Praying in the Darkness

The light outside us grows dimmer; the light within us grows brighter. 

We in Nebraska are going into December with much milder weather than usual. Snowfall in the late fall has been light to nonexistent in our state, and many days have seen temperatures rise past normal. Even though the calendar says December now, some of us are still getting by without boots and our heavier coats and hats, and I’ve heard more than one person say it’s hard to get into thinking about Christmas because of the mild weather.

However, no matter how mild the weather or how lacking the snow cover, the shorter days and lower sun still tell us winter is here. Here in central Nebraska, the sun at the beginning of December sets just after 5:00, and shorter days are ahead in the next three weeks. No matter where we live in the northern hemisphere, the dimming natural light is part of these weeks before Christmas. 

Along with the naturally dimmer days, our nation’s failure to acknowledge and address climate change and its consequences to our environment along with our nation’s current political and cultural backdrop can cause us to feel as if our days are growing darker with other ways. Because of this pervasive sense of darkness, it seems especially important this year to remember both the firm expectation that the natural light will indeed grow brighter and our deeper hope that other forms of brighter light will return to our lives at a time we can’t pinpoint. Because we live in Christian hope, even as the light outside us grows dimmer, our inner light shines brighter against the darkness. 

The focus of the Diocese of Nebraska’s Creation Community this year is to create and pray daily prayers appropriate to each liturgical season that remember the natural environment. Our intention is not only to add these prayers to our own regular daily prayers so we know others in our little community are praying with us, but also to offer them for use by others in the diocese in their daily prayers. 

For Advent, we will offer a short reflection and prayer for each week of Advent.

For people wanting to join us in our prayer, I’ll be sharing a short reflection and prayer for each week of Advent in this space, beginning this evening with the offering for the First Week of Advent. Look for each week’s reflection and prayer on Friday evenings.

A New Thing

At the 147th Annual Council of the Diocese of Nebraska in Scottsbluff last Saturday, we passed a resolution calling on the Episcopal Church Pension Fund and the Episcopal Church Endowment Fund to divest from the fossil fuel industry and reinvest funds in the clean energy sector. Between now and General Convention, other dioceses are expected to offer resolutions about divestment from the fossil fuel industry.

The theme of our Annual Council was “Behold, I am doing a new thing!” The people of the Diocese of Nebraska showed that we are indeed open to something new. In response to a global warming crisis that is unlike anything humankind has ever faced, a crisis that makes the future of humankind itself uncertain, we are willing to imagine a different world. We are willing to imagine a world in which we no longer burn fossil fuels to create energy, a world in which we instead harness the energy of the wind and the sun. We are willing to imagine a world in which we mitigate climate change resulting from global warming rather than continuing to accelerate global warming. With faith and hope, the people of the 147th Annual Council were willing to think about the reality of global warming and do something in response. 

The resolution itself outlined two moral reasons and two financial reasons to divest from the fossil fuel industry and reinvest in the clean energy sector. In presenting the resolution, I reviewed the resolution and then shared some of my own some of my deeper personal reasons for working hard for the church to address climate change in a significant way. Here is an excerpt:

First are the justice issues arising from climate change and Jesus’ straightforward commandments to serve the poor. Some of the world’s poorest people are being affected first and worst by climate change — people in Pacific Island nations like Kiribati, Tuvalu, and the Marshall Islands who are trying to figure out where they can go as their islands disappear; people in many places around the world who rely on traditional subsistence farming who no longer know when to plant and harvest because seasonal weather patterns have been disrupted by climate change; people in traditional Arctic villages built on permafrost — or what used to be permafrost — losing their homes and often their way of life, their culture and language; and all those affected by increasing tropical diseases, flooding, decreased water supplies as glaciers shrink or disappear, and so forth. 

Second is personal grief over the loss of familiar plants, birds, and trees. As a child, I first experienced the Holy in nature, and I still feel a special nearness to God when I feel close to God’s sacred creation. The loss of these things breaks my heart. 

Third is the knowledge that I can only begin to really comprehend of two things: first, what I know scientists tell us we will all face — us, our children, and whatever generations might come after — as global warming shoots beyond 2 degrees Celsius and goes on to 4 degrees or even 6 degrees warming, and what I know political and military analysts tell us about the breakdown of security around the world that would accompany these changes; and second, the knowledge that we — governments and industries and other institutions around the world — are failing to do much of anything right now to stop this. This isn’t hard to understand because the information isn’t there; it’s hard to understand because it is too terrible to contemplate. Somehow that has brought us to a point of inaction rather than action.

One reason we are reluctant to act significantly is that we are scared of facing the reality. Have you noticed how little we hear about global warming from politicians and pundits, or from pulpits, or even from one another in conversations? Talking about climate change is a big social taboo. One reason we sometimes get angry or annoyed with people like me who talk about such things is that we are all frightened of what is unfolding and perhaps a little ashamed at the things we have done or left undone that helped get us to this point. Along with that is that resistance to change that Mike Wagner talked about yesterday.

