More Fire and Rain

“Fire and rain” was the topic of a post here on June 12 concerned with bidding prayers for people affected by wildfires in the western United States, people affected by flooding in Florida and Alabama, and for wisdom as a new study suggested we were reaching an important tipping point that would result in a very different planet biologically than the one on which we live and on which humankind has developed.

In recent days, new instances of fire and rain have added to these concerns.

High heat and “epic dryness” are feeding ten separate fires in Colorado, along with fires in New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming, Montana, Arizona, California, and Nevada. USA Today quotes Ron Roth of the Rocky Mountain Area Coordinating Center saying, “The whole Central Rocky Mountain range is a tinderbox.” We have felt the heat in Nebraska. The town of Benkelman hit a monthly record high temperature of 114 degrees on Wednesday; the previous high temperature there for June --111 degrees -- was set in 1936.

This graphic shows the temperature records broken so far this month in the continental United States.

Since that June 12 post, Minnesotans experienced record flooding in Duluth, and tropical storm Debby dumped incredible amounts of rain on Florida and southern Georgia.

All of the destruction has been covered by news sources, and some have even connected the dots among the heat, the fires, the floods, and climate change caused by global warming. What most news sources can’t cover is the question of how people of faith can best respond to these events. We respond in a variety of ways; here are four ways we can move beyond a feeling of being overwhelmed or helpless to a place of faith and service:

1. Pray. (See A MajorTipping Point; Fire and Rain.) Pray for the victims of fires and floods and those in the path of destruction; pray for firefighters and rescue workers working in extremely difficult conditions; pray for communities that will never again be the same. Pray that we can find a way to live that gives the next generation and the one after that a decent shot at living good lives. Pray for forgiveness “for our waste and pollution of your creation, and our lack of concern for those who come after us” (Book of Common Prayer, p. 268), for we are responsible corporately – all of us together – for climate change to have been allowed to progress to this point.

2. Give to relief efforts such as Episcopal Relief and Development to help the people most directly affected by these disasters.

3. Advocate for stronger policies to mitigate global warming. Speak up as citizens, consumers, workers, and church members. Let our leaders know you are concerned about climate change and its effects on people today and in the future. This video – a TEDx talk by Dave Roberts – explains climate change so that people who want to speak up about it feel prepared to do so:

4. Live in hope. This morning’s Daily Office lesson from Romans (Romans 5:1-11) reminds us that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character,  and character produces hope, and hope does not disappointment us…”  Christians live in hope, not only hope of eternal life, but hope in the coming of the Kingdom of God. This is hope that calls us to live into the kingdom every day of our lives, serving as the Body of Christ in the world, encouraging one another, and living in expectant hope.

Praying the News

Every day there are news stories about suffering caused by pollution or climate change. Some of these items are highlighted in posts on this blog, but many of them don’t get mentioned. I’m sharing some examples in this post and asking for prayers for the people in these situations.

The practice of praying the news was explored in an earlier post (Praying the News: Keystone XLPipeline).  For today’s post, I’m suggesting a couple of prayers from The Book of Common Prayer to frame the prayers for these particular concerns. These concerns are all related to climate change; a brief explanation with links to news stories is included for each concern in the prayer list. If others find meaning in praying the news, I’ll be posting something similar fairly regularly.

Almighty God, in giving us dominion over things on earth you made us fellow workers in your creation: Give us wisdom and reverence so to use the resources of nature, that no one may suffer from our abuse of them, and that generations yet to come may continue to praise you for your bounty; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Collect For the Conservation of Natural Resources (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 827)

Please pray for:

People affected by floods in Thailand.  At least 381 peoplehave been killed in the worst flooding in Thailand in half a century. With the loss of rice crops, global rice prices are expected to rise, creating more hardship down the road. According to CNN, relief agencies describe a “humanitarian crisis”, with concern about water- and insect-borne diseases as well as those people in isolated areas who have been cut off for weeks without food or aid or any kind.

People in U.S. coastal areas making difficult decisions as sea levels rise.  Communities in coastal areas of the United States are considering the options as the reality of sea level rise is recognized. In south Florida, there are concerns about water supplies and existing storm drainage systems. This post from Cape Cod’s Climatide blog talks about the need to make some hard decisions soon, and people’s reluctance to do so because public officials haven’t wanted to take on the issue of sea level rise and thus give the false impression that it can’t be all that serious.

