires have taken hold at the end of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/02/2019-australia-hottest-year-record-temperature-15c-above-average-temperature" target="_blank">hottest year in Australian history</a>, with the average 2019 temperature 1.52 degrees C hotter than the long-term average temperature. Australia is experiencing the effects of climate change on a big scale. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Maybe we need a new term for this sort of “apocalypse”. Instead of talking about the “end times”, we could talk about “death times” or a time of loss on a scale most of us can’t imagine. It is not only the death of individuals, both human and non-human, that makes us reach for the language of apocalypse to describe it, but also the threat of losing entire species as bigger areas come under threat on a continent that is known for its unique fauna and flora. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">How can we in the Church respond to a climate-fueled tragedy of this scale? As with any loss, we can acknowledge it and talk about it, making it clear that we do see what is happening to a nation that is one of our closest allies. Many Americans seem only vaguely aware of what is unfolding in Australia as 2020 begins. Ignoring the suffering there goes against the command to love our neighbors; moreover, not learning from this tragedy and continuing to let climate change accelerate at a rapid pace puts others — and at some point, ourselves — in danger of other large-scale losses.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Episcopal Church’s <a href="https://episcopalchurch.org/creation-care" target="_blank">online resources for Creation Care</a></span><span style="font-size: large;"> include some practical, close-to-home actions we can take. These resources are a great starting point, especially commendable for helping us to think more intentionally about caring for God’s creation. Yet we know that even our best efforts at stewardship and conservation as individuals and parishes, while good and worthwhile, aren’t enough to make enough of a difference. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">What then should we do once we have seen and acknowledged the damage not only of the fires in Australia but of the past year’s fires in California, the losses here in Nebraska and so many other places around the world from flooding, the end of traditional ways of living as permafrost melts in the Arctic and sea level rise threatens island nations? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The temptation is to do nothing in the face of such a great threat because our efforts seem so small and futile. </span></span><span style="font-size: large;">However, the Gospel lesson for today’s Daily Office holds a different suggestion for us. The lesson is John’s version of the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1-14). In John’s telling of the story, Jesus asks Philip, “Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?” Philip responds by saying that the challenge is too great. In saying “six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little”, Philip basically says that the problem is too big for them to address. Then Andrew says, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.” Andrew immediately adds, as if to show that he understands the impossibility of feeding all these people, “But what are they among so many people?” What I love about John’s version of the story is imagining the boy calling Andrew’s attention to what he has to offer. When small children hear that someone needs help, they are often eager to offer their help even when the adults in the room think that the child has nothing significant to offer. I imagine this boy overhearing the conversation about finding food for all these people and saying, “Look! I have some barley loaves and two fish. You can have those to help feed the people!”</span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">While Philip and Andrew made it clear that they were too sophisticated to take the boy’s offer seriously, the fact that the child offered what he had made all the difference. It was all that Jesus needed. This suggests that rather than do nothing about climate change because nothing we can do seems big enough, we should instead humbly offer what we have: our ability to stay informed and talk about what is happening, our acts of stewardship and conservation, our phone calls and letters to elected officials, our ability to organize or attend meetings and rallies and marches to call attention to climate change and call for significant policy changes to address it, and our prayers. I’ve seen several poignant requests for our prayers from Australians via social media this past week. We may feel like our prayers are insignificant — and there has been some public shaming of people who offer “thoughts and prayers” when more seems to be in order — but some of the people in the middle of these fires want us to offer them anyway. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our prayers and our actions seem so small, but we don’t know how they will be used, how they will combine with the efforts of others, how we might eventually change the hearts of the people with the power to make the large-scale societal changes that can mitigate these disasters in the long-term. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Please pray for Australia, for its people, plants, and animals, and for our global climate. And please act in accordance with these prayers, offering in faith whatever actions each of us can offer. </span></span></div>
Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-13479106442848054142019-03-24T08:37:00.000-05:002019-03-24T08:37:24.448-05:00Compassion and Climate Chaos<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<b><span style="font-size: large;">Lent 3C: Suffering and Blame</span></b></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">In a post at the beginning of Lent, I shared my plan to read David Wallace-Wells’s book <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i> alongside our daily lectionary readings and Lenten prayers. This being the Lenten wilderness, I didn’t know what I might encounter along the way since by definition the wilderness has no set paths to follow and no guarantees of what we might find. Along with other Nebraskans, not long into Lent I found myself in unfamiliar territory.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">On Thursday, March 14 in Nebraska, blizzard conditions followed heavy rains as air pressure dropped in a “bomb cyclone” event. With the ground still frozen hard and more snowpack than usual melting, rivers and creeks flooded and huge chunks of ice got pushed into areas near waterways, resulting in great destruction in both rural areas and towns. Roads and bridges were badly damaged or destroyed, making areas already cut off by floodwaters even more isolated from aid. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the days since, we Nebraskans have greatly appreciated the assurance of prayers from people in other places, just as we have appreciated all sorts of practical help, such as money to help with flood relief, farmers from other states bringing hay to feed Nebraska livestock, and skilled volunteers simply showing up to help. And Nebraskans have been helping their neighbors and encouraging each other as communities begin the process of clean-up and rebuilding. Among the shock and sorrow at the losses resulting from the floods, the compassion people have given to other people and to animals has been a bright light showing the way forward and drawing us together. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, compassion has not been a universal reaction to our suffering. In this Sunday’s Gospel reading (<a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+13:1-9&vnum=yes&version=nrsv" target="_blank">Luke 13:1-9</a>), </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jesus is asked whether people who died in terrible ways were worse sinners than others; in other words, Jesus is asked whether people who experience unusual suffering somehow especially deserve their suffering. Today we might ask, do bad things really happen to good people? (Yes, they do.) Yet even if we know perfectly well that terrible things can happen to people who personify faith and kindness and moral goodness, we still in our culture — perhaps especially in our recent history — have a tendency to look for someone to blame when things go wrong. When we assume someone is to blame, and especially when we make an assumption, conscious or unconscious, that the someone who is to blame is probably the very person who is suffering, compassion dwindles. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jesus’s answer to this question about sinners getting what they deserve is basically that we are all sinners, all in need of repentance. If bad things happen only to people who have sinned, we are all in trouble. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">We know that the more our planet warms, the more extreme weather events we will have as a result of climate chaos. Spring flooding is not atypical in this part of the United States, but floods of this magnitude are atypical. (See, for example, the article <i><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-weather-climatechange/climate-changes-fingerprints-are-on-u-s-midwest-floods-scientists-idUSKCN1R22I8" target="_blank">Climate change’s fingerprints are on U.S. Midwest floods: scientist</a> </i>from Reuters.) It is fair to say, then, that our failure to stop climate change when we could have done so or our failure to mitigate climate change now that it is upon us contributed to this disaster. If we are invested in the blame game more than we are invested in Jesus’s Way of Love, it’s an easy step to go from acknowledging our collective failure to looking for specific people to blame for that failure and hoping to see them suffer.