By George Clifford

Wednesday, April 22, is Earth Day. Began in 1969, Earth Day was instituted to call attention to the global environmental crisis. In the intervening forty years, awareness has grown. Embarrassingly, much of the Church has remained indifferent while environmental problems have worsened, often taking a back seat to other, purportedly more urgent issues.

Today, the economic crisis cries for center stage. However, the economic crisis and environmental crisis intertwine inseparably with one another, as theologian Sallie McFague emphasized in her 2001 book, Life Abundant: Rethinking Theology and Economy for a Planet in Peril. McFague describes two worldviews, the neo-classical economic and the ecological economic, first explaining the connection and then suggesting theologically responsible responses.

The neo-classical economic worldview emerged from market-based capitalism guided by the invisible hand of self-interest, which Adam Smith first outlined in the eighteenth century. Theoretically, independent, acquisitive individuals eventually work out, albeit unintentionally, a society’s optimal production and consumption solutions to the benefit of all. McFague helpfully observes that this worldview focuses on monetary gains as its sole aim, excluding the values of the fair distribution of profits from the earth’s resources and global sustainability.

For the world’s entire population to enjoy a Western, middle class standard of living, we would require the resources of four more earth-type, earth-size planets. We in the West – about one in six people globally – typically see ourselves as consumers. More is better. Newer is better. The most and the newest is best. McFague reports that 93% of U.S. teenagers say shopping is their favorite pastime and that the U.S. has an amazing sixteen square feet of shopping space per resident. All of this consumption aims to create personal happiness.

Yet, consumption does not translate into personal happiness. Certainly, some amount of consumption and wealth are essential for human well-being and happiness. Humans have obvious needs for water, food, clothing, shelter, and healthcare. Humans have less obvious but equally real needs for education, social structure, and enrichment, including art and spirituality. Some modest level of personal wealth generally enables one to obtain most of those goods, goods that the poor live without or only have in insufficient quantities. However, surveys indicate that U.S. personal happiness peaked in 1957, even though consumption has more than doubled since then. People with six figure incomes sometimes feel poor. One root of the current economic crisis was excessive consumption by the avaricious, those whose greed far exceeded their needs as they sought happiness racing along a pathway named “More is better.”

I do not think it coincidental that the unhappiest parish, as measured by personal attitudes and social problems (alcoholism, broken marriages, troubled children, etc.), that I have known was also the wealthiest. People were so busy pursuing material goals that they had little time for self or others. Consumption had become their ideology, even the de facto religion of many.

The emergence of market-based economies signaled the emancipation of the individual and a developing, healthy emphasis on human rights. However, the neo-classical economic worldview myopically emphasizes individuality, birthing planetary problems. The top three of those are diminishing biodiversity, rapid population/consumption growth, and global warming. Continued, unbridled exploitation of natural resources, including other life forms, to maximize consumption driven economies will only exacerbate those problems.

The ecological worldview that McFague sketches sharply contrasts with the neo-classical economic worldview. She defines ecological economics as the allocation of scarce resources to keep the planet working indefinitely. She characterizes the planet as God's house, a household that must support all of its members over the long run. God intends humankind to serve the planet (the house) as stewards.

Ecological economic presumptions differ starkly from those of neo-classical economics. Neo-classical economics begins with unconstrained distribution of resources to competing individuals, confident that over time, if all compete, issues of fair distribution and sustainability will work themselves out. Ecological economics begins with community, focusing on sustainability and distributive justice, believing individuals of all species, including humans, can only thrive as part of the planetary community. Ecological economics entails balancing community and individual, not subordinating one to the other, avoiding the consequences of exalting the individual at the cost of the community and the futility of attempting to exalt the community at the cost of the individual. In other words, healthy mutual interdependence replaces radical individuality.

Ecological economics does not discard market-based capitalism; instead, ecological economics views market-based capitalism as one of many tools in the economic toolkit. Like any good craftsperson, the steward of God's house will choose the tool that best fits a particular job. Not every job requires a hammer.

Humans who view themselves not primarily as consumers but as members of a planetary household will perceive a circle of life and aim for a spiral of sustainability rather than the linear progress associated with increased consumption and production. Sustainability embraces all life and thus requires distributive justice. Furthermore, sustainability emphasizes the indispensability of all types of capital (financial, physical resources, knowledge, relationships, etc.). Poverty, the lack of financial and other forms of physical capital, like the consumption that neo-classic economics promotes, destroys sustainability. For example, poor people often use environmentally destructive slash and burn agriculture in a desperate struggle to survive. Poverty, contrary to neo-classical economic theory, is increasing. The income gap between the world’s richest and poorest fifths has exploded from 30 to 1 in 1960 to 74 to 1 in 1997.

By the standards of neo-classical economics, i.e., measuring gross domestic product per capita, the United States ranks 10th in the world; the top nine nations, except for Norway, are small countries, such as Liechtenstein and Qatar. Canada ranks 21st. (CIA - The World Factbook -- Country Comparisons - GDP - per capita (PPP)) However, compared using the United Nations Human Development Index, Canada ranks 3rd and the United States 15th. (Human Development Reports (HDR) – United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)) The Human Development Index better gauges ecological economics, including not only per capita income but also education and life expectancy. Admittedly, Canada has its share of problems and challenges. Nevertheless, the reversal in rankings between Canada and the U.S. with respect to per capita gross domestic production and the Human Development Index highlights an inherent weakness of neo-classical economics. Maximizing consumption does not maximize quality of life, let alone sustainability.

Faith communities are rightly addressing the concerns of those whose livelihood, dwelling, or well-being the current economic crisis imperils. More importantly, faith communities should attempt to use the economic crisis as a catalyst to shift worldviews from neo-classical economics to ecological economics. Ecological economics affirms the importance of both community and individual. Ecological economics replaces an ethic of human dominance with an ethic of human stewardship that values all life and all creation. Ecological economics enriches life for all, in a sustainable manner. Finally, ecological economics, unlike neo-classical economics, emerges out of a profoundly Christian understanding of creation.

McFague enumerates three simple rules of ecological economics that if adopted by everyone as part of his or her spiritual discipline would transform them and the planet: (1) take only your share; (2) clean up after yourself; (3) keep the house in good shape for future occupants.

The Rev. Dr. George Clifford, Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years He taught philosophy at the U. S. Naval Academy and ethics at the Postgraduate School. He blogs at Ethical Musings.

“I don’t write for people who farm. I write for people who eat.”--Wendell Berry

All of them look to you
To give them their food in due season.
You give it to them, they gather it;
You open your hand, and they are filled with good things.--Psalm 104:28-29

By R. William Carroll

I ruined some trousers and a pair of shoes the other day, and I’ve never been happier. Allow me to explain.

With other Christians, assorted friends from the surrounding community, and passersby on a local, public bike path, I spent the better part of the afternoon working on an organic farm. I helped plant broccoli, onions, and cabbage, and I lay down smelly raked leaves from a parishioner’s home between the rows as mulch. Others, including our former junior warden, put up a fence to keep the deer out. We are in Appalachia, the far southeastern corner of Ohio, closer to Parkersburg, West Virginia than we are to Columbus. And, unlike what you may have seen on Diane Sawyer (don’t get us started!), we have a positive story to tell about what people are doing in our community.

