Good News for St. Stephen's!

GreenFaith Certification Program

Last October, the Episcopal Church and GreenFaith announced a collaboration to enroll Episcopal parishes in the GreenFaith Certification Program. For parishes successfully completing the application process, GreenFaith provides a two-year program to help the parish become greener and become a leader for other Episcopal parishes across the country and other congregations of any faith locally, while the Episcopal Church provides half of the tuition cost for the parish.

At St. Stephen’s, we brought the proposal to the vestry, formed a Green Team, and completed the application process with a February 1 deadline. Yesterday we learned that our application was accepted! We are the first congregation of any denomination or faith tradition in Nebraska to join the Green Certification program.

We are delighted with this opportunity to learn how to be better stewards of the environment (and better stewards of our finances as utility costs go down), deepen our connection to God through remembering God’s creation in our worship and our study, and to learn how to provide religious environmental leadership in our community. The program strengthens intergenerational relationships within the parish, and this was a big part of our decision to apply for the Certification Program. It’s an opportunity to show our children that we do care about the world in which they will live as adults, to learn and work with them to do the best we can to protect their future and the future of our parish, and to say to them through our actions as a parish that God cares about them and about the world.

GreenFaith and the Episcopal Church have announced a new opportunity for other parishes to join the program with a May 1 deadline. For parishes that might be interesting in joining, there is an informational webinar available tomorrow, February 16, at 2:00. Click here to find out more about the webinar; click here to read the October Green Sprouts post New Green Opportunity for Parishes about the program. If you want to talk about how this might work for your parish or how St. Stephen’s handled the application process, please contact me. I would be delighted to have more parishes in our diocese working toward Green Certification!

More For the Children

(In which we adult camels approach the eye of the needle)

Back in October, 2009, I posted a piece called Hackberry Tree Parable about today’s Daily Office reading from Mark (Mark 10:17-31), which was the Gospel lesson for the coming Sunday lectionary. This was a story about some sort of big bird of prey crashing down through the branches of our hackberry tree holding onto a struggling squirrel. Finally, by letting go of the squirrel, the bird was able to right itself and soar away. Seeing that little drama while thinking about the rich man who went away grieving when Jesus told him the way to inherit eternal life was for him to sell everything he had, give the money to the poor, and follow Jesus, I wrote this:

Birds of prey most often succeed in hunting the weakest animals, the most vulnerable. The squirrel this one chose wasn’t as weak as it appeared evidently, and gave the bird a great deal of trouble. What’s interesting in light of the Gospel story is that it wasn’t just in letting go of something that the bird was able to fly freely again, but in letting go of the smaller, weaker creature on which it was preying. This little drama as it relates to the Gospel lesson wasn’t only about the raptor and its need to let go of a difficult weight, but about the squirrel and its desire to survive. The Gospel story isn’t only about us and our need to be detached from things that get in the way of discipleship; it’s also about those who have less power, wealth, and strength but about whom Christ cares very much. We aren’t truly free of the things that weigh us down until we join Christ in caring for and about the poor and vulnerable. It isn’t enough to go off and take a vow of poverty and simplify our lives; true discipleship involves noticing and caring for people who have to worry more about not having enough than about having too much.

Yesterday’s Gospel reading, the passage immediately before this in Mark, was about Jesus blessing the children. No matter where they live, young children are among the vulnerable because of their lack of power. Given the facts about global warming and climate change, we know we need to let go of some of our habits and comforts to make any sort of decent life for the children being born today.

I’ve often wondered about the man in today’s Gospel lesson. What happened after he recovered from the shock of what Jesus had said to him; what did he do after he went away grieving? Did he continue to live as he had, knowing at least somewhere in the back of his mind that he wasn’t living the way God called him to live, or did he indeed sell his possessions, give the money to the poor, and go follow Jesus?

And, not so much out of curiosity as out of existential angst, I wonder about us. What do we do after the shock of realizing what science tells us about the future of our planet if we don’t dramatically and immediately cut back on our emissions of greenhouse gases? What do we do after grieving for the world we have known and asking God to forgive us for what we have done to God’s creation? Does our generation continue living as we have, vaguely knowing we aren’t doing what God would have us do, but unwilling or unable to let go of our privilege and comfort so that today’s children and their children might live? Or do we change our habits and public policies, gladly letting go of some of those privileges and comforts so that we can follow the example of Jesus and recognize that the decisions we make now are having an impact on children, those vulnerable ones who don’t get to make the decisions that are determining their future?