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Those of us who made the mistake of reading the comments on articles about the destruction here in Nebraska learned that while many people in other places had a compassionate response to our suffering, many others had no compassion for Nebraskans because we have elected political leaders who refuse to do anything to address climate change. The general tenor of these comments was that the writer didn’t feel sorry for us at all because we had brought this all on ourselves by electing the wrong sorts of people, that we got just what we deserved. (On top of being mean-spirited, these comments seemed to me especially ill-conceived given the obvious contribution of Nebraskans to stopping the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our world needs people whose first impulse is compassion rather than placing blame; as we experience more and more of the results of climate chaos, our world needs Jesus’s Way of Love perhaps more than ever before. The basic foundations of human civilization are endangered by climate instability. Such a critical point of history requires us to demonstrate the best human values and to resist the temptation to divide further into warring factions. Hope for our world in an era of environmental collapse depends on compassion for one another. That compassion, that ability to care, will, I think, yield our best outcome in generating the political will to act to mitigate climate change as well the best outcome in responding to what David Wallace-Wells calls the “cascades” of challenges and disasters resulting from climate chaos. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Do we need to elect leaders who make addressing global warming a high priority? Yes, we do. Should people and animals who live in places that don’t elect such leaders — and right now that would be most of the United States since it’s pretty obvious from looking at legislative records and listening to campaign rhetoric that few of our leaders of either major party see climate change as a top priority or have any grasp of the size of the challenge before us — be left to suffer on their own when floods, tornadoes, droughts, or wildfires happen? No. For Christians, such a lack of compassion would simply be against everything that Jesus taught. We don’t require a moral litmus test in order for people to access basic necessities. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">And for anyone, even those who live by an “eye for an eye” blame game ethics, the ethics of blame and self-righteousness makes no sense since we don’t (at least at the moment) live in a country in which the red people all live in one place and the blue people all live in another place — not that political affiliation really tells you anything about any given individual’s concern about climate change. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Jesus answered a question about why he made a practice of sitting down to eat with known sinners by saying, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’” (Matthew 9:13) Now in this era of climate chaos we still need to learn what it means to show mercy to people in need rather than demanding moral purity. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The <a href="http://dioneb.org/" target="_blank">Diocese of Nebraska</a> has published a suggested list of links to agencies accepting monetary donations for flood relief along with thanksgiving for your prayers:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.paypal.com/donate/?token=kYlXKDpXjNgnf_O4ul6Sj98Ri4iXtdvEJjK3Bttg7E94m0DMvYfU42-vpfT9TOBNaVoZ1m&country.x=US&locale.x=US" target="_blank">The Diocese of Nebraska Flood Relief & Support Fund</a> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.redcross.org/local/nebraska.html" target="_blank">American Red Cross of Nebraska and Southwest Iowa</a> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.episcopalrelief.org/what-you-can-do/give/donate-now/individual-donation" target="_blank">Episcopal Relief and Development </a> </span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-5610317700257510952019-03-05T20:52:00.000-06:002019-03-05T20:52:20.997-06:00Lenten Wilderness: The Uninhabitable Earth<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>The Uninhabitable Earth: Life after Warming</i>, published two weeks ago, will help to shape my Lenten experience this year. In turn, I suspect my observance of Lent will color my reading of David Wallace-Wells’s blunt and lucid account of the present reality of climate change. My intention during Lent is to figure out every day what to give up or let go of to ensure time for a close reading of a chunk of this book along with a close reading of the Daily Office readings for that day and plenty of time for prayer. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">“It is worse, much worse, than you think,” reads the first sentence of <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i>. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">“We confess to you, Lord, all our past unfaithfulness: the pride, hypocrisy, and impatience of our lives.” We pray this confession in our Litany of Penitence as one of many particular faults. All of the sins we confess on Ash Wednesday have some bearing on the particular sin that most directly speaks to the subject of <i>The Uninhabitable Earth</i>: </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">For our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us,</span></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>Accept our repentance, Lord.</i> </span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Yesterday’s familiar Daily Office reading from John’s Gospel (<a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Isaiah+45:1-7&vnum=yes&version=nrsv" target="_blank">John 1:1-18</a>) reminded us of the reality of the Incarnation, the Word that came to live among us in our world of earth, air, fire, and water. While some forms of piety emphasize a heaven / earth dualism during Lent, the reality of our faith and of our lives is that we are part of the world God created and pronounced good, the same world so deeply loved by God that Jesus, God Incarnate, came to dwell here with us. Whether we can understand it, and even if we deny it, the laws of chemistry and physics and our past and present actions are resulting in big changes that have forever changed life on our planet. And whether we can understand it, and even if we deny it, God’s love for us and for all of creation, the love that we know through Jesus’s love, is with us as we respond to the huge challenges we face. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I’ve chosen to read<i> The Uninhabitable Earth</i> not despite the psychological and spiritual challenge of looking squarely at our present situation on this planet, but because of the enormity of that challenge. The temptation to look away is a true temptation, a temptation to sin. Our failure to acknowledge climate change as the central issue of our time — our practice of willful ignorance, of ignoring the very warm elephant in the room as we allow ourselves to be distracted by all sorts of craziness along with all sorts of other serious concerns that will only worsen as Earth’s temperatures soar — is more than an oversight. Our willful ignorance that results in human suffering and species extinction is a sin, and the only way to repent of willful ignorance is to seek knowledge. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">I have no idea what I’ll encounter in the practice of reflecting on this latest summary of our perilous condition alongside our daily lectionary readings and Lenten prayers, but when any of us chooses a serious Lenten discipline, we have no idea what we will encounter in our chosen wilderness. By definition, the wilderness has no set paths to follow, no guarantees of what we </span>will<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> find. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In this age of global warming, we are all in the wilderness, all lost whether or not we realize it. Choosing a forty day interior wilderness journey that acknowledges our material situation seems appropriate to me this year. I’ll post some reports along the way if I find something worth sharing.</span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-9116360103806550072018-12-24T15:25:00.000-06:002018-12-24T15:25:09.611-06:00Christmas: Wondering as We Wander<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>I wonder as I wander out under the sky</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><i><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">How Jesus my Saviour did come for to die</span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>For poor on'ry people like you and like I,</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><i>I wonder as I wander out under the sky.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">(Song by folklorist <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/religion-in-america/american-life/niles-i-wonder-as-i-wander/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">John Niles, inspired by a fragment</span></a> of a folk hymn)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Christmas traditions run deep for many of us, yet despite the continuity provided by certain traditions, each year’s Christmas experience is unique. This year’s Christmas for at least a good chunk of Americans seems somewhat different as we are living through what feels like a new sort of moment in our nation’s history. The sense of instability has shown itself in recent days with a deep plunge in the stock market (heading toward possibly the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/18/investing/stocks-worst-december-since-great-depression/index.