It's hard to know how much my lawn contributes to "red tide" algae blooms. I need to find out. Nutrient runoff is a problem and I am part of the problem.
My question: what can I do today to improve the conditions that reduce nutrient run-off/discharge?
I reached out to Congresswoman Val Demings Orlando Office to request a visit with Staff to discuss federal policy and legislation. I know most of what needs to be done needs to be done through the State of Florida and legislation and policy there, but still the Feds matter. It all matters. We all matter. We need a coordinated effort.
I'm just not comfortable anymore with reading about this and not trying to do something about it. I remember a couple of years back our Florida Legislature approving some $300 million to clean up the Indian River algae bloom mess. We like to think this is helpful. Well, yes, there is clean up needed. But how about changing regulations on septic tanks, how about spending that $300 to give homeowners cash to upgrade their septic tanks to ones that are decent, or spending for sewers that treat instead of septic tanks altogether? In other words, the science is there to tell us what the problem is but we won't do the political and economical sensible thing of prevention.
So, onward we go.
How is it going with your connection to the good earth today?

Hard to Hope

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There is a lot being written about climate change and environment even though it may be difficult to find in all the deluge of information that comes our way each day. Like anything else, you have to pay attention. And then, when you do find it, many times it’s hard to read because it’s hard to take because it can be depressing.  John Schwartz reviews William Vollmann’s new 2 volume work (No Immediate Danger, Vol. 1 of Carbon Ideologies and No Good Alternative, Vol. 2 of Carbon Ideologies) in Sunday, August 12^th’s New York Time Book Review. Here’s how Schwartz finishes:

“Reading these two books did have an effect on me; I became even more conscious of the resources I waste in my own life. I found myself wondering why I burn fossil fuels by driving two miles to a lovely park where I take my morning run, instead of trotting around my own neighborhood. It’s not that I stopped doing it, but I do feel worse about myself. Maybe that’s what the work was for”

There are two reasons people change: the pain is too great where they are or the promise is so wonderful where they want to be. So, maybe reading Carbon Ideologies brought Schwartz or is bringing Schwartz enough pain to bring about change in his life in carbon usage. Maybe.

I find that taking action, however small, helps me find hope. Here’s something for us: Sept. 8, 11am, Rise Up Orlando, at Lake Eola Park, to mark the Sept. 12-14 Global Climate Action Summit being held in San Francisco. Also this: check out your local Planning and Zoning Commission’s work. What is your local Comprehensive Plan and what, for example, is the plan for transportation that can and will reduce the carbon footprint? There is a lot to do my friends. When you find it hard to hope, get out there and do something.

Getting Back at It

I go through periods of ecological depression, that is to say, feeling numbed into inaction by the huge task of advocacy and action on behalf of climate change work. I'm thinking that in these days any environmental work, be it habitat preservation, species extermination, point and non-point discharge and run-off or whatever, is all about the climate change work.
I've been out of the loop, in that ecological depression, for some time, but I'm climbing back out. One significant boost has been, as hard as it is to read it and face the music, the NYTime Magazine of August 5, 2018 fully dedicated to climate work under this title: "Thirty years ago, we could have saved the planet." Oh my.
There is much to do, but knowing history (30 years ago et. al.) can help us not repeat doing what we did that did not help.
One thing that history can do is help engage conversation with those who do not see human activity as contributing to the climate's evolution.
Listen to this from the "30 Years Ago" feature piece (the year is 1982, the "Gore" is Al Gore, the setting is a Congressional Hearing on the "greenhouse effect."):
"There emerged, despite the general comity, a partisan divide. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans demanded action. 'Today I have a sense of deja vu,' said Robert Walker, a Republican from Pennsylvania. In each of the last five years, he said, 'we have been told and told and told that there is a problem with the increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We all accept that fact, and we realize that the potential consequences are certainly major in their impact on mankind" (sic). Yet they had failed to propose a single law. 'Now is the time,' he said. 'The research is clear. It is up to us now to summon the political will.'
Gore disagreed: a higher degree of certainty was required, he believed, in order to persuade a majority of Congress to restrict the use of fossil fuels. The reforms required were of such magnitude and sweep that they 'would challenge the political will of our civilization."
Here's what I see:
-the research has been "clear" since the early 1980's (actually, before that!)
-Republicans used to be the on the side of environmental law that opened access to markets and increased productivity and a vital economy. What happened?
-Democrats used to be savvy in bi-partisan consensus building. What happened?
-political will is the name of the game then, and now.
Just learned of a big September 8, 2018 action called "Rise for Climate, Jobs and Justice." I'm stepping into it. How about you?