Athens is at the hub of many interesting experiments in sustainable agriculture. It has one of the best farmers’ markets in the country. It has several nonprofits that are working in sustainable economic development, environmental justice and remediation, and strengthening local food systems, including Rural Action, where some of our parishioners have been deeply involved as staff members, board members, and volunteers over the years, and where I currently serve as a board member.

More recently, two parishioners in their twenties, Paul and Sarah Clever, have begun renting and rehabilitating a 170-year-old farmhouse from a local farmer, who is generously sharing his time and equipment and letting them have access to unused fields with top quality soil. Lately, they’ve been joined by another parishioner, A. J. Stack, who's the chair of our outreach committee. A.J.’s roots in Athens County go back generations. With wonderful support from our bishop and his staff, they and some others are thinking about forming an intentional community, and I have been charged with providing local pastoral support. Paul and Sarah have worked on organic farms before. Sarah is a faculty member at a local community college. A.J. is a social worker. All three are part of the leadership team for our Shepherd’s Alternative campus and young adult community. Our parish, the Church of the Good Shepherd, sits right on the Ohio University campus.

With support from our vestry and the diocese (we recently passed a sustainable agriculture resolution inspired by his work), Paul has been establishing a ministry called the Good Earth Hunger Mission (no website yet, but they do have a Facebook page). The purpose of this ministry is to grow food (they also glean excess produce for local farmers) and help God feed the poor. Making use of an existing distribution network run by another local nonprofit, they contribute food to local free meals, food pantries, and domestic violence shelters. In their first year, with a shortened growing season and a limited number of acres in production, they managed to grow or glean 5,000 pounds of food. This year, Paul tells me that a conservative estimate is 25,000 pounds. That’s twelve and a half tons of food!

But that’s not the most exciting thing about the ministry to me. One thing that excites me is the way that it transforms our outreach, which has always had a focus on feeding the hungry, in a sustainable and socially transformative direction. I think about it in terms of the Millennium Development Goals. One of the easiest ones to effect through local action is number seven, “ensure environmental sustainability.” We have always been strong supporters of our local food pantry. Three parishioners are board members, and we make substantial financial contribution every month, along with shopping and packing. In addition, four teams of parishioners and friends from the community (many of them in their eighties) routinely feed a free nutritious lunch to over a hundred people each week. The Good Earth Hunger mission is now supplying food to these and other ministries. More importantly, they are trying to involve those who are served, working side by side with our parishioners and other community volunteers, in producing their own food. There is considerable interest by the other parishes in our deanery (we’re having a deanery work day on May 2), and the ecumenical community. Paul is inviting youth groups and young adults to come to the farm on pilgrimage (youth groups must bring an adequate number of adult chaperones), and has a growing e-mail list and Facebook group to promote weekly volunteer opportunities.

Another thing that excites me is the way this ministry connects the Gospel to some of the fundamental ethical concerns in our community. In his recent address to the Diocese of Washington, “the Episcopal moment,” Brian McLaren speaks about how people, especially youth and young adults, are looking for ways to serve God without hating other people. I see the work of the Good Earth Hunger Mission as being on the front lines of our ministry of evangelism with students and young adults. We are not so much concerned with building up the Church, though I think that will happen. Churches can grow when they have a clear sense of mission and purpose. We are focused on doing the work of discipleship, “getting in on what God is doing” or “engaging God’s mission,” and trusting that God will bless those efforts that are responding to the Holy Spirit.

As chaplain, I intend to do work in spiritual formation on the farm as part of their exploration of life in intentional community and the development of a rule of life. We already have a plan to do some of this work and an exciting bibliography that we hope to work through in the next couple of years, along with a provisional rule with some balance, to guide the initial experiment. I am hoping that as the community develops, worship and Christian formation will always be an integral part of working on the farm. I believe that this community, if it endures, will combine Franciscan and Benedictine charisms, as well as the central insight of the new monasticism: “inhabiting the abandoned spaces of empire.” (Appalachian communities find it hard to forget how American prosperity comes at great price to the land and people of our region. Rather than focus on these deficits, we choose to focus on assets like family, faith, community, a rich artistic heritage, and the land.) I believe that the Good Earth Hunger Mission and the associated community may evolve into something like the early Catholic Worker farms, “agronomic universities” as Peter Maurin called them. We need to reintegrate faith, learning, and practice, prayer and work as the Benedictines would say. The farm will also be, in addition to a place of hard work, a place of peace and profound hospitality, without for a moment leaving the brokenness of this age behind, becoming an eschatological sign that another world is possible.

This charism for Benedictine hospitality (“receive all visitors as Christ”) was confirmed for me, when clothes still filthy and funky, barely able to wash the dirt of my hands, we sat down for evening prayer and a simple meal of rice and beans. Paul, Sarah, A.J., and I, gathered round the table, together with my wife Tracey, our two children, and two Quaker friends. I have had other close experiences with Christ in the past couple of years, but none closer. I believe that the Holy Spirit is doing something wonderful in our midst.

For more information about the Good Earth Hunger Mission, please feel free to visit their Facebook page (website forthcoming) or to call me at our parish office (740-593-6877). Just ask for Bill! I’ll be happy to put you in touch with Paul by e-mail or phone. He welcomes all inquiries and is also available to consult about setting up similar ministries in your local area. He would also welcome contact with existing ministries of this kind. He has studied several rural and urban models, but it’s always helpful to know what’s out there.

The Rev. R. William Carroll serves as rector of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Athens, Ohio (Diocese of Southern Ohio). He received his Ph.D. in Christian theology from the University of Chicago Divinity School. His sermons appear on his parish blog. He is a member of the Third Order of the Society of Saint Francis.

By Luiz Coelho

Another Earth Hour is over. In several locations around the world, houses and businesses turned their lights off and avoided energy consumption for one hour. But, at the end, did anything change?

I wrote about this same subject last year (for another publication), and, even though I do not have precise statistics about Earth Hour 2009 right now, it is reasonable to say that there will be similar results to the ones obtained last year, with some cities announcing energy consumption reductions of more than 10% during the event.

But, is that true? In 2007, Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bold disagreed. He argued that “a cut so tiny was trivial - equal to taking six cars off the road for a year”. Also, David Solomon, a PhD student at the University of Chicago, claimed that, in fact, “more than 67 per cent of the apparent decline during Earth Hour was due to factors operating throughout the entire day”. This would change the estimated reduction in electricity use during Earth Hour to a tiny 2.1 %.

Of course, both statements can be wrong, and need to be scientifically verified. However, even if we sustain the 10 % reduction, there are 24 hours per day, and 365 days (and 8,760 hours) this year. A 10% energy reduction for one hour, when seen within the context of a whole year of waste and disrespect for the environment, is basically irrelevant.

The point is clear. If Earth Hour happens only once a year, and for one hour, then it is a huge failure. Worse than that, the whole feel-good propaganda around it distracts many people from the serious danger the environment is in. It is almost like giving a placebo to a very sick patient. It is a medication that does nothing concrete, but takes away fears from people's minds, and allows them to go back to their daily environmental unfriendly activities, once the Earth Hour is over.

