Pope Francis and President Obama: Poverty, Pollution, and Climate Chaos

Tomorrow, Pope Francis and President Obama will be meeting in Rome. The White House had stated in January that “The president looks forward to discussing with Pope Francis their shared commitment to fighting poverty and growing inequality."

If this is the case, then we must fast and pray that the world's dependence on fossil fuels and the resulting pollution are on the list of topics.

"Climate change" is not something of the future, it is present now, swamping poor island developing nations and causing droughts and disruptions of weather patterns. The poor are always the hardest and most relentlessly hit by environmental destruction.


Fossil fuel industries all create massive water, air, land, and ocean pollution daily, from extraction (drilling, mining, and fracking) through transportation (pipelines, barges, trucks, trains) through processing, through disposal of bi-products and combustion. The pollution, poverty, and public health disasters multiply at each step of the process.

These are problems of faith and national policy that need to be addressed.  Not tomorrow. NOW. Because people are suffering NOW. Fossil fuels end up at every stage multiplying pollution and poverty. And we're all going to suffer more and more as the planet becomes less hospitable.

Even back in the 1990s, Blessed John Paul II was calling the world to stop greenhouse gases and deal with climate change and all the other environmental crises. We have waited too long to act. It reminds me of something he said in 1993:

         The future starts today, not tomorrow...
         
         The human family is at a crossroads in its relationship to the natural environment. Not only is it necessary to increase efforts to educate the world's people in a keen awareness of solidarity and interdependence, it is also necessary to insist on their understanding of the interdependence of the various ecosystems and on the importance of the balance of these systems for human survival and well-being.

Let us fast and pray today, that the pope and president talk seriously about fossil fuels, pollution, poverty, and climate chaos tomorrow.  And let us all get to work on the shift to a better, healthier world from this moment forward.

         Humanity and the world are at stake and they are endangered as never before. As I said before: Protect the world, this beautiful endangered world.
                                   Blessed John Paul II,  June 26, 1988 

We Need a Pope Francis I -- and Divestment to Save the Planet

Globally, Roman Catholics possess stock in many of the world’s most notorious international corporations. These corporations survive by the behest of shareholders. If the Vatican and all Roman Catholic institutions, dioceses, hospitals, colleges and universities, and parishioners were directed for the Scriptural reasons of care of Creation and the poor to immediately begin the process of divesting from corporations that are not living up to moral responsibilities to their workers, communities, and the environment and other species, and began investing instead in socially responsible ventures, think what could be accomplished!

As divestment worked to help change South Africa, it could work in this, international corporation reform and planetary survival. Such a Catholic campaign would be the best possible to tool to teach all Catholics and the world what the Office of Peace and Justice's statement on "international Monetary and Financial Systems" states:

…the primacy of the spiritual and of ethics needs to be restored and, with them, the primacy of politics – which is responsible for the common good – over the economy and finance. Economics and finance need to be brought back within the boundaries of their real vocation and function, including their social function, in consideration of their obvious responsibilities to society – for example, that of nourishing markets and financial institutions which are really at the service of the person and are capable of responding to the needs of the common good and universal brotherhood. Clearly, this vocation, this function has nothing to do with the shallow and crass economism for which money and marketplace success are the only measure of social value.

For instance, if Catholics globally began prayerfully divesting from corporations involved in global warming-inducing industries: oil, gas, natural gas, fracking and tar sands extraction, mining, clear-cut logging operations and water privatization firms, and shifting all their investments, facilities, and vehicles to alternative energies and corporations run on the principles of sustainable (or natural), ethical capitalism, as well as to micro loans, education, and public health services for the poor, consider what a power shift to Creation Care and Gospel values Catholics could achieve and at what a rapid pace!!!!

Other denominations and faith groups would follow. Within years instead of decades, we could begin to slow climate change and begin reforesting the planet to bring it back into ecological balance, which would help all suffering from drought, famine, wildfires, flooding, etc.