On Religion-Less Christianity

LT on DB and RC

“Religion-less Christianity”

[Note: I write a weekly e-letter called "Life Together" and the below references to that come from this blog being initially sent in Life Together. If you have any interest in receiving Life Together drop me a response post here and I'll get you set up]

When Dietrich Bonhoeffer, German Lutheran Pastor and Teaching Theologian, was imprisoned in 1943 by the Nazi Regime for anti-government (Nazi) activity and before he was executed in April 1945 under personal order of Hitler himself after never being released from prison, he wrote letters, essays, poems, and narratives both fiction and non-fiction. Toward the end of his imprisonment he wrote an outline to a book he never got to write. And in the last year of his imprisonment, and thus too his life, and what looked like to be what would be the focus of this unpublished book, he was writing of this thing called a “religion-less Christianity.” We never got the book. We never got the complete thinking of Bonhoeffer on the subject, but we got a bunch good thinking, writing, and ruminations to capture our imagination and call us to engage the faith in what Bonhoeffer called “a world come of age.” Since years ago being introduced to Bonhoeffer’s “religion-less Christianity” through the posthumously published Letters and Papers from Prison I have continuously been tracking this idea and dabbling as much as I could in learning more. For my sabbatical now in 2018 (roughly June 1 to Sept. 1, 3 months, dates still to be specified)  I choose Bonhoeffer’s “religion-less Christianity” as the focus for the “reflection” portion of my sabbatical. From what I know now I believe there is great stuff here for helping the church today be an engaging force of God’s unconditional love in a world that is less and less interested in religion but more and more interested in God.

Life Together (LT), the weekly e-letter I have been posting now for a number of years, takes its name from another work of Bonhoeffer, Life Together. Now, in 2018, this sabbatical year, in the e-letter I will be musing and writing specifically on the ins and outs of a religion-less Christianity and engaging Bonhoeffer’s work. It should be fun. I hope you enjoy it. It will be a time of growth and development for me and I hope will be helpful in your faith and life in Christ in the world.

Let’s get started.

How can I describe for you Dietrich Bonhoeffer (DB)’s “religion-less” Christianity?

“It is saying that God, in Jesus, and therefore always even without Jesus, is not the “God of the gaps,” here to fill our need where we need or our lack of information when we are lacking. God is not a power or being that stands ready at our beckon call to help us achieve and perfect the power and position to which we aspire. God does not stand at the periphery of our center in order to expand or enhance our place or influence. God, rather, is the center of all existence and we live within this being. Our humanity is not aided by divinity, but rather is divinity, but not as an elevation of humanity to divinity, and (perhaps) not as a deflation of divinity (c.f. the New Testament, e.g. Philippians 2 describing the decent of God to earth in Jesus), but rather by a revelation that humanity in all of its dearth and dust, is where the divine always has dwelt and will only dwell for the sake of or as the expression of the only thing that God (divinity) is: self-giving love. I am thinking right now of a couple of related descriptions of all of this: 1) Martin Luther’s statement that God is only found in suffering and death (note the word “only”) 2) an illustration of salvation I have conjured up and used many times that positions a drowning person being met by an arriving “life guard” who only saves by promising to die along with the drowning person and then does just that.”

