Register for Preach-In on Global Warming

Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) is inviting faith leaders from across the country to give sermons and reflections on global warming the weekend of February 10-12, 2012. As the date approaches, IPL will be offering a variety of resources free of charge to those who register, including:

• Denomination-specific liturgical and thematic notes to help in the preparation of     sermons, reflections, devotionals, Bible studies, and youth activities

• Ready-to-go sample sermons on global warming

• Global warming fact sheet and bulletin insert

• Valentine’s Day postcards for policy makers

• Free film: 30-minute DVD, Preaching for the Planet, normally $15, sent free of charge

Give a sermon or host a discussion

In addition to sermons and reflections, congregations can choose to screen the free film and host a discussion about putting faith into action. Resources will be available to those who register.

 Send valentines to policy makers

Leading up to the event, participating congregations will receive Valentine’s Day postcards to mail in to their representatives, encouraging political leaders to love their neighbors and the Earth by supporting policies that protect climate and curb greenhouse gas emissions.

If you have any questions, please feel free to call your state Interfaith Power & Light leader or Andrée Duggan in the national office at 415-561-4891, or write to andree@theregenerationproject.org.

Visit our website to register today! There is no obligation and the program is free of charge.

 Interfaith Power & Light • www.InterfaithPowerandLight.org

The August 17 showing of “Source to the Sea” is being co-sponsored with the Center for Environmental Law and Policy.  CELP Executive Director, Rachael Paschal Osborn, will be with us for a discussion on current water/river issues inWashingtonState and important upcoming legislation.

You are invited to attend and as you are able to stay for conversation after the films.  The programs will be shown at The Commons (home of Indaba Coffee and The Book Parlor) at 1425 W. Broadway Avenue (2.5 blocks west of the County Courthouse), at 6:30 pm.  Excellent Indaba Coffee will be available (bring your mugs).

August 3     DIRT, The Movie

DIRT! The Movie takes you inside the wonders of the soil. It tells the story of Earth’s most valuable and underappreciated source of fertility–from its miraculous beginning to its crippling degradation.  The opening scenes of the film dive into the wonderment of the soil. Made from the same elements as the stars, plants and animals, and us, “dirt is very much alive.” Though, in modern industrial pursuits and clamor for both profit and natural resources, our human connection to and respect for soil has been disrupted. “Drought, climate change, even war are all directly related to the way we are treating dirt.”

DIRT! the Movie brings to life the environmental, economic, social and political impact that the soil has. It shares the stories of experts from all over the world who study and are able to harness the beauty and power of a respectful and mutually beneficial relationship with soil.  The movie teaches us: “When humans arrived 2 million years ago, everything changed for dirt. From that moment on, the fate of dirt and humans has been intimately linked.” 

August 10     THE STORY OF STUFF    &

                            THE STORY OF BOTTLED WATER

In The Story of Stuff, using a quick-paced cartoon format, Annie Leonard, an international sustainability and environmental health expert, tells the history of an item, virtually any item–where its parts came from, the upstream life; where it goes when we are through with it, the downstream life; and what it really costs. Leonard develops the theme further with a specific item in The Story of Bottled Water—where the water comes from, where the used bottles go, what bottled water really costs, and how we were persuaded to buy it through an advertising technique called manufactured demand.  These “stories” expose the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world.

August 17     SOURCE TO SEA: THE COLUMBIA RIVERSWIM

On July 1, 2003 Christopher Swain became the first person to swim the entire 1,243 mile length of the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest. His swim brought stories about the river’s disrupted ecosystems and dislocated peoples to over twenty-thousand North American schoolchildren, and to a worldwide media audience of over one billion people.    A group of thirty-plus Northwest filmmakers, led by Andy Norris, followed Swain’s swim, and created a modern history of the Great River of the West. The result was a ninety minute film that one reviewer called, “a heart-wrenching tale of a man and a river.