 At one point, Mike talked about the gap between the rate of cultural change and the rate of change most of us can readily accept. But what we needed to understand about Daniel’s ability to embrace change, he said, was that Daniel understood “You’ll be in Babylon in two weeks.” 

Graphs of carbon emissions and warming global temperatures show a similar shape to each other and a similar accelerated rate of change to those graphs of cultural change that Mike discussed. So far, the gap between those curves and a line showing our response to the global warming crisis has done nothing but increase. We won’t be in Babylon in two weeks, but we already see the beginnings of the change, and we will be in a whole new world by the middle of this century or perhaps as soon as 2030 — 16 years from now — if we continue to do too little too late. 

A church that leads in recognizing the moral issues involved in climate change and responding in a big way to this crisis — a crisis that is as much a spiritual crisis as a physical crisis — is a church that will continue to live and minister to God’s people in a changing world. I ask you to be that church and vote in favor of this resolution. 

I ask your prayers for other dioceses that will be looking at divestment and reinvestment between now and General Convention in 2015. Please pray for those of us working on this issue, that we might have the courage to work for a strong resolution at General Convention, the wisdom to do that work well, and hope to sustain us as we contemplate this issue.

Climate Update and Questions for the Church

Environmental Summary: Introduction

Both locally and globally, the church’s work and welfare is bound up with environmental stability. As part of my work in the area of environmental stewardship, I send periodic summaries or updates to Bishop Barker to help him stay informed about what is happening with the environment, and particularly what is unfolding in the world of climate science. We are sharing this summary more widely as there has been lots of new information recently that will continue to have big impacts on things such as food production, health, the world economy, and the spiritual needs of people in the 21^st century.

The original document from October 28, which begins below, includes information from the first part of the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report around the physical basis for climate change. Since then, information from the upcoming second part of the report about the predicted impacts of climate change was leaked and shared in a November 1 New York Times article with the headline Climate Change Seen Posing Risk to Food Supplies. The article says that the second part of the report will tell us that food supplies are expected to decrease by 2% each remaining decade of this century. Elizabeth Kolbert posted Is It Too Late to Prepare for Climate Change? in response to the leaked information, writing: “The force of the report comes simply from assembling all the data in one place; the summary reads like a laundry list of the apocalypse—flood, drought, disease, starvation.” She goes on to talk about the even more dire impacts for non-human species of animals and plants. (Our lives are of course inextricably bound up with theirs, so these are indirectly dire impacts for humankind as well.)
Then Typhoon Haiyan came along and devastated the Philippines. Its wind speed at landfall was 195 mph, the strongest winds at landfall ever recorded. We can’t say what influence global warming does or does not have on any particular storm, but we do know that the overall pattern of severe weather is changing and that global warming provides the conditions in the oceans and the atmosphere that are known to amplify severe storms. At the UN climate conference now meeting in Warsaw, Philippine representative Yeb Sano gave an emotional plea to “stop the madness”. Knowing that people at home had no food after the storm, he vowed to fast during the climate talks until significant progress is made to help the nations most immediately vulnerable to the effects of climate change. 

October 28 summary

September was the 343^rd consecutive month with global temperatures warmer than the twentieth century average.

Two reports in recent weeks have given us updated information about climate change and predictions for the future.

IPCC Fifth Assessment Report

The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) 5^th Assessment Report for the group of scientists looking at the physical science basis for climate change got a lot of popular press for saying that there is a very high probability (approaching certainty) that climate change is for the most part the result of human activity. The version of the report published for policymakers is found here.

But there are other things worth the attention of non-scientists. One is the mention for the first time of geoengineering as a possible way to prevent catastrophic warming now that certain tipping points have either been reached or are soon to be reached. Along with the unknowns about the long-term effects of geoengineering – either finding a way to remove significant amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it or “solar radiation management” (constructing ways of reflecting enough sunlight away from the earth to cool the planet) -- this addition is noteworthy because it signals something about the critical nature of climate change at this point. Enough feedback loops are in play that even if governments and industries were inclined to make huge cutbacks in greenhouse gas emissions, there would still be some degree of temperature rise. And the political reality is that those cutbacks in emissions to any truly significant degree are not in the works.

Some other key findings were summarized well in Mother Jones magazine in an earlier article entitled 5 Terrifying Statements in the Leaked Climate Report.  The five, which the article discusses in some detail, are these:

·         We're on course to change the planet in a way "unprecedented in hundreds to thousands of years.

·         Ocean acidification is "virtually certain" to increase. 

·         Long-term, sea level rise could be 5 to 10 meters. 

·         This also implies a substantial melting of the Greenland ice sheet.

·         Much of the carbon we've emitted will stay in the atmosphere for a millennium…even after we've stopped emitting it. 

One more thing to note about the IPCC report is that their findings are very conservative as the work is done by reaching consensus among scientists. Many individual scientists see things deteriorating more rapidly and more severely than the IPCC report indicates.

