Extra Bits: Creation Care at General Convention

"Ubuntu in Action: Creation Care" was the General Convention theme yesterday (July 15). Episcopal News Service has an excellent report at http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_112609_ENG_HTM.htm

Besides talking about environmental resolutions, the steps taken to offset the carbon footprint of General Convention, and a summary of what the Church has been doing to address climate change and pollution, the report highlights the sermon given by Bishop Steven Charleston, in which he says, "I am here to tell you that unless we recognize that there is a higher, deeper calling that lies behind all of these needs...none of our hopes and dreams, whether they come from conservative hearts or liberal minds, will sustain the day on anything we have been discussing, for all will be for naught...lest we wake up and pay attention to the underwriting great issue of our day."

May we have ears to hear and find the will, wisdom, and courage to reset our priorities and care for God's Creation, the Earth that sustains us, feeds us, and delights us so that we can carry out all the other work and worship to which God calls us!

GC Resolutions and Garden Varieties

The Episcopal Church’s 76th General Convention is beginning this week. The Convention will address several important topics, including the environment. Resolutions concerning the environment are listed and summarized on the Episcopal Ecological Network (EpEN). These resolutions range from calls for better environmental stewardship to the development of a liturgical Pentecost Season Creation Cycle to establishment of an Environmental Commission.

Apart from a growing awareness among Americans in general of the practical necessity of taking better care of our environment, there are reasons for Christians in particular to pay more attention to the care of creation. Some of these reasons have to do with the way environmental issues fit into our traditions of being intentional about stewardship of God’s gifts to us and of advocating for policies that help people living in poverty, who are the people most affected by pollution and climate change; other reasons have to do with the way being in touch with the natural world helps to ground and enrich us spiritually. The variety of environmental resolutions for General Convention reflect this range of reasons for us to be more aware of our relationship with the environment. Uniting them all is this: our understanding of God is Incarnational; there is no great divide between body and spirit.

However, we do tend to create dichotomies when we use various categories to try to understand something complex. In this case, we might group the resolutions about environmental stewardship and justice under the category of compassionate action, and group the ones about spirituality under the category of contemplation. Many religious thinkers have explored the supposed dichotomy between action and contemplation; the Letter of James explores a similar dichotomy between works and faith.

This dichotomy came to mind this week as my travels took me to two very different garden projects in two parishes in very different settings. The first was the new flower garden at St. Mary’s in Bassett. I was in Bassett last Monday evening for their Celebration of New Ministry, and stayed overnight at the hotel across the street from the church. Early Tuesday morning, I spent some time sitting on a bench looking at the garden. It was a lovely place to sit, meditate, and feed my spirit at the beginning of the day: a contemplative garden.

The second parish garden I saw was this Sunday at St. Paul’s in Akron, Ohio, where I was confirmed and where my mother is still a parishioner. While St. Paul’s has some beautiful flower gardens, there was a new garden that surprised and delighted me -- a very well-tended vegetable garden. The purpose of this garden is to produce fresh vegetables to share with people who need food for their bodies: an action garden.

While the flowers at St. Mary’s and the vegetables at St. Paul’s seem like two entirely different projects, they have a lot in common. Both give the people who tend them an opportunity to be outdoors and get grounded in the truest sense of the word, by working with the ground. Both suggest good alternatives to grassy areas that need to be mowed and are often maintained with lots of chemical fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Both remind us that something important in the life of a parish can occur on the outer side of the church walls, that our lives as Christians aren’t contained within the indoor worship space. Both give people walking by a reminder of God’s gifts to us, and especially of the gift of new growth and fruition.


In my own garden at home in Nebraska, I tend to mix vegetables and flowers, partly because of lack of space, partly because of my personal taste in landscape aesthetics, but also because I have learned that planting flowers among vegetables – companion planting -- can help keep the vegetable plants freer of pests. Companion planting might be a good metaphor for good Christian discipleship, combining spiritual groundedness with compassionate action.

As I understand the General Convention theme of Ubuntu, it involves the idea of the interconnectedness among all of humankind and all of Creation. Sometimes things that seem very different are really interconnected or even intertwined. James says that faith without works is dead, yet we also know that works or action are more fruitful and lasting when they are grounded in a solid spiritual foundation. In the end, they are not really different things, but just two sides of faithful Christian discipleship.

Herds Upon the Hills -- and Carhenge

The weekend before last, my husband and I had a beautiful drive on Highway 2 through the Sandhills to Alliance. The Sandhills are green now, and there were wildflowers blooming as well. It was wonderful (in the full sense of filling-us-with-wonder) to find ourselves in places where there was nothing in sight but green hills, patches of wildflowers, a few birds, and cattle. Psalm 50 came to mind, where God asks for a sacrifice not of animals but of thanksgiving, for grateful hearts: “For all the beasts of the forest are mine, the herds in their thousands upon the hills. I know every bird in the sky, and the creatures of the fields are in my sight.” Surrounded by green hills and a constantly changing sky, it was easy to have a grateful heart!