People of the Navajo Nation.  Sand dunes in the Navajo Nation are moving, a sign of the increasing aridity of the Southwest. USGS geologist Dr. Margaret Hiza Redsteer’s study of these changes “points up the vulnerability of indigenous people who live on land she calls ‘just on the edge of being habitable.’ “ Dr. Redsteer says: “The annual moisture here has historically been just enough to get by. When there is even a small change, there is a huge effect.”

People in the American Northeast who have lost power or suffered injuries or loss of property in this weekend’s record snowstorm.  Read The WeatherChannel’s account of injuries and damages. Weather Underground’s Dr. Jeff Masters puts this storm in historic perspective and discusses its connection to climate change.

As we pray for others, we might also 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:

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.

Prayer for Joy in God’s Creation (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 814)

Loving Our Neighbors in 2011

Part 2 of 3. Gospel for Proper 25A.

This is the second of three posts looking at what loving our neighbors requires when we live in a global community and climate change is already bringing hardship to many parts of the world.

A necessary step to loving our neighbors today is to care enough to know what is happening to other people in other places and to have enough curiosity to wonder why.  Indifference and apathy are incompatible with compassion.

Here is a sampling of a few of the things happening in our world now:

·         The drought and famine in East Africa (see Eastern Africa: Drought and Famine posts from July) continues. In a recent article in Nature entitled We thought trouble was coming, Chris Funk explains how the Climate Hazard Group from UC Santa Barbara forecast the drought. One of the factors they had considered in making the prediction was warming in the Indian Ocean as a result of climate change. Warming in the Indian Ocean had been observed to be linked to drying of spring rains in East Africa. La Nina effects, intensified by global warming, had dried the autumn rains in 2010. Funk reports that with the severity of this crisis, 11.5 million people across East Africa need emergency assistance.

·         Along with the floods in Mexico, Central America, and Haiti mentioned in the previous post in this series, flooding is threatening Thailand’s capital city, Bangkok, and has already flooded much of Thailand. A Reuters story today reports that flooding has killed at least 342 people in Thailand since July, and 247 people in Cambodia.  As a result of torrential rains since Wednesday at least 100 bodies were found near the Irrawaddy River in Myanmar and 100 more people are missing.

·         The Pacific island nations of Tokelau and Tuvalu have been dealing with severe water shortages, the result of lack of rainfall (expected to continue because of an intensified La Nina pattern) along with increased salinization of the islands’ water supplies because of sea level rise. Emergency water supplies and additional desalinization equipment from other Pacific nations have brought assistance in the crisis. The New York Times online this week carried a photo essay from Tuvalu. A related article, As Danger Laps at Its Shores, Tuvalu Pleads for Action, tells about how climate change is affecting people there now – their diet, soil, water supplies, and health all are affected -- and how they might cope in the future. Current projections are that Tuvalu will be uninhabitable within fifty years.

·         Monday’s dust storm in Lubbock, Texas, the result of the ongoing drought there, featured an 8000 foot dust cloud traveling at 70 mph. (See Texas dust storm, biggest in U.S. in decades, turns sky red and black.)

·         Here’s the view from a window during the storm:

·         The economic effects of this drought are very serious. A sobering forecast from NASA climatologist James Hansen says that “If we stay on with business as usual, the southern U.S. will become almost uninhabitable” within this century. The social and economic upheaval if this prediction holds will be enormous.

·         Jeff Goodell’s Rolling Stone article ClimateChange and the End of Australia suggests that if we want to see what is in store for us, we might look at what is happening already in Australia, where “rivers are drying up, reefs are dying, and fires and floods are ravaging the continent.” Goodell ends his story with this:

We walk for a while, watching all the happy people strolling along the boardwalk and drinking wine in cafes and surfing the waves. The sun is shining, and everything is lovely. Too bad that it all has to go.

These are all big events or well-known situations, yet they aren’t part of what most of us hear about or think about from day to day, and they aren’t part of most of our conversations in the church about our mission in the world.  The need to expand our ability to provide disaster relief is obvious. Paying attention to what is happening now helps us to see why we need to work now at mitigating climate change, lessening its extremes in future years. The more we know about how people are suffering now and will suffer in the future, the easier it becomes for us to lessen our carbon footprints as individuals and as a church and to advocate for policies that will reduce carbon emissions. And if you’ve read this far, it may be obvious that as we confront this crisis, we will require spiritual resources and care for ourselves as well as others.

