Communal Faith and Climate Change
Every day I become more convinced that the pressing social justice issue of our times, the single most important problem that individuals and congregations and governments need to address, is our warming planet. And every day I’m more convinced that an essential (perhaps the essential) source of a solution rests in our faith—not necessarily the Christian faith, although that will do, but humanity’s faith in the sacred wholeness of creation. Since my brand of faith is Christian, look with me through one Christian lens at one solution. Krista Tippett recently interviewed Nadia Bolz-Weber, the pastor at The Church of All Sinners and Saints, an emergent Lutheran congregation in Denver, Colorado. Bolz-Weber said, “I don’t think faith is given in sufficient quantity to individuals… I think it’s given in sufficient quantity to communities.” She gave a few examples: Some people think they can’t say the Apostles’ Creed because they don’t believe…
Write, or Be Written
Here’s what excites me about our climate crisis: It invites us to change. “We face a choice that is starkly simple: We must change or be changed,” writes Wendell Berry. “If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse.” Okay, so the alternatives are either exciting or terrifying, but still: Dire circumstances give humans the opportunity to create something new, and this fills me with hope. Berry’s words remind me of a novelist friend who signs her books, “Write, or be written.” I don’t think Elissa’s trying to make authors out of her readers; rather, she’s suggesting that everyone has the choice to accept the stories our culture tells about us or create our own. The climate story our culture has written is dictated by consumption and profit at the expense of the earth and the poor who live close to it. It’s…
Changing Church
Ages ago, when I was in the messy middle of coming out bisexual (I felt raw and unformed because I was not the person others had thought me to be; I railed against God for making this world such a difficult place to be honest in) I read a passage my spiritual director Cil Braun had written in a newsletter: “God is not static. God is in constant creation, constantly being created. We are not static, either. We are in constant creation.” Yes, I thought; I am being created. At the time it felt wretched. Looking back I know coming out was gloriously, divinely formative. “Discomfort is the nerve ending of growth,” Jonathan Rowe writes. Kids know this viscerally when growing pains wrench their legs; they know it emotionally when cascading new experiences—getting dressed themselves, suddenly drawing figures—send them scurrying back to babyhood. Sometimes Gwyn crawls into my lap and…