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">worst December for the market since the Great Depression)</span></a>, a government shutdown, and the impending departure of Defense Secretary Mattis. Add the elements of environmental instability to this, with little encouraging news from either the scientific or the political spheres, and it’s no surprise that something feels different this Christmas. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">How any of this will play out is unclear. We have solid science to help us see what will happen if we continue on our current path of environmental destruction, but even that is uncertain as the future direction of the human actions that have gotten us into this crisis are unpredictable and the exact nature and timing of global warming’s feedback loops are still only partially known. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The American social and political traditions and the environmental stability that felt like givens to those of us born in the middle of the twentieth century are now unreliable. Having lost our way, we are wandering, searching, hoping for something we can’t quite envision. </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgirMPm94O6Oon72tHiNCQ3iv8kGM35aovznxXMbkT3pFRI_c5yslg_v57KkIOBoZYvru395T3OHrZ3KTZxg55eEsoAqQx7pwu78jht-Di3EPdii2ZYt44Ls4PHUNEQUKt9I6P9YDi39_A/s1600/Dec+1o+holly+003.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgirMPm94O6Oon72tHiNCQ3iv8kGM35aovznxXMbkT3pFRI_c5yslg_v57KkIOBoZYvru395T3OHrZ3KTZxg55eEsoAqQx7pwu78jht-Di3EPdii2ZYt44Ls4PHUNEQUKt9I6P9YDi39_A/s200/Dec+1o+holly+003.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Christmas story is about hope, about light shining in the darkness. Mary’s song — our <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+1:39-56&vnum=yes&version=nrsv"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Gospel for Advent IV</span></a> — reminds us that God shows mercy for people who are poor and oppressed, that those who are suffering in the present moment have real hope that a more just order will be restored. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Christmas story is also about wonder — the wonder of God being born among us, the wonder of a young woman receiving a visit from an angel and of a new baby with seemingly ordinary parents being seen as a King, but telling us when he is grown that his kingdom is not like other kingdoms. There is starlight, angels singing to terrified shepherds, and other people amazed at what the shepherds told them. And there is Mary, treasuring the words of the shepherds and, as Luke tells it, pondering them in her heart.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The Christmas story is about experiencing wonder as we wander toward the Light. Wonder isn’t the whole story — Mary went through the very real experience of pregnancy and childbirth along with those reflective and even mystical experiences — but perhaps it’s a necessary ingredient that we neglect at our own peril.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The wonder of Christmas was brought home for me yesterday when I went to see my young grandchildren in their congregation’s Christmas pageant. My three-year-old grandson was an angel, with the only directions being to hang around with the older angels and be where they were. But despite the efforts of the grown-ups in his life and the influence of Mr. Rogers in teaching the difference between real life and make-believe, the idea of people in costumes pretending vs. seeing the real thing is still shaky for a three-year-old, shaky enough for the enacted wonder of the story to become real wonder. When Mary brought out a baby doll that had been hidden away and put the baby in the manger, my grandson looked and looked at the baby, hovering near the manger and watching over the baby Jesus. His sense of wonder was evident and contagious. The story is still new for him, and that helped me hear the story in a new way as well. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">There are many occasions for wonder in our own daily lives. We have seen an amazing moon the past couple of evenings, a moon with a special glow. That science can explain why this moon looks different from others doesn’t take away from its beauty or its ability to expand our thoughts beyond our ourselves and our daily tasks. There are glimpses of joy on the faces of people of all ages; there are the small gray and brown birds that appear from hidden places to feed at feeders, the occasional sound of a wren, and the quiet of fields and woods far from town, and the winter skies seen from those same rural places. There is ice forming and melting, there are snowflakes falling like little stars, and the sight of friends and family who have been away from home. Wonder — and its companion, joy — are there for the noticing. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Wondering at the world around us and finding joy in God’s creation forms our hearts to love the world. We care for what we love, and the more connected we feel to other people and all of creation, the more easily we will see the way to live whole and holy lives even when the world feels unstable and fragmented. The world needs people who are whole and holy; God needs us to do the work of mercy, justice, repair, and love that will lead to a better world for all people and all living things. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">May Christmas wonder be yours during this Christmas!</span></span></div>
Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-54420617447450052412018-12-02T05:30:00.000-06:002018-12-02T05:30:07.242-06:00Into the Darkness<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Helvetica Neue"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;">Perhaps it’s because Nebraska has had several snowy, wintry days already this year, or perhaps it’s because of the weight of the news about climate change. Perhaps it’s because the level of corruption, incompetence, and willful ignorance among some of our top elected officials is taking us farther from addressing global warming instead of bringing us closer to the sort of large-scale all-in effort needed to mitigate climate change and adapt to a warming world. Perhaps it’s that the scientific reports seem less abstract when we see photos of places destroyed by fires, floods, and sea level rise. Whatever the reason, as this Advent season begins, I feel more keenly than I ever have at Advent that we are journeying into darkness.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">We pray “Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light…” in our Collect for the First Sunday of Advent, and we use phrases like “dark times” to describe a difficult point of our personal or collective history. But non-metaphorical darkness, real darkness, can be a welcome time of sleep. It’s when we dream and re-energize our bodies for another day. Clear, starry skies on the darkest and coldest nights pull us into a world of wonder. Darkness is neither bad nor good, it simply is. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">However, when we aren’t safely tucked away in our beds or purposely star-gazing, darkness can be scary because we can’t see what is around us and may be disoriented. That’s when we long for a light in the darkness. A small flashlight on a walk back from star-gazing in an open field or seeing a farmstead’s yard light ahead when driving on a dark night can make a big difference. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As we enter Advent this year, I’m keeping an image in mind of entering a quiet, restful darkness while knowing where to find some light when I need it. Maybe in the darkness, even if it's sometimes uncomfortable, we will learn something, dream something, that will help us see and participate in a new thing. In Advent, we contemplate the mystery of Christ as the one who was, who is, and who is to come again, the one that John’s Gospel describes as the Word who was from the beginning. “What has come into being in him was life,” writes John, “and the life was the light of all people.” We know where to find the light, and we also know that it’s both a necessity and a joy to pass through the darkness of Advent in order to more fully receive the light that always shines in the darkness, the light of Christ we celebrate at Christmas. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This year, our spiritual journey into darkness seems an especially good fit for what we are experiencing in our daily lives, in this unique moment in the intertwined history of humankind and planet Earth, and in our current political situation. In the <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Luke+21:25-36&vnum=yes&version=nrsv"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Gospel for the First Sunday of Advent</span></a>, Jesus talks about our ability to see the signs of the season such as the sprouting of green leaves telling us when summer is near. We can read the signs of our times if we pay attention. Reports of daily eco-disasters and<a href="https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&stream=top#sf-1"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> scientific reports</span></a> show us different kinds of signs of the same reality. As we pay attention, the darkness can seem overwhelming. It’s disorienting because we are in an unfamiliar place. However, as we allow ourselves to see the signs and enter the darkness of our current situation, we are also entering the more familiar darkness of Advent, that darkness that is meant to help us see the Light more clearly. Even though humankind has never before been in this same place, we know how to do this because we know how to journey through Advent and we know the Light is near. