Message from Margaret...

Dear friends,

As we move through Lent, I’m drawn to the insights of Christine Valters Paintner, whose new book, A Different Kind of Fast, proposes that to “feed our true hungers,” we might try fasting in Lent from multitasking and inattention, from scarcity, speed, certainty, and control. These profoundly counter-cultural practices are at the root of contemplative living and help us to listen to the voice of love that is always sounding in our hearts. How might abiding with that Divine Presence guide and sustain our urgent work to heal an ailing world?

• An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice

Saturday, April 20

9:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. • St. Mark’s, Southborough ($20, suggested donation to cover lunch)

With excitement we’re heading to our big Earth Day celebration on Saturday, April 20. Episcopalians across Massachusetts will gather at St. Mark’s, Southborough, for a special day of learning, sharing, worship, and renewed resolve. Come listen to celebrated ecologist and educator Robin Wall Kimmerer (author of Braiding Sweetgrass) speak in a video recorded just for us about reciprocity from a Native American perspective. Be inspired by internationally known author, environmentalist, and climate activist, Bill McKibben, speaking to us in a livestream. Enjoy the wisdom of Dr. Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-founder and co-director emeritus of the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, who, with her husband John Grim. created the academic field of ecology and religion and will be with us in person. At our closing Eucharist, be moved by the preaching of Bishop Carol Gallagher, a member of the Cherokee tribe and Assistant Bishop, Diocese of MA, and by the shared liturgical leadership of Bishop Doug Fisher, Diocesan, Diocese of Western MA.

Join clergy and lay leaders as we celebrate completion of the pilot phase of An Episcopal Path to Creation Justice and build spiritual and moral power to respond to the climate crisis. Registration is open. All are welcome! I hope to see you there!

EARTH DAY IS COMING!

• Earth Day Resources from Creation Justice Ministries (CJM)

This year’s CJM resource will help churches prepare for Earth Day and equip them to care for God’s Creation throughout the year. Plastic Jesus: Real Faith in a Synthetic World is designed to help us think through the ways that plastic appears in our culture and to consider how we can best love God, Creation, and neighbor in a world overrun with waste and pollution. The resource contains theological framing, sermon starters, advocacy ideas, resources for children, and three original songs commissioned to fit this year’s theme. You can download the resource here.

• One Home One Future

The leadup to Earth Day is a great time to register your church in this national campaign sponsored by eco-America/Blessed Tomorrow to educate, support, and activate congregations of all faiths to protect God’s Creation. The campaign offers trainings, resources, webinars, and guidance through seven engagement pathways designed to meet you where you are – PLUS, if you’re one of the first 1,000 congregations to sign up, you receive a free banner to hang outside your building!

• National Faith + Climate Forum 2024

Tuesday, April 16 • In your community or online

Sponsored by ecoAmerica/Blessed Tomorrow, this annual event will deepen your understanding of how to engage your congregation in Creation care, help you work toward just and equitable solutions, and connect you with other faith leaders locally and nationally. There are three ways to participate: attend at a designated location, be a host yourself, or attend live online. Check out the growing list of host locations – will your congregation be the first host location in Massachusetts? Register 15 attendees for your location and receive a stipend of $450. Check out the impressive list of speakers! Visit here to learn more and to register.

• Faith Climate Action Week, April 19 – 28

Faith Climate Action Week is Interfaith Power and Light’s annual program of climate-themed worship services and sermons that spans ten days of activities celebrating Earth Month. The theme of 2024’s Faith Climate Action Week is “Common Ground: Cultivating Connections Between Our Faith, Our Food, and the Climate.” We’ll examine how our food systems contribute to injustice and to climate change, and how our faiths call us to respond through practical solutions.

The 2024 Faith Climate Action Week printed organizer’s kit is now available! The resources in this kit will equip you to lead faith-based discussion and action at your congregation to ensure a safe climate for our neighbors and communities. While you’re at it, consider ordering IP&L’s Pizza Garden Seed Kit! 

PRAY

• Renewing God’s Creation: Daily Meditations for Lent 2024

Lent invites us to reflect on our relationships with God, each other, and the Earth upon which all life depends.  The Creation Care Leadership Circle, a small group in the Diocese of Western Massachusetts that advises our Missioner for Creation Care, invites you to sign up to receive an inspirational daily meditation (including a short quote and an image) during the Forty Days of Lent. The quotes come from diverse sources as we honor the wisdom of many voices and traditions. Please join us for our third annual series of Lenten meditations as we contemplate the gift of the natural world and our calling to reconcile humanity with the rest of God’s creation. Registration is open.

• Baptism and Collaboration in the Body of Christ

I am one of many contributors to a new devotional booklet for Lent and Easter now available from the Episcopal Dioceses of Massachusetts and Vermont. Presented with beautiful graphics, “Baptism and Collaboration in the Body of Christ” includes entries by ordained, lay, and monastic leaders that are based on the six promises we make in our Baptismal Covenant. You can find it here.