Earth “hours” can be only relevant if they happen frequently and consistently. We, as concerned people, have to demand from the institutions we are affiliated with (including the Church) that policies are taken so that real reductions in energy consumption happen. We also can do much more. Measures such as reducing lights, heat, taking shorter showers, buying organic and locally grown food, and boycotting products from countries or regions that are clear agressors of the Environment are surely helpful. One thing, however, is clear. What we do now (including the Earth Hour), is far from being enough to save our planet.

As a final reflection, I close this text like last year's, with a poem by Julian of Norwich, 14th Century mystic, who “lived several Earth hours” in a much more reasonable, dynamic and spiritual way than we probably do.

Be a gardener.
Dig a ditch,
toil and sweat,
and turn the earth upside down
and seek the deepness
and water the plants in time.
Continue this labor
and make sweet floods to run
and noble and abundant fruits
to spring.
Take this food and drink
and carry it to God
as your true worship.

Luiz Coelho, a seminarian from the Diocese of Rio de Janero, spends part of the year in the BFA program at the Savannah College of Art and Design. His Web site includes his art and his blog, Wandering Christian, on which he examines "Christianity in the third millennium, from a progressive, Latin American and Anglican point of view."

By Derek Olsen

Recently I've found myself caught up in the question: "what is saving what from what for what?" I know—it seems a little strange so allow me to explain where my mind has been wandering."

A story from TheOilDrum has been nagging at my brain for the last few days. It described the steps that one family was taking to meet the perils of peak oil/environmental troubles/social collapse, etc. and included what I consider a "typical" homesteading plan: a passive solar-enabled house with solar panels around, wells, cisterns, several acres under cultivation—you get the picture. Essentially they had created the kind of homesteading setup I used to dream about as a kid flipping through the Back to Basics book. But several things came out in the article and subsequent comments that gave me significant pause.

The couple was childless (by choice). They were isolated. They were heading into their 70's.
Two thoughts popped into my head with these revelations. The first from Ecclesiastes:

Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun. There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he hath neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This is also vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken. (Eccl 4:7-12)

The second thought was: And you consider this sustainable?!

Who will care for them in their old age? What happens when they can no longer maintain a small veggie plot, let alone several acres? If one gets sick, injured, or dies—what then?
Thinking more broadly, the mindset that this couple has embraced strikes me as one rooted deep in the American psyche. It's literally the rugged individual striking out on his own to carve his own destiny by the strength of his hand. The writer prefers the term "self-reliant" and does note a number of things that he can't do on his own—create metal tools, etc.—but at the heart of it lies the notion of the individual.

Looking to my initial rumination, under this paradigm, these individuals are saving themselves (or their immediate family) from just about everything for the sake of themselves.

Again—is this paradigm fundamentally sustainable? I don't think so...

Doesn't this rugged individualist paradigm of survival have strong roots within American expressions of Christianity? I'll say it does!

Thus I'm naturally reminded of Noah for in some sense he's the spiritual father of this model: just God and me (and my household and whatever I can get on my boat). We don’t hear a whole lot about Noah before the flood and that’s a shame because later interpreters therefore have to assess Noah on the basis of no data. All that we’re told is that he was “a just [or righteous (tsadiq)] man; perfect in his generation” (Gen 6:9) and that God tells him “for thee have I seen righteous (tsadiq) before me in this generation” (Gen 7:1). As a result, Jewish and Christian interpreters through the ages have tried to weigh the proper valence of two bits of evidence: “righteous” and “in his generation”. Indeed, ancient opinion was pretty well split on Noah. A number of New Testament and post-biblical texts focus on the “righteous” bit and assert that Noah preached salvation and repentance to all who would listen—and therefore suggest that no one did. Others suggest that Noah wasn't actually so great, emphasizing the "in his generation" bit. They see Noah as the best there was at the time, and that he doesn't quite measure up to later, better, standards precisely because we don’t hear of him reaching out to others.

The Zohar, a mystical Jewish treatise from the thirteenth century, states:

When Noah came out of the ark, he opened his eyes and saw the whole world completely destroyed. He began crying for the world and said, "Master of the World! If You destroyed Your world because of human sins or human fools, why did You create them? One or the other you should do: either do not create the human being, or do not destroy the world!"

The Blessed Holy One answered him, "Foolish shepherd! I lingered with you [before the flood] and spoke to you at length so that you would ask mercy for the world! But as soon as you heard that you would be safe in the ark, the evil of the world did not touch your heart. You built the ark and saved yourself. Now that the world has been destroyed you open your mouth to utter questions and pleas."

This tradition, then, (and others recorded in the Talmud and elsewhere) regards Noah as the least of the patriarchs for while Abraham, Moses and others argued for God on behalf of the others, it is not recorded that Noah did likewise.

Are we Noah?

Either in our theological thinking or our secular scheming—do we hearken after Noah more than the other patriarchs?

In looking for other paradigms I still think that the secular environmental paradigm of the Transition Town movement presents a better way forward. For its suggestion is that local communities should be addressing energy and climate issues as a whole for the sake of the whole. Nobody's retreating into a canyon in the California hills here; rather, neighbors are meeting one another and talking through plans. There's a part of me that's suspicious of this, because it means entrusting potentially crucial matters to other people—who knows if they can be trusted to come through? But then, come to think of it, that's how our world functions now anyway.

Realistic thinking about a lower-energy, non-fossil fueled world means a recognition of our interconnectedness. A recent group that participates in replicating a functioning Victorian community with an eye to a non-fossil-fuel world suggests that no less than 200 separate specializations are required to keep it functioning.
Checking back to the theological side, it seems that this sort of endeavor is far more in line with the heart of the Christian tradition, the one with baptism at its center. In the ancient world, even the notion of "individual salvation" wasn't constructed in the way we build it now. Yes, individuals (and households) were baptized but that was the start, not the end. Individuals were baptized into a community, into a family, into a Body. This family, in turn, created a new community that transcended the old—sometimes bitter—divisions:

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: Which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. (1 Peter 2:9-11)

Communities are harder to live with. They have disagreements, arguments, all sorts of unpleasantness. And yet they're workable—sustainable—in a way that individualism just isn't. Too, it is in the pushing, prodding, give and take of community life that we get pushed to make choices that give life for those beyond our selves and our little circles.

Derek Olsen is in the final stretch of completing a Ph.D. in New Testament (with a healthy side of Homiletics) at Emory University. He has taught seminary courses in biblical studies, preaching, and liturgics; he currently resides in Maryland. His reflections on life, liturgical spirituality, and being a Gen-X/Y dad appear at Haligweorc.

By Peter Carey

Can we have Spirit-filled liturgy without millions of reams of paper discarded each Sunday?