What keeps us from having the conversations we need to have and from doing the work that the church should be doing to serve God’s people and care for God’s creation now and in the years to come? 

Waters of Baptism

The last two posts, Water followed by ...And More Water came out of wondering about the significance of the waters of baptism in light of a couple of big environmental issues that had been in the news around the First Sunday of Epiphany, when we remember the Baptism of Our Lord. Those issues were catastrophic floods several places in the world and plastic pollution in our oceans. Increased frequency of major flooding is one expected effect of climate change, one of the many effects that bring hardship to people around the world.

Thinking about this has brought more questions than answers to my mind. As noted in the first post about this, both the effects of climate change on people and other living things and the extent of plastic pollution and its effects on people and other living things are issues of such a large scale that it’s difficult to even comprehend the challenges we face, let alone reflect on their spiritual significance.

But the questions are persistent if still in formation, so in this post, I’m offering some first questions for reflection in hopes that we might have a conversation about the way we see and talk about the waters of baptism in a rapidly and significantly changing world.

Comments, stabs at answers, answers made in confidence of their certainty, are all welcome. (If you’re commenting on the blog, please sign your comments if you want them to be shown.)

The first question is an easy one, but serves to introduce the second: What characteristics have we traditionally associated with water that suits it to be the matter – the “outward and visible sign” -- for the sacrament of baptism? What new associations do we or will we have with water as more of the earth’s water becomes permeated with plastic and as we face extremes of flooding and drought in many areas of the planet? Will this change the experience for people witnessing baptisms?

It seems almost dishonest or as if we were in denial if, as these environmental phenomena unfold, we continue to use water liturgically in the ways we have always used it without commenting on or acknowledging what has changed. If the significance for us of something like water changes in our daily lives – if, for example, we someday find ourselves in a world where pure water is rare – what, if anything, do we say about that?

The promises we make in our baptismal covenant (Book of Common Prayer, pp. 304-305) raise questions for us as we struggle with these new sorts of issues. We promise to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves. When our brothers and sisters around the world suffer from the effects of climate change, how can we best respond to disasters such as the floods of January? What can we do to prevent these things from happening?

We promise to strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being. We know that our actions, our comforts, are producing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change, and we know that the effects of climate change are bringing hardship to many people. We know that the plastic things we use find their way into the oceans and other waterways and have an effect on living things that comes up the food chain. What is the just thing for us to do? Are we respecting the dignity of every human being if we can’t bring ourselves to acknowledge and name the problem? What changes can we make to help us better keep our baptismal covenant?

The core of these questions seems to be centered on truthfulness with one another and with God about the changes in our environment and the part our actions play both in causing those changes and in responding to their ill effects. Where does truthfulness rank in our priorities when we approach liturgy? If we are tempted to pretend the world is something other than it is, or if we deny the realities of our world, how does that affect what we do before God and God’s people?

...and More Water

Over a week ago, I started this series of posts about water by talking about floods, especially the flooding in Queensland, Australia, and in Brazil. At that time, the death toll in Brazil was 13 people. Yesterday morning that number was estimated to be at least 665. . This morning’s estimate is over 700, with the number expected to rise as bodies are found and as the region remains at risk for fresh mud slides.

While no single weather event can be linked conclusively with global warming, the floods in both Brazil and Australia are linked to exceptionally high ocean temperatures which would be expected to result in above normal precipitation. In a Reuters article Matthew England of the Climate Change Rese

arch Center at the University of New South Wales in Sydney notes that “the waters off Australia are the warmest ever measured and those waters provide moisture to the atmosphere for the Queensland and northern Australia monsoon”.

CNN reports from South Africa that at least forty people have died in flooding, more than 6,000 people have been displaced, and more heavy rain is expected. Most rivers and reservoirs in South Africa have reached their capacity, so more flooding is expected.

After a week in snowy Syracuse, New York (where there has been more than 100” of snow this season, putting them on track to break their seasonal record), we came home to more snow in Nebraska. A video found here from The Weather Channel’s Earth Watch does a good job of explaining the link between the cold and snow in much of the United States and global climate change.