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">For a daily dose of wonder to help us reflect on our place in the vastness of creation, check out the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/12/2018-hubble-space-telescope-advent-calendar/577129/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2018 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar.</span></a></span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-17076610709644513252018-10-28T22:47:00.001-05:002018-10-28T22:48:00.000-05:00Light in the darkness: What do we want?<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Then Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” (Mark 10:51)</b></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">We Americans have had a harrowing week, the sort of week in which our Christian belief that light shines through the darkness becomes a matter of faith more than observation. But we do believe that the light shines in the darkness and that love is stronger than hate. <a href="https://www.episcopalnewsservice.org/pressreleases/presiding-bishops-statement-on-the-tragedy-at-tree-of-life-synagogue/" target="_blank">Presiding Bishop Michael Curry’s statement </a>after the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh expresses our faith and describes the response of prayer and action that translates our sympathetic and loving thoughts toward our Jewish friends into a real sharing of love.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="font-size: large;">Nebraska Episcopalians who attended our Annual Council in Gering this week had a little more than a day of renewing and beginning friendships, being with and listening to our current Bishop and the two Bishops who preceded Bishop Barker, hearing a strong witness to Christian discipleship from Dr. Tom Osborne, and worshipping together. We were in a strikingly beautiful part of our state under clear blue autumn skies. All of this was light in the darkness. When we left Gering on Saturday morning and started hearing the news of what had happened to another faith community in Pittsburgh, I was grateful for the renewal and strength we took away with us, because those of us who are trying to follow Jesus at this point in our history need strong faith and minds and hearts. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">The <a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+10:46-52&vnum=yes&version=nrsv" target="_blank">Gospel lesson for today</a> is the story of Bartimaeus, a blind man who calls out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” when he is told that Jesus is passing by. Jesus calls Bartimaeus over. Instead of assuming that what Bartimaeus needs most is to see, Jesus asks “What do you want me to do for you?” Bartimaeus is direct in his request: “My teacher, let me see again.”</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">What do we want Jesus to do for us on October 28, 2018? Do we want an end to hate crimes and violence, or is there some payoff in personal status or social arrangements that makes us want a sort of half-healing where we gain some sense of protection while the currents of hatred and ignorance that fuel the violence continue? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The week’s climate news was not only harrowing in its own right, but also very much connected to the other issues we are facing. The Red Cross president, Peter Maurer, talked about how climate change is exacerbating both domestic and international conflicts. [The Guardian:<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/21/climate-change-is-exacerbating-world-conflicts-says-red-cross-president?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #010000;"><i> Climate change is exacerbating world conflicts</i></span></a>…] Another article by National Geographic described the link between climate change and immigration from Guatemala. [<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/21/climate-change-is-exacerbating-world-conflicts-says-red-cross-president?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: #010000;"><i>Changing climate forces desperate Guatemalans to migrate</i></span></a>.] Climate change is one of the societal global changes that feeds the racism and xenophobia that underlies so much of the politics of hate in the United States. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">What do we want Jesus to do for us? When we pray for our nation, do we pray for Jesus to help us find the strength and wisdom and courage to effect large scale economic and cultural changes, or do we simply long for some vague miracle that will make us safe? </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">My plan for the next ten days includes standing in solidarity with our Jewish friends in Omaha, praying for real healing for our biosphere and our nation and for the strength, courage, and wisdom both corporately and personally to contribute to that healing, and keeping all of this in mind when I vote on November 6. </span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">We must become clear about what we truly want, and then ask Jesus for what we need to change our direction.</span></span></div>
Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-59388188696654482502018-10-20T20:42:00.003-05:002018-10-20T20:42:59.766-05:00Servant Leaders Needed<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Proper 24B:</b><a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+10:35-45&vnum=yes&version=nrsv" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><b> Mark 10:35-45</b></span></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">So Jesus called them and said to them, “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. (Mark 10: 42-44)</span></b></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">After James and John asked to sit on either side of Jesus when Jesus is seated in glory, the other disciples were upset with James and John for trying to assure their own status. Knowing the disciples were quarreling about who would be the greatest among them, Jesus explained that leadership among his followers differed from the leadership model they saw around them in the secular world, the world of the Gentiles. In a world dominated by the Roman Empire, rulers were tyrants who lorded it over others. This is reversed in Jesus’s vision of the beloved community of his followers: the greatest among them, the leaders, are there to serve the others, not to be served. A leader in God’s kingdom is primarily concerned with the welfare of others.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This is a timely Gospel text here in the United States. We are seeing in our nation today what happens when the well-being of the many is sacrificed to the pursuit of wealth and status for the few. We are seeing the middle class shrink while the wealthiest among us make decisions for their own benefit with little regard for the rest of us. Many of those in power don’t even pretend to care about the well-being of others, appealing to ideas more in line with Ayn Rand than with Jesus of Nazareth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">When leaders look only to their own short-term interest instead of the long-term interests of the majority, environmental degradation is one of the results. With regard to climate change, for example, the stakes are high. <a href="https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/10/half-degree-and-world-apart-difference-climate-impacts-between-15-c-and-2-c-warming"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">The World Resources Institute has produced a chart </span></a>showing the difference half a degree of warming makes in a variety of areas that impact our quality of life and our economic well-being. I recommend taking a look at this, as it gives an accessible summary to help us better understand why climate change is such an urgent issue and why governments need to prioritize large-scale action to mitigate climate change.</span></span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">In the United States, money from the fossil fuel lobby has heavily influenced those holding elective office, discouraging them from taking effective action against global warming. Officials have looked at their own short-term gain instead of the welfare of their nation. Instead of being servants of those who have elected them, they have effectively lorded it over us by lining their own pockets. To me, it’s especially offensive that many of those who fail to act as servant leaders self-identify as Christians, often emphatically so. Jesus is clear that supporting tyrants and pursuing our own status while ignoring the needs of those we should be serving is not compatible with Christian discipleship. This week's Gospel lesson is clear about the way for </span>Christians<span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> to exercise leadership, and the science tells us we can't continue with business as usual. Our lives and the stability of everything that supports us and other living things are at stake.