This prayer and action-based campaign would teach the world, especially Catholics and Christians, that those fortunate enough to have extra money need to use it in charity but in investment solidarity for the common good and life-nurturing economic systems, developing cultural and vocational values of caring and compassion. As you know, we, as servants of Christ and our Creator God, cannot serve both Mammon and God, and this Catholic Campaign would be a great lesson to demonstrate that where our hearts are our money should follow – that we can move mountains with prayer and action. We need a push towards saving God’s creation as strongly as we are presently directing toward the pro-life, anti-abortion efforts, as this IS the key pro-life effort…..to save a livable, hospitable world for the unborn and the born.

If we become the change we seek, we will be ultimately relevant and more spiritually alive, engaging the contemporary world in its monetary complexities with our spiritual values and obligation to God and each other. Roman Catholics will once again become known as people striving to live the Beatitudes, in our personal, family, communal, and global lives as Catholics, Christians, and citizens of the world.

Also with this Catholic Disinvest-to-Invest in Creation Care Campaign, the Church would be plowing the ground toward a general reform of the World Bank system and a curbing of multinational corporate imperialism and abuse. It would move us into more communal, ethical solidarity about the vocation of business and investment, which is desperately needed, teaching by example that:

The birth of a new society and the building of new institutions with a universal vocation and competence are a prerogative and a duty for everyone, without distinction. What is at stake is the common good of humanity and the future itself. In this context, for every Christian there is a special call of the Spirit to become committed decisively and generously so that the many dynamics under way will be channeled towards prospects of fraternity and the common good. An immense amount of work is to be done towards the integral development of peoples and of every person. As the Fathers said at the Second Vatican Council, this is a mission that is both social and spiritual, which “to the extent that the former can contribute to the better ordering of human society, it is of vital concern to the Kingdom of God”(24).

                          Pontifical Council for Peace and Justice’s statement “Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems” 

This leadership of reprioritization (with no doubt some initial financial sacrifices) would help the world to recognize that it cannot put short-term shareholder profits over the real needs of local people and workers, and the systems and species of God’s wondrous, complex Creation and its inhabitants. As Jesus counseled the rich young man, “Go and sell all you have and give to the poor.” A s Catholics in the developed world disengage ourselves from our addictions to large profits and materialism, we would help realign our personal lives toward God while leading the world to realigning its values and disengaging from the carbon-pollution destroying us.  

Benefits to the Catholic Church 

Beyond the international financial and ecological crises, however, we are also facing ones of faith and personal trust in the Church itself. In light of all the scandals, each Catholic has to decide whether or not the contemporary Church as we know it is credible and ethical as an institution -- in terms of pastoral service, truth, accountability, and even more, relevance in terms of meeting the real moral challenges of the day. Can it still be perceived as a light on the hill? This spiritually-based campaign of shifting our money to our values would be a step in that direction -- of restoring the leadership integrity the Church has lost.

As a priest at the old St. Patrick Church in Chicago preached last week – “When Christ taught us to pray, He never used the words ‘I’, ‘me,’ or ‘my’ and He instead used ‘we,’ ‘us’, and ‘our.’ This is a message everyday Catholics need to hear often in the pews. Too long Catholics and other Christians have focused on personal salvation rather than also on healing our corporate Body of Christ, repenting of our communal sins and working toward reparation and restoration.

For if we do not care for the land and its people as dictated in Leviticus 19, 23, and 25, we will have all the punishments of Leviticus 26, which are the same as those predicted by scientists and generals from the effects of global warming. The skies and land shall turn hard like iron and copper to us, and wars will take us all down. This Disinvestment-to-Invest in Creation Care Campaign would be an enormous step toward pro-life actions across the spectrum of life and show Roman Catholics working together globally to live out Christ’s Beatitudes and renew the face of the earth.

In 1205, Christ on the San Damiano cross said to Francis of Assisi, “Francis, go repair my church which is falling into ruins.” To do this, Francis led the Church in returning to the Gospel spirit of living on little and caring for the poor and all our brother and sister animals. So too, we must do to rebuild our Church, care for the poor, save our planet.  