Okay, here’s an interesting thing that as I think of it sheds some light not only on how I will be sharing my thoughts in 2018 on religion-less Christianity in Life Together but also expresses how we actually received DB’s direct address on this subject: the section above in quotes is something I wrote in my daily journal on December 22 and as I went back to it to share here I was typing along and realized when I got to the end it was really an incomplete essay, not a full or well-rounded exposition, and that more needed to be said and that the thoughts needed to be organized (not to say also vetted!). DB’s Letters and Papers in Prison, where we get his direct address on religion-less Christianity (let’s call it RC), were just that: letters and papers. My thoughts in Life Together on RC will be that too. Not fully thought out, not fully organized, not fully edited, just shared. And to give you an idea of how unvarnished what that sharing will be, here’s what I wrote in my journal on Dec. 22 just after I finished the above and as I was typing the above out now found abruptly disturbing because what I wrote begged for more description/explanation: “cleaned house, did laundry, got haircut, did some home finance.”

I went from noting DB’s RC to chronicling my chores. Ah, yes. And such is the way we live our life.

So, there you have it for now.  Some initial ramblings on DB’s RC and my engagement of it and sharing with you. Again, now in 2018, I’ll be using Life Together to just keep opening up this RC as much as possible. At least that’s the way if feels right now. 

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 Since we are in the Reformation 500 mode and mood because of Oct. 31st and the 95 Theses launching the swirling what became the reformation of church and transformation of culture.....and since our environmental policy and practice in the US is under assault, what with pulling out of the Paris Accords and the evisceration of the EPA's policy approach which is going from protection of environment and citizens to protection of economic benefit (check out the most recent actions on Chlorpyrifos, the insecticide), and more......I thought it good to share something I wrote a couple of years ago on Martin Luther and the environment. 

Luther is key for me.

And the most pressing policy and practice before us all is environmental stewardship. Bar none, save nuclear holocaust which of course takes out, ahem, everything.  Keep your action and eyes on the care of creation. Its now not only important but urgent. 

So since Luther is key and environment, care of creation, is primary, let's put them together for some fun: Luther as Environmentalist. 

Luther As Environmentalist

The Liberating Gospel and Care for Creation

By Johan Bergh*

By now, as a responsible citizen who cares about the livelihood of others, you’ve at least begun to develop habits of reducing, reusing and recycling. What you may or may not be doing as a religious leader in your community is utilizing your public voice and office to advance the cause of caring for creation. My intention here is to describe how the gospel of Jesus frees us to care and act and invite you to use your voice and life as a religious leader to step into the challenges of environmental stewardship and justice. My intention here is to invite you to get Grace and to go Green! Go GreenGrace![i]

But why should you? After all, isn’t your job as a faithful follower of Christ about working with folk on their relationship with God and not about working on their relationship with others, to say nothing of how it’s not about working on their relationship to plants, animals, soil and water?

Actually, that’s not really an issue much these days anymore is it? I mean the part about not paying attention to environmental concern because it’s viewed as outside the purview of religious life. Mainline religious folk have made this connection for a long time and now in recent years Evangelicals have made advances to come on board.[ii]

Instead of having issues with seeing environmental justice as integral to the faith, you may be strongly motivated to step out and act or may even be already very involved.

If that’s the case, great! But please get busy. The planet is on life support.

But maybe you do have hesitations with seeing environmental advocacy and action as part of the faith. If so, I want to offer here the fundamental reason why it is.

But there is more. Maybe you are totally convinced that political and social environmental action are absolutely critical and only too happy to turn away from what you see as the church’s historical shallowness of focusing so much on “salvation” and neglecting the weightier matters of justice. Maybe you are all about taking Christianity to the streets and abandoning the worship buildings because you believe the faith is about people loving people with God’s love and not about God loving people with God’s love. If that is the case, I want to offer here too one fundamental reason why I believe that is misguided.  Salvation for Christians is not prelude to activism and certainly not tangential to activism. It is itself the ultimate activism….the only action that matters….God’s destroying our self-righteousness and replacing that Self with God’s Self (take a look at Romans 6 for how that happens!) so that now this New Self is only doing what’s God’s Self does: loving the world (yes, Earth and all creatures, not just human beings) at all costs.