</span></span></span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-88828948125542311042018-10-14T22:23:00.003-05:002018-10-14T22:23:33.118-05:00IPCC report: Seeing our neighbors and following Jesus<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This past week the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a report on global climate change. While not surprising for people who have paid attention to previous reports from the IPCC, this report brought with it a much more dire look at our future that has made more people pay attention to the report and understand the urgent need for big changes in the ways we produce and use energy. The prognosis is grim even if we do our best, but our future with dramatic and large-scale changes that mitigate the amount of global warming is a much better future than what we face if we continue with business as usual. According to the report, we have about ten years to turn things around.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This week we also watched Hurricane Michael rapidly grow in intensity over abnormally warm water and bring terrible destruction to the Florida panhandle before continuing into the Carolinas and Virginia with more destructive winds and heavy rains. In case we lacked the imagination to understand the sorts of consequences we face if we fail to mitigate global warming, we had an immediate example with Hurricane Michael. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In the Church, our Gospel lesson today was the story of the rich man asking Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life. (<a href="http://bible.oremus.org/?passage=Mark+10:17-31&vnum=yes&version=nrsv" target="_blank">Mark 10: 17-31</a>) This man had scrupulously observed the religious law. He had done everything just right to ensure both spiritual and financial well-being. However, he evidently sensed that something was missing, and so he sought out Jesus and humbly asked him if there was something else he needed to do. Jesus told him he lacked one thing. Jesus told this man who was so focused on his own welfare that he needed to sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and then follow Jesus. Instead of being preoccupied with his own welfare and comfort, he needed to see and serve his neighbors and then follow Jesus. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In preaching at Church of the Resurrection in Omaha today, I mentioned the IPCC report and talked about the extraordinary times we are living in, suggesting that this story from Mark’s Gospel can help us figure out what to do in the 21st century just as it spoke to the people of Jesus’s time. The contrast between the culture in which we live and the kingdom of God is at least as glaring for us as it was for the people in Jesus’s time. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">The point isn’t that all of us need to sell everything we have, but that we need to put our focus elsewhere. Jesus calls us to look up and out from our own lives so we can see our neighbors and the needs of others, and Jesus calls us to follow him. In today’s world, seeing our neighbors near and far will make it readily apparent that we can’t go on living the way we are living, that we all will have to support changes in business as usual in order for more of us to make it through this century with enough of the basics like food, water, shelter, and basic infrastructure to live good lives. </span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: large;"><br /><span style="font-kerning: none;">We don’t know where Jesus will lead us in the years to come as our culture either changes and adapts or falls apart, but we do know that there are many, many people in the Church who are studying Scripture and listening in prayer and speaking with our wisest teachers and trying to figure out together what it looks like to follow Jesus in these challenging times.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">We live in a consumer culture that isn’t working well for us either spiritually or materially. The planet simply cannot sustain the drive to economic growth dependent on us buying more and more stuff, and our souls suffer as well until we ground our priorities in Jesus’s teachings rather than the teachings of our consumer culture. The culture tells us that money can buy happiness — or at least numbness to the pain — while Jesus tells us that the happiness of material success is nothing compared to the joy of following him and giving to others.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">While I know some other preachers today talked about the IPCC report and the climate crisis, I also suspect that it went unmentioned in more pulpits. If we are following Jesus and focused on our neighbors near and far, we have to pay attention to these global changes and the effects they are having and will continue to have on people. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Mark writes that when Jesus told the rich man what he needed to do, the man went away grieving “for he had many possessions”. As a parishioner pointed out today, we don’t know if he went away sad and then kept living as he had lived, or if he went away sad about the big change in his life he was about to make.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">If we look away from the climate crisis and fail to advocate for the systemic changes needed to create a more livable world for all of us, we will be like the rich man in the parable if he chose his old way of life over eternal life. If, though, we acknowledge how hard the task ahead is but then go ahead and work at doing it, we will assure our own joy in following Jesus starting now and help assure a greater chance at a sustainable life for all living things on our planet in the future.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Click <a href="https://support.episcopalrelief.org/hurricane-relief/?ID=180800DP0HR0000&utm_medium=Undefined&utm_campaign=fy18hurricanerelief&utm_source=180800DP0HR0000"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">here</span></a> to contribute to Episcopal Relief and Development’s <a href="https://support.episcopalrelief.org/hurricane-relief/?ID=180800DP0HR0000&utm_medium=Undefined&utm_campaign=fy18hurricanerelief&utm_source=180800DP0HR0000"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Hurricane Relief Fund</span></a>.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;">Click </span><a href="http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">here</span></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;"> to read the IPCC’s panel </span><a href="http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15/pdf/sr15_spm_final.pdf" style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Summary for Policy Makers</span></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica;"> of last week’s report about the impacts of global warming above 1.5 degrees C.</span> </span><br />
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-60571136031078569152018-10-04T22:56:00.000-05:002018-10-04T22:56:32.559-05:00Cruelty or Compassion<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">My heart has been heavy this year on the Feast of St. Francis. After looking at today’s main news stories this morning, I went outside — where the temperature had dropped some 50-60 degrees since yesterday afternoon — thinking that breathing some fresh air and moving around doing some garden clean-up would make things brighter. I was working on a flower bed that surrounds our small statue of St. Francis when one of our resident cottontails hopped out from under a bush. It surprised me, though, by not hopping away as they often do when we startle them. Instead, it hopped to a spot a couple feet away from me and then stopped and simply watched me. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">This bunny’s lack of fear reminded me of the stories of wild animals and birds approaching him. The animals and birds seemed to sense that Francis was compassionate, that near him there would only be kindness and not the cruelty other people sometimes aimed at wild creatures. </span><br />
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Francis sensed the interconnectedness among all things that the modern study of ecology has demonstrated. That interconnectedness in the natural world is paralleled by interconnectedness of events and issues in the economic and political spheres that may at first glance seem unrelated. There are many important issues demanding our attention right now, but all of them — including our failure to address climate change in a significant way — are interrelated. Environmental concerns tend to get pushed aside given other immediately compelling issues, but our welfare depends on not losing sight of the state of the biosphere both for its own sake and because of the way it connects with all the other concerns before us. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The welfare of the birds is something to consider as we remember St. Francis. BirdLife International’s <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/sites/default/files/attachments/BL_ReportENG_V11_spreads.pdf"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">2018 State of the World’s Birds report</span></a> describes a “steady and continuing deterioration” in the state of the world’s birds. Even some of the world’s most <a href="https://www.birdlife.org/worldwide/news/even-familiar-birds-risk-extinction-new-study-finds"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">well-known bird species are declining</span></a>, and this should concern all of us: “These statistics aren’t just bad news for birds, they are also warnings for the planet as a whole. The health of bird species is a good measure of the state of ecosystems in general.”