“The projected timing of climate departure from recent variability”:  Within a generation, sooner for the tropics

Camilo Mora and others from the University of Hawai’i published a report in the October 10 issue of Nature that predicts when various locations in the world will reach the point of climate departure from recent variability – i.e. when the average temperature of that location’s coolest year will be greater than the average temperature of its hottest year for the period from 1860 to 2005. In the University of Hawai’i press release about the report, Camilo Mora says: “The results shocked us. Regardless of the scenario, changes will be coming soon. Within my generation, whatever climate we were used to will be a thing of the past.”

This graphic from The Washington Post shows expected dates of this big change for several cities. If little changes, the average year for climate departure overall will be 2047 (yes, only 34 years from now); if greenhouse gas emissions were to be stabilized, the average year becomes 2069. Of particular concern to us in the Diocese of Nebraska given our companion dioceses in the Dominican Republic and South Sudan, tropical areas are expected to experience this change within the next decade. Chicago has a date of 2052 without mitigation and 2081 with stabilization of emissions.

With “business as usual”

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/hot-spots/506/

With mitigation:

http://apps.washingtonpost.com/g/page/world/hot-spots/506/

There is debate among environmentalists about exactly how dire all of this is: do we face a very changed world that still supports human life, or are we looking at total human extinction? (Guy McPherson is a scientist who thinks the most recent evidence points to the latter. While I’m not yet convinced, his moving reflection on how we live that is the second half of this short video (starting around 2:17) can really speak to either option.) 

That we are even asking the question, though, is certainly cause for theological reflection that may help the church be an effective pastoral presence as the reality of climate change breaks through to increasing numbers of people.

Effects on people living in poverty

The Yale Environment 360 Digest reports on a study by the U.K.’s Overseas Development Institute that says that increased extreme weather events will make poverty worse in parts of the world that already are among the poorest. The study suggests that aid money should be spent on reducing the risks to people from extreme weather events instead of only on humanitarian relief after a disaster.

As the church looks at ways to respond to the challenges of climate change, this sort of study should be useful.

And lest we think the phenomena of climate refuges and of climate change affecting the poorest people first and worst are things that happen only in other countries, the Huffington Post ran Life on the Edge of Climate Change this week. The author, Babs Roaming Buffalo Bagwell, is the senior public relations and media liaison for The Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians. She describes how climate change affects her community every day, writing: Some may be ignoring this reality, but we don't have that luxury. When the water's edge is at your doorstep, sea level rise and extreme rainstorms aren't political, they're personal.

What do we have for this? And what/how do we teach our children?

At our Annual Council Eucharist, Bishop Barker brought our environmental reality into the homily: “We are in fact living in a moment of unprecedented challenge and change for humankind.  We are hastening towards global environmental disaster.  In the lifetime of the youngest people now dwelling on earth, everything changes.” Bishop Barker’s question from the show The Book of Mormon – “What do you have for this?” – is a question that we might ask repeatedly as we learn about climate change and reflect on the church’s response to this most urgent and global issue.

As I was writing this summary, Wendy Bell, a Unitarian minister I met at the Climate Reality Leadership Training this summer, posted on Facebook that she had just read the most pessimistic climate report she had yet seen. A little later, she posted this question:

Ministers: If you had been a chaplain on the Titanic, how might you have understood your role? DRE's [Directors of Religious Education]: What would you have taught the children?

What are our roles as ministers – lay or ordained – in the Episcopal Church? How do we best live as the Body of Christ in a world that is in big trouble that is so seldom acknowledged? To use Walter Brueggemann’s term, how do we break through the numbness? And what do we do then?

And in light of what we know we can expect in their lifetimes, what do we teach the children? The latter is a huge question for the church that is seldom if ever discussed. What can we teach them about God and the world and their relationship with Christ and with one another that can prepare them for today’s world and for whatever the remainder of this century brings? How do we best model and teach the classic Christian disciplines of prayer, study, and love for God and one another so that our children are well-equipped spiritually to be the Body of Christ in a changed and changing world?

In many ways, it’s no different from what we’ve always done, preparing our children for whatever life might bring them. At this point of human history, though, when we know how fragile the future is for everyone (and when the adults in leadership positions are doing so little to ensure their future), it seems to be especially important to equip our children with the spiritual practices, traditions, and knowledge that will help them develop spiritually resilience that can last throughout their lifetimes.

Clergy opposed to Keystone XL pipeline

Realizing that our reasons for opposing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline rested on Christ's commandment to love God and our neighbors, and thinking that this viewpoint should be part of the wider discussion about this issue, Fr. Don Huber and I wrote this statement and sent it around to other clergy in the Diocese of Nebraska that we thought might have an interest in the issue. It has been published in the Lincoln Journal Star, the Grand Island Independent, and the Alliance Times Herald.

