The rainforests of Brazil are up for grabs, literally. Ranchers, gold miners and anyone who wants to make a quick buck head for the hills. No one will stop you. The president pledged a loosening of environmental restrictions. In reality, he eliminated them. The plumes of smoke from people burning the rainforest are visible from the space station with the naked eye.
Why is this bad? Don’t people need to earn a living? Brazilian scientists monitoring the devastation measure about 2,400 square miles of illegal burning last year and 3,600 square miles this year. All together, that’s a square of about 80 miles on each side. The devastation continues.
The planet, and all human life depends upon the rainforests for several things, 1 as a carbon sink where CO2 from the atmosphere is rapidly taken up into plants to become “biomass.” 2 as an oxygen source. In a big sense, the rainforests are the lungs of our planet. And 3 as a source of atmospheric moisture. Moisture from Brazil become rain in North America. But political expediency has now given our planet emphysema. Instead of breathing, the rainforest is belching out more CO2 as trees and plants are burned to clear land.
It is a global outrage. The only purpose of this destruction is to keep one autocratic politician in power. When a sovereign nation holds a major portion of vital resources for life on the planet, we may need to reconsider our notions of sovereignty.
Whenever I am asked to pray in public, in a non-church setting, whether it is opening the Maryland Senate (three times), mealtime grace at a secular event such as Rotary meetings, or praying with a high school football team before a game, I always have alongside me in my imagination, two friends. One is Jewish and the other is an atheist. In my mind, they are listening to my prayer as members of the public who might be there. I ask myself, “How would they here this prayer?” and “Would they feel included or excluded?”
I begin this Episcopal reflection with a quote from Martin Luther (although I am unable to substantiate this quote. I heard it long ago in class.) Luther was undoubtedly criticizing the organizational structure of the Roman Catholic church in which he was a priest. It is a good thing to consider not only how any group is organized to make decisions, but how they share their money (or not), and what money-sharing has to say about power, relative importance and group values.
We prefer to think of ourselves as thoroughly modern people who are Christian, monotheists in belief. Yet how many of our waking hours are consumed thinking about money versus how much time do we spend each week praying or meditating on the God of the Hebrew and Christian bible?
Some species of birds have four color receptors in their retinas instead of three like most mammals and humans. These receptors process light in the ultraviolet spectrum that is invisible to humans. Since fructose and sucrose sugars have big peaks in their UV spectra, this gives me a clue why birds can watch our grape crop and know exactly the morning of peak ripeness (sugar concentration) of the grapes. The birds have additional information that humans don’t (at least visually), and they use it to their advantage.
Our daily office this morning gives us this insight into the very early church. (Acts 2:44-46) “44All who believed were together and had all things in common; 45they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts.” That generation lived out their faith in a particular way. It obviously worked or we wouldn’t be here talking about this. But it led me to wonder how the ways in which we structure our lives, the world around us and our church help or hinder passing on the relevant matters of faith to future generations. Read more…
There is a spot on the surface of the earth in the Oklo (uranium mining) region of Gabon in Africa where radioactive material smoldered at “sub-critical mass” for thousands of years. It was a natural accumulation of radioactive elements brought together where their radioactivity was sufficient to generate enough heat to melt tons of metal and rock and ignite any biologic materials nearby, but not enough radioactivity for the pile to become critical and explode. With entirely natural processes, this pile of material cycled on and off every three hours creating intense bursts of heat and radioactivity for 150,000 years. You can mathematically model a nuclear chain reaction the same way you model an epidemic (or vice versa).
Right now, the entire globe is smoldering with this pandemic. You even hear on the news of “local hot spots” (a term borrowed from nuclear chain reaction modeling), outbreaks or critical areas. We have kept the terrible contagion from infecting ten or a hundred times more people in the same month or two (that would be like a nuclear explosion). Given the politics of anti-vaccination movements and lack of sound leadership, I am concerned that this disease will continue to smolder for a long time. Perhaps for several years to come.
The need for social distancing, precautions and so forth will not suddenly vanish because the potential for infection will linger like an unwanted guest far longer than anyone is willing to discuss these days. Getting 60 to 80% of the global population vaccinated is going to take a while. So how should we carry on in the meantime? Why should we carry on? And what value will the church add in the lives of its members and the surrounding community?
How should we go forward?
Hold virtual Sunday worship until we are told it is safe to resume in-person worship
Increased phone calls and letters to parishioners
Facilitate outside group meetings as advised
Gradually ease back existing church meetings based upon medical advice
Find expanded ways to use our church and enhanced video network
Educational programs
Entertainment
Outreach educational programs
Explore new ways to engage people at home
Small group, family lessons
Icebreakers, games, conversation starters
Why should we carry on?
With courage, resolve and presence we demonstrate that the love of God is with us and for us
Only God’s love brought to the world by those who know it can cast out the fear, ignorance and darkness
We desire to make the world a better place
What is our value-added to the community?
Grace Church does not guilt people into becoming baptized so they will be free from sin and go to heaven
We don’t sell fire insurance
We stress that the kingdom of God is right here, right now
We share the love of God with others to give hope and belonging
We develop solid spirituality and maturity in our children and youth
We reach out in support of the wider community with no strings attached and no guilt
We try to be the arms, mouth, hands, feet and heart of Jesus in a broken and battered world
We have used this down time to address a century of deferred maintenance on the property. Many things were deteriorating, and some things were not safe. We are turning our attention to what Grace Episcopal Church in Muskogee needs to become for the century ahead.
For the umpteenth time, someone asked me if I really thought climate change was caused by humans burning fossil fuels. In shear frustration, I said, “It’s like this. If you heard a gunshot and then you opened the door in front of you to discover: 1) One person pointing a pistol at another. 2) The pistol is still smoking. 3) The other person is falling to the ground with a gunshot wound. What would you conclude?” That’s the level of confidence in the case supporting anthropogenic warming, i.e. man-made climate change. Read more…
Listening to a recent BBC radio broadcast about the immigrants coming to the southern US border, I heard one British official note that many of these immigrants are fleeing violence and political persecution in their countries of origin and should qualify for political asylum. He went on to say that because they were fleeing terrible conditions and persecution, that they deserved to be treated with respect and dignity. I was shocked by the implications of this. Was this commentator suggesting that those people who were NOT fleeing persecution and political pressure were somehow less deserving or not deserving at all of respect and dignity? Read more…
Much of this article is borrowed from a similarly-named article in www.patheos.com A century ago, heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine were street legal and even found in some consumer products. Cocaine was in the original Coca Cola formulation. Heroin was prescribed as a cough suppressant (I bet it was effective) and meth was the drug of choice for WWII soldiers on all sides of the conflict. Now we know a lot more about the dangers of these drugs. In the same way, our church has developed “toxic traditions” that often cause more harm than good. Here are some of the author’s points. (Note that this is an evangelical, very conservative author. Six of his ten points I either disagree with or do not think they are relevant for Grace.) Read more…