</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the news stories I read this morning bore the discouraging heading <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/energy-environment/2018/10/03/climate-scientists-are-struggling-find-right-words-very-bad-news/?utm_term=.67eeb38ebda1"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>Climate scientists are struggling to find the right words for very bad news</i></span></a>. Reporting on the 48th session of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Washington Post reporters Chris Mooney and Brady Dennis report on our increasing understanding that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C. is essential to avoid global catastrophe and the IPCC’s task of communicating their knowledge and helping the world’s nations come to agreements that allow us to do this urgent work in a fairly short amount of time. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Other news stories today were about the confirmation process for a new Supreme Court justice and the related issues around women’s rights and the #MeToo movement that have been highlighted by this process. And there were stories about other things such as the immigrant children who have been separated from their parents, gun violence, and ongoing wars and civil disturbances. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Given all of that, here is what struck me as especially insightful on this day when we remember St. Francis. The Atlantic published a piece by Adam Serwer called <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelty-is-the-point/572104/"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><i>The Cruelty Is the Point</i></span></a>. Serwer suggests that the many events and current policies which seem cruel aren’t cruel as an unintended consequence of some noble goal, but rather that the cruelty — and the bonding around the “joy” of inflicting cruelty among supporters of current policies — is the point. In reading it, I thought about our lack of concern for the birds and other living things, the indignation of many Americans at the thought that we might choose to change the ways we produce and use energy so that people in other places might live, and the cruel things said and shouted at women in recent days who dare to speak their truth. It’s all of one piece, and that one piece couldn’t be further from the compassion that St. Francis embodied and taught.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Deeply rooted kindness, heartfelt compassion, simple Christian love are the antidote to cruelty. Animals do sense which people are kind like Francis and which people are cruel, and when we humans are paying attention we do a good job of sensing that, too. Francis was known for his devotion to God and his compassion for all living things. Strengthening our own devotion to God and our own capacity for compassion are the essential elements to ready ourselves for the work that lies before us for our nation and for every living thing with which we share our planet.</span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-84204550746947070922018-09-17T21:16:00.000-05:002018-09-17T21:16:25.076-05:00Remembering Hildegard in 2018<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: "Bookman Old Style"; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">Today the church remembered Hildegard of Bingen as we continued to learn about the destruction resulting from </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/09/17/us/florence-monday-wxc/index.html" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Hurricane Florence</span></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> and</span><a href="https://youtu.be/Tp3jAREfLYA" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"> Typhoon Mangkhut</span></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">. We know that </span><a href="https://youtu.be/Tp3jAREfLYA" style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">climate change is making hurricanes more destructive</span></a><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">, we know that emissions from human activities cause climate change, and we also know that the United States, at least, in 2018 lacks the political will to curb those emissions to the degree necessary to mitigate the effects of climate change.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-kerning: none;">Hildegard, a remarkable woman of the 12</span><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="font-kerning: none;"> century, can help us understand our situation. Along with writing down and illustrating her visions, she led a religious community, preached (an amazing thing for a woman in that time), healed people, and composed music. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">But it’s Hildegard’s concept of <i>viriditas</i> that speaks to our concerns today. Viriditas is “greenness” or green power, a creative life force that she sensed in all of creation, including plants, animals, and precious gems. The way Hildegard described it is a sort of spiritual and biological power. For Hildegard, God was the ultimate creative force; greenness was the presence of God in the world. Unlike many in the church in her time, Hildegard taught that the body and soul are integrated. She understood the interconnectedness of all things that we deny in practice when we collectively refuse to make the systemic changes necessary to mitigate climate change.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Were she with us today, Hildegard might very well have insight into our situation. She taught that sin “dried up” the greenness, writing:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><i><span style="font-size: large;">Now in the people that were meant to green, there is no more life of any kind. There is only shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples. There pours forth an unnatural, loathsome darkness that withers the green, and wizens the fruit that was to serve as food for the people. Sometimes this layer of air is full, full of a fog that is the source of many destructive and barren creatures, that destroy and damage the earth, rendering it incapable of sustaining humanity. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">But humans are also capable of becoming conduits of <i>viriditas</i>. By opening ourselves to the greenness of creation, we tap into a deep source of creativity. Hildegard’s vision helps us understand why people engaged in environmental advocacy find times of renewal outdoors so necessary to sustaining compassion and creativity in discouraging times. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: large;">More about Hildegard is available from the </span><a href="http://liturgyandmusic.wordpress.com/2010/09/17/september-17-hildegard-1179/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Holy Women, Holy Men blog</span></a><span style="font-size: large;">. The </span><a href="http://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/days/features.php?id=20276" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: large;">Spirituality and Practice website</span></a><span style="font-size: large;"> provides links to several resources.</span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Episcopal Relief and Development is accepting donations to its Hurricane Relief Fund <a href="https://support.episcopalrelief.org/hurricane-relief/?ID=180800DP0HR0000&utm_medium=Undefined&utm_campaign=fy18hurricanerelief&utm_source=180800DP0HR0000"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">here.</span></a> </span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-79011945195039526352018-04-11T06:50:00.000-05:002018-04-11T07:33:29.757-05:00Christian Witness In a Wounded World<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">When I visit with church people about the environmental crisis, the most common question is “What can we do about this?” or (tellingly) “What can I do about this?” Sometimes, of course, the response is a less positive “I can’t let myself think about this!” that points to an underlying assumption that there is nothing any one person can do about the environmental crisis, and so no point in putting any energy into thinking about something so unsettling. The people who want to do something, either collectively or individually, have the moral response right, I think: We need to do everything we can to make our situation better. The people who are overwhelmed, though, have one piece of it right: It’s too big for our small efforts at stewardship — e.g. recycling our plastic, turning down the thermostat a degree or two — to make much difference. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Along with thinking about what sort of honest response to give people who are eager to do their part in repairing the Earth, I wonder about what particular gift we Christians can offer as humankind faces a challenge unlike anything else we have faced before. It would be silly for us to try to duplicate the work done by the big conservation and environmental advocacy organizations, who employ professionals who are better equipped than we are to lead in small mitigation efforts and in advocacy. We can pray, and we certainly know something from salvation history about hope. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I was invited to preach at the First Congregational United Church of Christ in Hastings, Nebraska, this past Sunday. This congregation looked at consumer habits and plastic pollution during Lent, and I was asked to preach about where this fits into the bigger picture of our environmental crisis.The Gospel lesson (John 20:19-31) was the story of “Doubting Thomas” encountering the risen Jesus. Reading this story again in light of questions about plastic pollution and climate change helped me articulate better some of what the Church’s call might be in this century. Here’s my reflection on this passage in light of these questions:</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>But [Thomas] said to them, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” </b>(John 20:25)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Good morning! I’m delighted to be here with you this morning, and especially delighted that I’m here because this congregation has been studying the problem of plastic pollution and looking at the sorts of habits to adopt as a congregation and as individuals in response to that problem. No doubt most of you now know more than the average American about the size of the problem and its ramifications for human health and the ecosystems in which we live. I don’t know about you, but when I look at the statistics about the amount of plastic produced and how much of it ends up as trash, I can’t even wrap my head around it. What I do know is that I’ve taken photos along shorelines from our little lake here in Hastings to the Great Lakes to the Hawaiian Islands of plastic trash that all looks the same — those brightly colored bottle caps stand out everywhere. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I serve as a deacon in The Episcopal Church. While deacons get assigned to a parish — mine is Church of the Resurrection in North Omaha — we serve directly under the authority of the Bishop. Our charge is to serve as a bridge between the church and the world, interpreting the needs and concerns of the world to the church and making Christ’s love known to the world in word and deed. We have a special call to serve the poor, the weak, the sick, and the lonely — in other words, to help and advocate for people who are marginalized. I began my ministry as a deacon working in hunger ministry here in Hastings when we were first starting the Open Table lunch program, a typical sort of ministry for a deacon.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In 2007, while serving our parish in Grand Island, I went to a national conference for Episcopal deacons where our Presiding Bishop — our equivalent to an Archbishop — told us that given our charge to care for the poor, the sick, the hungry — for people in any kind of need — we needed to get to work on the environment! She explained that pollution and climate instability exacerbated all of the miseries we deacons traditionally addressed. That was what I needed to hear, as I had already become excited about something called the GreenFaith Fellowship Program that trains religious environmental leaders. I entered the fellowship program and changed the course of my ministry.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">GreenFaith, an interfaith group, organizes its work in three categories: spirituality (connecting the wonder we experience in nature with our faith), environmental stewardship (the sorts of practices that help conserve our resources and keep our air, water, and land healthy), and environmental justice (noticing that the impacts of pollution and climate change often hit the poorest communities and communities of color first and worst, and advocating for better policies and systemic practices to change that).</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">As part of our fellowship program, we attended retreats around each of those areas. To my surprise, the most spiritually moving of the three, the one where I truly felt I had stood on holy ground, was our environmental justice tour of the toxic sites of the Ironbound neighborhood in Newark, New Jersey.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">One of the many sites we saw that day was the biggest trash incinerator in New Jersey, which sat within a half mile of two low-income housing projects. It was also near the intersection of several freeways. The air quality was not good. We exited one of those freeways and got off our bus and stood at the gate of this place. As our guides told us more about what we were seeing -- about the mercury emissions and the high asthma rates near the incinerator – I watched an unending stream of garbage trucks come off the expressways and go through the gate to the incinerator.** I turned to Rabbi Troster, the head of the fellowship program, and said that this must be like the lowest circle of hell. He said that was what he had thought when he had first visited the incinerator. Yet there was something holy in witnessing this. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">When the entire tour was done and our group was reflecting on it, we found that everyone in the group had had a similar experience as we made our pilgrimage and stopped at several toxic sites. Seeing those things had connected us to the holy. The sense I made of that was that seeing how our habits of consumerism and carelessness affect some of the most marginalized people in our own country had given us a glimpse of how our way of life affects Jesus. As we treat the least of the members of God’s family, so we treat Jesus. When we stand as witnesses to suffering, we stand close to Jesus.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our Gospel reading about Thomas illuminates that sort of witness to environmental degradation and injustice. I believe that a major piece of an appropriate response from Christians to the big environmental challenges of our time — and I’d put plastic pollution and climate change at the top of a list of those challenges — is better understood in light of this story about Thomas and his doubt.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">In this story, the other disciples believed Jesus was alive because he had appeared to them, but Thomas expressed doubt because he wasn’t there to see it for himself. (Notice that Thomas was evidently the only one who had had the courage to leave the locked house.)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">If you’ve been a church-goer for a number of years, there’s a good chance that at some point you’ve heard a preacher say we should be more like the other disciples and less like Thomas. Here’s my full disclosure this morning: I really like Thomas, just as I really like Martha, Lazarus’s sister who didn’t choose the better part. They are my kindred spirits, and since both of them are considered saints, I think that’s okay.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">I like Thomas because I think there’s something deeper than garden variety doubt going on here. Thomas said, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” These aren’t the detached words of a mere skeptic; these are the words of someone who is passionate about knowing the truth, and the words of someone experiencing deep grief. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">To take the word of others and believe that Christ is alive – which is the one thing Thomas would like to be true more than anything – means taking the risk of believing too hastily. If he took their word for it only to discover later that this belief was wrong, it would be like losing Jesus all over again. Thomas is already too heartbroken to take that risk.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Notice that when Jesus appears to Thomas and shows him the evidence, so-called Doubting Thomas not only believes that Christ is risen but goes beyond what any of the others have said. He addresses Jesus as “my Lord and my God”. Thomas may have understood the meaning of Christ’s being alive more than did some of the others, and perhaps that’s why he was so cautious about believing. For Christ to be alive and appearing in various places, including locked houses, implies that Jesus was indeed more than beloved teacher and friend. He was God! The truth of Jesus’s resurrection changes everything, and I think Thomas understood that in a profound way. Being clear about the truth was more important to him than being offered hope that might prove to be false or comforting words that could be half-truths meant to make him feel better. Thomas wants to be a witness to the truth.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">The truth about Jesus was a joyful truth. The truth about environmental degradation in the 21st century is discouraging and sobering. Most people in our nation manage to ignore this truth most of the time, either by outright denying it or simply not thinking about it because it’s emotionally difficult to do so. But the truth, whether it be joyful or sad, has a way of bringing us closer to Jesus and grounding us more deeply in our faith. And standing close to Jesus on a solid foundation of faith is a good place to stand as we look at the scale of the challenge before us.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">For most of us, the first steps in bringing our faith to bear on the environmental challenges facing us is to commit ourselves to greater personal responsibility for reducing our use of toxic substances and energy, reusing items instead of throwing them away (because there isn’t really any “away” where they can go), and recycling whatever we can. Along with our small contributions toward reducing the amount of plastic waste or carbon emissions, these practices keep our awareness of environmental issues in the front of our minds and serve as an example to others.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">But we are so far down the path of environmental degradation that the amount of real difference we can make depends on our efforts toward environmental stewardship being done as one piece of systemic change, not in isolation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">So the next step for people of faith facing our environmental challenges often is to advocate for better corporate and government policies. We can write letters, visit with legislators, and use our power as voters either as citizens, members of church councils, or stockholders. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Environmental stewardship and advocacy are important, and we need to encourage each other in our efforts. But these are good practices for anyone, no matter what their faith or lack of same. To be honest, there are several fine environmental organizations that are better equipped to lead us in environmental stewardship and advocacy than are most of us in the church. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">What we can offer in ways others can’t, and, I suspect more and more, what is a call from God to the church today, is to serve as Christian witnesses to the environmental crisis. We can look at the truth about plastic pollution and climate change and, instead of ignoring it, denying it, or sharing a false hope that things will magically get better without our having to do anything inconvenient, we can simply stand prayerfully with that truth. Standing close to Jesus on a solid foundation of faith is our unique gift, a gift that gives us the inner peace, strength, courage, and love to bear witness to the truth. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Tom and Cathie, who are sitting right here with us this morning, continue to serve as both advocates and witnesses for our land and water in Nebraska by their perseverance in attending rallies, hearings, and landowners’ meetings in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline. Tom participated in civil disobedience, a now traditional way for Christians to stand as witnesses to the truth. If you want to know what witnessing to the truth looks like, you have good resources right here in your own congregation.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Witnessing to the truth requires us to do some homework and be discerning about what we read and listen to. The pursuit of truth takes some effort! We can be witnesses by gently speaking the truth in our words and actions, whether that be in conversations with family and friends, in the course of our advocacy efforts, or by standing with others in actions like rallies or marches that advocate for better policies. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Are our acts of prayerful witness successful in terms of convincing others or improving policies? We always hope they will be, but often they are not. However, that doesn’t mean we are powerless. In times like ours, it’s important to speak the truth for its own sake. That is what gives our lives meaning and also gives our souls true peace. Standing in witness is a form of prayer, and we know prayer is important even when our prayers appear to be unanswered.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Our world is wounded; pollution and climate change are intertwined with other justice issues, and there is work to be done that requires both actions of stewardship and advocacy and contemplative practices such as prayerful witness to the truth. Thomas was passionate about knowing the truth about Jesus; Jesus invited Thomas to touch his wounds. In a wounded world, faithful Christians — the ones who know and follow Jesus — don’t shy away from touching the wounds.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">If we remain faithful to truth and bear witness to it alongside Jesus, whatever happens will have meaning. That in itself is a form of hope that might serve us well in the years ahead — the hope that we live meaningful lives of integrity no matter what. Amen.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">**For an update on the incinerator, here’s a 2012 article about emissions controls being installed on it. GreenFaith was part of the coalition of activists pushing for emissions controls. <a href="http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2012/09/newark_incinerator_plant_to_ge.html"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2012/09/newark_incinerator_plant_to_ge.html</span></a></span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3898757412053197620.post-52761786371817416282018-02-19T06:30:00.000-06:002018-02-19T06:30:12.067-06:00Wilderness<div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 11px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 13px;">
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">A week ago, those of us who observe Ash Wednesday and want to encourage others to practice those things that give us a holy beginning to Lent were wondering how much of a shadow Valentine’s Day would cast over the beginning of Lent in the greater culture. What would people be thinking about Wednesday evening — hearts and flowers, or the beginning of our forty day wilderness journey? By evening, though, the nation’s focus was on yet another in a series of horrible acts of violence, this one a school shooting in Parkland, Florida that killed seventeen people. Once again, American children were killed at school. Once again, our nation’s leaders were big on thoughts and prayers but not so interested in talking about what substantial policy changes they proposed to help protect our children from deadly violence at school.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;">We are in the wilderness, and not just the figurative wilderness of our Lenten journey. We are lost in a place that is empty and disorienting and frightening. Taken as a group, the adults of our nation have forsaken our responsibilities to our children. We have said we love our nation’s children even as we allow greed and sloth and probably several other deadly sins to keep us from having policies such as those in other nations that would make our public places, including our schools, much safer places for children.</span><span style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: initial;"> </span><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">That we Americans allow sin to keep us from protecting our children is no new revelation, of course. We have been in the wilderness a long time, watching global temperatures rise along with concentrations of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere while greed and sloth and probably several other deadly sins keep our leaders from developing policies that could mitigate the effects of climate change. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">Much has been made of the hollowness of “thoughts and prayers” without action after events like mass shootings. Prayers of confession and repentance, though, necessarily result in action. Truly changed hearts result in truly changed lives. Truly changed hearts in our nation’s adults would produce genuine love that would not let sin get in the way of protecting our children. That said, we as a culture are far from that point of conversion. So long as a short-sighted desire for a perceived private gain trumps any impulse toward the public good in the hearts of voters and the people they choose to develop our public policies, we will remain in the wilderness. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">At its best, the wilderness is a place where so much is stripped away that we see ourselves as we are — our sins along with the gift of being beloved children of God — and repent. This is why many Christians choose some sort of discipline for Lent that echoes the wilderness experience; that wilderness experience can bring us closer to God when it results in penitent hearts. When we see clearly who we are and the things that tempt us and then choose to turn our backs on the temptations, we are ready to leave the wilderness. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">But some of us won’t even acknowledge that we are in the wilderness. If we refuse to acknowledge the reality of our situation, if we pretend that we can continue living as we do and putting our sinful desires before our love of God and our neighbors — including our children — we will remain stuck in the wilderness, lost in a place that is empty and disorienting and, if only we would let ourselves feel it, frightening.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">This week, much of our nation was shaken by yet another school shooting. This week also the <a href="http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/imageo/2018/02/18/rather-than-growing-like-it-should-in-winter-sea-ice-in-the-bering-sea-has-been-shrinking-dramatically/#.WopTp2aZOu4"><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none;">Bering Sea lost a shocking amount of sea ice</span></a>, something that should not be happening at all in February. The upshot of these big changes in the Arctic region is that changes in the Arctic create changes in weather patterns further south that promise to be very disruptive. An unstable Arctic means an unstable planet, and an unstable planet means a terrible legacy for our children and grandchildren. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">We are in the wilderness. Some of us want to do what we must to get out of the wilderness, and some of us don’t care enough about ourselves or others to even tell ourselves the truth about where we are. Our work is to do our own work of repentance, and then take the news — both the news of the reality of our situation on earth and the good news of repentance and restoration — to others. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-kerning: none;"><span style="font-size: large;">For everyone this year, not just observant Christians, Ash Wednesday revealed just how far astray we have gone. Jesus calls us back to the discipline of love that will make all the difference in how we live. </span></span></div>
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Betsy Blake Bennetthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12456095455189144011noreply@blogger.com0