Dear Church Family,
I am very, very grateful to this church community for your work on the Climate Call to Action, and for the enthusiastic support with which you voted to endorse it on Sunday. Huge thanks go to Art Paull, Susan TenBosch, Suzanne Jones (who’s been nominated for an academy award for those climate videos), Andrew Newell and Cynthia Cudaback. What a team, and what a moment. Did you notice how many students were on that zoom call? Even some zooming in from their colleges on the East Coast?
I am grateful not only because it was good work done well, but because the climate crisis is so pressing and urgent. Responding to the crisis with this much energy, intelligence, imagination and love shows that we are taking our call to God’s mission and ministry seriously.
When the youth group took a mission trip to Monterey we learned about “sentinel species.” You may have heard of the canary in the mine, who warns of environmental danger before humans feel any effect, but there are other kinds of sentinel species too. We specially focused on sand crabs in Monterey. Sand crabs are sentinel species because they are deeply interconnected with other species of the ocean ecosystem—those they feed on, and those that feed on them—and because they are sensitive to changes in temperature and pollution around them. We learned that by studying the health of the sand crabs we could learn a lot about the health of the whole ecosystem. I took this metaphor to heart, and lately I’ve come to see that climate change is a sentinel issue. It connects to so many other things, and the health of the climate tells us a lot about the health of humanity. By looking at the climate we see so many other interconnected issues: we see the devastation of poverty, whether neighborhood by neighborhood or nation by nation. We see the intersection of racism, globally, where the racial groups least responsible for climate change pay the largest price. But we also see how the climate crisis is politicized instead of being a unifying issue, which is a grievous trouble as well. And we see how inextricably woven it is with our capitalist system, where the profits are privatized and the (environmental) costs are socialized. We cannot fight for the climate without also fighting against poverty, racism, and the worst abuses of capitalism.
One youth proposed this week that even the coronavirus pandemic is related to our ecological work. It is not quite conclusively proved that the virus originated in wild animals and mutated to humans, but her point was that if we did originally get it from wild animals, we got it because we (humans) were pushing our way into territory that ought to belong to the animals. We have taken over too much of the world, she said, and we are paying the price. What’s more, if we lived simpler lives, and did not travel so frequently, perhaps it would have remained an epidemic and not grown to pandemic proportions.
It is important to notice how people respond differently to crises across the generations; the youngest generations are quite frankly panicked by the climate crisis, while many members of older generations are merely concerned. How you feel about the climate crisis will, to a young person, tell them how you feel about many connected issues. It speaks to justice, beauty, truth, and human dignity. It’s connected to, well, everything.
I say all this to mean: keep up the good work. Keep engaging with the work of climate activism, knowing that it is so important to us and especially to our youngest members. Take that next step and audit your own carbon footprint. As a church, our work on this important issue speaks volumes to all the interconnected work we would do to follow God’s call.
On a personal note, I know a lot of this work will continue over the summer and I will be sorry to miss out on participating with you. My pregnancy is nearly full-term now, though my midwives have prepared me for the unknown, saying that any time in May, or up to June 7th, would be a fine time to give birth (baby is officially “due” on May 23rd, but we know babies have their own sense of timing). I am wrapping projects up, handing things over, and planning to begin my parental leave mid-May unless the baby comes earlier. More specifically, I plan to have the week of May 2nd be my last full-time week of work, followed by the week of May 9th being half-time work, and May 16th will be my last Sunday until I return at the end of the summer. I would love to talk and/or visit with you before I finish; please don’t hesitate to call me just to say hi and bye!
Every Blessing,
Talitha