As clergy of the Episcopal Church in Nebraska, we oppose construction of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline which would transport bitumen from the Athabasca Tar Sands to refineries in Texas. Our concerns about this project are rooted in Christ’s commandment to love our neighbors and in our belief that creation care is a foundation of local and global love of others, ourselves and our creator.

The commandment to love our neighbors requires considering the effects of our actions on others and on ourselves. Scripture calls us to be the tillers and caretakers of the earth, the stewards of creation. Our tradition as articulated in The Book of Common Prayer teaches us that we are fellow workers in God’s creation, that we need to use the resources of nature wisely and reverently so that generations yet to come may have life, breath and cause to continue praising God for the bounteous gifts of creation. Using our resources wisely and reverently means acknowledging and remembering that they come from God and that our use of them is not solely for our own immediate gain, but for the good of all of creation.

The mining of the Athabasca Tar Sands has already brought disaster to the First Nations people who have lived along the Athabasca River for generations. Reduced river flow and contamination of the water and land has impacted fishing and hunting and people’s health. The area being mined is in the Boreal Forest, a fragile and essential habitat for migratory birds and an ecosystem whose continued ability to function as the largest carbon storage area on earth is essential to mitigation of global warming which causes climate change.

Globally the impact of processing and burning the oil extracted from the Athabasca Tar Sands will further accelerate climate change. The world is already experiencing violent storms, record heat, flooding and droughts as greenhouse gas emissions have reached a critical level. Surely a project that would accelerate greenhouse gas emissions and the resulting acceleration of global warming does not serve God and God’s purposes for humankind and the rest of creation.

As Nebraskans and others voice our thoughts on the pipeline to the United States State Department, the political question being asked is: Is the proposed pipeline in the national interest? This is an important question, but we believe that we have a greater obligation to ask some moral questions. The moral questions go further than the political question, asking: Does the proposed pipeline harm or hurt humanity as a whole? Is building it consistent with the wise and reverent use of creation? If we as a people and a nation agree to the building of this pipeline, will we be acting as good stewards of creation? We believe the answer to these moral questions is no. We believe we cannot further endanger the earth’s precious fresh water reserves; we cannot further endanger water which supports the crops that feed our nation and the world; we cannot feed our greedy desire for cheap oil at the expense of our and others’ health and food and our children’s future.

Locally, the possibility of a pipeline leak over the Ogallala Aquifer risks devastating consequences for people over a vast area of our state who depend on the aquifer for drinking water. This concern is well-founded because of the history of leaks in such pipelines and is shared by us, our Governor and our Senators. A foreign company coming into our state and appropriating land to build this pipeline that endangers the people of the state is a great injustice to those who depend on the land and water for their livelihoods and their very lives. It is at its best risky business and at its worst morally reprehensible.

The Keystone XL pipeline will provide some immediate gain for some people. We must conclude, though, that while in the short-run it may serve financial gain for a few, it doesn’t serve the long term health and well being of humanity and creation. Given this choice, we oppose the granting of a permit for construction of the Keystone XL pipeline and call on others to join us in choosing life and health.

****

These are the names of the sponsors as listed on October 5:

Deacon Betsy Blake Bennett, St. Stephen’s, Grand Island

The Rev. Don Huber, St. Matthew’s, Alliance and Calvary, Hyannis

Deacon John Adam, St. Matthew’s, Alliance and Calvary, Hyannis

The Rev. Scott Barker, Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska

The Rev. Carol Ann Bullard, Holy Apostles, Mitchell

The Rev. Jason Emerson, Church of the Resurrection, Omaha

The Rev. William Graham, St. Mary’s – Holly, Rushville and St. Joseph’s, Mullen

Deacon Christine Grosh, Trinity Memorial Church, Crete

Deacon Cheryl Harris, St. Matthew's Church, Alliance and Calvary, Hyannis

Deacon Nancy W. Huston, St. Martha’s Church, Papillion

Deacon Colleen Lewis, St. Luke’s, Kearney

The Rev. Gretchen R. Naugle, Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska

The Rev. Jeffrey S.F. Nelson, Church of Our Savior, North Platte

The Rev. Larry Parrish, St. Thomas, Falls City

The Rev. Dr. Charles A. Peek, St. Stephen’s, Grand Island

The Rev. Chris Plantz, St. Hilda’s, Kimball; St. Paul’s, Ogallala; St. George’s, Oshkosh; Good Shepherd, Harrisburg

Deacon Kim Roberts, St Martin of Tours, Omaha

The Rev. Ellie Thober, Grace Church, Columbus

The Rev. Ruth Tomlinson, St. David's, Lincoln

Archdeacon James Visger, Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska

The Rev. Judi A. Yeates, Episcopal Diocese of Nebraska

A New Thing for a New World

While sitting and waiting for my turn to vote in the election of our new bishop last Saturday, the idea came to me of writing an open letter to whomever we elected that day, a letter that would talk about the importance of our diocese putting and keeping environmental issues before us in a more intentional way. Like most everyone who was at the election, once we elected The Rev. J. Scott Barker , turned in our credentials, and got home (though my getting home, unlike that of others, was an easy and happily eco-friendly matter since I live near the Pro-Cathedral), I was exhausted. The idea of an open letter was forgotten.