We need a Pope Francis I.

As my mother always said, "What is this world coming to?"

On Tuesday night, NPR Court Correspondent Nina Totenberg observed what a change there had been in the American people in ten years as she reported on the health care debates at the Supreme Court. She remembered the time of outrage when citizens discovered that people were dying or becoming injured for life when they were turned away from emergency rooms for lack of the means to pay. This had led to a unanimous decision that if care was available and could stop death or severe injury, it shouldn’t be withheld based on money.

Now she is witnessing rallies when crowds posed with the question of what to do with these people at emergency rooms calling out “Let them die!” (How Lenten – they sound like the crowds shouting for the release of Barabas.) And three court justices have queried whether we should do this, a question that would not have even been acceptable in times past.

Our hottest movie for youth right now is “Hunger Games”, where adults from the government force youth to play “games” in which they have to kill each other to help their part of the country get food.  And the kids try to rebel against this extreme form of cynicism, selfishness, and evil.

What a metaphor for the national psyche and what little we have to give our children in terms of values and hope. In our media and politics, all of the traditional virtues, such as generosity, kindness, patience, humility, etc., are dissed and the vices of greed, selfish, pride, etc., are touted as good, and even Godly.

It makes me wonder, how many across the country rallying with such virulence are people call themselves Christian, or most particularly Catholic. Have they forgotten that so many of the hospitals across the country were started by nuns who devoted their lives in the name of Christ to serve those who were poor and could not pay for private doctors? They felt God, who made every person out of love, and God’s Son, believed in health care, of the Good Samaritan variety. And so many Christians of all stripes do the same today, sending their youth and adults into ministry to other countries to offer health care to those who cannot pay. Yes, this is all charity. But is also a decision about identity.

Who are we as Americans when we have descended into such meanness and dog-eat dog living and forget the better parts of our spirits? This debate isn’t just about health care -- it’s really about who we are. Do we bond together as an American people for higher values or lower ones?

And do some Christians use Christ as a badge for political power rather than as a teacher and Savior in service?

It also makes me wonder, if one of the causes of this decline in the American spirit is the decline of Catholic Sisters among us. Catholics complain about the priest shortage while ignoring the far more expansive loss in the number of nuns, creating and running hospitals and schools and social services. Though they have a bad rap in society, with memories and jokes about nuns who were mean, the vast majority of nuns never were, and they taught generations of us what it means to live for higher standards of civility and love and nobleness of spirit and prayer. They were like a sweet yeast in the bread of not just Catholic society, but all of American society, and the world, as they gave us models and institutions of service and caring for the poor.

They still do, in far smaller numbers, and because of their smaller numbers and their choice to live more among us, many without their signature habits, we do not notice their loving examples or listen to their voices. Perhaps if Catholics as a whole remembered who they once were, they could help remind the country. 

These health care debates, no matter what perspective you come from, should not be run by vices disguising as virtues, but on the level of our higher natures speaking in civil dialog to find the most practical, workable solutions for the needs and resources at hand.

Yes, the health care debate is one of money -- how do we best pay for medical services - -but it is also one that says who we are as people. Are we from the countries of the Hunger Games  -- or from the America that designed the Marshall Plan that healed the nations and economies after World War II, the nation that created Social Security so our elders wouldn’t die on the streets, the nation that fashioned the Works Progress Administration and Civilian Conservation Corps to put the unemployed to work doing needed community arts and infrastructure projects to rebuild the country in the Depression – not just to rebuild its economic body but its psychological body as well, to give it hope.

We need to give more to our kids than hunger and eating each other up to survive. They are looking to us for more idealistic caring models throughout our world. Just look at the overwhelming youth response to the Stop Kony 2012 video. They got the heart of the message. Kids shouldn’t be used to kill others. Adults need to stand up and say this isn’t okay and do something, Now.

