Good Friday and Earth Day

The Anglican Church of Canada has prepared additional liturgical materials for this year's Good Friday Earth Day:

April 22, 2011, is Good Friday as well as Earth Day. The Greening Anglican Spaces Task Group has assembled a Good Friday Earth Day Reflection , a Good Friday Liturgical Resource designed to be interpolated into the Book of Alternative Services Good Friday rite, and has assembled a short list of liturgical resources which may be helpful to worship planners.

The task group has also partnered with Faith and the Common Good who have designed a Carbon Calculator so people can discover the hidden cost of our carbon use.

A Solemn Intercession:
Let us pray for God's creation and for the whole web of life.
for those people and creatures who have been betrayed by human greed and
faithlessness;
for nations and communities suffering deluge or drought,
for species on the brink of extinction,
for families and those dispossessed of home and land,
for future generations inheriting the fruits of human neglect and exploitation.
that God, Source of all life,
will show us anew the miracle of creation,
proclaimed in our beginnings, and promised in our future.

A Collect
Oh God, you created the heavens and the earth
and saw that it was good.
Give us the eyes to see your goodness
in all that gives life,
and give us the will
to put to death our indifference to your creation,
that rising with you to new life
we may participate in the healing and restoration of the earth.

Low carbon Christmas

I know it is only the beginning of Advent - but here are some suggestions for 12 Days of Low Carbon Christmas from the National Council of Churches. Some good ideas - not so sure the group who wrote these know what it is like to live at 5000+ feet in Wyoming in the winter!!

The Low Carbon 12 Days of Christmas

1. Send Electronic Christmas Cards: Sending your Christmas greetings electronically is good for Creation because it saves trees. If you want to send a personal Christmas greeting to close friends and family, use recycled paper to make your own Christmas Cards.

2. Make Your Own Decorations: This can become a wonderful family tradition. Use recycled materials or natural materials like pinecones, leaves, vines. Making your own Christmas wreath out of materials you collected is carbon neutral and positively fun!

3. Buy a Living, Local Christmas Tree: Start a tradition of planting your Christmas tree in your yard or on your church grounds after Christmas. You can even put a message in a bottle underneath the tree thanking God for the year’s blessings. Your planted tree becomes a Christmas gift for creation and a living family memory for years to come!

4. Use LED Christmas Lights: These lights use around 90% less energy than incandescent Christmas lights. Look for lights that are Energy Star approved. Remember to conserve energy and not to leave them on all day or overnight. 

5. Do Your Christmas Shopping with Reusable Bags: Less plastic bags means less energy is used to produce them, and therefore less carbon is released into the atmosphere.
6. Give Responsibly: Buy gently used gifts like books and toys or non-material gifts like a national parks pass or event tickets rather than products. If you are good at making crafts, consider making gifts for your loved ones.
7. If you buy traditional gifts, minimize your carbon foot print by purchasing Local and energy efficient gifts that are minimally packaged. Click here for ideas.

8. Use Reusable or Recycled Gift Wrap: You will save energy by reducing the need to produce wrapping paper and help reduce global warming pollution.

9. Practice Alternative Giving: Donate to a charity in a friend or family member’s name. Ideas here

10. Limit Your Travel: If you need to travel to be with family ride with other friends and family to reduce the per person carbon emissions or take the train. In general, driving results in fewer carbon emissions than flying, especially when driving a moderately fuel efficient vehicle at or below the speed limit with properly inflated tires.

11. Serve Local Food for Christmas Dinner: Consider serving a locally raised main course, but if a local ham or turkey is too pricey, serve a few side dishes made with local vegetables. This is a tasty way to reduce the number of miles food has to travel to get to your plate, which in turn helps reduce carbon emissions.

12. Remember Why We Celebrate! Christmas is a time to celebrate God’s gift of Jesus Christ, a savior who will bring peace to Earth (Luke 2: 11-14), through whom all things came into being (John 1:3) and through whom God reconciled all things (Colossians 1:19).

Thoughts on Eco-Religion

The Environmentalist writes on the role of religion in the "green" movement.

...environmentalism is not a Hollywood intellectual property. While the environment may have become topic du jour for some and a near religious calling for others, it is a religious issue for this Grist list of 15 "green" religious leaders that includes: the Patriarch of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Dalai Lama, an Episcopal Reverend, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Vice President of the National Association of Evangelicals, the Pope, the leader of the Islamic Foundation for Ecology, an Australian theologian, the head of the American Rabbis' Committee on the Environment, a Dominican Nun, a member of the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, a Unitarian reverend, a Methodist theologian, and Father Thomas Berry, a Catholic priest who refers to himself as a 'Geologian.'

The comments on the Grist article are worthy of review, as well. They include suggestions for the list from other countries/world religions that are making a significant contribution.

And there's the robust environmental movement of South Asia (India, Nepal...) and Harvard's FORE (Forum on Religion and Ecology) research into the environmental traditions of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Shinto, Indigenous American Indians, Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Which all goes to say that those who label environmentalism as a religion in the hope that it will invalidate the movement are as out of touch with reality as those who cite religion as an obstacle to environmentalism. The truth is the environmental movement is as diverse as humanity itself. It includes those who are deeply religious, those for whom the environment has become a religion, those who keep their religion to themselves while they seek to validate the science and those whose need to deny climate change may have become a religion, as well.

It is a global epiphany.

Read it all here.