Worship and conversation guided by each week’s baptismal vow

Thursday, March 7, 14, 21; April 4

5:45 – 7:45 p.m. • Online (free)

You are also invited to join one or more of these gathering, offered through Green Mountain Online Abbey of the Diocese of VT, to reflect on one of the baptismal vows. To join a meeting, click here. All are welcome. RSVPs to the Rev. Adwoa Wilson are appreciated:  [email protected]. 

 • Green Lectionary Podcast: Lent Edition

Looking for preaching help? The Lent season of the Green Lectionary, sponsored by Creation Justice Ministries, has begun streaming! Listen wherever you listen to podcasts or via the website. Episodes will drop weekly throughout Lent. 

• Group Spiritual Direction Circles | for spiritual leaders in a climate-changed world

Meeting once a month, March/April to October/November

Several options for days, times, leaders • Online ($200, some scholarships available)

The BTS Center is offering an 8-month opportunity in which spiritual leaders strengthen their holy hearing and sharing in group spiritual direction/companioning. Gathering monthly from March through November in groups of six over Zoom, each two-hour session is centered on a prompt related to climate change, liminality, or uncertainty. Rather than a solution-seeking conversation, group members are invited to respond from their hearts to that prompt and each other, together investigating spirit-centered responses. For more information, including choices of dates and leaders, visit here.

LEARN

Religion in Times of Earth Crisis | A Series of  Public  Online Conversations

Mondays, 6:00 –7:30 pm (ET) • Online (free)

Harvard Divinity School is hosting a series of public conversations with members of the HDS faculty. The final two events are listed below. A full list is available here. Optional follow-up conversations are 7:45–8:45 p.m.

• The Practice of Wild Mercy: Something Deeper Than Hope

Monday, March 4 • Terry Tempest Williams, HDS Writer-in-Residence

Can personhood be granted to mountains, lakes, and rivers? What does it mean to be met by another species? How do we extend our notion of power to include all life forms? And what does a different kind of power look like and feel like? Wild Mercy is in our hands. Practices of attention in the field with compassion and grace deepen our kinship with life, allowing us to touch something deeper than hope. Great Salt Lake offers us a reflection into our own nature: Are we shrinking or expanding? To register, visit here.

• Reflecting on Religion in Times of Earth Crisis

Monday, March 18 • Mayra Rivera, Dan McKanan, Teren Sevea, Matthew Ichihashi Potts, & Terry Tempest Williams

All the presenters will gather to share learnings and consider the overarching questions: What can an expansive understanding of religion provide in these times of Earth crisis? What is the role of the study of religion in times of catastrophe?

• Transforming Climates: Preaching Environmental Justice

April 2-4 • Sewanee, the University of the South

Racial and planetary climates are shifting in ways that demand transformation: of our society, of our communities, and of our preaching. This conference will explore how preaching changes when colonialist and exploitative conceptions of humanity break down. In small-group workshops and lectures, participants will develop tools for an embodied, attentive, and place-based approach to preaching that can invite transformation of racial and environmental injustices. For more information and to register, visit the Sewanee website. 

 • Claiming Your Call for a Climate-Changed World: A Three-Day Retreat and Community of Practice

Thursday, June 20 – Saturday, June 22

Schoodic Institute, Winter Harbor, ME - Free!

The BTS Center and Creation Justice Ministries are offering an exciting opportunity for congregations in northern New England! Applications are now open for a Three-Day Retreat and Community of Practice for teams from New England congregation. Recruit a team of four from your congregation and apply to participate. Nine congregations will be selected. For more information and to apply, click here.  

Orchids, New England Botanic Garden at Tower Hill. Photo: submitted.

ACT

 • 52 Ways to Care for Creation: Bulletin Insert 2024

Click here to download a resource from Creation Justice Ministries that contains 12 monthly bulletin inserts for your congregation. Each week highlights a Creation justice idea for action or reflection that corresponds with the liturgical/seasonal calendar. Download both print and digital versions of the bulletin inserts!

• Hope is Heat Pump: How One House of Worship and School Reduced Carbon by 85%

Monday, March 4

7:00 – 8:00 p.m. • Online (free)

Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light is excited to co-sponsor this Jewish Climate Action Network (JCAN) webinar detailing how one house of worship and school upgraded their heating systems to heat pumps and reduced their carbon emissions by 85%. Hear from specialists who helped them chart the route toward towards climate neutrality while keeping the school, sanctuary, and event spaces in full operation. Click here for more information and to register.

• Reducing Carbon Footprint

Thursday, March 7

11:00 a.m. (Eastern) • Online (free)

Sponsored by Anglican Communion Environmental Network, this webinar will share inspiring stories from around the Communion about how to cut back our emissions.