It was exciting to visit St. Matthew’s in Alliance and learn more about their environmental stewardship activities. The parish has an active recycling program, both at church and in parishioners’ homes; they kept environmental issues in mind when they selected a new HVAC system for the church; and, under Father Don Huber’s leadership, there seems to be a growing awareness of the importance of Christians being intentional about the way we care for creation.

Recycling is really nothing new for St. Matthew’s. Their chapel incorporates windows, panels, pews, altar, and organ from their former building. The parish also support the Mission Store, a thrift shop in downtown Alliance that is a source for affordable clothing, housewares, and furniture. Deacon Cheryl Harris and her husband, Todd, are among the people who keep the Mission Store going. They gave us a tour Saturday evening, and what we saw was a very well thought-out way for people to recycle all sorts of things. It’s a great ministry to the people who need the items they sell, and also to the people who have a way to recycle items they are no longer using.

Several people at St. Matthew’s told us we really needed to see Carhenge before we left Alliance, so as we left town late Sunday morning, we swung by there.
Carhenge is a replica of Stonehenge made out of used cars that are welded together and spray painted. It struck me as a surprisingly interesting combination of art, American roadside kitsch, and a statement of some sort about the automobile. It is, in its own way, recycling on a grand scale. And no matter whether it’s taken as art or something else, there is no question that it is creative!

Early this morning I was sitting on my porch having a cup of tea and thinking about Carhenge, when I noticed a spider web in the early morning sunlight. Because a spider produced the web, we consider that part of “nature”. Humans are part of nature also, so it seems odd that we don’t usually consider our products, things like Carhenge, to be part of nature in the same way we do a spider’s web or a bird’s nest. The difference is in our capacity to reason, to critique our own instincts, to consider and choose among alternatives, and then to create something that isn’t necessarily instinctive. The same gifts of reason and free will that allow us to create in a human way are also what give us the capacity to sin. Similarly, the gift of being able to critique our instincts sometimes results in our losing touch with our basic instincts and basic needs. Thus, human beings sometimes end up creating things that are ultimately destructive, and we can end up producing things in a way that harms the air and water we need to live.

In medieval times, Hildegard of Bingen talked about human beings as “co-creators” with God. As the Psalmist points out, God, who owns all the cattle on all the hills, doesn’t need our help, but invites us into a relationship as co-creators, as partners in sustaining God’s creation. God invites us into the joy of creative work, using our gifts toward the sustenance of God’s good creation: the animals, birds, flowers, grass, and ourselves.

Extra Bits: Report on Climate Change Impacts

Yesterday the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program released a report, “Global Climate Change Impacts in the United States”. Nebraskans might be especially interested in the part of the report about predicted impacts on the Great Plains.

Major news outlets covered the story, but few featured it. It’s puzzling that we don’t pay more attention to this situation, which will impact everything else – human economy and activities as well as the ecology of other animals and plants -- as it unfolds. The report emphasizes the importance of acting now to minimize the impact of climate change. Here are links to a few of the media reports: The Associated Press, Nature.com ,The Seattle Times , U.S. News & World Report, and CNN.

The good news about the report is that it gives us a clearer picture of what we need to do to be good stewards of creation. More information helps us to focus our efforts, and also to see the importance and urgent nature of this work. Thanks be to God for the scientists who are studying climate change, and for giving us humans the intellectual tools to figure out how to proceed from here!

Pigeon Holes, Stewardship, and the Holy Trinity

This coming Sunday I plan to be at St. Matthew’s, Alliance, to preach and to see in person some of the parish’s work toward “going green”. I’m looking forward to this visit and others through the summer and early fall. Several parishes in our diocese have made some changes to be better stewards of creation, and some are looking for ways to do more now that they have found the initial changes to be workable and worthwhile. It will be exciting to see what sorts of grassroots efforts are in progress, and to help make connections between these parishes so that we can all learn from one another.

As I’ve talked with others recently about some of the places I’ll be visiting and about the creation care work I’m doing, I’ve noticed the way some folks immediately (and wrongly) pigeon-hole various communities – expressing surprise that some would have any interest in environmental stewardship, sure that others must already be fairly sophisticated about creation care. These stereotypes are based for the most part on the perceived economic interests along with the average citizen’s economic class and educational level in each community. Along with the community stereotypes there also seem to be some assumptions about the traits of people who would care about God’s creation, about people who would be “environmentalists”.

Of course, faithful stewardship of our time, talent, and treasure isn’t bound by geography or socio-economic level, and faithful stewardship of creation – our dearest treasure, which makes all other treasure possible – isn’t any different. Perhaps it’s the political climate of recent years that makes us so ready to label one another and to view the world in an oversimplified, black-and-white sort of way. However, as people become more and more aware both of the environmental challenges we face and of the things we can do to ensure environmental stability, it becomes obvious that a desire to help care for creation is part of being human. People from all sorts of communities, all sorts of socio-economic groups, and all sorts of political persuasions and religious groups are changing some habits and doing what they can to contribute to the health and wholeness of our natural environment.