David Rhoads writes concerning the cosmic nature of salvation pointedly spoken of by Joseph Sittler:

“Sittler pointed to this passage from Colossians [1:15-20] as an adequate Christology. Here is an understanding of the cross of Jesus that extends to the whole created order. Jesus did not die for humans alone to be reconciled to God. Instead, Jesus’ death is a reconciliation of all things in the whole of creation. The consequence is that humans too are reconciled with “all things” and therefore placed in a new and responsible relationship with the whole created order. The work of Christ as a cosmic redeemer catches the hearer up in a drama of redemption that includes the whole cosmos and is therefore able to address our environmental crisis.”[iii]

So here, in one fell swoop, I want to take down one huge wall that is keeping us in the church from paying attention and doing something about our not-so-green Earth on the one hand and, on the other hand, is keeping us in the church who are active in social action from seeing how Jesus Christ is not simply the best social activist embodying God’s love for all but actually the savior of the world.

Here we go.

The mission of God, that is incarnated in the person of Jesus, is God blessing and healing the world, and all persons, in totality, so that personal concern for destiny is no longer the concern we have made it. God reconciles God’s Self with us, no thanks to us, and thus frees us to attend to the reconciliation needs at hand: our neighbor’s welfare and creation’s care.[iv]

Jesus does not establish a new religion named Christianity but instead in his very person and mission destroyed and destroys all attempts by people to construct belief systems or behavioral patterns that attempt to create or establish a relationship with God.

This relationship with God is in fact already established…covenant….by God.  Jesus is God’s definitive word to that reality and truth.

That being the case, Jesus shuts down all our religious pretense and shuts up all our religious banter and calls us to do this: instead of drawing all our attention to establishing our relationship with God we are freed (the operative word here!) to give all our attention to where it belongs….and to the only place, too, by the way, where God’s attention and heart goes: to the care and well-being of creation….meaning our neighbor and our Earth.

Martin Luther put it this way: God does not need our good works, but our neighbor does.[v]

Today I would respectfully amend Luther and write “God does not need our good works, but our neighbor and environment do.”

Luther digs deeply into this notion of being freed by God from religion for justice and wholeness in his famous work “On the Freedom of a Christian” in which he creatively used two contradictory statements to name one singular truth:

“A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none.

A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.”[vi]

The singular truth: a Christian is simply given the totality of life: identity, community, meaning and destiny.

Thus firmly grounded in Christ one’s full attention and focus in life is given over to caring for what is before us (getting traction in our relationship with world) and not what is beyond us (getting any traction in our relationship with God). Jesus’ own ministry demonstrates this. When teaching he was keen on how the people of God need to get it into their thick skulls and hardened hearts that God has got them covered, in all dimensions of life (and that therefore actual radical trust in God was possible): “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?” (Matthew 6:28b-30).

Much of the Christian church has historically been criticized for its zealous attention to the salvation of the person without the necessary attention to the salvation and well-being of society and Earth. Lutherans have often been included, and rightly so a good bit of the time I would have to agree, in this so-called “quietistic” faith category. This is because we have not seen the actual radical nature of the freedom we are given, the Reconciliation, when we are “subject to none.” Oswald Bayer, in referring to how Christ destroys the Old Self (“Old Adam”) before Christ raises it from the dead, writes,

“In view of the commonly held suspicion that Lutheran theology promotes a form of quietism, we need to point out that the reverse side of this death of the old Adam is supreme liveliness and activity. This is no paradox. If I finally pin myself down and judge myself on the basis of what I have done and do, and if I let myself be pinned down by others, by their looks, their words, and their behavior, I am no longer free. But if I am liberated from this captivity, from my own absolute claims and from those of others, then this gift of freedom brings with it a sense of perspective that enables me to distinguish between person and work.[vii]

Lutheran systematic theologian Gerhard Forde speaks considerably on what I would say is this “reformation explosion” that got muffled if not extinguished by Orthodoxy. Listen please to something Forde writes about that first thesis of Luther:

