What do spiritual communities have to contribute to the conversation on climate change?

Photo: Jan Messersmith

There is a bizarre little story from the Book of Numbers in the Hebrew Scriptures that just came up recently. The Israelites are out wandering in the desert for 40 years with Moses and God leading them. They keep complaining: “The food is terrible, and the portions are so small!” But that suddenly seems like nothing when they are beset upon by serpents. People are dying of snake bites. So the Israelites come to Moses and say, “We are so sorry we ever complained against you and God. Now please fix this situation!” So Moses goes to God and says, “Um, God? We have a situation here.” And God says, “Make a serpent out of bronze and mount it on a pole. When people get snake bites, they will look at this snake on a stick and they will be healed.”

Which is terrible medical advice, just for the record. But on a metaphorical level, it’s terrific. The thing that is terrifying you? The thing you are running from and denying with all your might? Turn around and stare it in the eyes. Because then it loses its power over you. Then you can figure out exactly what the issues are and start devising ways to deal with them.

Climate change is one of those things we can lift up like a snake on a stick. If we say, “Too scary! Too scary! Don’t want to look it in the face! Don’t want to talk about it!” then we just stay in freak-out mode and don’t actually deal with the problem. That helps exactly no one. The people who look to you for spiritual leadership are already freaking out. They already know it’s bad. Not talking about it, or saying it will all work out in the end, is not doing anyone any favors. But just lifting it up like a snake on a stick and freaking people out is also not doing anyone any favors. We have to look at this snake on a stick and figure out what is our power here?

So what strengths and gifts do we bring, as leaders of spiritual communities, that help empower our people to stare down the snake on a stick?

We know how to talk about greed. Those who market products to us would have us believe that we are not enough—not good enough, not attractive enough, not popular enough—unless we buy their beer, their eyeliner, their car. And then we will suddenly be surrounded by attractive young people playing volleyball on the beach or something. They are selling this image that always starts with the premise that we are not enough. But we have this counter-message, very counter-cultural, that says each person is a fabulous creature, a beloved child of the Divine, and that all those possessions may just get in the way of a good relationship with our Creator and with all of creation.

We know how to talk about lament for what is being lost. Where do people go when someone dies? They put together a memorial service, and even if they are not usually showing up in a community of worship, this is one occasion when they often come. Because we know how to grieve together in community. We know how to support each other in times of loss. And what we’re losing right now is the earth we used to know.

Earth Ministry members at the 2017 Seattle Climate March

We know how to talk about hope, even in the face of what appears to be hopeless. Our hope comes from within, and we are empowered to work out of this place of hope not because we expect to win something, but because it is the right thing to do. Hope is a spiritual practice. If our hope is placed out there somewhere, beyond our control—we hope that the president will fund solar panels for every home in the U.S.—we are setting ourselves up to be passive and to be disappointed. If our hope is instead based out of our spiritual connection to our Creator and all of creation, we are empowered to live into the world that we want to see, whether it actually comes to fruition or not in our lifetimes.

We know how to talk about gratitude and abundance, community and support. We know how to talk about sharing what we have. These concepts are familiar to us. We don’t have to face the challenges of climate change alone.

We know how to talk about power. Joanna Macy talks about the difference between power over and power with. The first creation story in Genesis talks about God giving humans dominion over creation. Many have understood this as free license to do as they please with the planet. But we as spiritual leaders understand that dominion means God created everything, called it all good, and then gave it to us to take responsibility for keeping it good. How counter-cultural a message is that? No, you do not have permission from your Creator to rape and destroy the planet. You are to be a good steward of it. To take care of it. To live in harmony with it.

We as leaders of faith communities can and need to say these things. We need to offer spiritual grounding, moral and ethical frames to center our people in this work, encouragement to help people be their best possible selves, ways of seeing beyond the individual to the greater good of the community and the ecosystem. We can only do this work if we dare to raise climate change like a snake on a stick and stare it straight in the eyes. We can help each other. We can pray, meditate, advocate. We can become the world we want to see.

The Rev. Meighan Pritchard is the pastor of Prospect Congregational United Church of Christ, an Earth Ministry Member congregation. 

2018 Legislative Session Wrap-Up

Earth Ministry members deliver
Oil Spill Prevention Valentines

Well that’s all she wrote folks – the Washington State legislative session is a wrap! I am thrilled to share the good news that thanks to the advocacy efforts of people of faith statewide, two of Earth Ministry’s priority bills were passed and are now waiting to be signed into law.

Successes:

Oil Spill Prevention Act, E2SSB 6269

Provides secure and reliable funding for the Department of Ecology’s Oil Spill Prevention Program by expanding the barrel tax to pipelines. Thanks to this legislation, marine protections will be fully implemented and ongoing concerns will be addressed regarding oil spill prevention and preparedness.

