As we head toward Holy Week and the sacred mysteries of our faith, we give thanks for the love that transcends death. How will we express that love in this place and in this time? Bill McKibben recently advised, “If you want to stand with the brave people of Ukraine, you need to find a way to stand against oil and gas.” Together, we can pray, learn, act, and advocate for a cleaner and more peaceful world.

Just in time for Earth Day (April 22) and Earth Sunday (April 24), the Creation Care webpages for the Diocese of Western Massachusetts have been updated. The newly updated Creation Care webpage for the Diocese of Massachusetts also has a new look, and its resource list, “Sustainable Life: Suggestions for Responding to the Climate Emergency,” has been thoroughly revised. Do take a look!

• I will pre-record an Earth Sunday (April 24, Second Sunday of Easter) sermon that will be available to the Episcopal dioceses in MA and to Southern New England Conference, UCC. Whether you include my sermon in your worship service or preach your own climate justice sermon, I hope you will register your event with GreenFaith’s Sacred Season for Climate Justice (see below)!

• Join nationwide prayer on Earth Day

Across the U.S, people of all faiths will join their voices on Earth Day at 12 Noon, local time, to pray for action on climate change. Sign up to pray and you will receive Interfaith Power & Light’s National Climate Prayer.

• Great Tide Rising: Earth Day at the Compressor

Clergy and lay faith leaders are invited to join the Red Rebel Brigade, the Boston Area Brigade of Activist Musicians (BABAM) Band, elected leaders, musicians, and others in support of closing Enbridge’s compressor station. This event is hosted by Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station.

• “The Faith of Prophets: Lessons for the Climate Crisis”

Keynote: “Why Prophets Matter Today,” by the Rev. Dr. Brooks Berndt, Minister of Environmental Justice for the United Church of Christ (10:30 - 11:30am); Panel discussion, “Prophetic Action Today” (11:45am - 12:45pm); Local Action in Your Own Community.

For more information and to register, visit here.

• GreenFaith’s Sacred Season for Climate Justice

In 2022, please consider holding a special Holy Week, Easter Season, or Earth Day Sunday service that focuses on God’s urgent call for climate justice and healing. Offer a climate justice prayer or sermon and be sure to register your event, so that it is counted among the events being held around the world. For more information and to host an event, please visit here. A collection of Sacred Season resources is available here. Please join in calling for no new fossil fuel projects, a phaseout of current fossil fuel projects, and an investment in a just transition.

• Faith Climate Action Week, with Interfaith Power & Light (April 22-May 1): The theme of this year’s IP&L Faith Climate Action Week is “Sacred Trust: Our Children’s Right to a Livable Future.” IP&L provides a kit that includes faith-based discussion materials, a climate change fact sheet, suggested short films and a Youth and Children Blessing ceremony. You can also screen “Youth v Gov,” a climate change “superhero” movie. Register now through April 5 to screen the film for your group for free by streaming from April 11-May 1 to an in-person or virtual audience. For more information and to order supplies, click here.

• Earth Day 2022 with Creation Justice Ministries

This year’s Earth Day Sunday (April 24) resource theme from Creation Justice Ministries, “Weathering the Storm: Faithful Climate Resilience,” discusses the importance of churches being hubs for resilience in the climate crisis. Sign up here to receive this resource.

• A Body Prayer for Peace

Please join me in a simple body prayer for peace – with Earth and among nations – that I recorded for the opening session of National Faith and Climate Forum, American Climate Leadership Summit 2022 (March 31, 2022). A video is available here. The text is available here.

• Shining in the Shadows: Leading with Hope in a Time of Despair

Sponsored by The BTS Center, this retreat will be led by Rev. Steve Garnaas-Holmes and will explore practices to renew our hope. In gathered activities and in solitude, in online sessions and times apart, we'll engage in some contemplative practices, creative exercises, re-imagining some biblical texts, and small group conversations. We'll explore practices of lament, ‘divine mindfulness,’ gratitude, reframing, and reconnecting, to discover trust and courage. Even when times are hard, the future looks bleak, and the air is murky, we can find joy — yes, joy, even! — and shine with light in the shadows, and lead with hope, helping others recover their hope and bear light.

Sponsored by The BTS Center, the fourth Lament with Earth, presented in partnership with The Many, will offer a time of ritual, music, and prayer as we ground our grief in community. We will come together to lament and celebrate the transformative power of water, holding space for mourning and discovery, sorrow and inspiration.

• Preaching Hope in a Climate Emergency

Last month I co-led with my friend and colleague Rev. Dr. Jim Antal a one-hour webinar on climate preaching. This 30-minute video of our presentation focuses on moral responsibility (“Is climate change my fault?”) and hope (“Given the stark climate news, what does hope look like?”). I hope (!) you enjoy watching our presentation (we didn’t record the Q&A).

• “Preaching Resilience: Cultivating Climate Justice from the Pulpit”

This is the text of a keynote address I gave last week for Creation Justice Ministries in a webinar hosted by CJM’s Co-Director, Avery Davis Lamb. I talked about nine things I try to do when preaching about climate emergency: push back against helplessness, enable people to face hard facts, offer a positive vision of the future, provide a moral framework, encourage reconciliation, provide opportunities for emotional response, build hope by encouraging action, deepen reverence for nature, and encourage love.

A video of the conversation, along with CJM’s other workshops on climate resilience, is available on their YouTube channel. How do YOU preach about climate justice and resilience? Please share your ideas!