Ocean Plastics

The news this month about plastics in the ocean comes in the form of good news / bad news. The good news is that the now-famous garbage patches, including the most well-known of them, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, don’t seem to be growing in size. These “garbage patches” are, in fact, not the dense and easily visible areas some reports have led the public to believe, but contain mostly small bits of plastic. Marcus Eriksen’s post on the 5 Gyres blog, Beyond the absurdity of a ‘Texas-sized Garbage Patch’ lies a larger menace of plastic pollution in the world’s oceans , says that while the idea of a big, almost solid patch of plastic real estate appealed to the sense that someone could go do something about it (or with it), the reality is “much worse”. What we have instead is a “thin plastic soup”, and that in a way is better news than a floating island of plastic trash. But the bad news is also that it’s not in a definite area; it’s everywhere. That means it’s not something we can go out and clean up. The only way to address the plastic pollution in our oceans is to quit adding to it, and clean up the bits that get spun out of the gyres and onto beaches.

Writing on the Discovery News website, Emily Sohn writes ‘Great Garbage Patch’ not so Great After All , noting that these small bits of plastic throughout the oceans pose a variety of threats, especially as fish ingest them and as they break down.

Waters of Baptism

Water, of course, still has all the characteristics it has always had, and holds all the same meaning for human beings. Water has always been both essential and potentially destructive. But with plastic pollution in the oceans and the prominence of worldwide floods brought about by torrential rains, our understanding of water as a metaphor is no doubt shifting in some way, adding perhaps some new aspects of meaning to a very traditional sign. That's the subject of the next post.

Water

Despite the less liquid form of H2O covering much of Nebraska today -- and doing that beautifully -- I’ve been thinking about water for several days. Last Sunday we remembered the Baptism of Jesus, and many parishes had baptisms that day. The prayers of thanksgiving over the water in our baptismal service remind us that along with being essential to life, water has great spiritual significance.

Personally Challenging Task

In the week leading up to the First Sunday after Epiphany (The Baptism of Our Lord), stories were popping up in the news about floods in Australia and South Africa . The floods in Australia were fairly well-covered in the news; fewer people here heard about the ones in Eastern Cape Province and KwaZulu Natal. The same week, I came across more information about the plastic in our oceans – both the extent of the pollution and more evidence that plastic is entering the food chain. Not having a lot of time to sit and process all of this, I simply didn’t write the post during the week. When Saturday came, it was even more difficult to focus on something this complex after news of the shootings in Tucson.

Since then, I’ve been looking at why it was so difficult to put these pieces together. Thinking about water brings together two environmental phenomena that I find very difficult to really comprehend because of the scale of the phenomena and the unthinkable nature of their consequences: the effects of climate change on people and other living things, and the extent of plastic pollution and its own effects on people and other living things. Thinking about the waters of baptism, reflecting on the relationship between the physical properties of water and its spiritual significance for us, is a whole different exercise when done with an awareness of the environmental realities with which we now live.

With this next Sunday’s Gospel (John 1:29-42 ) beginning with John talking about the Baptism of Jesus, the blog plan for this week is to talk about floods in this post, plastic and water in the next post, and perhaps be able after that to put together at least some of the pieces in relation to the waters of baptism.

Floods

This morning there were new headlines: Dozens missing from flooding in Australian valley and 13 Dead After Heavy Rains in Brazil. No single weather event can be connected to changes in the climate brought about by global warming; floods happen and have always happened. But two things indicate an overall connection: first, the record-breaking rainfalls and severe storms that have caused the flooding are exactly what scientists have told us will happen as the earth’s atmosphere warms and holds more water vapor; and second, there have been multiple floods in the past year with the phrases “record-breaking rainfall” and “catastrophic flooding” attached to them. If we were experiencing weather phenomena within the old norms, we wouldn’t be breaking so many records.