Trinity Sunday reminded us that God is a Trinity, a relationship among three Persons: God the Father/Creator; God the Son, incarnate God yet fully human; and God the Spirit, pure spirit. Any attempt to simplify God to any one of these three Persons keeps us from a whole and healthy relationship with the Living God. Similarly, there is a rich and complex web of relationships among God, humankind, and the rest of creation. To be whole and healthy human beings, we tend carefully to our relationships with God and creation as well as with one another. Part of the goodness of stewardship – environmental or otherwise – is that in taking care of all that God has given us, we end up taking better care of one another and of ourselves, and we grow closer to God.

As our understanding of the complexity of environmental stewardship grows, it will become clearer that this is a task that touches everyone and work that belongs to everyone who lives on this planet. In healing the Earth, we may very well come to understand and better appreciate the richness and complexities of one another, to heal our human relationships while we heal our planet.

Extra Bits: Thomas Berry and the Great Work

Thomas Berry, a Roman Catholic priest, environmentalist, and eco-theologian, who described himself as a “geologian”, died June 1. One of Fr. Berry’s books is The Great Work: Our Way Into the Future. In this book, Fr. Berry argued that the future of humankind depends on our learning to live in communion with the Earth rather than in a relationship of exploitation and dominance. Changing the pattern of our relationship with the Earth, said Fr. Berry, is the “Great Work” of this era. There is more information about Thomas Berry’s life and work at http://www.thomasberry.org/ .

Given Fr. Berry’s death, it was interesting timing that ABC News on June 2 aired “Earth 2100”, a look at a possible future where population growth, resource depletion, and climate change converge with catastrophic results. The program ended on a note of hope, looking at all the places along the way of the catastrophic scenario where different choices might have been made that could not only have averted the catastrophe, but also have resulted in a better life for everyone on the planet. By setting the observations and predictions of scientists within a piece of fiction, ABC perhaps managed to make some of the science accessible and interesting to a large number of people. The message was similar to Fr. Berry’s message in this: there is important work to do, and there are important choices to make, that can make a huge difference in what life on Earth looks like in the next 100 years.

The religious environmental movement owes a great deal to Fr. Berry and what he taught us. We give thanks for his life, work, and wisdom. May the Great Work continue and grow!

Contemplation: Abiding in Love

Like many other Nebraskans, I have this year’s vegetable garden planted and spend a little time most days checking on it and weeding, watering, or doing whatever else needs to be done. My garden is small by Nebraska standards: two little rectangles in my yard, along with a few tomato and pepper plants tucked away in containers and odd spots in flower beds. Apart from watering during dry spells, daily maintenance isn’t really necessary, but, like most gardeners, I like to watch the garden grow. What I really do much of the time that I’m “working in the garden” is looking. Some May days the sun’s light and warmth make young plants grow so that the change is evident from one hour to the next.

The looking, though, isn’t confined to my little garden. The longer, warmer days of May give us good opportunity to look at both the plants and animals we live among. In our little piece of Nebraska this spring, I’ve watched baby squirrels figuring out how to climb up and down a tree, a mother rabbit carrying mouthfuls of grass clippings that were mulch for my garden but are now a nest for her babies, and many birds raising their young. And there is more to see: stars, clouds, rainstorms, lightning.

This week I started reading Radical Amazement: Contemplative Lessons from Black Holes, Supernovas, and Other Wonders of the Universe by Judy Cannato. In the book’s introduction, Judy Cannato talks about contemplation as “a long loving look at what is real” (p. 12). This involves both an attitude of compassion and mercy rather than disapproval, and the ability to discern what is real from things that superficially mimic the real. Finding joy in looking at the world around us is living contemplatively.

When we think about these things in light of our recent Sunday Gospel readings from John 15, we see another dimension of Christ’s invitation to abide in his love. Jesus explains that we are the branches of the vine that is Christ; we are fruitful only if we stay connected to Christ, only if we live our lives rooted in Christ’s love. We will abide in Christ’s love, he says, if we obey his commandments; the commandment he gives is that we love one another.

That love for one another involves a “loving look”, looking at one another with compassion rather than disapproval. The way to stay connected to Christ, the way to be rooted in Christ’s love, is to cultivate gratitude, openness, and love in our hearts. The way to abide in Christ’s love is to learn how to look contemplatively, with compassion and mercy.

Looking at everything in the world in this way helps us to experience our connectedness to one another and to all of creation. We are indeed branches connected to a single vine; if we experience ourselves – either as individual persons or as a species -- as independent of everything else, we have lost sight of reality. The science about pollution of our air and water and about global warming bears this out; everything is interconnected, and when we live as if our actions had no consequences for anyone or anything else, we put our own lives in danger.

A friend reminded me today of something E.B. White said in an interview with Israel Shenker in 1969: "If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world. This makes it hard to plan the day." The world teaches us this false dichotomy between saving and savoring, between action and contemplation. It’s not only a false choice, but a dangerous way to think about the world.

The vine parable reminds us that we won’t succeed in improving or saving the world unless we take the time to enjoy or savor it; our work won’t be fruitful unless it is rooted in love, and love requires the loving look, the deep knowing, that is contemplation. Savoring the extra hours of looking at the wonders around us this time of year is in the long run one of the most productive things we can do! Enjoy!