August Musings

On Wednesday, August 3, I attended the memorial service of a mighty, gentle woman -- Nina Leopold Bradley -- the eldest daughter of the conservationist family Aldo and Estella Leopold.

This was not a religious service and yet the spiritual underpinnings were evident in all the short speeches about Nina -- her deep respect for the relationships of people to each other and people to the land, which were her passions, like those of her father (and many members of the Leopold clan). A recurring theme was how Nina listened to you with such intensity and delight that she made you feel like you were her very closest companion and she believed you could do anything you dreamed -- and then you found out that she did that for everyone, and it was true every time she listened.

Like Aunt Mary, she was a great woman of the woods and the prairies -- and of people. The people gathered to remember and celebrate and mourn the loss of Nina did not pray together, but there was a deep reverence and companionship of spirit and a sense of the mystical present and presence there among us. She certainly left the world better for her life. She gave us a model for good living. And good science. And good politics. And a good laugh along the way. Thank you, Nina.

Outdoors Celebration of Creation and Responsibility for Life

The first ever such service exuded joy on a beautiful fall day, where the animals and people gathered together to praise God, remember the stories of creation, bless the animals and the harvest and the children and expectant parents, and all those who do God's work with the land -- the farmers, gardeners, and wild lands and animals specialists, the foresters and tree planters. The youth, in Scripture readings and pageantry helped us celebrate, and then encouraged by words from John Paul II, we then, as adults, as forgiveness for all of creation and life that we have failed to care for as God asked us to.

For a recap and photos, go to www.stpatrickofhudson.org and http://www.stpatrickofhudson.org/pictures.aspx

IF you wish to organize this in your community, here is the template:

Celebration of Creation
and a Responsibility for LIFE Prayer Service
Following the Model of St. Francis

Held outdoors near St. Francis’s feast day. If it rains, we will have to do the blessings of the animals first under the car port. Then go in for the service. There needs to be a mix of male and female presiders – A number of children and youth have dowels with crepe paper streamers of various colors to wave as they process up the lawn to the front for the colors of the days of creation. Rainbow kites on tall poles are used for the rainbows. Jingle bells and other kinds of bells are handed out to the youth and others to ring at the right times. Numerous confirmants, youth, and children are encouraged to read or process up with ribbons or gifts of creation in the first part of the service. Various adults from different aspects of the community are encouraged to read one of the Lord Have Mercys in the latter part of the service to involve as many people as possible.

SING: Canticle of the Sun-- (by Marty Haugen-- songbook #417) Verse 1-5; sung as people are gathering

WELCOME & OPENING PRAYER FROM PASTOR:
We welcome all of you on this beautiful fall day. We are so happy to see you --especially all of you who are visitors. Thank you for joining us!. And a special thanks to all of you who of many faiths among us, you are our honored guests.

O Divine and Mysterious Creator, we are gathered here to give praise to you for the glorious creation and life you have given us and to ask us for your Spirit and Word to guide us in caring for it all. Help us to follow the example of St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of ecology. Help us to care as you care, to value as you value, to love as you have loved, and to help renew the face of the earth.

SONG: Canticle of the Sun -Verse 6

DEACON or LAY MINISTER #1: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God.”

[pause ] – Procession of youth carrying cross and yellow banner together to the front and placed behind the round table and between the two big trees.

ALL: All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being.

DEACON OR LAY MINISTER #1: “What has come into being in Him was LIFE, and the life was the LIGHT of all people.”

FEMALE LAY MINISTER: Let us now go back to the stories of our beginnings:

CONFIRMANT #1:
“In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep…”

[BLACK RIBBONS PROCESS UP WAVING]

CONFIRMANT #2“Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light….”

[DRUM ROLL] – YELLOW RIBBONS WAVING PROCESS UP

“And God separated the light from the darkness, and… God made the two great lights – the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night”

[The yellow ribbons run to one side of the crowd and the black ribbons to the other, led by main ribbon leaders -- An individuals carrying a big image of a smiling sun on a stick and another with a moon on a stick and a number of others with stars on sticks dance and skip and twirl in to drumming….]