• Deep Green Faith: Online Class

Rev. Jerry Cappel will lead this exciting 5-session series, sponsored by Center for Religion and Environment (Sewanee). It is common for creation care ministry to operate disconnected from the larger community life of prayer, worship, fellowship, and faith. How might faith communities embody a more full inclusion of all creation in their lives of faith, worship and witness? For more information and to register, visit here.

• Worlds Without End: Easter Ecology

This free, Thursday afternoon webinar hosts a conversation between the Anglican scholar Hannah Malcolm, and the Center for Religion and Environment (Sewanee's School of Theology). For more information and to register, visit here.

• Ecological Spiritualities Conference

Harvard Divinity School’s Program for the Evolution of Spirituality will host its inaugural conference on Ecological Spiritualities, exploring the evolution of earth-based spiritual traditions and highlighting innovative spiritual practices that are emerging in response to climate change, mass extinction, biodiversity loss, and the disruption of local and global ecosystems. Registration is open.

In these times of accelerating climate change and devastating losses, we need spiritual leadership that is strong enough to speak prophetically to the challenges at hand, yet tender and nuanced enough to allow the message to resonate. Those of us who preach regularly, or even occasionally, can feel at a loss as to how to incorporate climate change into our sermons and reflections, complex and painful as these subjects are. And yet, the need for preaching in a climate-changed world is profound. Knowing the importance of ecological preaching, The BTS Center is pleased to partner with Rev. Dr. Leah D. Schade and Rabbi Yonatan Neril for an Eco Preaching Workshop in which participants will gain tools to become “EcoPreachers” in their contexts.

• Read Bill McKibben’s latest in the New Yorker: “In a World on Fire, Stop Burning Things” 

Did you know that Massachusetts is second in the nation in the number of houses of worship that have installed solar panels? Hosted by Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light, this "open forum" will answer your questions about how your congregation can join this growing list. Registration is open.

As we enter another season of climate-driven disasters, it is time to step back and ask: How can our congregations be hubs of climate resilience, helping our communities weather the spiritual and physical storms of the climate crisis?

In this workshop sponsored by Creation Justice Ministries, participants will learn about the domestic and global context of climate disasters, get connected with resources for disaster response and recovery, and engage in conversations and activities for developing context-specific disaster preparedness and response plans. Facilitated by Avery Davis Lamb, Co-Executive Director of Creation Justice Ministries.  Visit here to register.

• #Fasting for a Future

Across Massachusetts, people are fighting local fossil fuel projects and demanding an immediate transition to clean energy. On March 15, six Massachusetts activists began what turned out to be an 8-day hunger strike to protest a planned gas-fired power plant in Peabody. To express their support, 80 people fasted from food or fossil fuels for various lengths of time and took other symbolic actions. 

Our diocese’s Social Justice Commission and several of our churches are among the many organizations co-sponsoring this rally, which is being organized by Springfield Climate Justice Coalition. Check the SCJC Facebook page and the StoptheToxicPipeline website for more information.

• Sign on to the 5 moral standards for climate finance

Many current climate advocacy efforts relate to stopping fossil fuel financing – the flow of money that funds the flow of oil. Green Anglicans, GreenFaith, World Council of Churches and many other faith groups are calling on asset managers to adopt, implement, and ensure compliance with 5 moral standards for climate finance. Financial institutions play a vital role in the transition to clean energy because they bankroll all new energy projects - for good or ill. A faith-based delegation will deliver these to BlackRock and Vanguard, the two largest asset managers, at the Annual General Meetings in April. Please add your name and affirm these moral standards.

• Customers for Climate Justice

Sign on to the Customers for Climate Justice Open Letter to CEOs demanding they stop financing fossil fuels and deforestation.

• Banking on Our Future

Check out the new Banking on our Future Toolkit from Third Act that includes everything you need to help recruit your friends, family, and networks to sign the Banking on Our Future Pledge: talking points, sample emails, letters to the editor, letters to your Bank’s branch manager, starting points for finding a better credit card and bank, and much more.

• Interfaith Power & Light is launching its 2022 Faith Climate Justice Voter Campaign to reach out to people of faith and conscience to make sure they are registered and ready to vote, and to mobilize them to vote their values of caring for our common home and loving our neighbors.

• Mass Poor People’s and Low-Wage Workers’ Assembly and Moral March on Washington and to the Polls

Saturday, June 18 • Washington, D.C.

This will not be just a day of action, but a declaration of an ongoing, committed moral movement. Led by Bishop William Barber and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis, the Poor People’s Campaign march will focus on voting rights and economic justice as part of their intersectional understanding that climate justice depends on racial justice and a healthy democracy.

Members of Creation Care Justice Network (CCJN), a network of Episcopalians in Massachusetts, are hard at work crafting an Episcopal version of the UCC Green Congregation Challenge. We’re redesigning this challenge to match our Pray, Learn, Act, and Advocate approach to climate justice, updating some of the options, and coming up with a new name for what we hope will be an exciting way for congregations in Massachusetts to step up their climate ambition and accomplishments. If all goes well, maybe we can launch the project later this year!

If you’re interested in joining our work, please contact us at [email protected]. We’d love to welcome you.

• If you have suggestions or wish to be in touch, feel free to drop me a note at [email protected]. 

Creation Care Advisor (Episcopal Diocese of Mass.)