“A Christian is a perfectly free Lord of all, subject to none.’ What does that mean? The answer is that it means just what it says! A Christian is subject to absolutely no one or anything. It means that because of God’s act in Christ Jesus, that which makes you to be a Christian, you are absolutely free from all the nonsense that people usually and inevitably associate with the name of religion. It means that God has care of everything that has to do with your relationship to him. You are subject to no one, no institution, no set of rules, no laws, nothing, absolutely nothing. You are free, absolutely free! God alone, absolutely, has done everything. Or to put it even more strongly: God has, in effect through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, put up for the entire world a blazing KEEP OUT sign over the whole province of religion and salvation. This, God has said, is my business alone. He has put you, and every one of us, out of the salvation business, and shoved us out into the world where our real business is. That, really, is what Luther meant when he insisted that salvation is by grace alone, sola gratia. It means that God has an absolute monopoly on the salvation business, and that you are free, absolutely free, when you simply take God at his word. He has made you a free Lord of all things.”[viii]

Notice where we are “placed” when we are taken out of the salvation business. Forde states we are “shoved out into the world where our real business is.”

The church’s real business, because of reconciliation by God in Christ Jesus, is the stewardship of neighbor and Earth. Yes, we are to be “witnesses” to the resurrection (Acts 1), but this, I believe, is exactly what we are doing when we work for justice with neighbor and Earth. And too, this is not to deny or denigrate the place of actually naming the reason you are doing all this as a follower of Christ. I Peter 3:15-15 speaks of being prepared to name “the hope that is in you.” When you serve neighbor and do justice with creation you will be asked why. Especially if you do more than lip service. And when you are asked, you name the source: Jesus Christ set you free to be such as this! By the way, most best practices in evangelism today lay claim to this approach and in fact all other approaches are normally met with suspicion if not acrimony by those not in the faith: for those with whom we Christians relate in family, community and workplace, do not share with them anything about Jesus unless you first are in prayer for them and actually care for them….and their well-being (as opposed to how they might be recruited to support your agenda or program).

Do you think that care of creation and environmental stewardship are an add-on (or worse, not even that!) to your central mission as the church of Jesus Christ? Then I do not believe you have  seen God’s mission of healing and blessing all of the world being done in Christ Jesus.

Do you think that care of creation and environmental stewardship are critical for church advocacy and action and that church mission should focus on social action and not Jesus’ cross and resurrection that saves us from our sinful selves? Then you have not seen the full dimension of Christ’s atoning work and how it is not only central to our witness and work but is in the end the only word of hope we have to offer the world (regardless of the correctness of our advocacy and action).

Go green![ix]

Go grace!

Go GreenGrace![x]

---

[i] www.greengracepostings.blogspot.com is the author’s blog where he welcomes your on-going participation and partnership in environmental stewarding and the life of God’s grace in Jesus Christ.

[ii] Cf. Brian McClaren, Everything Must Change (2007). McClaren has marvelously chronicled the opening of his evangelical faith from a narrow concern for personal salvation to the wider mission of God for the healing and justice for the entire planet through numerous publications. Evangelical churches seem to traditionally been slower to embrace environmental stewardship as a core value within their faith. Napp Nazworth, www.christianpost.com, June 12, 2012, writes, “A 2009 survey conducted by The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life showed that white evangelical protestants were less likely than any other major religious group to say that the Earth is warming because of human activity (34 percent). By comparison, 58 percent of the unaffiliated, 48 percent of white mainline protestants and 44 percent of white non-Hispanic Catholics said that the Earth is warming because of human activity. Among evangelicals, there have been two main groups representing either side of this debate. The Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI) represents global warming activists while Cornwall Alliance represents global warming skeptics.”

[iii] David Rhoads, “Who Will Speak for the Sparrow? Eco-Justice Criticism of the New Testament,” www.lutheransrestoringcreation.com. Dr. Rhoads is Professor of New Testament, Emeritus, The Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and currently Executive Director of Lutherans Restoring Creation, a grassroots Lutheran environmental stewardship movement and organization.

