A huge problem is that we have a large amount of energy being required from existing ecologically sensitive and aware people who are finding themselves pulled toward protecting and supporting their brothers and sisters, “who they HAVE SEEN”* (see note below) . The result of this is that we expend all this energy for this “fake crisis” (I call Continue Reading
I think there is more brokenness in focusing on sexual identity differences rather than on trying to confront and heal the broken systems which harm people and planet.
“To care about a changing climate, we don’t have to be a scientist or an environmentalist or a liberal political activist. We just have to be a human who wants this planet, the only one we have, to be a safe home for all of us.” — Katharine Hayhoe
(Forgive the length of this, but this began as a reply to a comment elsewhere, and turned into a much longer train of thought) A movie called “The Book of Eli” was about a man, in a post apocalyptic world protecting the Bible he obtained/salvaged from an evil despot who sought the book in order to use it to solidify Continue Reading
The final sentence of the previous quote from the Wallace-Wells book provides a good explanation of why I think we need to utilize and “recover” an ancient purpose of the apocalyptic genre: “There is simply no analogy to draw on, outside of mythology and theology—and perhaps the Cold War prospect of mutually assured destruction.” Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (p. Continue Reading
“If you had to invent a threat grand enough, and global enough, to plausibly conjure into being a system of true international cooperation, climate change would be it—the threat everywhere, and overwhelming, and total. And yet now, just as the need for that kind of cooperation is paramount, indeed necessary for anything like the world we know to survive, we Continue Reading
So I am wondering about what may be ahead for the UMC** in terms of the need to focus more of our energies on the Ecological Crisis as a theological crisis and call to responsibility; a close kin and perhaps central tenet of what God is doing amongst us as our moral failings as humanity now threaten, in a most Continue Reading
“It is important to mobilize people who at the moment are concerned, but basically complacent, and turn them into people who are much more activated and essentially voting about climate as a first-order political priority rather than a third- or fourth-order priority – judging politicians on the basis of their climate policy.”— David Wallace-Wells in an interview in The Guardian Continue Reading
“The majority of the burning has come since the premiere of Seinfeld. Since the end of World War II, the figure is about 85 percent. The story of the industrial world’s kamikaze mission is the story of a single lifetime—the planet brought from seeming stability to the brink of catastrophe in the years between a baptism or bar mitzvah and Continue Reading
“We need people in every organized workplace to be getting together and imagining what their workplace would look like if they took rapid de-carbonization seriously. And asking how could it improve lives? How could it lead to a fairer economy?” — Naomi Klein https://buff.ly/2Nomqt0 She is so awesome!
I have a “problem” with Naomi Klein in that I can never stop succumbing to the temptation to quote too much of her articles. No surprise that her book “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate” was THE one I point to that really did set me on a new path in my theological mission and focus: To help enable Continue Reading
The following gem* stuck out for me in one of my friend and teacher’s extraordinary stories he has shared: ““During one visit to our apartment, Herman is excited to tell me about one of his discoveries. He was translating an Ethiopian Targum (Hebrew O.T. text translation into an ancient indigenous language) when he noted something important. The ancient scribe had Continue Reading