Sunday morning, I woke up eager to get up to Grand Island and share the news of the election with folks at St. Stephen’s. It was exciting to think about the new possibilities for ministry in several areas that might emerge in our diocese under Scott’s leadership. As I do most Sundays, I got up early enough to have a leisurely breakfast and check the weather report and news headlines before heading to church. The news of the day quickly reminded me that there are things about which we – all of us, in the church and out of the church – need to be talking much more than we are. There are things we need to be thinking through and doing that we are instead putting out of our minds and neglecting doing. I remembered my idea about writing to our bishop-elect about these issues.

From Sunday on the news stories brought the issue of climate change both closer to home and closer to a place where ignoring the issue was becoming more difficult for many people. When I picked up the Sunday papers from our porch, the Omaha World Herald featured a story about the Missouri River flooding: Even tamed, river a threat. When I checked the weather forecast on The Weather Channel website, there were links to articles such as Expert says Tornadoes 106% Above Average and California’s June Oddity about the highly unusual amount of rain in California in early June. The New York Times online ran an article with the headline Food Supply Under Strain on a Warming Planet.

As the week went on, records for high temperatures were broken in many American cities, fires burned in Arizona (the maps and photos on Wildfire Today give some idea of the size of the affected area), people along the Platte River as well as the Missouri were warned of flooding, and temperatures continued to be high in the eastern part of the country.

It seemed this week that more people were making a connection between all of these “extreme weather” events and climate change. There was news of a timely Stanford University study predicting that “large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly by the middle of this century even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years.” The study talks about an “irreversible rise” – yes, irreversible – for the tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere if – and our hope is tied to negating this antecedent ‘if’ clause – greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase. On Wednesday, Plomomedia put this illustrated and narrated version of Bill McKibben’s essay A link between climate change and Joplin tornadoes? Never! on YouTube:

And today Richard Black of the BBC reports that the observed climate warming since 1995 – the warming that seemed to match the predictions of climate scientists – has now, with the accumulation of one more year of data, reached the point of statistical significance.

With that sample of the kinds of things we know about and are thinking about with regard to the climate, we come to the idea of an open letter to our bishop-elect, Scott Barker. While I hope to see the sort of leadership from Scott that would be helpful as we work with this issue, it hardly seems right to address a letter to a bishop-elect asking him to take on the task of leading us into the coming years with our eyes wide open to the realities of the world around us as if the bishop is the only one with any responsibility for this work. Rather, it seems better to have people already in the Diocese of Nebraska ready to talk with our new bishop about the impact of these issues in this place and to present creative ideas for him to consider as he gets his feet on the ground. Instead of an open letter to our new bishop, then, consider this an open plea to the diocese as a whole to be ever mindful of climate change and other environmental issues as we do ministry in our diocese and in our parishes. Given the lack of questions during the walkabout about either the effects of climate change on our programs or the church’s response to this pressing need in our world, we have some work to do to get to that level of awareness.

I don’t know off the top of my head the particulars of what these radical changes in our world might mean to our planning, to our living out our mission. That’s something we have to tackle as a diocese. What is clear to me is this: we can discern where we go with our knowledge about these changes only if we truly know and accept the reality of where climate change leaves us. Climate change is no longer a separate issue. It isn’t something that a handful of people in the diocese think we should address because it relates to the Millennium Development Goals or because it shows that the Episcopal Church cares about the world. All of those are still among the reasons to do this work, but the failure of our institutions – governmental, religious, civic – as a whole to have done this work early enough and well enough leaves us with something much more urgent and much bigger, something we can’t continue to leave unacknowledged most of the time.

We must do some triage; we must ask which elements of our current life as a diocese are essential and which things might be, while good and worthwhile in themselves, expendable or open to revision in this time of rapid change. We need to ask what new elements of ministry might help us better minister to the world and to our own faith community in this century. The whole of what we are doing now is at best unsustainable. Insofar as it lulls us into assuming that the way we are living is spiritually sound it is worse than unsustainable; insofar as it leads us to think that the way we have lived and the way we have done church in the past is still the way to follow Christ today, we are leading people into sin.

We will change in this century, while many of us are still living on this earth. Staying the same is not a long-term option. We can choose to make significant changes (and some of these will be difficult changes) now in order to mitigate the effects of climate change on our lives in the future, or we can choose to continue to do business as usual, church as usual, for a few more years until change of a graver nature is ours with no more choice in the matter. The first choice gives us opportunity to do a new thing with joy; the latter choice might give us some short-term comfort. As we sang at the Election Council Eucharist, "Grant us wisdom, grant us courage for the living of these days."