Healthy Food Packaging Act, ESHB 2658

Phases out toxic PFAS chemicals from paper food packaging. An added victory is that a companion bill also passed to ban this same class of chemicals in firefighting foam. Washington state is the first in the nation to place restrictions on these chemicals that are linked to a slew of health concerns. We are grateful to live in a state that pioneers protecting the vulnerable.

  

More to Come:

Equitable Price on Carbon

While Governor Inslee’s attempt to put a price on carbon did not make it through the legislature, the Alliance for Jobs and Clean Energy filed an initiative to the people immediately after the bill was pulled. This move is the culmination of over three years of organizing efforts to bring together diverse constituency groups in support of a policy that reinvests in Washington and truly holds equity for impacted communities as its core value. Earth Ministry has been a member of the Alliance Steering Committee since it was founded and we are excited to work with you to pass this initiative this fall. Stay tuned for more ways to get engaged, including opportunities to help collect signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot.

People of faith from Whidbey Island meet
with their Representative Dave Hayes

Earth Ministry members have had so many opportunities for engagement with their elected officials this year! My top moments from this session were teaching workshops at interfaith advocacy days in Spokane and Olympia, going door to door with Earth Ministry Colleagues delivering handmade Valentines in support of the Oil Spill Prevention Act, watching Earth Ministry Outreach Coordinator Leda Zakarison testify at a committee hearing for the first time, and organizing meetings for faith leaders from Whidbey Island to speak with their legislators about chemical safety.

By sharing our stories within a values-based framework, people of faith bring a new depth to legislative action. Earth Ministry’s advocacy efforts encouraged legislators to look beyond bills as solely environmental and instead to consider them as opportunities to uphold the moral choice of protecting communities and creation.

Even though the legislative session is over, our faithful advocacy continues strong! Democracy is like going to the gym – in order to see progress, you must work your democracy muscles more than once a year. So while we certainly deserve to catch our breath and celebrate, we will keep putting faith into action through our upcoming Earth Month activities and initiative campaign efforts. We look forward to partnering with you along the way.

With joy in our shared victories,

Jessica

Jessica Zimmerle

Earth Ministry Program and Outreach Director

A More Greening Mission: St. Leo Church Tacoma

A Church’s Journey in Living out a Dynamic Mission in Solidarity with a Changing World. 

St. Leo's L'Honey Project.
Photo: Courtesy Franciscan Volunteers

For those who know of St. Leo’s, they will say that it is an interesting parish and has a unique flavor in the expression of liturgy and the mission of its congregation. Like all congregations we have our own history and expression of what it is to be Church. As it states in 1 Corinthians, the church is one body with many parts. We come together in love and faith to worship our Creator in unique and wonderful ways. Collectively, we all are all called to be the Good News to our world by living out our faith in God.

All of our congregations give expression to that faith we hold in common but express it uniquely! How we “do church” is our faith response to the working of the Spirit in our world. Our faith is expressed dynamically and responds to the needs of our time. We are an expression of the living Body of Christ in the world and in each other’s lives. Because faith is dynamic and the Spirit of God works in and through us becoming that Good News - we have to be open to change. We have to be open to the shifting needs of a suffering world. If our expressions of faith become static and incrusted by routine and habit, we may miss the moving of God’s Spirit. In the Papal Encyclical written by Pope Paul VI in 1965, it states that we have the “duty of scrutinizing the signs of the times and of interpreting them in the light of the Gospel.” This call to duty has been echoed by Popes Benedict, Francis and other church leaders in various ways in more recent times.

Change and keeping up with the needs of our world is difficult, energy sapping and overwhelming. It takes faith. A faith that can build upon our past to address the issues of today and that of future generations. 

St. Leo Church has grown and changed over the years. In its earlier days the focus was on providing a faith home and quality education to the local population of arriving immigrants and their children. As the needs of providing parochial education to the community waned, the emphasis shifted to address the growing social concerns of the poor and displaced as the community struggled with urban decay.

The need to provide a place to nurture a healthy faith-life, educate our young and care for our most vulnerable remain a concern we try to address. We continue to build upon the good works of the past, but our understanding of mission and what it is to be church has changed and has grown. We now know that we are called to be Stewards of Creation. We are sisters and brothers with all of Creation. Our God is understood as the God and Creator of All.

With this new understanding we are compelled to broaden our Mission by bringing good news to ALL of Creation, not just the human family! This year, 2018 St. Leo Church is making a commitment to stand in Solidarity with all that God has created. If we are to understand the world as it really is, we need to embrace the concept of solidarity with all that God has made. This understanding does not cheapen or lessen the value of humankind; it gives us a deeper richness to that understanding of what it really means to be human!

