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Come Together And Act
Friends,
As I am sure you are aware, these are crucial times. Indeed, we have potentially reached the global warming tipping point that we have been warned about now for years. However, this is not the time to sit around feeling powerless and defenseless. If you are like me, you are feeling angry and apprehensive about the state of our environment and the damage that we as humans have caused. Ideally, our anger is inspiring us toward action, rather than overwhelming us toward inactivity. Anger is a powerful tool that can be channeled toward action and passion. For those of you that are involved in communities, have you considered what you can do as a group? We are capable, intelligent, and adaptable beings and when we come together we are a force to be reckoned with. This is not the time to be complacent. This is the time to draw upon all our resources- emotional, financial and time- to do something...anything.
As Ian Lawton reminds us in one of his 5 part series on the climate, we need to persevere, like the blade of grass that pushes through the concrete, even after its been trampled time and time again- we need to be irrepressible. And as Fred recommends in his article below, even just the shift toward seeing things in nature as living beings to hug, protect, and adore can help inspire us toward action. And others in this eBulletin call us toward reverence, awe, and commitment.
Every living being on this planet and indeed this universe is interconnected in a deep and meaningful way. We are literally made of the stars, we breathe the air that the trees cleanse for us, and we are in a symbiotic relationship with every creature in this web of life.
Take Yellowstone National Park, as an example. By the 1930's all the wolves in the park were completely wiped out and there were zero remaining. Within a few years, the conditions in the park had declined drastically. The land was eroding and the plants were dying off.
READ ON...
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Trees and Things that Live
Fred Plumer
The idea that we humans have been given dominion over the animals, the trees and the waters is just wrong. At some point we are going to have to admit we have been blind to what we have done and are continuing to do. If we do not begin to function in harmony with all Creation, I am afraid Homo sapiens will have a short history on this earth. Even more tragic, we humans will have missed an opportunity to experience an amazing awareness that could have led to a profound, life changing spiritual experience and a very different worldly experience.
READ ON....
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Global Warming and the Christian Prophetic Voice
Carl Krieg
In the midst of all this one might well ask: What has happened to the Christian prophetic voice? the voice that says: no, you can’t do that. Christians lately have a tendency to accommodate culture, either by draping the cross with the American flag, or by pretending that new philosophical/theological theories are the answer to the world’s problems. The prophets of the Hebrew Bible had a different take on the divine will. They walked into the king’s court and the king’s chapel, and proclaimed what they believed was the word of God: you cannot do that! We may not like to use the word sin anymore, especially when thought of as “original”. So let us put something else in its place. We are parochial, we do create our own little world, we do put our interests above those of others. And it will haunt us. The eternal now is upon us, and it is time for the Church, progressive and otherwise, to join those prophetic voices that the the world so desperately needs to hear, those voices that cry out: you cannot do this!
READ ON....
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Putting Heart Back Into Earth Care
Ian Lawton
I’m yet to meet anyone who openly admits that they don’t care about the earth. We all SAY we care. The real question we need to ask is, “What are we prepared to do? How far are we prepared to go in our activism? Will we make radical changes to our lifestyle for the cause?”
READ ON....
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Climate Change, A Vocabulary of Reverence and the Strength of Fragility
Rev. Jerald Stinson
For those like me who see Jesus, not as the divine Son of God in our midst, but as a courageous sage and social prophet, and for those of us who see God as other than an all-powerful distant deity – the language of reverence is rooted in the story of existence and the universe itself.
That becomes a religious story whispering of a larger meaning of our existence or in Bumbaugh’s words each of us is “a self present in the singularity that produced the emergent universe; a self present at the birth of the stars; a self related through time to every living thing on this planet; a self that contains within it the seeds of a future we cannot imagine in our wildest flights of fantasy.”
That non-traditional evolutionary sacred story invites us to stand in awe; and it calls us to create a whole new vocabulary of reverence even as we commit to cherishing and caring for the earth.