What would it take for us in the Episcopal Church to stop producing millions of pages of bulletins and service booklets every Sunday? We all know how costly it is for our environment to keep producing paper, to say nothing of the cost of making and maintaining computers, printers, copiers, sorters, and duplicators. And then there is the human labor that is put into production of these bulletins and booklets. In recent years, in many churches I have visited, the prayer book liturgy is basically copied and pasted, perhaps with a slightly different version of the psalm, or some inclusive language included in the Eucharistic Prayer. Without even entering the discussion of whether the liturgies fit with the canons of our church, is it really necessary to produce so much paper? The bulletins I have seen some places look and feel like books. I wonder if churches, deaneries and dioceses have even considered the cost of this production of paper that is quickly discarded (hopefully recycled) shortly after parishioners leave for coffee-hour, and afternoons of family and football?

When I have brought this up with other folks who run churches, I hear that it is more hospitable for visitors to be handed a bulletin that does not force people to turn the pages in the Book of Common Prayer, only then to have to pick up one or another Hymnal, and then turn back to the Book of Common Prayer. Ok, I’ll concede that we are a bit crazy in our beloved church with the number of books to negotiate. However, these visitors are the same folks who drive their car, talk on the cell phone, listen to the radio, and eat a snack while driving. We are all multi-taskers Are we really saying that people can’t follow the along our liturgy, with a few instructions, while sitting in the pew?

I am part of the problem. As I prepared for services to begin the year at our school, I produced a leaflet for each person who attended our opening service. I came close to not making them, but I felt like it would be a lot to spring on new teachers if they had to fumble around with all the books. I also worry about the sense that our church can, unwittingly, project an “in-crowd” type of attitude, despite our “Episcopal Church Welcomes You” signs! However, perhaps we need to step out and actually welcome others once they get in the church.

I am concerned about the waste of paper and the cost of this production. Where else could all this money be going? Could we increase our mission? Could we offer some to the MDGs? Where could that budget line go?

I wonder if as a Lenten discipline next year every church could take just one or two Sundays “off” from producing any bulletin beyond a one-pager? Could we also practice the discipline of hospitality for visitors to our churches? Could we risk speaking to the visitors and offering help with our many colored prayer books and hymnals? How much money would be saved in just one or two weeks of using no bulletins? How many reams of paper might be saved?

I know, I know, it’s a crazy idea, but maybe it’s crazy enough to try – even for a couple of weeks. Who’s with me?

The Rev. Peter M. Carey is the school chaplain at St. Catherine's School for girls in Richmond, Virginia and is also on the clergy staff at St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Richmond. He blogs at Santos Woodcarving Popsicles.

By George Clifford

Each Tuesday, the city of Raleigh collects trash and recyclable items in my neighborhood. People place their rubbish and recycling bins curbside Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. After a windy Monday night or on a windy Tuesday, material blown from open recycling bins and from overstuffed trash bins litters the neighborhood. On my Tuesday jogs – with advancing age and declining speed I no longer presume to call my daily four miles a run – I frequently stop to pick up litter, depositing it in a convenient bin. Nobody has yet asked me what I am doing, what gives me the right to put litter in their bin. More surprisingly, nobody else whom I see on my Tuesday excursions picks up litter. Dog walkers, runners, people in their yards, lawn care service employees, children waiting for a ride – all seem equally oblivious to the litter. As the neighborhood stays relatively litter free, either homeowners eventually pick up the litter or wind patterns carry most of the litter elsewhere.

Perhaps another sign of my age is that I jog without an IPOD, phone, or other electronic device. Through decades of busy days in which my run often provided me with my only private time and, on many days, was a much needed stress reliever, I cultivated the habit of using the time for reflection and prayer. On a recent Tuesday, I reflected about litter, why it bothers me, and why I interrupt my jog to pick up somebody else’s trash.

Although the Bible speaks of humans receiving dominion over the earth from God, that dominion has never struck me as authorizing humans to destroy the earth. The Navy gave me authority over sailors. My commission – like that of all Navy leaders – was to help those sailors develop, not destroy them. The Navy is generally very clear that its sailors, no matter how eccentric or troublesome, are not the nation’s enemies against whom the Navy may one day have to wage war. In this day of joint warfare operations, the Navy even acknowledges that soldiers and airmen are friends, not foes (Marines have always been part of the Department of the Navy, a fact both sailors and Marines are sometimes loathe to admit it!). Parents have dominion over children. Again, the intent is to develop the child, not to destroy. The same principle – to develop not destroy – seems to express the intent of human dominion over the earth.

The analogy of sailor (or child) and earth seems particularly apt when one considers that both are composite, living entities. A human being has approximately one trillion cells. Over the years, new cells replace many of those that die; some cells malfunction (e.g., a cell that becomes cancerous); other cells are sacrificed for the greater good (e.g., removal of an appendix about to burst or cells that would form webbing between toes). The body can withstand much use and abuse but that has definite limits. For example, most of us survive multiple falls with little or no permanent damage but could not survive a truck hitting us at 55 mph as we walk across a street.

No analogy is perfect. A person is his/her body. The earth is not a person. Yet the earth is like a living organism with parts too numerous to count. Change, as with a human, is endemic to the earth. The earth’s geology, weather, flora, fauna, etc., all constantly evolve. The earth is amazingly resilient. It endures and overcomes a remarkable amount of use and abuse, whether from humans cultivating food, building shelter, dumping waste in the ocean, or conducting atmospheric nuclear weapons tests in the last century. But we are approaching – some would say we have even passed – the earth’s ability to absorb our unthinking abuse. Like a human, the earth has only a finite capacity to absorb abuse. The signs of our surpassing that capacity are manifold: climate change, persistent smog, once fertile fields stripped bare of their topsoil, once potable watersheds from which we now pump only toxic water, etc.

What awoke me to the problem of the abused earth was seeing a June 22, 1969 morning newspaper photograph of the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland, OH, burning. Although I was still in high school at the time and my education far from complete, I knew enough science to know that rivers do not burn naturally. Something was grievously wrong. My awakening continued with reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and discovering that I, who thought I lived in an idyllic, friendly wilderness –Maine – in fact lived near one of the nation’s most polluted rivers. The river’s water was so toxic that fish no longer lived in it; a person who accidentally fell into the river often required medical attention. My environmental awareness has given me an abiding and deep appreciation for the phrase in Rite II Eucharistic Prayer C, “this fragile earth, our island home.”

Too many people continue to act as if human “dominion” authorizes the use, abuse, or even destruction of the earth. As a Christian and as a priest, I understand the transformative power of words. One way to change the attitude underlying those actions is to change our words, to identify earth as “Mother Earth.” This affirms earth’s living dimension, associates a nurturing yet powerful metaphor with earth, and recognizes the absolute truth that without the earth, human life as we know would be impossible. “Mother Earth” connotes the totality of this planet and avoids the more limited images some associate with the older, emotionally laden “Mother Nature.” Instead of asking people to be environmentally responsible, we should ask people to treat their Mother well and with love. Christians steeped in ecclesiastical history know that in centuries past, Christians have on occasion referred to the Church as their Mother. In our secular culture with generally ill-formed Christians, the metaphor of Mother Earth probably speaks more powerfully than Mother Church. Objectors do well to remember that a child having more than one mother is no bad thing – unless the child wants to get into mischief! (I’m not advocating polygamy, simply affirming the great benefit that comes from having more than one woman fill a mother-like role in a child’s life.)