 The film includes stunning pre-inundation footage of Celilo and Kettle Falls, as well as a broad spectrum of interviews with tribal members, agency representatives, fishers, authors, nonprofit leaders, and citizens who trace the natural history and present-day challenges of the Columbia River in their own words. One educator described it this way: “The interviews weren’t just riveting, they made this grown man cry.”

Each year in May municipalities and bicycle organizations around the world observe “Bike to Work Week,” a time for commuters to leave their cars at home and ride bikes to work.  It has led to many improvements for bicycle commuters and pleasure-riders in cities across theUnited States.  The Federal Highway Administration says that 65% of all driving trips are made within two miles of home.  Biking is a carbon-neutral, healthy, and cost-effective alternative.  By biking two miles to and from work twice a week, one can reduce carbon emissions by roughly ten pounds.  Spokane Bike to Work Week is May 16 to 20.  The Faith and Environment Network is encouraging all people of faith to consider setting aside a weekend day on either side of that work week, or another weekend of your choice, as Bike to Worship, whether Saturday or Sunday.  You may work a little harder getting to church or synagogue or temple, but you will give the air and the earth a bit of a rest.  On the other hand, you may find that you are better rested and happier after a bike-ride than you are being shut up in a car.

Talk to your local faith community leaders and engage them for such a day and event in recognition of God’s good gifts to us and our stewardship of them.  For more information on Bike to Work Week in Spokanego to the Spokane Bikes website http://spokanebikes.net/wordpress or to the page that lists that week’s Spokane activities http://spokanebikes.net/wordpress/?page_id=48 .  For more information on Bike Month go to the League of American Bicyclists website http://www.bikeleague.org/programs/bikemonth/ .

Celebrate the arrival of spring weather, finally.  Happy biking.

What a gift to have so many options offered to honor all of Creation on Good Friday this year, which is also Earth Day. Check out the Anglican Church of Canada’s web site for quick and easy resources you can bring to your church for this Holy Day.  There is also a short homily and a solemn intersession that can be inserted with a collect.

http://www.anglican.ca/relationships/action/greening/earthdayliturgy2011/

Please share this link and these ideas with one another and consider how some of them might be incorporated into our prayers and awareness. In this time of unpredictable environmental challenges, it is past time to put our prayers and concerns in the open.

God’s Peace…

Evita Krislock, Faith & Environment Network

As reported in the Spokesman Review, for an hour Saturday March 26, members of the Faith & Environment Network and others in Spokane joined millions of people and thousands of businesses around the world in shutting off their lights in recognition of Earth Hour.  Spokane’s Mayor Verner encouraged Spokane businesses and residents to participate and to embrace alternative energy that could boost our local economy. “In the state and nation, Spokane increasingly is recognized as a leading clean-energy city,” Verner said in a news release. The Faith & Environment Network’s Evita Krislock also noted that “part of the message of Earth Hour is to stand with people all over the globe and say ‘The Earth matters. Every single thing we do has a consequence.”  Read the full article in the Spokesman Review here.

 If you missed our Spokane Earth Hour event, Earth Day is right around the corner.  Another all-day event on Main Street downtown Spokane is planned for Saturday, April 23 to engage, educate, and entertain you with Creation Care related booths and activities.  Check out the Earth Day Spokane web site for details and a full calendar of events.

I live in the country with forest and open fields.  I love having the natural world all around me with few of the distractions of city life.  And yet even here I seldom take time from the work of making a home of this place in order to be aware of neighbors.  Like the field mice which, I realized upon watching our cats, are everywhere, hundreds of them, making their lives and providing themselves as food for many other critters.

As I took time to walk last week—actually walked without a job to do, walked not for exercise but for the sake of paying attention—I found two woodpecker nests with the inhabitant and a great horned owl which I had heard but never seen.  I found them for the first time in places I have passed dozens of times without paying attention.  And I found, only because I looked, buttercups and Idaho blue-eyed grass and closer to the house the first crocus of the season.