Rich in Soul

Annual Council ended today, and from where I sat it looked like an energizing and renewing event for most of us in attendance. The focus on mission “From every family, language, people and nation” was centered on the establishment of a global companion relationship among our diocese and the Dioceses of the Dominican Republic and of Twic East in Southern Sudan.  The theme of mission showed up throughout our meeting, though.

At the Council Eucharist, the processional hymn was “God of grace and God of glory” (Hymn 594). The words “shame our wanton, selfish gladness, rich in things and poor in soul” summarize a large part of the importance of connecting our spiritual lives with a concern for the environment. Habits of over-consumption that harm our planet also harm our souls. “Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, lest we miss thy kingdom’s goal” is a good prayer for us as we consider the church’s role in addressing the environmental challenges of our time.

Thank you to everyone who spoke with me about environmental stewardship during Annual Council! It was exciting to hear about what is happening in some of our parishes and to find others who are enthusiastic about taking care of the Earth. Because of the timing of the environmental stewardship presentation, some folks who were interested in certain resources weren’t able to pick them up at the display before leaving for home, so here are some links:

The brochure about eco-palms is available here from the Center for Integrated Natural Resources and Agricultural Management at the University of Minnesota.

Click here for information about the GreenFaith Certification Program for congregations. Click on this link to Episcopal Life Online for more information about grants available to Episcopal parishes who want to apply for the program. New Green Opportunity for Parishes was an earlier post on this blog about the program.


Someone asked for a list of the books on display; please send me a message if you want that list! I'm also happy to send the page of suggested first steps toward a greener parish to anyone who wants a copy.


And for those who liked the story about the treasures we discovered during our October 10 clean-up, the post about that, Grace, is here. 

"Save us from weak resignation to the evils we deplore...Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, serving thee whom we adore."

Water

Blog Action Day

Today bloggers around the world are participating in Blog Action Day, an annual occasion for bloggers to talk about a selected topic from each blog’s unique perspective. This year's topic for Blog Action Day is water.

Nebraskans know the importance of water. We are blessed with the Ogallala aquifer as a source of water for drinking and irrigation. We treasure our rivers and appreciate our lakes and ponds for fishing, boating, and watering livestock. Wetlands are an important element of our ecological system, and take on special importance when migrating birds, including the Sandhill cranes, come through along the central flyway.  Pollution and depletion of water resources is a constant concern for Nebraskans desiring a healthy, sustainable environment. The current controversy about a proposed TransCanada pipeline crossing the Nebraska Sandhills has highlighted the importance of these wetlands and of the Ogallala aquifer to our economy and our way of life.

Christians know the importance of water. The water of baptism is central to our liturgy. During the Thanksgiving over the Water in our baptismal liturgy, the celebrant recounts some of the events of the salvation story in which water was a central element: the creation story, the Exodus through the Red Sea, the baptism of Jesus.

The Episcopal Church is committed to the Millennium Development Goals, and our concern for the environment springs in part from that commitment. Along with being a piece of the goal of environmental sustainability, access to clean water is a key piece of the goals related to children’s health, maternal health, and preventing diseases.  If we care for the poor, we will care about having clean, sustainable water resources around the world. Jesus said, “Whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.” (Matthew 10:42)

Seasons: Loving our Neighbors

Thursday was the sort of early spring day we in Nebraska have been awaiting all winter. The sun was shining, the wind wasn’t particularly high, we could see bits of color where crocuses and snowdrops were starting to bloom, and birds were singing. The Earth calendar says it’s now officially spring; the church calendar says it’s still in the Lenten season that started back in snowy February. And despite the warmth of the late March sun, the air is still cool and there’s another chilly rain coming, reminding us that it’s still very early in the spring. I heard someone this week remark that though spring is now here, she wouldn’t feel as if we were fully in springtime until Easter; once Easter arrives, we know that spring is really here and the heaviest winter clothes can be put away for several months.

My family and I lived in New Zealand for four years before moving to south central Nebraska. With southern hemisphere seasons the opposite of ours, The Earth seasons and liturgical seasons are easily separated there; the Lenten journey begins in late summer and ends with an autumnal Easter. It’s easy for us in Nebraska to forget that our liturgical calendar that arranges the church seasons in close order with the Earth seasons in the temperate part of the northern hemisphere doesn’t work the same way for people in other parts of the world. Our own immediate weather and our own immediate liturgical experience are what we know most easily, but we need to look beyond them to begin to understand the experience of people in other places.


As Easter approaches, even this early northern hemisphere spring, this not-quite-fully-arrived spring, is a great contrast to the cold and snowy winter we had this year. Stu Ostro, Senior Meteorologist for The Weather Channel, said that the best word to sum up this winter in the United States is ‘relentless’ -- one storm after another, one cold front after another. In a recent blog post, he gives a good overview of this winter and talks about the various climatological factors that came together to bring us so much snow and cold. He gives a fairly detailed look at the role of El Nino, both in the ways in which this was a typical El Nino year and the interactions with other factors that made it atypical in some ways. There’s a good discussion of the NAO (North Atlantic Oscillation) and the AO (Arctic Oscillation), both blocking patterns that bring Arctic air much farther south than normal. These factors this year gave us more cold farther south than usual in the United States, while Canada had a warmer than normal year, witnessed by many of us when we saw the snow conditions in Vancouver during the Winter Olympics. Finally, he talks about the role of climate change in all of this, noting that as our atmosphere warms, we can expect “increased precipitation extremes”.