Another way to move people away from attempting to exercise dominion over the earth is for those of us committed to caring for Mother Earth to lead by example. Following the leader – adopting a moral exemplar upon whom to base one’s life – is a time-honored approach to the Christian moral life popularized in the question, “What would Jesus do?” I admittedly lack the wisdom to know what type of vehicle, if any, Jesus would drive. I am confident, however, that Jesus would stoop once, or perhaps even several times, per day to pick up litter that disfigures, even temporarily, Mother Earth. A person committed to leading the way towards more fully and completely caring for Mother Earth would do well to audit his or her life for ways to reduce destructive impact and to enhance caring. Maybe one day somebody will ask me why I pick up litter, affording me an opportunity to explain that individual acts done by large groups can collectively make a huge impact (and perhaps to feel a trifle self-righteous!).

Collective action is yet another way to move people away from dominion toward respecting Mother Earth. When Maine enacted a law mandating a deposit on all beverage containers, the state within a matter of months became much cleaner. Non-profit groups and individuals picked up litter and earned money simultaneously. Retailers, bottlers, and others opposed the proposed law. Today, Maine people still consume beverages in bottles and cans, retailers collect and refund deposits, a cottage recycling industry has developed, and Mother Earth is looking better and a little healthier for it. Surely a nation that can send humans to walk on the moon and bring them home safely can find more ways, large and small, to help preserve restore our fragile island home to health.

The Rev. George Clifford, a retired priest in the Diocese of North Carolina, served as a Navy chaplain for twenty-four years.

By Heidi Shott

One recent, magnificent Saturday, the temperature hit 85 degrees here in midcoast Maine. I spent some time fiddling in the garden, admiring the green pea shoots popping up through the dirt. My son Marty and I walked to the neighborhood fish ladder and watched thousands of struggling alewives ascending, in little fits and starts, the tortuous 42 vertical feet from the tidal Damariscotta River to the concrete dam that marks the southernmost shore of Damariscotta Lake, their birthplace. Once over the dam and into the mill pond, these mackerel-like fish spawn and then late in the summer they slip and slide back down the ladder and out to the open sea. Next spring they’re compelled to do it all over again.

At one point I pulled out the hammock, set it up for the season, and just lay there enjoying the welcome warmth and the view of the mill pond and the repeated whoosh of my son Colin whacking the heads off the dandelions with a badminton racquet. The ecstasy lasted about ten seconds before the black flies found me.

The black fly. The bane of what passes for spring in Maine hovered around my hairline and behind my ears with the intention of extracting little droplets of A Positive. I hauled myself out of the hammock with a sigh and walked down to the dock where there was a wisp of breeze. Every few seconds the skin of the mill pond flickered as a newly-arrived alewife struck a black fly on the surface. Down below the dam, where the fish are the thickest, the gulls and cormorants feed from the sidelines on the fish that get waylaid on the rocks. If you’re lucky, once or twice during the alewife season, which runs the month of May, you might look skyward at just the right moment to see one of the neighborhood eagles flying by with a fish clutched in its talon en route to its nest over the far line of pine trees.

Black flies, alewives, and eagles. I stood on my dock looking at the chill, black water thinking how superfluous we humans are to this particular chain of connections. But then a black fly started to suck a bit of blood from the tender flesh at the corner of my right eye. Instinctively I squished it with my index finger and flicked it away to the pond. At that moment it occurred to me that my blood and my family’s blood and the blood of my-until-recently-cooped-up neighbors is what feeds this remarkable system. In May we come out of our homes en masse, feed the black flies who, heavy with our donation, skim the water to be eaten by alewives who are in turn eaten by eagles and osprey eager to feed their young. One sad spring several years ago, the eaglets died of hunger in their nearby nest because the alewives were delayed in making their journey up the river. It’s true. I have neighbors who monitor these things with high-powered binoculars.

Back on the dock, I felt a twinge of guilt for squishing my tiny fly friend. What’s a bit of pain and an unsightly red welt when I could help to feed the eaglets? It’s a small price to pay to live amid this natural wonder and beauty in a setting that would resemble a photo in the L.L. Bean catalogue if only we had nice lawn furniture and professional landscaping. By letting myself be chomped, I can be a living sacrifice – a little of my life given freely will support a little of theirs. Of course the sacrificial life, particularly when it involves blood sacrifice, has fallen a bit out of fashion over the past couple of thousand years. But in this natural setting, it represents a yielding, deferential way of life that does not much diminish me as a giver but rather offers my small oblation up to the world.

Last Tuesday night, after the local school budget passed, my seven years as a school board member ended. Over the years my sons resented my absence on the second Wednesday of each month. I didn't help them with their homework or read to them or put them to bed on many weeknights. But it gave them a little guy time with their dad. They get to break the rules, stay up late, play pinball after 9 p.m. All in all my community service has equaled a very small sacrifice. I can think of dozens of people who give much, much more out of the substance of their lives for the benefit of others, not to mention a lot of black flies and the alewives who, wittingly or not, give up the whole thing.

Still I worry that my modern children won’t learn about sacrifice, blood or otherwise. Come summer I know that Colin will walk around the house with a flyswatter and recite Ogden Nash’s couplet, “God in his wisdom made the fly/but then forgot to tell us why.” Maybe in time he’ll take a larger view, but until then, all I can say is I’m glad Colin isn’t in charge of the universe.

Heidi Shott has served as press officer to Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine since 1998. Communications director of the Genesis Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides expertise and low-interest loans to nonprofits engaged in community development, her essays about trying to live a life of faith may be found at Heidoville.

By Marshall Scott

It's garden time at our house. My wife loves to garden, while I love to harvest. There is, as I'm sure you know, a price to be paid for the opportunity to harvest. For me, it's the heavy labor. So, some of the tilling is done. The raised bed is built, as is a trellis stout enough to hold butternut squash. There's more to do, of course, but things have started.

It's garden time. Seeds started in peat pots and customized potting soil are thriving on the seed benches. Tomatoes, beans, eggplant, and peppers show their promise. Soon they'll be spending daylight hours hardening off, adapting to the rigors of the world outside.

Last year's blackberry stakes are, starting to leaf out, as the new stakes of the blackberries and raspberries break ground. The blueberries are greening up and blooming. And the peach tree is spectacular this year. Blossoms are as large and as plentiful and as floridly pink as I can remember.

Perhaps that's because they suffered so last year. Last spring, just as the peaches and blueberries bloomed, we were hit by an ice storm. Blossoms were literally frozen on the bough. While the ice covered them, they seemed preserved in glass. When the ice was gone, the blossoms were gone as well, and with them a year's harvest. There were no local peaches or blueberries or apples to be had last year because of that storm.

We do eat from our garden, if as supplement rather than subsistence. We were saddened by the loss of peaches and berries, but nothing like the costly losses to the orchardists in our region and beyond. But we were certainly aware of our loss, and more sensitive to theirs.