[iv] There are actually three major theological foci in my schemata that inform my thinking on faith and environment. Shared here, “Reconciliation,” is the foundational one and the topic of this brief treatment, but the others build upon it. Listed below (“Restoration” and “Re/creation) are the two others.  Here with brief explanation, they must get attention at another writing.

Restoration

God’s justice calls for all those who love God and neighbor and creation to work for the restoration of just and equitable relationships. Abuse of natural resources, neglect of natural ecological dynamics will continue to exact a heavy toll for both society and environment. It’s imperative that we restore the ecological balance.

Re/creation

Enjoying the outdoors with a myriad of activities and sports over the years is a key way in which I have appreciated and engaged our natural environment. From my early years when my mother simply wanted us outside to play and “get some fresh air” to my adult years when actively running, biking, hiking or playing ball, I have been re-created while I recreate. In this sense, activity and play outdoors, enjoying or employing the natural world for recreation, is a gift of God to me for renewal and vitality daily.

[v] Steven Paulson, Luther for Armchair Theologians (Louisville, Kentucky; Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 182.

[vi] Martin Luther, “The Freedom of a Christian,” in Martin Luther’s Basic Theological Writings, ed. Timothy Lull (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), 596.

[vii] Oswald Bayer, Theology the Lutheran Way (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2007),  25.

[viii]Gerhard Forde, “The Freedom to Reform (Reformation 1967),” in Lutheran Quarterly, Vol. XXV, No. 2, Summer (Hanover, PA: The Sheridan Press, 2011)

[ix] An excellent way for congregations of all faiths to get comprehensive traction in environmental stewardship action and advocacy is the Greenfaith Certification Program (www.Greenfaith.org).

[x] Again, you are invited to www.greengracepostings.blogspot.com

*Johan Bergh is Pastor of St. Philip Lutheran Church, Mt. Dora, Florida, a Greenfaith Fellow (www.greenfaith.org), Lutherans Restoring Creation Coach for the Greenfaith Certification Program (www.lutheransrestoringcreation.org) and a 1981Trinity alumnus.

Don’t Pray for An End to the Violence – Live For It.

On a man helping a birth in a grave, 59 massacred and 500+ wounded and a Messiah.

In the Nuremburg war-crime trials, writes Paul Tillich, a witness told of living in a Jewish cemetery grave as he and others hid from the horrors. This 80 year old man told of assisting a woman giving birth to a child in another grave. He said this is what he prayed as this child was born 6 feet under: “Great God, has Thou finally sent the Messiah to us? For who else than the Messiah himself can be born in a grave?” Tillich wrote this about that: “For him [the witness] the immeasurable tension implicit in the expectation of the Messiah was a reality, appearing in the infinite contrast between the things he saw and the hope he maintained.”

The expectation of the Messiah and Las Vegas killings. Our confession as Christians is that the Messiah has been here already.

The things we see.

The things for which we hope.

I see 59 killed and 500+ more mowed down.

I hope for an end to that violence but too I know the violence goes deeper still and must be addressed. The violence of scarcity and poverty, the violence of inequality, the violence of bigotry, the violence of religious fanaticism, the violence of land and water degraded and diminished.

The things we see.

The things for which we hope.

In between comes and stands the Messiah who died at the hand of all this violence and left us with but a promise and a promised presence with which to engage all this same violence.

But what then are we waiting for?

A Savior?

A Lord?

Has he not already arrived?

Is this not our utter declaration?

How is it then that we think we are not the ones, the only ones, who can stop the violence? How is it that we think the Messiah should arrive and do something more than we are fully capable of doing? Why do we pray that the Messiah change things when he already has done so?

So we see, what we hope for has already occurred. We see the hope is already realized.

So what now but for us to live into Life. Live into the violence with non-violence, and be killed by it if that is what will be.

What we need to see is that there is not other “hope” out there that is to come or will come on our behalf. The solution to our violence has already been revealed in the poverty of the manger and the depravity of the cross.

Letting death have its way without dealing death back is resurrection.