For the Children

The Daily Office Gospel reading for Wednesday (Mark 10:1-16) includes the story of Jesus blessing the children. Jesus made it plain that even if the children didn’t have much importance to others, they were important to him. By his example of not allowing the disciples to keep the children at arm’s length from him, Jesus teaches us the importance of seeing children as individuals in need of love and protection, not as abstractions.

I’ve just begun reading a new book by Mark Hertsgaard, Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth. While many books have been written about dealing with climate change, this one has a depth to it that is helpful to those of us looking at the environment through a spiritual lens. I’ve been thinking the past year about our culture’s denial of the realities of climate change and our seeming inability to begin looking at what is happening and how we might best deal with it. This book articulates very well some of the issues involved in all of this.

Hot brings home the reality of our warming climate through a father’s passion for his own daughter’s future. Mark Hertsgaard had reported on the plight of children in other countries before his own daughter’s birth, but realized after she was born that he had been able to keep an emotional distance from the stories of these children that parents don’t have.

Reviewing Hot in the New York Times, Wen Stephenson writes that this book “raises the emotional stakes while keeping a clear head.” Stephenson then says: “This was the first book on climate change that not only frightened me — plenty have done that — but also broke my heart.” Perhaps our hearts need to be broken before we can bring ourselves out of denial and get to the place where we can help one another cope with this changing world.

In the Prologue to the book (which is available here through Google books), Mark Hertsgaard talks about the moment when his view of the world changed, when the issues of climate change became so real to him that he knew he had to find out all he could and work on figuring out how people can live through the period of climate change we have now entered. The shift came in 2005 when Hertsgaard was a new father of a baby girl. He interviewed David King, a prominent British climate scientist, who talked about climate change not as something in the future that we might possibly yet avoid, but as something that had already begun unfolding. Even if our greenhouse gas emissions were cut drastically and immediately, there would still be global warming for many years as a result of the processes that had already begun. After the interview, Hertsgaard realized that the time period they had been discussing was his daughter’s lifetime, that this warmer, more difficult world was the world in which his little girl would grow up and live her life.

Hot not only takes a realistic look at where we are now, but looks with hope at things we can do – and that some people and governments are already doing – to make the best of the future. Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth is not a religious environmental book, but its compassion for our children and its elements of hope speak to people of faith.

Candlemas Light

In seven weeks spring will officially be here. This is hard to imagine right now as we emerge from another winter storm, this one with especially cold temperatures and wind chills. Despite the biting cold and recent snow, though, on sunny days the sunshine feels warmer than it did in early January. The days are getting longer, and once we pass Candlemas, which is today, the increasing light will become more obvious.

In the Church, February 2 is the Presentation of our Lord, when we remember Mary and Joseph presenting the baby Jesus at the temple forty days after his birth. Luke’s account of this event tells about Simeon and Anna recognizing the baby as the Savior, the Messiah. Simeon says this child is “a light for revelation to the Gentiles”. This day is also known as Candlemas and as the Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin. Some churches still bless new candles on this day or have a special candlelight procession.

This point forty days after the Nativity is nearly midway between the dates we use now for the beginning of winter and the beginning of spring. Some old calendars considered this to be the beginning of spring, and in places with milder winters, early February in a normal year can seem like the beginning of spring. Sometimes even here in Nebraska we can sense spring coming on this date.

Luke tells us that Simeon looked forward to “the consolation of Israel”. Despite the darkness of many things in his world, Simeon had faith that he would see the Messiah before he died. When he saw the infant Jesus, he knew that this was the light for which he had waited. Until the Holy Spirit guided him to the temple that day, Simeon didn’t know where or when or how he would see the Messiah, only that this would happen before he died.

In this week of extreme weather here in the United States and in other places, most notably Queensland, where a huge cyclone named Yasi threatens an area already devastated by floods, it’s sometimes hard to find faith that we will see the light. There is some expectation that Cyclone Yasi may be the biggest cyclone ever to hit Australia. Given that these sorts of mega-storms are exactly what climate scientists predicted would happen as global temperatures rise, what we are experiencing in our northern hemisphere winter and in the southern summer may well be the new normal. It’s sometimes very hard to find hope that we will find our way out of the dark future we would face if global warming is generally ignored and allowed to continue to accelerate.

For people of faith, though, there is always a light of hope even if we can’t imagine how or when we will see the changes for which we are waiting and for which many of us are working. Just as most of the people in the temple that day didn’t recognize that Mary’s baby was different from any other baby brought to the temple forty days after being born, it may be that most of us won’t recognize it when things begin to change for the better. But we continue to pray that there will some shift in political will or in the consciousness of enough of the world’s people that we can learn to live together on this planet with clean air and water, oceans that can support living things, and a global climate that is stable enough to sustain civilized human life.

