In a culture that can’t think past the next 24-hour news cycle, religion still reads stories hundreds of centuries deep. The Abrahamic faiths worship a God who shows “steadfast love to the thousandth generation” (Exod 34:7). Genesis 12 begins the story of Abraham’s call by God. Every promise God gives Abraham has a long horizon, […]
Yesterday our congregation, First Presbyterian Church of Jeffersonville, dedicated our first solar array: 48 panels, 12.96 kW of generating power. Never having done this before, we sort of made up what you do when you consecrate solar panels. First Don gave a lovely sermon about the importance of acting as “conservators” of creation, based on […]
My previous post discussed the biblical claim, derived from Genesis, Job, and Psalms, that God made the whole creation to flourish, and loves every being in it. In this post I’ll describe the deep relationship scriptural writers draw between violence against humans and violence against the earth. I used to have Hebrew students translate the […]
Last month I gave three lectures and two workshops at the biennial Presbyterians for Earth Care conference at Montreat, where 140 dedicated people gathered from all over the U.S. for worship, workshops, learning, and enjoyment of western North Carolina’s exquisite countryside. Since then I’ve spoken nine times in five different cities. The air everywhere is […]
Do you recall the recession, when banks got a big bailout and a dubious public was told that otherwise the whole thing would collapse? Do you rememberthe contradictory messages: so many people in debt up to their eyeballs being told they needed to spend the country’s way out of recession? Does it hurt your stomach […]
Hooray for government action! Most everyone else in the circles I inhabit is very excited about the EPA’s clean power plan that was released yesterday. And like everyone in our local circles, I live on the border between two states with powerful officials that oppose this very sensible and forward-looking plan. So I wrote my […]
Before I began this blog in 2013, I asked myself frequently if it would become one of the thousands of heartlessly orphaned sites that let others know just how committed their writers are. I couldn’t answer, of course, having no glimpse into the future. This long hiatus might have been excusable if no one […]
The Green Boat: Reviving Ourselves in Our Capsized Culture, by Mary Pipher (New York: Riverhead Books, 2013) Years ago when my daughter and every daughter I knew were enduring middle school, several of us mothers read Mary Pipher’s remarkable book Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, and then passed it to our girls. […]
During the UN’s COP 20 meeting in Lima about climate change last December, our Presbyterian group took part in a people’s march in Lima’s streets, joining the rallying cry, “Cambiemos el sistema, no el clima”: “Let’s change the system, not the climate!” And when we came back, participants from Peru, Bolivia, and the U.S. together […]
Back in Lima the next day, we attended the Interfaith Commission Conference on Climate Change, featuring American economistJeffrey Sachs. Sachs talked about the history of industrialization that arose with the power of fossil fuels beginning 250 years ago with the steam engine, which changed the world in every way. Intensive industrialization arose. The population exploded. […]