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 “Everything”?  That’s hard to enumerate,  since the literal meaning itself is indicative of why such a “catch-all” term is neccessary.  But there are things that stand out for me,  within which I find myself being consciously aware of the radical shift in my thinking about the world and about theology.  And it is the latter, Theology,  in which I find myself in a REBUILDING stage;  much of which is actually RECOVERY in terms of Christian history and theology,  but, for me,  is definitely a NEW THING which God is doing IN ME,  and illuminating AROUND me.

I am taking this brief time at the start of my day ,  because today I have reserved to begin the TECHNICAL pieces of my 30-second spot (I think I may do a 60-second version as well) for what is to come: EcoEcclesia: The Inescapable Network of Mutuality (the Webcast).  I have 3 interviews (4 if you count TWO separate conversations I have recorded with Leah Schade,  in addition to one with Tyler Sit, United Methodist pastor in Minneapolis,  and Norman Wirzba,  Professor of Theology and Ecology at Duke Divinity School ).  These 3 interviews will be featured on Show 1 (extended clips of the full interviews,  and Shows 2,3, and 4 in their entirety , which will hopefully include some conversation with others around the issues raised in those interviews, along with some other background and supplemental material from the work of those three people in their ministry contexts and writings.

That being said,  I want to say just a little this morning as I have fired up my editing tools for work today,  how it can be said that “This Changes Everything” is accurate as a theological statement for me.

Most importantly,  it is a radical enough, wide-ranging,  upheaval of theological sensibilities that there is a total shift in the lens through which I see most everything.  For one,  it has totally shifted the expectations I have for what kind of content I seek to “Webcast”,  as I have been foreseeing myself becoming a professional Webcaster for some 7 years now.   What I had been anticipating was that I was going to focus on Church and Technology,  like a TWIT network for the Church (modeled on the This Week in Technology network run founded by Leo Laporte,  and also the conversations on The Gillmor Gang run by Steve Gillmor.  I was also fond of (and still miss very much) the Dave Winer and Jay Rosen podcast, Rebooting the News.  I was also focusing a lot of my theological lens on the Occupy movement,  and had been operating under the name “Occupy Theology”.  I haven’t lost any of that “Occupy” spirit,  but now,  the sense of urgency is PLANETARY;  Cosmological; and the economics being reshaped toward an Ecological Economics.  It’s all in the service of seeking to encourage and enable the church to join this needed Reformation.  And I have stressed that this is not just some kind of catchy effort at hyperbole. It is quite seriously the knowledge that NOTHING less than a complete reformation is neccessary,  one which unmistakably alters the focus of theology — which although it is arguable FOCUSED still on God and Jesus,  the menaing of salvation and eschatology and redemption has taken on a much more urgent sense for the task of rethinking and rediscovering what we need as a people to move into and live as faithful people of God,  our calling to “preach the Good News”.

So now, the “Network” I seek to establish is thereby named “EcoEcclesia”,  and subtitled,  in honor of the “Cosmological, Ecological Theologian, Martin Luther King, Jr” (thanks to Drew Dellinger for his work on this),  “A Network of Mutuality”,  and for the church,  if we hope to faithfully live in the Kingdom of God,  “Inescapable”.  
And I cannot omit crediting and expressing my indebtedness theologically to Brian McLaren,  who has been encouraging the faithful in the church to awaken to this needed Reformation.  After reading “This Changes Everything”,  I went right to some of his books to re-read in those numerous areas where he wrote on this at length, and also find some further sources in his blibliographies.  Interestingly,  the title in which he writes about this the most is “Everything Must Change” .  It’s like the message of Naomi Klein’s book,  re-stated for the church’s consideration.  Our calling requires that this is so.

I also have to express much of the same indebtedness and thankfulness to Michael Dowd,  whose Webcast series, “The Future is Calling Us To Greatness” featured interviews with some 55 invaluable thinkers, writers, speakers, scientists, and activists in diverse fields around Ecology, Theology, and Cosmology.  It was there where I discovered Drew Dellinger (one of the interviews),  and was alerted to the existence of the series by Brian McLaren,  also one of the interviews.  I got in touch with Michael soon after watching just a few of the conversations ,  which are just excellent and illuminating and inspiring, and mind-blowing.  That series led to my acquiring several books from some of these amazing people.

More on this later.