Canada wasn’t the only place warmer than normal the past few months. In the southern hemisphere, for example, Western Australia sweltered through its hottest summer on record. 

A draft paper from NASA concludes that “global temperature continued to rise rapidly in the past decade, despite large year-to-year fluctuations associated with the El Nino-La Nina cycle of tropical ocean temperature,” and it predicts that a new record twelve-month global temperature will be set in 2010. In the Climate Progress blog, Joe Romm, quoting extensively from an e-mail message from climate scientist James Hansen, summarized some of the main points  for folks who don’t want to wade through the entire paper. As in Stu Ostro’s post, there is consideration of how various factors interact to determine both particular weather events and overall climate trends.

As Christians, we are called to love our neighbors; in this global village in which we all now live, loving our neighbors means caring about people all over the world as well as those who live in our own neighborhood, city, or state. Most of us are sympathetic to people in need in other parts of the world. We responded with great generosity to the survivors of the earthquake in Haiti, for example, and we are interested in knowing how the relief effort is going and what else we might do to help.

In the same way, it’s important for us to understand not only our own immediate weather and the personal and economic effects it has, but for us to be aware of the global climate and how that affects our global neighbors as well as ourselves. This week, a tiny island that was claimed by both India and Bangladesh disappeared , covered by the rising ocean. This island was not inhabited, but other nearby islands – and, very significantly, the coastal areas of Bangladesh – are. What lies ahead for these global neighbors?

As the Lenten season concludes with Holy Week, we might spend some time considering the global climate. Where are we headed, and what does it mean for ourselves and our neighbors? At this time, how can we best follow Christ, who taught us that in serving others we serve him? Looking past our own immediate experience of Earth seasons to enter into the experience of our liturgical season will help us first to look at the challenges our global neighbors face, and then to enter into the fullness of Easter and the fullness of spring with renewed hearts centered on serving Christ through serving our neighbors.

Christmastide: Incarnation

"Praise the LORD from the earth, you sea-monsters and all deeps; fire and hail, snow and fog, tempestuous wind, doing his will.” (Psalm 148: 7-8)

Christmas celebrations in the Diocese of Nebraska this year were shaped by the winter weather. Some parishes, including our parish of St. Stephen’s in Grand Island, went ahead with Christmas Eve plans knowing that attendance might be down a bit because of snow or ice, while others cancelled or rescheduled services.

In south central Nebraska, the Christmas Eve blizzard watch had been dropped for a winter storm warning. (Our true blizzard was to come on Christmas Day.) Before the weather became a big factor, I had planned to be at both our late afternoon family-oriented service and our 10:30 Eucharist. On Christmas Eve, though, knowing that weather conditions were supposed to deteriorate sometime overnight, we started out for the earlier service thinking that as we drove back to Hastings afterwards, we could determine how safe it would be to drive back up for the second service. We were surprised when we got to the edge of town and into more open country! It was clear that the roads were bad and quickly becoming much worse, and so, despite disappointment at the prospect of missing both Christmas Eve services, we turned around and went back home.

Our daughter’s church in Hastings, First Congregational UCC, had a 6:00 Christmas Eve service, so we joined her for that before driving very carefully back to our house for a much more leisurely supper than we can usually squeeze in between Christmas Eve services. The entire evening was a very different experience, not what we had had in mind and not without disappointment about missing the celebration at St. Stephen’s , but a good start to Christmas nonetheless. In the end, the reason for our evening turning out the way it did was a fresh reminder of what we celebrate at Christmas: God’s Incarnation; God being born as a human being, as one of God’s own creatures, to live among us on Earth.

While we find the terms or categories ‘body’ and ‘soul’ useful, we human beings are a complex combination of these elements. Some of the ancient Greeks thought that we had pre-existent souls that were inserted into bodies and that at death continued to exist without a body. In the Nicene Creed, in contrast, Christians emphasize the resurrection of the body, the hope of everlasting life in a new body, not a bodiless eternity. Our sacramental sense in the Episcopal Church also points to the intertwining of the physical with the spiritual. We use physical elements – water, bread, wine, oil – to deepen our experience of God’s grace, and in our liturgy we move around in physical space instead of sitting still, trying to leave our bodies behind.

Pointing to the connection evident in the Hebrew between Adam and his creation from Earth, Robert Alter (The Five Books of Moses, p. 21) translates Genesis 2:7 this way: “…then the LORD God fashioned the human, humus from the soil, and blew into his nostrils the breath of life, and the human became a living creature.” This is who we are; we are connected both to the Earth, to the physical world, and to our creator God, whose breath of divine spirit gives us life.

