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
On us “liberals” who are concerned and upset over the UMC GC vote and its implications for the future, and not happy that “the Bible was upheld” (it wasn’t): Those “liberals” are also Bible readers and church members and Christians, many of which actually have family members and close friends with whom they talk and share about the experience of Continue Reading
This guy writes very well. And sees very well. And processes very well. “climate change is .. an “existential crisis”—a drama we are now haphazardly improvising between two hellish poles, in which our best-case outcome is death and suffering at the scale of twenty-five Holocausts, and the worst-case outcome puts us on the brink of extinction. Rhetoric often fails us Continue Reading
I’m gonna have to stop reading soon. I need to go to bed, and I will need to be able to sleep then. “Every degree of warming, it’s been estimated, costs a temperate country like the United States about one percentage point of GDP, and according to one recent paper, at 1.5 degrees the world would be $20 trillion richer Continue Reading
This is horrific:“In just the last forty years, according to the World Wildlife Fund, more than half of the world’s vertebrate animals have died; in just the last twenty-five, one study of German nature preserves found, the flying insect population declined by three-quarters.” Wallace-Wells, David. The Uninhabitable Earth (pp. 25-26). Crown/Archetype. Kindle Edition. This just in from a phone call 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
Back to the Wallace-Wells book, on “Feedback loops”: “A warming planet leads to melting Arctic ice, which means less sunlight reflected back to the sun and more absorbed by a planet warming faster still, which means an ocean less able to absorb atmospheric carbon and so a planet warming faster still. A warming planet will also melt Arctic permafrost, which Continue Reading
“This is what is often called the problem of environmental justice; a sharper, less gauzy phrase would be “climate caste system.” The problem is acute within countries, even wealthy ones, where the poorest are those who live in the marshes, the swamps, the floodplains, the inadequately irrigated places with the most vulnerable infrastructure—altogether an unwitting environmental apartheid. Wallace-Wells, David. The Continue Reading
After the past two days (the events of Tuesday, and the “day after” emotional experiences) and numbness and raw anger and uncertainty about the future (along with hopes for the possibilities that might arise from this wreckage), I am , today, in a kind of “debilitated” mode, finding it hard to shake off and move ahead, particularly since I have Continue Reading
LOL…funny, and poignantly relevant to the UMC, and the “Traditional Plan”
Just learned about an hour ago that a long time online friend, whom I never met face to face, passed away. Norman Suggs was such a kind, compassionate, and life-loving, good-humored online presence to everyone. I had been exchanging comments under my posts and his for about 10-12 years. One of the saddest bits of news I’ve ever had come Continue Reading
From a Facebook friend: “this is what happens when things that are not eternal truths but culturally driven are taken as eternal truths even though they aren’t.”
Reading Wallace-Wells new book “The Uninhabitable Earth”, and a mash up of that with “Uninhabitable UMC”. It’s not quite a perfect analogy, but there are obvious parallels that are certainly analogous.
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
I posted thoughts yesterday about how this UMC schism is like a replay of the Southern Baptist fundamentalist takeover I also experienced, which was about to explode into reality when I was in Seminary at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky. (M. Div. 1978-81). My “Church History II” professor, Bill J. Leonard, soon (or in about 10 years) to Continue Reading
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