World Malaria Day

ERD and NetsforLife®

Today is World Malaria Day. Episcopal Relief and Development is one of the partners in NetsforLife® , a very effective program to combat malaria by distributing treated mosquito nets and training people in the proper use of the nets. Already malaria-related deaths have been reduced by an average of 45% across the NetsforLife®  program area. Details of their work so far can be found here. 

Here's a look at local volunteers instilling a "net culture" while distributing the nets, and shows how critical the Anglican Church is to the successful distribution of the nets:

Malaria is one of the diseases expected to increase as the planet warms. Supporting efforts to reduce malaria is an example of the sort of humanitarian effort the church can provide now and in coming years to help mitigate the effects of climate change. This map (from Hugo Ahlenius, UNEP-GRID Arendal) shows a prediction for the spread of malaria by 2050. Areas in red are places where malaria is not present now but is expected to be present by 2050; areas in gray are places where malaria is now present but where the climate is expected to not be suitable for malaria by 2050.

Through May 25, any donation made to the NetsforLife® Inspiration Fund will be matched, doubling the impact of donations during this time. Rob Radtke, President of Episcopal Relief and Development, says this in the announcement of the matching gift challenge :

Joining together in the fight against malaria, through NetsforLife® and the NetsforLife®Inspiration Fund, is a great way for individuals and congregations to support the Millennium Development Goals and make a real difference in communities throughout sub-Saharan Africa. We are grateful to the donors who are providing the matching funds for enabling us to double the impact of every gift we receive by May 25 and continue toward our goal of raising $5 million by the end of the year. TheNetsforLife® program has demonstrated remarkable results year after year, and is truly deserving of the wholehearted support so many have shown.
 

Earth Day / Third Sunday of Easter

“They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence.” (Luke 24: 42-43)

Today is Earth Day; Friday was the second anniversary of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. Because the oil “spill” ended up being so much bigger than we realized it would be on Earth Day 2010, Earth Day probably will be shadowed by the anniversaries of the oil spill for many years to come.

Today is also the Third Sunday of Easter, and our Gospel lesson for today (Luke 24: 36-48) is about the resurrected Jesus appearing to the disciples. Jesus asks if they have anything to eat, and they give him a piece of broiled fish, which Jesus eats. Luke’s report of Jesus eating the fish helps us to see that Jesus was truly there, that this wasn’t an apparition. It’s striking to have this reading as we observe Earth Day this year.

Fish was a basic food for the disciples and Jesus, as it was and remains for many people in the world. Fish is a principal source of protein for many people, and fishing – the occupation of several of the disciples – is still the way many people make a living.

Two years after the Gulf oil spill, fish near the oil spill site are sick. (See Cain Burdeau’s article for the Associated Press.) Evidence connecting the ulcers, black streaks, and damaged fins to the oil spill is circumstantial; what is known is that something isn’t right in that part of the Gulf ecosystem.

According to a report in the May 7, 2012 edition of The Nation entitled “Two Years After: BP’s Toxic Legacy”, people who live along the Gulf Coast are also sick. Along with fighting poor health, people have had to fight to get access to proper medical care. The article gives details of some of the justice and fairness issues involved. Surely Jesus, who healed the sick, would have us be concerned about those suffering from exposure to toxins.

The Gulf of Mexico isn’t the only place where fishing doesn’t provide the sort of healthful protein and steady livelihood it used to. The health of our ocean ecosystems as well as many freshwater ecosystems is suffering from pollution by various toxins, plastic pollution, loss of habitat, ocean acidification caused by global warming, and other changes in ecosystems brought on by warming waters. Something so basic as catching a fish and grilling it, something so basic that Luke uses it to help us see the reality of the risen Christ, is now something we can’t take for granted.

“What would Jesus eat?” may be a more instructive guide to action than “What would Jesus do?”  What basic foods will remain sustainably available to people around the world who have traditionally relied on fish and seafood for daily protein? As Saturday’s forum about the intersection of poverty and the environment   made clear, issues of environmental sustainability, poverty, and human health are interconnected. The church has always served Christ through serving the poor and sick; in today’s world, we must extend that service to the earth’s ecosystems in order to truly serve our neighbors near and far.

Webcast: The Intersection of the Environment and Poverty

A forum about the intersection of the environment and poverty   – environmental justice – will be webcast tomorrow (April 21) at 11:00 central time. This forum was initiated by the Episcopal Church, and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori is the keynote speaker. Kim Lawton, senior editor and correspondent of the PBS program Religion and Ethics NewsWeekly is the moderator for the forum. St. Mark’s Cathedral in Salt Lake City is hosting the event.

After the forum, this webcast will be available for on-demand viewing for individuals or groups. There are two 45-minute panel discussions planned after the keynote address: Can Sustainability Initiatives Life those in Poverty? and Reducing Environmental Health Consequences for those in Poverty. Information about the panels and the connection to the webcast are available on this page on the Episcopal Church’s website. 