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

CONFIRMANT #3: Then God proceeded to create WATER in the Dome of the Sky and on the earth, and God separated the two of them.

( Blue ribbons waving process up ….A youth process up to the round table with a Jar of Water (holy water from the baptismal font) , and the Leaders sprinkle the people with holy water using spruce branches dipped in the water.}

CONFIRMANT #4: And the God created the land by pulling back the waters to reveal the earth….

(Brown Ribbons waving and a youth processes up with a clay pot filled with dirt.)

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

CONFIRMANT #5: “And God said, ‘Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants bearing seed of every kind and trees of every bearing fruit with seed in it.”

(Green Ribbons waving and a youth processes up with a bouquet of flowers to place on the table and on standing vase of branches with colored leaves in front of the table with the dirt and water.)

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

CONFIRMANT #6:
“And God said, “Let the waters bring forth swamps of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the dome of the sky… And God created every living thing that moves, of every kind, with which the waters swam and every winged bird of every kind…

CONFIRMANT #7: And God made the wild animals of the earth of every kind and the cattle of every kind, and everything creeps upon the ground of every kind.

ALL: “AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Ringing of the bells, tambourines, etc.]

ASSOCIATE PASTOR – “And God blessed them” saying ‘Be fruitful and multiply!” [Bells and whistles and tambourines ring out.]

PASTOR: Let those who have pets and animals bring them forward. Also, all those who work to preserve wild species and their habitats, please stand for a blessing. Let us all put out our hands in blessing:

O God,
You have done all things wisely;
In your goodness you have made us in your image
And given us care over other living things
Which are all beautiful and precious in your eyes.
Reach out with your right hand
And grant a blessing on these and on all animals
And on us, your servants,
that we may care for them kindly and carefully,
and treat them with respect.
Thank you for all those who work to care
for your wild species and their habitats.
Bless and keep them in their holy work.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

ALL: AMEN

CONFIRMANT #8: Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have lordly care over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, over the cattle, and over the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing …”

CONFIRMANT #9: “So God created humankind in his image, and in the image of God he created them; male and female God created them. …”

CONFIRMANT #10 : “The Lord God formed a human from the dust of the ground and breathed into the nostrils the breath of life.”

[Everyone stands to drum roll!]

ALL: AND GOD SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD! [Bells and whistles and musical instruments]

ASSOCIATE PASTOR: “God blessed all of human kind and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and take care over it and guide it.’”

[more bells and tambourines]

PASTOR: Now we ask all the children and expecting parents to come forth for a blessing. We also would like to ask to stand all those in our midst who work with mothers and in the Respect for Life movement, and those who work to protect families from domestic abuse. Let us all put out our hands in blessing:

Gracious Father,
Your Word,
Spoken in love, created the human family.
Hear the prayers of all gathered here to bless all these children in our midst and these parents who await the birth of their children.
Calm their fears when they are anxious
Watch over and support them,
And help us to work with you
In caring for them
So that in safely and in good health
They may praise you and glorify you with us.
And please bless all of these,
Your servants,
Who work to care for families under stress of violence and abuse
And all those who care for the unborn
And the mothers who carry these children,
Please bless their holy work.
Through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ
Now and forever.

ALL: AMEN

CONFIRMANT 11: And then God said, “See, I have given into your care and use every plant, yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And every beast of the earth, and every bird of the air, and everything that has the breath of life… I put these all in your care.