Totem Pole Journey at St. Leo's, 2013

As a parish, we really began to be more receptive of the needs of God’s Creation by supporting a cause made known to us by our Lummi Nation Sisters and Brothers in 2013. Master carver Jewell James of the Lummi Nation brought a colorful 22-foot healing totem pole to St. Leo as part of a 1,700-mile journey from Wyoming to British Columbia. The trip was a rolling protest against the potential export of Wyoming coal to China via Northwest ports. This very moving and spiritual event captured the hearts of many and helped continue to weave threads of connections with the created world and all of God’s people. It awakened concerns for the need to end the use of fossil fuels and to find alternatives. Coupled with the parish’s growing honeybee program and this awakening stirred by the Lummi People made clearer our call to environmental stewardship and advocacy.

Since 2013, the parish has greatly expanded its educational/community outreach on care for Creation with its honey bee program – The L’Honey Project. We have instituted parish recycling efforts, improved energy efficiency (a work in progress) and are planning to create a parish greenspace for young and old alike on our church campus! The parish has become more active in clean energy promotion and legislative advocacy in Olympia as well as at the federal level. We are continuing to work in partnership with our Sisters and Brother at Earth Ministry and Intercommunity Peace & Justice Center.

Truly we are entering into a different understanding of our relationship with each other and the created world. We are all knitted together, in solidarity and we will not be pulled asunder.

Peace,

Rick Samyn

Rick Samyn is the Pastoral Assistant for Social Justice at St. Leo Church in Tacoma, WA. St. Leo is an Earth Ministry Greening Congregation.

Grit and Grace

Jessie Dye is Earth Ministry's Senior Campaign Strategist. She wrote this piece as a reflection on the new year and the new challenges and opportunities it brings. If you would like to receive reflections and updates about Earth Ministry/WAIPL programs directly to your inbox, you can sign up for our email newsletter on our website.

Beloved Community,

The week after New Year’s Day is the most difficult of the working year. In the Northwest, we are in full hibernation mode during the weeks just past the winter solstice, our darkest season. The music, lights, and reunions of the mid-winter holiday are behind us. Nature lies bare with only the tiniest hint of the daffodils to come.

Facing the demands of this new year is formidable as well. In 2017, we confronted and fought our way through horrific environmental decisions made by the current presidential administration – the cannibalizing of our public lands, plummeting US global leadership on climate, and the gutting of the EPA. Attacks on the poor, the ill, and the immigrant are increasing and hate speech is no longer seen by some as shameful. Rising to the challenges of 2018 daunts our most resolute activists.

At Earth Ministry/WAIPL, we pledge ourselves to grit and grace this year.

Grit, because we are in it for the long run and serious obstacles are part of the landscape.

Grace, because it is only with kindness, love, and the presence of Spirit that we are able to reach across the rifts that divide us, here and around the world.

How can we act with grit and grace when our democracy, our heritage, and our children’s future are being robbed in plain sight? Gratitude for each other takes us a long way there, as does compassion for the angry ones, and honest pride in the remarkable successes we’ve accomplished together.

Image: Patrick Wilson on Flickr

This year, we celebrated many victories. Thanks to our shared efforts, decision-makers denied permits needed to build the coal terminal in Longview and have ordered a more in-depth review process for a methanol refinery in Kalama. We expanded the Children's Safe Product Act, ensuring that parents can protect their children from harmful toxic chemicals. And due to public outcry, both the City of Tacoma and Whatcom County paused construction of new fossil fuel infrastructure projects in those communities. 

Gratitude goes first to the Native Nations of our region and across the country. Thanks to the Lummi, Quinault, Yakima, Nimiipuu, and Upper Columbia Tribes as well as many others, we have fought terrible fossil fuel projects in the Northwest and won! This beautiful video tells part of the story.

Gratitude extends to our environmental partners, who have open-heartedly welcomed faith leadership into their circles and shared their policy wisdom and resources with us. We are all so much stronger together.

Earth Ministry is particularly grateful to each one of you who said a prayer, preached a sermon, picked up the phone, submitted a comment, attended a hearing, sent a check, made a monthly donation, talked with your family, and sent in a ballot in the last year. Take pride in the good work we have done together. It takes a powerful movement to protect creation, and you are at the forefront of it!

Finally, showing compassion for those who are terrified of change is a powerful moral and strategic lesson from the Civil Rights Movement. In a fast changing world, our kindness is our greatest strength and builds the social bonds we require for a civil society and for long-term care for our common home.

In 2018, Earth Ministry has an absolute commitment to you that we will find the right messages, provide strong leadership, and maintain the stick-to-itiveness necessary to get us though this year with grit and grace. We count on your grit and grace as our beloved partners in the coming journey around the sun.

Blessings to you in the new year,

Jessie