Remember the July floods in Pakistan? In early December, a reporter for the British Telegraph reported on current conditions in the flooded areas . A recent PBS NewsHour report tells more about the aftermath of the flooding and other water issues there:

If we find it difficult to imagine what is happening in faraway places, we might look closer to home and re\member the floods in Iowa last summer. A report on the impacts of climate change on Iowa was released January 1. It’s a good report for Nebraskans to look at to help us think about how we might best live in the next several years, and it does a good job of laying out the connections between global climate change and local weather trends. Increased precipitation and flooding is discussed in this report. An Iowa State University press release about the role of some ISU researchers in the study notes that the university itself was flooded in August 2010.

Along with concerns about flooding caused by increased precipitation and severe storms, global warming brings coastal flooding from sea level rise. Flooding of both kinds is expected to increase in the years ahead. Disaster aid to victims of floods is the sort of charitable work that churches have historically done. One consequence of increased flooding will be an increased need for aid.

I suspect this is one piece of the connection to the waters of baptism. We who have made a covenant to "seek and serve Christ in all persons" should think about how we would respond to increased flooding both close to home and far away.

Advent 1 Addendum

Friday’s post, “As in those days before the flood…” talked about links between today’s Gospel lesson (Matthew 24: 36-44)  and recent news about sea level rise. Today’s New York Times has an op-ed piece, “An Almanac of Extreme Weather, written by Jack Hedin, a farmer in southern Minnesota, that hits more immediately and closer to home for Nebraskans.

Mr. Hedin talks about the difficulties Midwestern farmers face as the weather becomes more severe; he especially talks about the recent changes in precipitation and increasing frequency of flooding. In the middle of the piece, he writes:

Minnesota’s state climatologist, Jim Zandlo, has concluded that no fewer than three “thousand-year rains” have occurred in the past seven years in our part of the state. And a University of Minnesota meteorologist, Mark Seeley, has found that summer storms in the region over the past two decades have been more intense and more geographically focused than at any time on record.

The weather in neighboring South Dakota was covered in another recent piece in the New York Times, “Storm Upon Storm for South Dakota”  from November 20.

Today’s piece about Minnesota talks about changes we can make in the Midwest to address climate change and try to preserve productive farmland for future generations. It’s a good fit with the First Sunday of Advent theme of being awake and prepared!

"As in those days before the flood..."

Advent 1A

Friday morning there was an interesting juxtaposition of news headlines with a small bit of the Gospel lesson for the First Sunday in Advent. The lesson is Matthew 24: 36-44. As Jesus talks about the need to be ready at all times for the return of the Son of Man, he compares the time when the Son of Man returns to the days of Noah: “For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man.” 

While Noah built the ark and made the other preparations God told him to make, other people went about their business as if nothing unusual were about to happen. Jesus says they were oblivious to the situation until it was too late, until the flood had come and swept them away.

Friday morning’s New York Times had a front-page story about residents of Norfolk, Virginia, trying to deal with rising seas. Even as residents try to address the specific problems with rising water in their own neighborhoods, many of them also realize that their needs are only a small piece of much bigger problems as the world gets warmer and sea levels rise.

Other recent news stories reported similar concerns in a variety of location: southern Florida, Alexandria, Egypt and the Nile Delta , the Galveston Bay region,  and the Bahamas.  Nebraska’s lack of coastlines doesn’t insulate us from the effects of sea level rise, as the economic consequences and population shifts will be felt everywhere. And the climate changes that are causing the rise in sea levels will have other, more direct effects on Nebraska.

On some level, all of these stories indicate that there seems to be some increase in awareness of what we are facing. But on another, deeper, level, there seems to be as little awareness as Jesus says there was when Noah was building the ark. This week's "Black Friday" shopping glut seemed to contrast the headlines. We will know that we are really beginning to understand what is happening when we act like people who are awake and prepared, when we begin to make significant changes to mitigate climate change and consciously adapt to the changes that are unstoppable.

God and Wealth

All God’s Children was a post on this site a little over a year ago. It talked about the hope that a climate bill could be passed yet that fall before the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December, and talked about the reason Christians should be concerned about the passage of a climate bill or the chances of a significant agreement being reached at Copenhagen: the effects of the carbon that we as a wealthy nation produce will be for the most part be felt first and the worst by some of the poorest people in the world.

A year later, the United States Congress has still not passed a climate bill, and little progress was made at Copenhagen.  Last year’s hopes were not fulfilled.  One of the principal reasons Congress hasn't moved on climate legislation is that fear of immediate negative economic effects keeps us from seeing the long-term positive effects of climate legislation. Even people who understand the science and have concern for those who stand to suffer the soonest from climate change shy away from effective action if they think their own costs for energy or taxes might go up.