We make some effort to “eat local,” from our garden or from local farmers or from the few supermarkets that have discovered that there’s a market for it. While it’s not the only reason for the effort or the expense, we are certainly more aware of where our food comes from and how. A generation ago a large pressure canner or a large dehydrator would have been a remarkably unromantic birthday gifts. Over the last couple of years those are the gifts my wife has cherished most. And I will say as a cook there are a number of pleasures to take in having one’s own canned tomatoes and dried basil. I take a particular pleasure in the dried herbs, perhaps because I don’t have all that good a sense of smell. There is a visceral pleasure when, instead of shaking a small jar, I fill my palm with dried leaves and rub them to powder between my hands, allowing the tiny bits to fall into the hot skillet. When all the spices are in – basil and tarragon and oregano – I can put my face in my hands and breathe deep. The scent fills my nose, and my kitchen; and on my better days, I will smell it for hours, every time I come in from outside.

Long ago, as an undergraduate I participated in a class experiment. We fasted from solid food from the end of the Tuesday class to the beginning of the Thursday class. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that I was never hungry. My routine was somewhat disturbed, but I could always find something else to keep me occupied. I learned much, although not what was originally intended. I had gained no sense of identification with the poor and hungry. I was so well fed that I had not suffered at all. I had learned instead just how blessed I was. I also learned what a false effort it would be, for me at least, to attempt to “show solidarity” by some temporary experiment. It might offer some intellectual stimulation, and even some moral compunction; but it wouldn’t come close to identification. Perhaps it was one of the first times I realized why, later as priest and chaplain, I could never say, “I know how you feel.”

The garden, I think, takes me closer. It’s still not enough for identification. I am not a farmer, much less a subsistence farmer. At the same time, I know what effort I put in. I know how often I bark my knuckles in the process; and so I know some of my sweat and blood feeds the roots of the peppers. I know what it means to put in two hours in the hot sun; and if I don’t know what it means to put in twelve hours, I do know that my life would be very different if I had no choice. I know how I feel about the squirrels in the peach tree and the robins in the blueberries and the rabbits in the beans; and if I can only imagine what it would be like to have my family’s life on that line, I have at least some basis for that imagination.

And so I am more aware of the news about food, at home and abroad. I am aware that rice exporting countries in Asia are withholding exports to protect their own people and their own stability, while rice importing countries scramble. I pay attention to the food riots in Egypt and Haiti. I note the news of cold snaps that damage the fruit crops in California. I realize the increased costs of fuel raise the costs of food around the globe. I am conscious that while these changes are, for me, a matter of what I eat, for many they are matters of whether they eat.

As an Episcopalian, I am conscious that my church has spoken to issues of hunger and food many times. I was struck by this simple resolution, passed in 1976: “that this General Convention encourages simple eating lifestyles for all those scheduled to attend the 66th General Convention of the Episcopal Church in Denver, 1979.” (1976:D071( [link: http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution.pl?resolution=1976-D071] Still, in all our current troubles, it’s easy to lose our voice on these things. We have passed our commitment to the Millennium Development Goals. At the same time, resolutions on food security (2003-A016) [link: http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution-complete.pl?resolution=2003-A016] and on eradicating hunger in the United States (2006-D085) [link: http://www.episcopalarchives.org/cgi-bin/acts/acts_resolution-complete.pl?resolution=2006-D085] have died for lack of concurrence at the end of General Convention.

Each of us is called, I think, to consider how our lives affect the lives of others. If we watch how this plays out in our eating – whether the cost of oil for transport or fertilizer, or how that affects use of food crops for ethanol, or how industrial agriculture affects issues from the environment to immigration to small farmers – we will recognize the ways, perhaps new ways, to “think globally and act locally;” and to continue to “seek and serve Christ in all persons,” however far away they may seem. I’m not sure I would agree with Dorothy Frances Gurney that

“One is nearer God’s heart in a garden
Than anywhere else on earth.”

But if it is true, for me it is not because of pious rapture but because it puts me that little bit closer to those who struggle for their daily bread. And I am certain that God is there.

The Rev. Marshall Scott is a chaplain in the Saint Luke’s Health System, a ministry of the Diocese of West Missouri. A past president of the Assembly of Episcopal Healthcare Chaplains, and an associate of the Order of the Holy Cross, he keeps the blog Episcopal Chaplain at the Bedside.

By Jean Fitzpatrick

We've finally switched to reusable grocery bags. Bright green. I think of it as conspicuous conservation.

Let's face it, we need all the conservation we can get: according to TIME, it takes some 14 million trees in a single year to keep the U.S. in paper bags, and 12 million oil barrels for plastic. Treehugger.com says over 100,000 birds die every year after encounters with plastic debris, much of it plastic bags.

You'd think using the green bags would be a simple step, but then you'd be forgetting the human factor.

Today at the supermarket I arrived at the cash register and realized, as usual, that I'd left my green bags in the car. Ordinarily -- if there's no one behind me -- I ask the cashier to wait a second while I race out to the parking lot, but this time I was in a rush: I only had a few minutes to grab some groceries on my way to work. "I don't need a bag," I told the cashier, figuring I'd carry my few items out to the car and slip them into a green bag in the trunk.

“She doesn't need a bag," the cashier called out. I glanced around, not sure whom she was talking to. That's when I saw that Juliet, the supermarket's most reliable bagger, had stepped up to the checkout counter. I always bag my own groceries unless she's there. Juliet, a middle-aged woman with a blond ponytail who has Down syndrome, always arranges the items in the bag so they're not squashed, leaky, or missing when you get home. By now she'd already popped my basil, fish and fruit into a plastic bag. As soon as she heard the cashier's announcement she frowned and pulled them out again. "Thanks, Juliet," I said, but, her frown deepening, she looked away. I swiped my debit card and, clutching my groceries in both hands, beat a hasty retreat.

All the way home I pictured Juliet's frown and decided that if I ever found myself in that situation again, Juliet's feelings meant more to me than one plastic bag. I'd forced myself into a bogus trade-off, of course. Had I not scheduled my day down to the last nanosecond, it would have been easy enough to run outside and bring in a green bag, which Juliet would have packed with her usual efficiency and good cheer. When I neglect to show myself compassion, I realized, I tend to short-change others as well...not to mention forgetting all about the planet.

Back home, as I put the shrimp (shrink-wrapped and farm-raised) along with the basil and fruit (each stuffed into an oversized plastic package) into my hefty side-by-side fridge (how much of an EnergyStar can it really be?), the whole effort seemed absurd. Can a few green bags really lighten my carbon footprint? I wondered. Is there any point to making such a small change?

Well, even if we save a few hundred paper or plastic bags a year, that's a start. The bags aren't a solution, but, along with some other changes we're making to our daily routine, they're a first step. More than that, maybe, when I'm all caught up in rushing around, the green bags broaden my perspective. I'm keeping them beside me in the passenger seat these days, hoping I'll remember to bring them into the supermarket, but also letting them remind me of the choices I seek to make. They're part of a sacramental way of life: in the midst of the day's obligations and busyness, the green bags open me up to a caring connection with the earth, one that is interwoven with all my other relationships...with Juliet and the cashier, with the people I love, and with the loving energy that sustains us all.

Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.

By Reid Detchon

Our material comforts give us so much to be grateful for. Kings and queens, in days gone by, never knew the luxuries we take for granted. Most of us live and eat so well, our biggest threat is overdoing it.

And yet our little empires, our cars, gadgets and homes, are built on something that threatens to bring it all to ruin – the production and use of energy. Our personal freedom and mobility depends on oil and electricity that comes mostly from coal and natural gas.

These three fossil fuels, formed and accumulated underground over millions of years, are being extracted, combusted, and injected into our atmosphere with ever-increasing speed, and the world is growing steadily warmer as a result.

Like the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, we are experimenting with magic we can’t control. We have put in motion processes that we cannot stop or reverse, and we are putting God’s creation at risk.

The Arctic ice cap drives our hemisphere’s weather, but in less than a decade, it may be gone. The warming tundra is preparing to release gases built up through eons of decomposition, trapped no longer beneath a frozen cap. The mighty oceans warm and expand and, as ice melts on Greenland, rise along our coasts.

What are we doing to our world, to ourselves, to our children’s future? What are we doing to each other?

When the climate changed and the rains failed in Darfur, herdsmen moved onto farmers’ land and started fighting. When the climate changed and an unrelenting heat wave struck Europe in 2003, more than 14,000 died in France alone. When the climate changed and the Gulf of Mexico warmed, its energy was taken up by Hurricane Katrina.

When we say it’s just the weather, we are like children plugging our ears and saying, “Nah, nah, nah, nah” to block out what we don’t want to hear. The energy we use – when we start our cars, boot up our computers, heat and cool our homes – is killing people. We are killing people – by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.

This is tough to hear – because it threatens the regal comforts we all are so grateful to have. Do we really have to give them up to save the world?

Energy is a great blessing. It has brought billions of people out of deprivation and misery. Doing without it would harm far more people than global warming.

Thanks to God’s blessings, we need not do without. All energy is not alike. Some kinds of energy are harmful, but others are not. Every day God provides, through the sunshine and the rain, the wind and the trees and plants, far more energy to the Earth than we could ever use. We call this energy renewable, because God continually renews its supply, like manna, for all who reach out their hands. It may cost a bit more to gather, but what is that against the cost we are incurring, the harm that we are doing?

We can change our ways. We can make a choice – at home, at work, in our churches and schools. There may be some sacrifice, some small additional price to pay for cleaner energy. But the reward is large. It is, in fact, the whole world.

Reid Detchon, a vestry member at St. Columba’s in Washington, D. C., is Executive Director, Energy and Climate, at the United Nations Foundation.

By Heidi Shott

In 1979 a small island in the Southern Caribbean made a bold move by designating the real estate between the high tide mark and 200 feet below the surface a national marine park. Rules require dive boats to use moorings instead of reef-damaging anchors and make illegal spearfishing and the use of diving gloves, lest divers be tempted to touch vulnerable coralheads.

Nearly 30 years later Bonaire, one of six islands that comprise the Netherlands Antilles, has done more to preserve the complex ecosystem of the coral reef and the variety and abundance of fish life than anywhere else in the Caribbean. Not only have the Bonairians preserved their natural resource, but they have also ensured steady economic growth by drawing divers to their pristine underwater park year after year. My family has returned to dive off the island ten times over the last 15 years. We’re in a rut, but it’s an awfully nice rut and very affordable once you get there.

Diving is something my husband Scott and I have shared throughout our life together. The thrill of seeing a sea turtle or a eagle ray or to swim in the midst of a huge, flock-like school of silversides or to have dolphins frolic along side our boat, binds us in a way that is hard to explain. Scott learned to dive at 14 in the mid-seventies in the murky lakes and frigid quarries of West Virginia. I learned in 1985 in the tropical waters off the Micronesian island of Saipan when we were first married and teachers at the island parochial school.

During our most recent trip in January, our twin 14 year-old sons learned to dive. Finally we could dive together as a family. We spent two weeks diving, reading, playing scrabble and gin rummy, and watching the sun set from our porch with boat drinks and snacks – no phone, no email, no computer games, no TV, no diocesan or hospital emergencies that required our response. When we awoke in the morning, the drill was not the mad morning rush to school and work but to drink some tea with a slice of toast, gather our gear bags, squeeze into the bottom half of our wetsuits, and make our way down the dock to the happy camaraderie of the dive boat. “So where we goin’ this morning?” the day’s dive leader would ask.

“Salt Pier!”

“La Dania’s Leap!”

“Carl’s Hill!”

“Anywhere, it’s all good!”

Under the Caribbean sun we would arrive at the dive site and hoist our air tanks onto our backs, the acrid smell of hot neoprene in our noses. How delicious to let the weight of the gear flip us backwards off the side of the boat into the cool ocean.

As a diver, one skill I’ve paid close attention to over the years is controlling my buoyancy. I’ve learned to rise and fall in the water by gauging the amount of air in my lungs and to control my pitch and yawl by the flick of a fin or the twitch of a hand in the water. I’m not an expert – I don’t dive enough for that – but after a dive or two the fluency comes back. By maintaining neutral buoyancy a diver can get close to things…really close. This is important because so much of what goes on in your average coral reef neighborhood is tiny and complicated and if you want to get a sense of the intricacies of life on the reef, you need to be as close and as still as possible.

What an honor to be a visitor to this little corner of creation. It takes hundreds of years for the coral reef to grow: one generation of a hundred of species of coral dies to form a minute layer over the great exoskeleton of the reef, a millimeter at a time. One of my favorite things to do, and I taught my sons to do it as well, is to kick back from the reef into the deep water and pause to take in the whole wide expanse of the scene. We’re looking at part of creation that was in this very place doing its silent, magnificent thing at the same time Henry VIII was beginning to grow a teensy bit dissatisfied with Catherine of Aragon, when our boys were shooting themselves to bits at Second Bull Run, and when my grandfather was in the trenches faraway in France. For millennia tiny blue-lipped blennies have bravely defended their two inches of territory, orange frogfish have extended their deceptive lures, the spectacular and shy spotted drum has swum in and out of the hollows of brain coral…over and over and over again. For the past 60 years, since M. Cousteau and his friends figured out how to breath underwater, we humans have been privileged to observe this world for up to 75 minutes at a time.

Last month, on the day before we were to fly home and resume our life in Maine, I jumped off the dock with my fins, mask and snorkel. We’d made our last dive earlier in the day and were now allowing all the dissolved nitrogen built up in our blood to dissipate before we flew." (Getting the bends in an airplane is a seriously dumb, seriously dangerous rookiesque thing to do.) Before long, I was swimming 30 feet above the terrain I’d dived inches from a half dozen times in the past two weeks. From the surface I recognized certain distinctive coral heads, a large prickly West Indian Sea Egg, brilliant purple stovepipe sponges and delicate, translucent vase sponges, five different species each of parrotfish, angelfish, damselfish, and butterflyfish, and little groupers called Rock Hinds. I recognized them from 30 feet above only because I already knew them intimately from close at hand. Fish we don’t recognize at depth, we study in our fish books when we surface so we will know them the next time. Divers sport the geeky enthusiasm of birders, we just don’t often talk about it in public.