We tend to separate issues from one another, treating poverty and environmental issues and health issues as separate things. But everything is interconnected, and our understanding of all of these issues and our ability to serve others in the name of Christ are both increased by looking at the connections and intersections among various issues. In order to love our neighbors, we need to learn to care for the environment we all share.

Tar Sands: The View from Canada

I've just returned from a few days in Vancouver, British Columbia, where our son was participating in a conference. On Sunday, we visited Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver. Among the many exciting and inspiring things going on there was an announcement from The Environmental Group. They were inviting parishioners to join them for a “Compassion for Creation” discussion following a showing of a video from TEDxVictoria (November 19, 2011) by photographer Garth Lenz on the tar sands. 

The video contrasts the beauty and value of the boreal forest ecosystem with photos of the tar sands mining project and the threat it poses to the ecosystem and to the value that Canadians have traditionally placed on the forest and the people, plants, and animals that call it home. Garth Lenz says that the tar sands project represents “the antithesis” of these values.

As Nebraskans, our greatest concern about the tar sands mines has been the possibility of the Keystone XL pipeline coming through our Sandhills region and endangering our land and water. This video talks about that pipeline crossing this rich agricultural region as one of many concerns about plans to continue increasing the mining of the tar sands and production of oil from the bitumen. Because of the way oil is produced from tar sands, use of this oil results in more greenhouse gas emissions than those from any other source of oil.

It’s good to know that our Anglican sisters and brothers in Canada are also concerned about the tar sands, and it’s good for us in Nebraska to know that the effects of this project go way beyond the concerns we have about the proposed pipeline crossing particular parts of our state. Whatever route is proposed next, the environmental costs of tar sands oil are too great.

Garth Lenz talks about the effects of tar sands mining experienced by people living downstream from this area, then adds: “We all live ‘downstream’ in the era of global warming and climate change.” Please watch the video of his talk and pray that all of us might hear what God is calling us to do. 

No Bird Sang

Grief

At the end of our Maundy Thursday service at St. Stephen’s last night, the choir sang And No Bird Sang      to help us make the transition from our Maundy Thursday remembrance of the Last Supper to the events of Good Friday. Douglas Wagner’s words begin with this: “Calm was the wind and dark was the sky, when our Lord came to die; Lone on the cross for our sins he did hang, and no bird sang.”

These words resonated strongly for me last night. The Gospels describe the darkness at noon, the way all of creation responded to Jesus' death; the spiritual and the physical are not separated. 

One of my joys this time of year is hearing the birds sing when I wake up in the morning or when I’m outside gardening or sitting on my porch. When I read and think and pray about habitat destruction, pollution, and the effects of global warming on existing ecosystems, I often think about the birds and the joy and comfort their songs and company bring to people. What would our world be like if no bird sang? Even if we grieved nothing else we stand to lose as a result of environmental degradation, the thought of a world with few or no birds brings considerable grief.

Last year Good Friday fell on Earth Day. Last year’s Good Friday post  suggested that grief – our Good Friday grief as Christians and our grief for the ways we have harmed the earth – connected the two, and that the Solemn Collects of our Good Friday liturgy can help us through this grief. When we pray the Solemn Collects, rather than staying stuck under the dead weight of grief, we open our hearts to the concerns of the Church and the world.

This past year has seen more extreme weather events, more floods, droughts, storms, and fires, a continuing rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide and thinning of the Arctic Ice. The environmental pressures on human beings and the other things that live on the earth are great. Through it all, we find our ability to cope with our grief and find hope as we did last year:

It can be difficult to know where to begin doing something with our grief for the earth. With no significant national or international effort to address climate change or prevent future oil spills or stop covering the planet with plastic, we know our efforts are valiant but probably not enough. Yet just as our hearts are touched by Good Friday, our hearts are broken open by this grief, too. Prayers for the earth and her people are a good place to begin. We might pray for the Church and all people, praying that we continue to find meaning and hope in our lives even as the chances of sustaining life as we have known it on our planet get increasingly smaller. We might pray for open eyes, ears, minds, and hearts, for the ability to understand what we are facing and the will to do something about it.
 The third of the Solemn Collects asks for the cry of those in misery and need to come to God; it also prays for God to “give us…the strength to serve them for the sake of him who suffered for us.” Gathering our strength and doing whatever we can to prevent and alleviate the human misery that results from environmental degradation is the only choice we have as followers of Christ…Making the choice to acknowledge the problems we face and work to address them with so little evidence that we can succeed is where we draw on our faith and our hope; making the choice is where we get out from under our grief and, drawing on our faith for strength, gather energy for the work ahead.

Joy and Sorrow: Easter Hope

End of March and beginning of Holy Week…

March ends immediately before Holy Week begins this year. Nebraska's weather this March, like the weather in most of the United States, has been unusually warm.  An article in today’s Lincoln Journal Star   

says that “nature’s gone crazy” and describes the unusual weather. According to the article, if today’s forecast for Lincoln holds, every day in March this year except for March 3 will have had above average temperatures.