“You cannot serve God and wealth,” says Jesus at the end of this week’s Gospel lesson (Luke 16:1-13).   The lesson from Amos is similar: God sees people who observe the letter of the Law, but who care more for their own wealth than they do for the poor; they “trample on the needy”, selling them out for silver or even for a pair of sandals.

That post a year ago ended with this: “We have much to gain for ourselves by turning to new energy technologies and capping our carbon output, and, just as importantly, we have much to gain for the poorest people with whom we share the Earth.”  Our immediate economic concerns and fears keep us not only from caring enough about the poorest people in our world, but also from seeing where our choice to ignore climate change will leave us in the long-run.

A year from now, our Gospel text from Matthew 20 will end with Jesus saying, “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” What will we be able to say next September about our consideration for our poorest brothers and sisters?

To see what Episcopal Relief and Development is doing to respond to the record flooding in Pakistan, click here. 

To donate to ERD’s relief efforts in Pakistan or other places affected by natural disasters, click here. 

Interpreting the Signs

The Gospel lesson for today is Luke 12:49-56. It ends with these words:

54 He also said to the crowds, ‘When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, “It is going to rain”; and so it happens. ⁵⁵And when you see the south wind blowing, you say, “There will be scorching heat”; and it happens. ⁵⁶You hypocrites! You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?


Jesus was speaking about the signs of what was happening spiritually, signs that were there for the seeing but that people either could not or would not piece together. But God gives us all sorts of signs, all sorts of evidence of what is happening in every aspect of our lives. We can learn a lot if we open our eyes and ears to the signs around us and allow ourselves to see the realities -- the beauty and joy and the pain and sadness -- of our world.


This morning’s Gospel lesson along with our Epistle reading from Hebrews about the “great cloud of witnesses” tells us that Christ’s words weren’t meant to lull us into disengagement with the world around us, but rather to strengthen us to go out into the world in Christ’s name. Allowing ourselves to look and listen and see the signs around us is a necessary part of discipleship.

When I sit down at my computer to do online text study or make notes on the lessons during the week, I see news headlines. Throughout the past week, there were daily headlines about a pattern of extreme weather events that follow the predictions of climate scientists, I wondered about our inability or refusal as a society to piece together the evidence and do what we need to do to lessen the extent and effects of climate change.


Keeping in mind Jesus’ admonition to pay attention to the signs of our times, I'm sharing a list of some of the headlines I noticed this week:

• Huge ice island could cause threat to oil, shipping 
• Hundreds evacuated, 1 dead after flooding in Iowa
• Ames opens drinking water sites for residents
• China landslide: More than 700 people confirmed dead
• Smoke from raging fires coats Moscow
• One-fifth of Pakistan is underwater
• Severe thunderstorms hit areas of DC, MA, VA: Causes flooding, power outages
• Long hot summer of fire, floods fits predictions…

****

(Added at 2:12 CDT)  Here's an additional headline fresh this afternoon from the Associated Press: "UN chief: Never seen anything like Pakistan floods".

Praising God in the storm...

Five-Day Update

Five days ago, the focus of the heavy rains and storms in Tennessee was Memphis. Since then, Nashville and the surrounding Cumberland River valley have had flooding that caused loss of life and widespread property damage. While there's been a focus in the general press on the damage caused to some country music landmarks in Nashville and homes of some country music stars, some of the less affluent parts of Nashville were hit hard. The Diocese of Tennessee reports on damage to church property and deaths and injuries to people associated with the diocese. News about Episcopal Relief and Development's relief efforts in Tennessee is available here; there is a link on that page for people wishing to donate to the relief effort, or you can click on the red button above to donate.

Climate scientists expect more extreme weather events as the Earth's overall temperature warms. Relief organizations and governments will have heavy demands if these predictions are accurate; one thing the church might do around the climate change issue is to figure out how to increase our abilities to respond to human needs, both material and spiritual, in times of disaster.