Our slowness to awareness: that is why the Faith and Environment Network will focus tomorrow, March 26, Earth Hour Day, on what it means to be mindful, that is, aware of the natural world around us as well as the ways we impact it.  Thich Nhat Than talks about it as “the miracle of being fully awake.”  And with the days lengthening and moving toward warmth, what a good time to consider the natural economy of light and darkness with a representative of the International Dark-Sky Association.  I hope many of you can make the Faith & Environment Network’s “Earth Hour and Beyond: Called To Care,” Saturday, March 26, 4:30 – 8:30/9 pm, at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist, in Spokane (details below). 

By Tom Soeldner

Earth Hour and Beyond: Called To Care

A Faith & Environment Network event to raise awareness about climate change and the need to care for creation in our community, Saturday, March 26, 2011,4:30 pm, Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (127 East 12^th Avenue, Spokane’s South Hill).  Please help spread the word to family, friends, and at your church!

This year’s annual event in Spokane will feature:

• Artists and naturalists discussing environmental mindfulness including: Lynn Schott, poet and environmental activist from Kettle Falls, WA;  Scott Kolbo, Associate Professor of Art, Whitworth University; and Dan Matiatos, biologist and Refuge Manager, Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.
• A presentation on the Dark-Sky movement which seeks to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting,
• A time of music, readings, and meditations, and
• Turning off of lights in the Cathedral at 8:30 pm in observation of Earth Hour and in solidarity with Spokane and international neighbors.

A light supper will be provided.  A donation of $15 is suggested for the event, but all are welcome regardless of donation.

Earth Hour is an event when individuals, businesses, and cities turn their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change.  At Earth Hour 2010 a record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action.  It included the Earth Hour event offered in Spokane by the Faith and Environment Network.

The Faith and Environment Network engages people of faith and their congregations in caring for creation.  For further information please contact Evita Krislock (220-6532) or Thomas Soeldner (607-7115).

Earth Hour and Beyond: Called To Care

A Faith & Environment Network event to raise awareness about climate change and the need to care for creation in our community, Saturday, March 26, 2011,4:30 pm, Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (127 East 12^th Avenue, Spokane’s South Hill).  Please help spread the word to family, friends, and at your church!

This year’s annual event in Spokane will feature:

• Artists and naturalists discussing environmental mindfulness including: Lynn Schott, poet and environmental activist from Kettle Falls, WA;  Scott Kolbo, Associate Professor of Art, Whitworth University; and Dan Matiatos, biologist and Refuge Manager, Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge.
• A presentation on the Dark-Sky movement which seeks to preserve and protect the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through environmentally responsible outdoor lighting,
• A time of music, readings, and meditations, and
• Turning off of lights in the Cathedral at 8:30 pm in observation of Earth Hour and in solidarity with Spokane and international neighbors.

A light supper will be provided.  A donation of $15 is suggested for the event, but all are welcome regardless of donation.

Earth Hour is an event when individuals, businesses, and cities turn their lights off for one hour to take a stand against climate change.  At Earth Hour 2010 a record 128 countries and territories joined the global display of climate action.  It included the Earth Hour event offered in Spokane by the Faith and Environment Network.

The Faith and Environment Network engages people of faith and their congregations in caring for creation.  For further information please contact Evita Krislock (220-6532) or Thomas Soeldner (607-7115).

If you’re going to give up something for Lent . . .

Originally posted on Earth Ministry’s blog—click here to read the full post!

By: Rev. Tim Phillips

Giving up something is a traditional practice during Lent. Some people give up chocolate or alcohol or meat. The idea is that to abstain from something will make us more aware of the pattern of our lives and the life we owe to God. It identifies us with the forty days Jesus fasted in the wilderness before he began his ministry or the forty years the children of Israel wandered in the desert before they entered the Promised Land. Periodic fasting from meals, various foods, or particular actions is part of most religious traditions.

This year, if you are going to give up something for Lent, why not give up something that would make a positive impact on the Earth?   Read more here.