Creation Care Network E-news |
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Dear friends,
• Climate emergency webinars
Thank you to everyone who joined our four webinars devoted to the climate emergency. The lively presentations and small-group discussions explored how our two dioceses in Massachusetts, in partnership with friends and allies, can move forward as we pray, learn, act, and advocate on behalf of planet Earth.
We want to build on the momentum of the webinars, so please let us know how you think our two dioceses can work together to address the climate crisis. Please send me your thoughts ([email protected]).
In the meantime, if you are a member of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts, please join Creation Care Justice Network. Based in the Diocese of MA, this growing network offers ways for Episcopalians across Massachusetts to connect with each other as we address the climate crisis. By signing up, you will receive a short monthly newsletter, “Green Justice News,” and hear about opportunities to join one of the three working groups (Action and Advocacy, Spiritual Practice and Grounding, and Communications and Networking). I hope that my friends in the Diocese of Western MA who care about protecting God’s creation will join hands with folks in the “Eastern” diocese. We are stronger together!
Anglican Theological Review just published my article about climate preaching. The article aims to equip preachers to deliver strong sermons about the climate crisis. Here is a brief excerpt:
If the voice of one young woman – Greta Thunberg – can rivet the attention of the world, what would happen if preachers everywhere unleashed their own passion for God’s Creation? What would happen if preachers across the Episcopal Church and in every religious tradition began to speak boldly and frequently about our moral obligation to create a more just and habitable world? Just as ecosystems have so-called tipping points – a critical point when they suddenly undergo rapid and irreversible change – so, too, human communities can experience a tipping point after which society changes swiftly in dramatic ways.
Climate preachers play an essential role in creating that urgently needed social “tipping point.” Please share this article with the preachers in your life. If you are a climate preacher who would like some personal encouragement or prayer, please feel free to be in touch ([email protected]).
The entire Spring 2021 issue of Anglican Theological Review is devoted to the climate and extinction crisis. In an introductory essay, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry comments: “This is God’s world. It is not yours, nor is it mine. It does not belong to a nation, a corporation, or to the wealthiest humans who have walked this earth. This is God’s world… As Jesus’s disciples, may we come to love this world—God’s world—with the ferocity and tenderness of God himself.”
• Review of Rooted & Rising
One of the most compelling aspects of this collection of essays is the embodied humility of the authors, expressed as disenchantment and realism. There is a shared knowledge of the Goliath they face, and they bear no illusion that this is an easy undertaking. The authors do not claim to have the answers, but the strength they have found and re-found allows them to persist in listening to their call to address the inequality, suffering, sacrifice, and urgency inherent in this work.
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Artwork by Christi Belcourt. Graphics by Sarah LittleRedfeather. |
• Join the struggle to stop Line 3
Five years ago, I traveled to Standing Rock to join the multifaith effort to stand with the Sioux Nation’s Water Protectors in their fight against the Dakota Access pipeline. Today I invite you to join another Indigenous-led struggle to protect their land and water against another pipeline.
On June 5-8, people from around the country will join a Treaty People Gathering in Minnesota to lift their voices and their prayers in opposition to Line 3, the notorious pipeline intended to transport tar sands oil across northern Minnesota. Here is a video introduction to the event. Indigenous leaders are calling all people of faith and good will to come to Northern Minnesota for community building, mobilization, and peaceful action to urge President Biden to revoke the project’s permits. As Enbridge builds Line 3 through Anishinaabe treaty land and the Mississippi Headwaters, now is a critical moment to support the movement to defend Indigenous sovereignty, water, and climate.
The Episcopal Church in Minnesota is involved in resistance to the Line 3 pipeline through Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. To learn more and to consider attending as part of its multifaith delegation, please join the webinar below. Even if you can’t travel to Minnesota, attending this online event should be a good way to learn about Line 3 and the issues that it raises:
Tuesday, June 1 • Zoom (free)
8:00-9:00 pm (Eastern): multifaith reflection on showing up for Indigenous-led resistance
9:00-10:00 pm (Eastern): Q&A about the Treaty People Gathering, June 5-8
To join the Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light Faith Delegation to the Treaty People Gathering, click here. Folks in New England are invited to sign up here if you are interested in attending or offering remote support.
If, like me, you must stay home that weekend, please join me in praying for the success of this moral witness. We can also stay up to date by watching a live-streamed Facebook event on Sunday night, June 6.