Meanwhile, we have been learning to wrap our minds around the size of the disaster in the Gulf, even as today sees another attempt to manage the situation, this time with a giant container placed over the source of the leak -- or gush -- that would make it possible to remove some of the oil before it spread into the surrounding water. A quick check of this afternoon's headlines tells us that the top executive of BP says he doesn't count on this working. Evidently this is something worth trying, but we won't know for a few days whether it will work. Meanwhile, the oil keeps gushing, and another story says that people who live along the Gulf coast are buying and eating as much seafood as they can right now because they don't know when they will be able to buy it again. It's like spending as much time as possible right now with a terminally ill friend because you don't know if she will be around next week.

Where is God in this? Gov. Rick Perry of Texas said on Monday that the oil spill is "an act of God"; that's one sort of possible answer. We Episcopalians usually see God as a source of strength and comfort, a light in the darkness, in difficult times; the idea of God as the instigator of a major disaster involving an oil rig is foreign to most of us. God is a source of strength to the victims of disasters -- the people who live along the Gulf coast, the victims of the floods in Tennessee, all the people around the world whose lives are forever changed by pollution, flooding, melting glaciers that serve as water sources, and rising sea levels -- and a source of strength to those who are directly assisting the victims of disasters and those who are working for a healthier environment. God created the world and said it was good; our job is to help repair our broken world and join God in rejoicing in the wonder of creation.

A friend sent a link to this YouTube video featuring Casting Crowns singing Praise You in this Storm. He said my Sunday post reminded him of the song; the song had been in the back of my mind as I wrote the post. It's a good reminder of where God is in all sorts of storms.

Praising God in the storm

Instead of a Sunday morning at St. Stephen's or some other parish in Nebraska, I'm on an airplane from Memphis to Washington, D.C., having taken the very early flight to Memphis from Omaha this morning. I'm headed to the national Interfaith Power and Light conference; I serve on the board for Nebraska IPL and am representing us at this meeting.


It's a strange way for me to spend Sunday morning, and even stranger as I continue reading Bill McKibben's book Eaarth, check as I can for the latest news about the oil gushing into the Gulf, and fly in and out of the heavy rains and storms that Memphis has been experiencing. 


In my post The Day after Earth Day (April 23) I wrote: "The good news the day after Earth Day is that there doesn’t seem to be a major oil spill, though there is an oil slick that at the last report I heard measured ten miles by ten miles."   We have gone from that on April 23 to the headline Gulf Coast Towns Brace as Huge Oil Slick Nears Marshes as I checked today's New York Times. Describing the effects of the approaching huge oil slick, this story says: "But what is terrifying everyone from bird watchers to the state officials charged with rebuilding the natural protections of this coast is that it now seems possible that a massive influx of oil could overwhelm and kill off the grasses that knit the ecosystem together."


Meanwhile, the Revised Common Lectionary for today has us reading Psalm 148, which talks about all of creation being knit together in praise of God, the ruler of all creation:
⁷Praise the Lord from the earth, you sea monsters and all deeps,

⁸fire and hail, snow and frost, stormy wind fulfilling his command!

⁹Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars!

¹⁰Wild animals and all cattle, creeping things and flying birds!

¹¹Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the earth!

¹²Young men and women alike, old and young together!

¹³Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his glory is above earth and heaven.

The book I'm reading talks about the increase of flooding storms as the temperature rises, since warmer air holds more moisture.  With the news from the Gulf getting more alarming by the day -- and the hour -- the attempt to solve some of our energy problems by increasing the number of offshore oil wells seems like a more problematic solution than some people, including some environmentalists, had led us to believe. Some of the things we have been seeing in recent months -- the increased snowfall in part of the United States and the heavy rains in Rio de Janeiro that caused loss of life and homes in landslides come to mind -- are most likely going to become more frequent.  


The solutions to our environmental woes aren't coming easily. They are difficult to figure out from an engineering and scientific point of view, and politically will be very difficult to implement, if we even find the political will to look past short-term concerns to the big picture. But people of faith are called to take on an extra challenge, to continue praising God in the midst of it all, to praise God in the storm.


When we join our voices with all of creation in praise, we become more aware of our connection not only to God, but to all of creation.  Praising God may bring us to the perspective we need: not an escape from the reality of what we have done to God's creation, not a denial of or escape from the realities of the world around us, but a place where our hearts and our sights are open wide enough to repent and do the hard work of reconciliation with God, one another, and all of creation.