We often talk about our souls and our spiritual lives as if they are something separate from our bodies and the rest of life; perhaps we do that to help us remember that we have souls and need to tend to their health, or perhaps we do it to compartmentalize our lives and keep God at a distance. At times we need to give special attention to our spiritual lives because our culture makes it difficult to keep a healthy balance among the variety of human needs, but we err if we take the physical world – and our bodily experience – to be second-rate. We are inextricably connected to the physical world. Our health, both body and soul, is tied to the health of the Earth.

This year, the blizzard’s shaping of our Christmas celebrations is a reminder of our connection to the Earth. Just as the Holy Infant was born in a stable, the last place most people would have looked for the birth of the Messiah, so Christ gets born again in our hearts in unexpected places. We might expect to find the wonder of Christmas in the beautiful liturgy and music of a Midnight Mass or the joyful retelling of the story in a children’s Christmas Eve pageant, places where we have found it before, but we can also find the wonder as we look out alone on wind-driven snow. Our God came to live here among us on Earth, and so we can find God in the earthly elements of wind, cold, and snow.

We are not isolated from the world around us, and we Nebraskans are certainly not unaffected by the weather. Who we are and what we do is bound up with the natural world around us; and who we are and what we do -- and what it is like to live as a human being on this Earth -- are important to our God, who became Incarnate as a baby born in a stable in Bethlehem.

A Greener Annual Council

The Diocese of Nebraska’s Annual Council was held last Thursday through Saturday in North Platte. Thanks to Nancy Striebel and her team from our host parish, Church of Our Savior, we were able to recycle plastic bottles, aluminum cans, and paper at Annual Council. I heard several positive comments about the recycling; many of us are used to recycling at home and at work, and were very pleased to have the opportunity to do so during this meeting.

Two of the resolutions that were passed at Annual Council have to do with the environment. The 76th General Convention this summer endorsed the Earth Charter. One of our resolutions was a Response to the Earth Charter; it encourages each congregation in the Diocese to “perform an audit of their use of paper, plastic, water, furnishings, etc., and take action to reduce, reuse, recycle, and reclaim resources.” Another resolution that is a local response to an action of General Convention is the affirmation and adoption of the Five Marks of Mission articulated by the Anglican Consultative Council. One of those five marks is this: “To strive to safeguard the integrity of creation and sustain and renew the life of the earth”. Both of these resolutions call us to be more intentional in our stewardship of God’s creation.

A growing awareness of environmental concerns was evident in several reports and in conversations with people. There was a presentation from the EGG (Episcopalians Going Green) team from St. Matthew’s in Lincoln; some of the Sowers Fund projects also featured activities such as reusing, recycling, and gardening. People stopping by the Green Sprouts display shared efforts their parishes were making to be greener, while others shared their intention to lead their parish in that direction.

The Green Sprouts presentation talked about connecting with nature as a necessity for our spiritual nurture and health; about our activities during 2009; and issued an invitation to have The Conversation, to talk about environmental climate change in a political climate where a recent Pew poll found fewer Americans believing that global warming exists or is a serious problem even as the scientific evidence has become very strong. Where is the Church called? How do we keep the conversation open?

For parishes wanting to be more intentional about environmental stewardship but not knowing where to begin, the following information was available at the Green Sprouts display:

Ideas to begin greening a parish…

Turn off lights that aren’t needed.

Change from conventional lightbulbs to compact fluorescent lightbulbs.

Reduce the use of paper. Use both sides of the paper when making multipage copies. Use e-mail in place of paper mail for parishioners who are online.

Unplug computers and other office equipment at night.

Fix dripping faucets.

Turn down the thermostat in the winter; turn it up in the summer.

Recycle paper, plastic, metal – whatever you can.

Use mugs instead of Styrofoam or paper cups at coffee hour. Use the dishes in the kitchen cupboards for parish dinners, or have people bring their own place settings to potlucks.

Consider purchasing Eco-Palms for Palm Sunday.

Have a Green Fair around the Rogation Days or St. Francis Day. Plan activities that highlight environmental stewardship. Plant a tree; worship outdoors; have a contest to see who can find the most creative ways to reuse existing items.

Organize carpools for the parish. Where possible, encourage parishioners to walk or bike to church.

Reduce or eliminate the use of lawn chemicals; landscape with plants that won’t require much water. Create landscaping with stewardship in mind: “A wild area in a churchyard does not show that no one cares about the place. In fact, it shows just the opposite.”**

Talk about environmental issues. How do they connect with our baptismal covenant? How does the Millennium Development Goal of environmental sustainability connect with the other MDG’s?

Involve the Sunday school and youth groups, and let them teach the adults some things about caring for creation.

____

**From How Many Lightbulbs Does It Take To Change A
Christian?