As I paddled around in the gorgeous turquoise, warmer than our mill pond ever gets at mid-summer, I started to finger this essay in my mind. Out of habit and propensity, I often contrast whatever situation I’m find myself in to the state of the Episcopal Church or the nuttiness of trying to live like a Christian in this complicated world. It’s an annoying habit and I’ve tried unsuccessfully to break it. I’ve compromised by only writing about one in five ideas that wash over me. Still, what I was thinking was something like this: If one part of God’s glorious creation - such as the ecosystem of the tropical coral reef – is so amazingly complex and fragile, doesn’t it follow that other parts of creation – the family, the congregation, the diocese, the Church, the Communion – each would be just as complex. Think of how nuanced and complicated the life of any congregation or diocese is. Yet, if we’re on the outside, how easy it is, with a little bit of distant observation, to feel we have captured the nut of a place in the palm of our hands.

As a diver at depth, so careful with my breathing to remain close but not intrusive amid the life and death action of the reef, I can observe a world that I don’t belong to. I can learn a lot, but I’ll never be a fish. I’ll never know what causes the Pederson’s Cleaning Shrimp to climb onto that particular anemone. As a snorkler 30 feet above, I can see the bigger coral heads and the bigger fish, but I’ll never see the two-inch blenny defending his little home in the crack before darting back to safety or the baby spotted moray eel poking its head and mouth full of teeth from a burrow.

But my inability to really, really know doesn’t stop me from pretending I know the undersea world. In his song, “Laughter,” Bruce Cockburn sang, “A laugh for the dogs barking at our heels, they don’t know where we’ve been. A laugh for the dirty window panes, hiding the love within.” I’ve always loved that line because he calls us on how willing we are to be dismissive of people with whom we don’t agree or with whom we have little in common. We’re especially good at that in the Church.

I don’t know how to change that, but scuba diving provides some good lessons: control your breathing, be still, watch carefully, and, for God’s sweet sake, don’t open your mouth.

Heidi Shott has served as press officer to Bishop Chilton Knudsen of Maine since 1998. She is also communications director of the Genesis Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides expertise and low-interest loans to nonprofits engaged in community development. Heidi's essays about trying to live a life of faith may be found at Heidoville.

By James Jones

Traditionally people have given up things for Lent. Last year in the Diocese of Liverpool many parishes took part in a Carbon Fast. Through it we were able to focus on God’s Earth and its poorest people in whom, Jesus said, we were to find him.

This year, in Lent 2008, we invite as many as can to join us in a Carbon Fast (For details, click Read More at the end of this entry.)

Over the years I’ve been able to visit some of the countries most affected by the changing climate. I’ve sat with village elders in Africa, India and Central America and asked the simple question, “Has the weather changed in your lifetime?” With the answer “yes” has come stories of cyclones, rivers drying up, harvests failing and flooding.

Whatever is happening to the planet there’s no disputing that we’re putting more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before and that this is adding to the blanket that’s trapping the heat around the earth.

On World Environment Day, I was in Tromso in the Arctic Circle for a service in the Ice Cathedral. Desmond Tutu was preaching next to a block of ice that had fallen away from a melting Ice Cap, and reinforcing our responsibility for God’s creation.

St. Paul tells us everything has come into being through and for Christ. This doctrine gives us the ethics of caring for the earth. It is Christ’s environment, not ours. He stands at the centre of all creation – as both creator and redeemer.

As the climate changes and impacts the earth it is clear that the poor are already suffering. The tragedy is that those with the power to do something about it are least affected and those who are most affected are powerless to bring about any change. That’s why there’s a moral imperative on those of use who emit more than our fair share of carbon to rein in our consumption.

It’s estimated that in the U.K. we emit 9.5 tons of carbon per person per year whereas in Ethiopia the average is 0.067 tons and in Bangladesh 0.24. Apparently the earth can sustain 0.8 per person! Reducing our carbon footprint is therefore a matter of justice.

When Jesus fasted in the wilderness he kept company with wild beasts and with angels who ministered to him. He came out of that experience with a clear sense of the Kingdom of God which he preached with passion.

As we pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it’s done in Heaven, the Carbon Fast will be a practical step towards a fairer world, a sustainable planet and the earthing of Heaven.

The Rt. Rev. James Jones is Bishop of Liverpool.

Read more »

By Steven Charleston

I do not remember when I first heard the old saying that everyone talks about the weather, but no one does anything about it. It is just one of those truisms that seems to have always been there. Until now.

Now we are not just talking about the weather. We are, in fact, doing a great deal about it. We are changing it. And not in a good way. The recent national experience of fire storms in California, drought in Georgia, floods in the Midwest and record heat in New England reminds us that climate change is not a myth, but a formula. With a grim mathematical precision we are mutating our weather patterns into new and unstable combinations. The disasters we have witnessed so far are only the first products of that deadly equation. There is much more to come.

Of course, we have heard those predictions before. For many years now scientists and environmentalists have been sending up flares to warn us about how our behavior was impacting the world around us. For just as many years, most of us ignored those warnings and went about business as usual. Now we are paying the price. But before we spend too much time with self recrimination, we should glance at the global clock ticking loudly in the corner. We are close to midnight when it comes to reversing our situation, but close is better than being there, being at the point of no return. We still have a chance, if we choose to take it.

Will it require whole cities burning down or drying up to motivate that choice? Do we have to lose Atlanta or San Diego to get us moving on environmental action? As people of faith, those citizens in the larger society who profess to have a spiritual motivation built in, now is our chance. We are the people who are supposed to listen to the prophets. We are the community that is already organized to not only offer pastoral care to those hurt by disasters, but equally ready to advocate on their behalf. We have the vision of a holy creation and the network of local ministers to turn that vision into action.

While many, if not most, of us have waited until the evidence of global climate change has literally fallen on us, we have an opportunity now to redeem ourselves by using the resources at hand to do something about it. We have been changing the weather for the worst, not we can start changing it again for the better. Slowing down the effects of global warming is possible in the short run. Stopping it altogether is even possible in the long run. We have the ability to act if we choose to do so. And there are few communities better positioned to make those moves than the people of faith.

Will we stop talking about the weather and do something about it? Will the church lead the way? Will we finally muster the national willpower to put our prayers to work on the environmental agenda that is so obviously staring us in the face? Personally, I believe that we will. As much as the disasters sprouting up around us create a climate of fear and loss, they create opportunities for mission and witness. Our finest hour as the people of God is at hand. This is our moment, our chance. The choices we make will determine future in a way that our ancestors could never have imagined. We have an historically grave responsibility, but one that God would not have called us to if we were not up to the task. The destruction we see around us is not an accident. But then, neither is the fact that you and I have been placed here to do something about it.

The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, former Bishop of Alaska, is president and dean of Episcopal Divinity School, and keeper of the podcasting blog EDS's Stepping Stones. A citizen of the Choctaw Nation, Bishop Charleston is widely recognized as a leading proponent for justice issues and for spiritual renewal in the church.