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Sunday, June 6 • Facebook (free) 9:00 p.m.
I encourage everyone to sign and share this petition to President Biden. If he is serious about tackling climate change and honoring tribal rights, he needs to stop this pipeline.
• Stop the money pipeline that funds projects like Line 3. Learn how you can help #DefundLine3 and add your voice to the growing demand to banks like Chase, Citi, Bank of America and TD Bank to stop financing Line 3. Stopthe MoneyPipeline.org is organizing efforts to push banks, asset managers, insurance companies and institutional investors to stop funding, insuring and investing in climate destruction.
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• Alive in the Spirit: A Morning Retreat with Rev. Dr. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas Saturday, June 12
9:30 a.m.-12 Noon • via Zoom (free)
Jesus calls us to fullness of life (John 10:10), yet many of us feel anything but fully alive – we may feel melancholy, distracted, anxious, or numb. In this morning retreat we will explore ways of prayer that make us available to the healing and enlivening power of the Spirit. The first part of the retreat will focus on our inner lives; the second part will focus on how our outer lives can create the conditions for experiencing what Joseph Campbell called “the rapture of being alive.”
Our time together will include presentations and guided meditation, with options for solitary reflection and small group conversation. This retreat is co-sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Western MA and the Episcopal Diocese of MA. It is open to everyone. To register, please click here. If possible, please bring a candle, Bible, and Book of Common Prayer.
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• Looking for Climate Resilience pilot congregations
Brugmansia Ministries is a new interfaith organization composed of scientists, engineers, and civic and religious leaders committed to helping prepare communities and religious organizations for climate change and climate migration through resilience-building practices and adaptive infrastructure.
Committed to “resiliency as ministry,” Brugmansia Ministries is enlisting pilot congregations who are willing to help the organization refine their process and provide feedback on their mode of engagement. This is a great opportunity for congregations who are already interested in environmental justice/resilience work and who want to help shape a new and innovative ministry. If you are interested in learning more about Brugmansia Ministries or being part of a pilot engagement, you can visit their website or contact their director, Josh Richardson ([email protected]).
• During roughly the same period that COVID-19 killed more than 2.8 million people, more than three times that many likely died from air pollution. Isn’t it interesting how invisible some deaths are – how accepted, how unquestioned? As Rebecca Solnit argues in a compelling essay, we tend to normalize certain forms of death and destruction as “a kind of moral background noise.” I invite you to take a look at her article, “There's another pandemic under our noses, and it kills 8.7m people a year.” What deaths are we taking for granted? What if we fought the climate crisis with the same urgency with which we confronted coronavirus?
• Job openings
The Rev. Fred Small now serves Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light in a new capacity – as Director of Faith in Action. He writes: “By freeing me from the plenary responsibilities of an Executive Director, this transition will allow me to concentrate on my passion: mobilizing people of faith as climate justice advocates.” MassIP&L now has two job openings, one for Executive Director, the other for Administrator. Are you – or someone you know – called to apply to one of these positions?
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• I mentioned Greta Thunberg near the beginning of this month’s newsletter, and I will give her the last word. In this powerful 5-minute video, she speaks about the links between the climate crisis, the ecological crisis and the health crisis. “Our relationship with nature is broken. But relationships can change…”
Thank God that broken relationships can change! How is God inviting you to join in healing our relationship with nature?
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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.)
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“Sea meets stone in Rockport, Mass.” Photo: Robert A. Jonas
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Opportunities for engagement |
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Join MN Interfaith Power & Light for a free webinar |
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Living Up to Our Treaties: Multifaith Reflection on...
On Tuesday, June 1, join us for our June Community Connector webinar. From 7:00-8:00 pm CT, we'll spend time reflecting on what it means for us as people of faith and spiritual grounding to be in solidarity with Indigenous leaders.
Read more
www.mnipl.org
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Looking for Climate Resilience pilot congregations
Brugmansia Ministries
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Brugmansia Ministries is enlisting pilot congregations who are willing to help the organization refine their process and provide feedback on their mode of engagement. |
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Brugmansia Ministries is a new interfaith organization composed of scientists, engineers, and civic and religious leaders committed to helping prepare communities and religious organizations for climate change and climate migration through resilience-building practices and adaptive infrastructure.
www.brugmansiaministries.org
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If you've enjoyed this newsletter, please feel free to forward to one or two friends you think may be interested.
Blessings!
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MBJ photo: Tipper Gore, 2014 |
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