Just now, as I picked up a pile of papers and books to move it aside to make room to set my laptop on some table space near me, one of those books was my hardback copy of Naomi Klein’s This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs The Climate. And the term “Everything” got me thinking. Just what is included in that Continue Reading
How often we forget (and ignore) what MLK did and said and wrote AFTER 1963, after “I have a Dream”…..He moved to link the various maladies of society to the larger problem of justice; to a “Cosmic bent toward justice”; to Vietnam and violence, to Economic justice (Poor People’s March, housng in Chicago, Memphis sanitation worker’s strike), and yes, even Continue Reading
“NBC could have asked Democratic candidates 1,000 smarter questions on climate change than this.” http://ow.ly/XdLLW And yet, as I look at the article expecting some examples of the 1000, scarcely little more time was spent in the article on this quesiton than NBC gave it.* (See update on this below) I think we have a real problem talking about this, Continue Reading
What follows is a comment I entered on the UMNS Facebook page under this post that asks the question: People thought President Kennedy was crazy when he shot for the moon. Leaders dream big. So what’s your church’s moonshot? So I offered this: I bet many could guess what I’m going to say. The “moon-shot” is actually a good illustration of Continue Reading
“You purchased this item on September 23, 2014.” This is the Amazon banner at the top of the Screen when I call up the listing for Naomi Klein’s This changes Everything. This is where the big change happened for me. Reading this. It brought together 30 years of ecotheological rumblings that finally burst out of my consciousness and into a Continue Reading
Today is the day that the National Observance on Monday will commemorate, the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. And to mark the deep impact this man has had on my journey, I focus on this particular quote to highlight yet another theological insight which has changed my course since the fall of 2014. “In a real sense all Continue Reading
MLK always knew “Life is Interrelated”. In his Letter from the Birmingham jail, he wrote “We are all in an inescapable network of mutuality”. Had the verdict on Climate been in during his time, he would have been including and integrating that into his insights. This is perhaps an insight whose time has come for the church to stand up Continue Reading
More on one of those “Three common arguments” from Climate-Crisis-Denial Land, the one that objects by saying “Oh, that’s being political”, as if that is grounds for an automatic bypass of the argument. It’s a dog-whistle, with the “preaching to the choir” meaning being that this is a “liberal thing” and a part of the “plot to destroy America by Continue Reading
What’s really galling to me is how little ANYONE I grew up with (like from my former youth group) interacts with me AT ALL on this issue. I post to Facebook a great deal on this. Perhaps they’ve simply turned off my posts. Perhaps they’ve clicked on “Don’t show me posts like this”. Without a way to look at this Continue Reading
People may be wondering how it is, and maybe even WHY it is, that I keep relating things, seemingly anything, to the Climate Crisis. And to that I say, “You betcha”. The fact that we put this issue on the sidelines comparative to almost ANYTHING else is testimony to how far removed we have become as PARTICIPANTS and INTER-DEPENDENTS in Continue Reading
It seems to me that we’ve made baptism into a very “Gnostic” experience. Given the LACK of concern, consciousness about what is happening to the “ELEMENTS: of the earth, in which baptism SHOULD be a direct, experiential witness and reminder, the sacrament has become just another way for us to “spiritualize” and just conveniently “forget” and “ignore” how our collective Continue Reading
This is so STOOOOOPID, the Wheaton and “Some Evangelical Christians” response : “I stand in religious solidarity with Muslims because they, like me, a Christian, are people of the book,†she posted on Facebook. “And as Pope Francis stated last week, we worship the same God.†Though the college did not take a position on her wearing the headscarf, some Continue Reading
I’ve spent the last 15 months noticing how SO VERY FEW people are willing to even comment on the Climate Crisis. Of course, the reasons are “legion”. From outright ideological denial (as a part of a “package” of right wing paranoia about the government and the media) , to an unconscious refusal to take the time and open the self Continue Reading
Again, as I have said earlier after asking the UMC in particular to consider the theological and evangelical responsibilities to ACT and REFORM around Climate Change and Eco-Theological responsibility as a representative of God’s people and ALL people, this is more importantly a universal call to ALL of God’s people and that of ALL religious traditions (many of which have Continue Reading
I love how responsive the UMC is to disaster. It is an obvious REQUIREMENT to do so; to help people hit by disaster. What I am going to say next is in NO WAY to minimize this at all. We must continue to do so. But ANOTHER way to help is to help PREVENT, or if not PREVENT, to MINIMIZE Continue Reading
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