God looked at everything that God had made:”

ALL: “AND GOD SAID IT WAS VERY GOOD!” {bells, whistles, ribbons waving!!}


SING: AWESOME GOD by Rich Mullins (second verse first, then first – a group of youth lead the hand gestures)

PASTOR: Now all of you who farm and bring forth life from the earth in your gardens, please bring up samples of your harvest that we may bless them and bless you in your holy work. And all those who are foresters and land conservationists, please stand as well. Let us put our hands out in blessing:

God our Creator,
Who bestows the rains of the heavens and riches of the soil,
We thank your loving majesty for this year’s harvest.
Bless those whose hands helped to bring forth the fruits of the earth.
Bless also those who tend your wild lands
And help preserve them for the future.
Bless your foresters and tree planters
Who are working to keep your lands lush and fertile.
Fill the hearts of your people with gratitude
For this harvest and these workers.
And help us ensure that from this abundance
All the hungry, the poor, and the needy may be filled with good things
And together we may all proclaim the glory of your name.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

ALL: AMEN!

CONFIRMANT 12: “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all their multitudes. And on the seventh day, God finished the work that God had done, and God RESTED on the seventh day…

MOMENT OF SILENCE

LAY PRESIDER: Let us give thanks for all that God created and for God’s caring command to rest each week to re-create our bodies and spirits:

SING: NOW THANK WE ALL OUR GOD (fast tempo #202 in Songbook)

[All ribbon holders stand up and weave through the crowds to the joyous music]

DEACON: God gave humans the work of loving and serving God -- taking care of each other and the earth, sharing its abundance with all the people and species. But people sinned and turned away from God, so God got angry and made it rain forty days and forty nights. [drumming sound of rain]

But God had asked Noah to save samples of the animals and his family in the ark, so that after the flood, God could renew the earth. Noah and his family gave thanks for being saved, and that is when God made a covenant with the human family and all the living creatures on the earth.

LAY PRESIDER: The Lord proclaimed “When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature that is on the earth.” God said this three times so that we would remember:

{Two rainbow kites will be processed up and put on either side of the cross bewteen the trees and behind the round table -- All the colors come out and process with them in two rings around the congregation (one on either side) and back to their seats)

ALL: “I have set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and every living creature that is on the earth.” [All the ribbons go together in the order of a rainbow, and a rainbow banner is unwound in front. Bells and music and drumming]

ASSOCIATE PASTOR: In our day, Pope John Paul II, in his 1990 address “Peace with God the Creator, Peace with All of Creation” warned the world that we were neglecting God and God’s statues. He said “the ecological crisis is a moral crisis” and “Today the ecological crisis has assumed such proportions as to be the responsibility of everyone….

He told all of us:
An education in ecological responsibility is urgent; responsibility for oneself, for others, and for the earth. …, a true education in responsibility entails a genuine conversion in ways of thoughts and behavior…

PASTOR: Pope John Paul II told us that all humans have an “ecological vocation” but he also specifically addressed all who believe in a Creator God
, most especially Catholics, saying:

I should like to address directly my brothers and sisters in the Catholic Church, in order to remind them of their solemn obligation to care for all of creation. The commitment of believers to a healthy environment for everyone stems directly from their belief in God the Creator, from their recognition of original and personal sin, and from the certainty of having been redeemed by Christ. Respect for life and for the dignity of the human person extends also to the rest of creation, which is called to join humans in praising God….