• Electric Vehicles: A Panel Discussion

Sunday, March 17

12 Noon • Sts. James & Andrews Episcopal Church, 8 Church St., Greenfield (free)

As part of Green Team 2024 Environmental Sunday Programs, celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with a panel discussion on electric vehicles! Panelists will include representatives from the Green Energy Consumers Alliance and from Fairfield Kia of Keene, NH, as well as a local resident who drives an electric vehicle. If you like, bring a lunch or snack. Questions? Contact Ella Ingraham: [email protected].

 • Ecological Restoration and Environmental Justice: Earth Repair

April 5 (1:00 – 6:00 p.m.) & April 6 (9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.) • Online ($150)

Communities around the world are working to restore health and balance to damaged ecosystems. In this two-day, virtual course with Professor Karenna Gore, students will learn from restoration projects that are grounded in complex “ways of knowing” where ceremony, community, and longstanding and attentive relationships with the land are fundamental. Karenna Gore is the founder and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics and visiting professor of practice of earth ethics at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Complete information is here. Registration deadline is March 22.

ADVOCATE

 • Stop Private Jet Expansion at Hanscom or Anywhere: A Webinar

Wednesday, March 6

7:00 p.m. • Online (free)

The webinar will cover:

• The private jet hangar expansion plans – what the developers are saying now;
• Climate impacts of the proposed expansion – why it’s a statewide issue;
• Next steps in MEPA state environmental review, including public comments;
• What you can do to help stop the largest private jet hangar expansion in New England and possibly the nation.

Speakers include Naomi Oreskes, co-author of Merchants of Doubt and a world-renowned geologist, historian, and public speaker, and Alex Chatfield, one of the leaders of our Creation Care Justice Network (CCJN). For more information, a full list of speakers, and to register, visit here.

 • Vote climate justice and Creation care!

In this crucial election year, our freedoms depend on free and fair elections – and communities of faith can play a critical role in defending them.

• The Rev. Carol Devine (Executive Director, Blessed Tomorrow) explains in a brief essay, “Voting Creation care as an act of faith,” that “Voting is an important way we people of faith live out our values and influence society for the good of all people and all creation.”

• In a well-researched new essay on “The Sacred Right and Responsibility to Vote,” the Rev. Dr. Jim Antal (Special Advisor on Climate Justice to the General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ) writes, “If you are a person whose faith encourages you to see the spark of the divine in every person you meet, I urge you to hear God’s call to do whatever you can – in your community and within your sphere of influence – to join others and prepare for a free and fair election.”

• Did you know that “for 250 years (1634-1884), one of the ways congregations engaged public life was to hear an election sermon”? … “As an election approached, houses of worship would fill with citizens eager to reflect on the moral qualifications of those running for office. Today, though, it is likely that little to nothing will be said about the election in many, perhaps the majority, of our houses of worship.”

Is it time to reawaken this moral witness? Read a thoughtful essay by Jim Antal, “The Time is Now for the ‘Election Sermon.’”

 • Episcopal Election Activators 2024-2025

The Episcopal Church is inviting Episcopalians to join this year’s cohort and to encourage voter engagement. Episcopal Election Activators is an Episcopal Church program, run by the Office of Government Relations, that seeks volunteers to help promote and facilitate local non-partisan election engagement efforts in their state or region of the U.S. Applications are open for the 2024-2025 cohort, which will run until December 2025 with varying levels of engagement based on the election calendar. Individuals may apply at any time. You will receive training in voter registration and other engagement strategies, while benefiting from the support of network peers and Office of Government Relations' staff.

• Faith in Elections Playbook

Interfaith America and Protect Democracy have created a free Faith in Elections Playbook. To help churches and faith-based organizations do their part to ensure a smoothly run election in 2024, this playbook provides how-to guides, FAQs, templates, and other helpful materials that outline ways you can take nonpartisan action to support your state's election system.

• Faiths for Climate Justice, May 3-12

People of faith around the world are mobilizing for a week of action calling for an end to fossil fuels, a sustainable future, and a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty. Join or organize an event, and we’ll be part of this global effort sponsored by GreenFaith International. Would you like to help organize an event in western Mass.? Please contact me ([email protected])!

If you’d like to join our Creation Care Justice Network here in Massachusetts and to receive its monthly newsletter, Green Justice News, please visit here. As always, drop me a note if you’d like to be in touch. 

Blessings,

(The Rev. Dr.) Margaret Bullitt-Jonas

Missioner for Creation Care (Episcopal Diocese of Western Mass. & Southern New England Conference, UCC)

Creation Care Advisor (Episcopal Diocese of Mass.)

Mill River, late February. Photo: submitted

Join our diocesan Creation Care Facebook group!

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Blessings!