Dealing death back at death is only destruction.

Instead of building shooting ranges we need to be building non-violence training centers.

The things we see.

The hope we maintain.

In between the two lives the Messiah who died.

How then shall we live?

Ramblings  on Humanity and a Healthy Planet: There Does Not Need to Be a Breaking Point

From the time I studied environmental education in the 1970’s I have been sensitive to knowing the use of non-renewable resources for consumption and development cannot go unabated without a breaking point bringing deteriorating decline or catastrophe or both. I remember the debate about growth and progress in an international conference in Rome in the 70’s and a publication called “The Limits of Growth.” The very notion of limits is a problem for us – we don’t like to think there is a stopping point. In Laudato Si, the 2015 Papal Encyclical on the environment there is this: “Put simply, it is a matter of redefining our notion of progress.” It’s paternalistic and selfish of so-called First World countries to think and say all the developing countries (and why do we use that term ‘developing’ to describe a country?) cannot or should not all have washing machines like everybody in the so-called developed nations (to use an actual appliance that changes lives as a metaphor for development – see www.ted.com  for the Hans Rosling “The Magic Washing Machine”TED Talk on resource depletion and development). Even with that, there is the necessity of a change in defining progress since progress now is becoming or has become earth-depleting and self-defeating. We are ravaging the planet.

This would and will continue without what added to the equation makes it a tsunami of hurt: an ever increasing population of human beings (not to mention that simultaneously we are killing off hundreds of other species and creating a monoculture that will be unsustainable). In the Daytona Beach News Journal of June 3, 2017 (we were visiting the East Coast sand and water for some R and R) I caught a Letter to the Editor on Volusia County development and water quality saying “the elephant in the room” is “an every expanding population.” The writer was talking about our inability to set limits on growth.

This, my friends, will not go away. “This” being our critical need to reduce growth and development while renewing the planetary environment while we redefine what it means to progress. I left my undergrad world of  Environmental Science and went to a theological seminary for graduate studies because in my altruism to change the world I thought there could be no solution to the technical challenges of environmental decline until and unless there was a change in attitude and understanding of our human relationship to the divine and thus too to creation as a whole.

I still feel that way but realize we in the church have not overall done a good job of translating our faith and have it contain a direct and not indirect connection to care of creation. The reconciled relationship with God is not realized without the reconciled relationship to the created world. Care of creation is not a sub-set of concern, a social issue, but rather an integral part of the primary concern of faith. We simply do not see this. Again, Laudato Si: “the external deserts of the world are growing because the internal deserts have become so vast.” U.S President Trump, in announcing the US withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord focused on the economic and labor impact on American citizens, with a particular emphasis on how Americans cannot and will not afford helping other people, nations, bear the cost of transitioning to sustainable development. This is morally bankrupt on at least 2 fronts: 1) the US has been the prime polluter in greenhouse emissions for the past 100 years, just recently taking 2^nd place to China, and so bears the primary responsibility for the global consequences of warming the entire planets suffers 2) even if we disregarded this past culpability, we have current responsibility to do all we can as much as we can for the common good, not simply our singular best.

What are we to do?

First, serve God by investing time, money, wisdom and energy on all personal fronts: advocacy, stewardship practices (i.e. consumptions, waste management, product use all in the familiar reduce, reuse, recycle vein) to earth care.

Second, help each other redefine progress and level the playing field so all nations can have enough for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Third, work with your local government to produce real zoning regulations that promote growth in designated areas while creating real limits to urban and suburban sprawl (see “first” above regarding advocacy).

Fourth, raise the discussion on the limits of population growth so that our nation and all nations create a population accord which calls for all families to have no more than 2 children.

I know, I know, it’s all hard, especially that last one on population limits, since we have personal and social freedoms with which to honor and contend. But this is not the time to be timid. This is the time to engage with as much heart and soul and good sense that we can muster. We must listen deeply to each other and respect each other immensely. And we must make the changes needed. Faith in God calls for it, humanity’s and the natural world’s survival necessitates it.