READ ON....
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Intimate Silence: the Spirituality of Desert Preservation
a Reflection
Jim Burklo
Desert Stewardship Project event, 9/6/14
Joshua Tree National Monument
A young Muslim woman student at the University of Southern California once told me that the reason she fasts at Ramadan is to manifest an essential human quality. Human beings, she said, are the only creatures that are able to restrain themselves from doing what they want to do. When animals are hungry, they find something to eat and eat it. When they are thirsty, they find something to drink and they drink it. Humans are humans because they can get hungry and thirsty but, if they choose, restrain themselves from eating or drinking. This capacity for deferral of immediate gratification in many other areas of life is what makes civilization possible. So for her, fasting at Ramadan was an exercise to develop her capacity for restraint.
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Event: The Future is Calling Us to Greatness
With Michael Dowd
November 24-28, 2014
A worldwide movement has been emerging for decades, largely unnoticed, at the nexus of science, inspiration, and sustainability. Beliefs are secondary. What unites us is a pool of common values, priorities, and commitments regarding the importance of living in right relationship to reality and contributing to a healthy future for humanity and the larger body of life. This series of Skype interviews will explore the work of some of the world’s most respected luminaries regarding what we may expect in the coming decades and how to stay inspired to be in action in the face of enormous challenges and difficulties.
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Religions for the Earth Multifaith Service
Video
On Sunday, September 21, Religions for the Earth will conclude a three-day conference with a multifaith service at the Cathedral Church of Saint John the Divine from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Religious and spiritual leaders from around the world will join with activists, artists, scientists, community leaders, and government officials in a ritual of covenant and commission to protect and care for the Earth. Speakers include: Former Vice President Al Gore, Rev. Jim Wallis, Chief Arvol Looking Horse, Dr. Vandana Shiva and Rabbi Ellen Bernstein and more.
WATCH HERE...
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The Debate That Should Be Taking Place
David Anderson
This problem began long before the late Middles Ages and the Enlightenment here referenced. It began with the Babylonians, Akkadians, Egyptians and others who lived at the beginning of the bronze, iron and agricultural age; what many now call the beginning of the first axial age. It was an age that tore us away from thousands of years of attachment to nature. Unlike earlier Homo sapiens going back to the beginning of our species who had a reverence toward nature and the delicate balance that needed to be maintained, in the mind of that first axial civilization the earth was turned into an inanimate object to do with as humans wished. Remnants of this contrast were seen when Europeans first met the American Indian. Along the way this contrast was also seen the life of certain spiritual leaders and their followers such as the Buddha and Jesus and Gandhi and in isolated communities. But for the bulk of humanity, we all went from homo sapiens in tune with nature to homo economicus in opposition to nature.
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Filthy Dirty South - Music Video
Rising Appalachia
This song and video offer a lyrical analysis of our southern regions and the onslaught of environmental abuses laid onto sacred lands. The lyrics touch on the Gulfcoast oil spill, Mountain top removal, and fracking, and beg the question WHY is this south is so “filthy Dirty”.
WATCH HERE...
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Earth Talk - Video
Matthew Fox
Matthew Fox talks on the subject of “Recovering the Sacredness of the Earth and the Difference it Makes as the Next Stage of Human Evolution”.
How special the Earth is – this is becoming clearer every day as we examine other possible planets in the universe on the macrocosmic scale; and as we explore more of the wisdom of animals and plants and other creatures closer to home. Clearly the Earth is a sacred Temple and we aren’t treating it as wonderfully as it deserves and our future sustainability requires. Matthew explores the capacity for our species to take this occasion of the crisis Mother Earth finds herself in to reinvent our ways of living and working on this planet. As the eco philosopher says, “hope is a verb with the sleeves rolled up.” Matthew also talked about what it takes to be green men and green women, spiritual warriors on behalf of mother earth. This vocation constitutes the next stage of evolution in our species, that of compassion and warrior hood.
WATCH HERE...
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