The flowering trees and spring flowers have been beautiful, and it’s been a real joy to be able to be outdoors without worrying about slipping on a bit of remaining ice or wearing a heavy coat. People are smiling and saying, “Isn’t it a beautiful day? Isn’t this weather great?” And it is beautiful, and the weather is lovely, and it’s great to see so many smiles, and yet there’s something not quite right. It’s the end of March, and it feels and looks more like the end of April.

Yesterday I photographed some of the things blooming in my own yard and a nearby park. Flowers that usually bloom in succession in my yard are blooming at the same time; many daffodils that wouldn’t even be in bloom most years on this date are past their prime. A small rhododendron bush is already beginning to drop its petals.  Rhubarb, ferns, and lilies of the valley are up and growing.

This graph from NASA http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif plots global temperatures from 1880 to the present.

The overall climate trend is toward warming.  Weather is determined by many factors, so within any given segment of that trend, the global temperatures go up and down. This is why news sources are reluctant to say that our abnormal March is the result of climate change. It’s the result of several factors, one of which is climate. What the graph makes clear is that a noticeably warmer March in 2012 will necessarily be warmer than, say, a noticeably warmer March in 1912.

It’s been a joy to experience the beauty and warmth of springtime earlier than usual, but it’s also a concern. Our weather this month has been consistent with what climate scientists have told us to expect. With such extremely unseasonable weather, there’s concern that the life cycles of plants and insects and other animals may get out of sync with one another, with unknown effects on ecosystems. There’s concern that record warmth in the spring might be mirrored by record warmth in July or August, when it would be less welcome. And there are the many economic and health concerns about climate change in general.

Perhaps this mix of joy and concern, of light and darkness, is appropriate as we begin Holy Week. We begin Holy Week with the contrasts of Palm Sunday: the hosannas of the procession of palms followed by the somber Passion Gospel. From Palm Sunday, we go through the sorrow and darkness of the part of the story that is our focus during Holy Week, but at the end of it all we reach the joy and light of Easter.

What’s happening in our world seems to be a mix of joy and sorrow – the joy of springtime mixed with a somber reminder of the reality of climate change. Like our joy at Easter, our joy at our early springtime is bound up with things that are far from joyful.

At Easter, we remember the triumph of life over death. We hear again the promise of light overcoming darkness, of life being stronger than death. Our Easter joy, our deepest joy, gives us hope in the face of all sorts of occasions of human despair, including the harsh reality of climate change and its expected effects on our world this century. Given the reality we face, what does a good outcome – the sort of outcome for which we dare to hope – look like? We have no more idea of that than the disciples did of the resurrection as the events of Holy Week unfolded. What we have is hope informed by faith and the promise of life.

Celebrating Cranes: Deepening our Wonder

Right now, the Platte valley in central Nebraska is filled with migrating birds and the sounds they make. This St. Patrick’s Day, the Green Team at St. Stephen’s invites you not only to wear green, but to be green and join us for our Sandhill crane celebration March 17 and 18.

St. Stephen’s in Grand Island designates one Sunday during Lent as Crane Sunday, a time to highlight the wonder people experience when they stand at the river at sunrise or sunset watching and hearing the cranes take off for the fields or return to the river for the night. That sense of wonder is spiritual; the wonder we experience at the river is connected to what we do and say in church on Sunday morning. Crane Sunday is meant to make that connection explicit and to provide a time and place for mutual reflection on this and other connections between the church and the wider world.

Along with our Sunday morning celebration this year, we will be gathering at the Nebraska Nature and Visitor Center  on March 17 to experience the wonder together outdoors and to participate in some activities to help deepen our sense of wonder. You’re welcome to join us for any one of our weekend activities or for the entire experience.

The Nebraska Nature and Visitor Center is hosting ornithologist, author, and photograper Paul Johnsgard for a 2:00 program, “Winter and Early Spring Birds of Nebraska”. The more we learn about birds, the more we wonder at their habits, their beauty, and their role in our ecosystem. After the program, St. Stephen’s will have the conference room available for people to rest or gather to talk or reflect, but with good weather forecasted, most of us will walk or sit outside to soak up the sights and sounds of early spring.

We plan to gather for Evening Prayer at 4:00, either in the conference room or a quiet place outdoors. Gathering for prayer allows us to share our interior prayerful response to the joy of spring and the return of the birds, and brings us back to the connection between our joy and wonder in God and our joy and wonder in God’s creation.

For those who want to see the sunset wonder at the river, we are joining a 6:00 walking bridge tour. The cost for this is $15; call theNebraska Nature and Visitor Center at 308-382-1820 for details and registration. Others may want to stop by the crane viewing site on Alda Road to see the sunset wonder.

At 9:30 on Sunday morning, we will continue our prayerful response at the church, gathering for Holy Eucharist, and reflecting on what we experienced outdoors and how it connects to what we are reading in Scripture and thinking about as the church at Lent.