Meanwhile, while we wait and pray and work this month in the northern hemisphere, we will see more light with longer days and the sun a bit higher in the sky. May this be a sign of hope for us and give us faith to do the joyful work of caring for our world!

Anglican Primates' Statement on Climate Change

Last week the primates (senior bishops such as chief archbishops or our presiding bishop) from most of the provinces of the Anglican Communion met in Dublin. Primates’ meetings are an opportunity for these leaders to meet in order to pray, think, and talk together about various issues. Climate change was one of the discussion topics for this meeting.

At the end of the meeting, the primates issued a statement on climate change . The document includes this paragraph:

We encourage all Anglicans to recognise that global climatic change is real and that we are contributing to the despoiling of creation. We underline the increasing urgency of this as we see the impact of climate change in our provinces, especially in the Pacific region.

Among my prayers of gratitude this chilly last day of January is thanksgiving that this group of leaders from around the world named climate change, acknowledged our role in it, and noted that the impacts of climate change are already evident some places, especially in the Pacific region.

It’s difficult for people from some of the places affected, such as small island nations, to be heard by the rest of the world. When the church hears the cry for help from people who are easily overlooked, we are truly following Christ, who noticed, healed, and fed people who were poor or outcast, and who instructed his disciples to do the same.

Doing Justice

Epiphany 4A

“What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

Sun Come Up is one of this year’s Oscar nominees in short documentary films. It’s a story from Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific about the Carteret Islanders relocating to a new home on Bougainville, fifty miles across the open water. The Carteret Islanders are among the growing number of climate refugees in our world, people who must leave their home because the effects of climate change are making it uninhabitable. These people have a language and culture unique to their islands, but must now go live in a different place because their islands are disappearing due to rising sea levels and erosion. This film tells the story of these people and the people of Bougainville who, despite their own hardships after ten years of civil strife, welcome these refugees. Here’s the trailer of the film:

Sun Come Up Trailer from Sun Come Up on Vimeo.

Tomorrow’s lectionary includes Micah 6:1-8. Micah’s message from God tells us that God wants us to do justice. A big piece of doing justice in today’s world is paying attention to people like the Carteret Islanders who are losing their homes. Doing justice also involves working not only to ensure there are welcoming places for them to resettle, but working to bring the levels of carbon and other greenhouse gases down to a point where the effects of climate change can be kept to a minimum. The longer we live with carbon levels above 350 ppm, the more severe will be the effects of climate change. (The December 2010 reading from the Mauna Loa observatory was 389.69)

The kindness of the Bougainville Islanders is extraordinary. As the synopsis of the story on the Sun Come Up website explains:

Many Bougainvilleans remain traumatized by the “Crisis” as the civil war is known locally. Yet, Sun Come Up isn’t a familiar third world narrative. Out of this tragedy comes a story of hope, strength, and profound generosity.

Verse 5 of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-12), tomorrow’s Gospel lesson, is “Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.” The Tulele Peisa website (‘Tulele Peisa’ means ‘sailing the waves on our own’) includes some background information about the situation on the Carteret Islands . As on other Pacific Islands, their staple food has been taro. When the groundwater on islands becomes too saline due to sea level rise and rising storm tides, the taro crops fail. The conditions on the islands have certainly made the people humble, and no doubt much of the world would prefer that climate refugees be meek in all possible nuances of the word – submissive, not creating a stir, nonassertive.

In the film trailer, one of the people with whom they are negotiating on Bougainville says, “I’ve heard about you Carterets, you are easy-going people.” But while easy-going, they are not passive. They have carefully thought through their circumstances and their options, and are relocating in a way that will help their family units and some of their culture to survive and in a way that allows them to be productive people in their new home. They are gentle people, but they are not allowing circumstances to push them around completely. Without such planning, they know they would become, as some already have, “the new marginalised fringe dwellers with serious social problems and stigma” living in slums on the Papua New Guinea mainland.

Perhaps some meekness is called for on our part, in a willingness for those of us living in places that are habitable to step aside and, following the example of the Bougainville Islanders, make space for this new kind of refugee. Meekness would call for us to set aside our desire for everything to continue to grow bigger so that others can be ensured the essentials in life. Surely that is part of doing justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God. If we do these things, we might stand a chance for all of us to inherit the earth.

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?