It is my hope that the inspiration of St. Francis will help us to keep ever a sense of ‘fraternity’ with all those good and beautiful things which Almighty God has created. And may God remind us of our serious obligation to respect and watch over them with care, in the light of the greater and higher fraternity that exists within the human family.”
LAY PRESIDER: And that is why we have gathered today. To celebrate God’s creation and give Glory to our God, and also to ask for forgiveness for how we have often ignored God’s values and decrees. How we have not been the best stewards and caretakers.
ADULT #1: Lord, we have not understood or cared enough for the systems of life that you have established on the earth to sustain and comfort us. We have watched your glaciers melt, your oceans warm and rise, the earth’s storms grow more violent, and the poor people of the planet suffer the most. Yet we stand in confusion. We are afraid of change and committing ourselves to new attitudes and new energies. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #2: Lord, you have blessed us with joyous life, and children, yet we have not cared for the gifts of human life as you asked us to do. We have allowed unborn children to be aborted, and we have at times abused our youth. We have neglected the hard lives of the elderly, the sick, the dying. We have used death as a penalty for crimes. Father, please forgive us, for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #3: Lord, you have showered our country with abundance and the ingenuity and drive of many people. Yet we have not shared enough of what we harvest and produce with those who have less. Every day, every minute, children, Your children, are starving to death or they lack clean water to drink or homes to come back to. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #4: Lord, we thank you for systems of commerce that bind us together. Yet throughout our country and world, our companies and corporations have laid off record numbers of workers and then rewarded stockholder with high profits. Many in our midst long for the dignity and security of jobs and work and food and shelter and health care. In so many ways, we have valued money over people and things over relationships. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD HAVE MERCY.
ADULT #5: Lord, We thank you for our ability to produce so many beautiful, needed, artistic, and entertaining things, but we forget about the waste they make. We heap trash in your lands. We let chemicals run into your rivers and lakes; we dump waste and spill oil in your oceans. We have not cared enough about the consequences of our actions. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #6: Lord, how diverse and amazing are the many species you have put on this earth. Yet many have gone extinct because of our actions, some without us even noticing. We clear cut forests and destroy grasslands We have a hard time discerning the difference between want and need, and we struggle to know how to use the gifts of this earth without harming the beauty, diversity, and stability of your creation. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #7: Lord, just as you have blessed this earth with a diversity of species, you have blessed us with a diversity of people – red, yellow, black, and white, and so many colors in between. Yet we often struggle to see Your face in those people of Yours who are different from us – whose color or culture is different; whose religion or language or culture or country is different; whose sexual orientations or abilities are different; whose politics are different. Too often we insult, mock, marginalize, or fight them rather than try to listen, understand, and treat them with respect and dignity as your children. Father, please forgive us for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY
ADULT #8: Lord, time and time again you have asked us to live in peace, and to pass on your peace others. Yet we struggle with real fears. We have waged wars and do not know how to end them. We have used chemicals and landmines that leave your land unusable and children harmed even after the war ends. Teach us how to how to make peace in our homes, schools, communities, nation and world. Teach us how to pray for our enemies, and how to forgive and be forgiven to start afresh, as you have asked us to do. Father, please forgive us, for we know not what we do.
ALL: LORD, HAVE MERCY.
SING : Kyrie Elison (Celtic) chorus
DEACON: O Lord, we so little understand the true ripple effects of all we do. We cannot see as You do. You sent us your Son to show us the Way. He called the children to come onto him. He healed the sick and the lepers, and he fed the five thousand. In the desert, the garden, and by the lakeshore he prayed. He told us how dearly His Father loves even the lilies of the field and the sparrows of the sky. But most of all, He told us how God the Creator loves us each as a parent and has asked us to take care of all of life.
FEMALE LAY PRESIDER: So Lord, please send us Your Spirit to soften our hearts, open our minds, and stand up ready to do the work that you have given us. Help us to serve more humbly and tenderly, to listen more carefully and with our hearts, and to give joyous thanks every day and every moment so that we may become peacemakers and renew the face of the earth – now and for future generations.
SING : Lord Send Out Your Spirit and Renew the Face of the Earth by Joe Zsigray [chorus plus first verse and chorus]

FEMALE LAY PRESIDER:
Our Creator has made each made us unique, with so many different talents and skills and perspectives to offer to the world to try to heal it. With the Holy Spirit energizing and guiding us, let us now, each of us, take a moment in silence to prayerfully decide in our hearts some of the things that we can commit to do today, tomorrow, this week, this year to protect this planet and all of life on it.

SILENCE

ASSOCIATE PASTOR: Now let us stand and go to the front of the church and dedicate our hearts to these tasks as we dedicate our new statute of St. Francis.

SING: THE SUMMONS: WILL YOU COME AND FOLLOW ME IF I BUT CALLYOUR NAME? .{by John L. Bell, arrangement of trad. Scottish melody by Kelvin Grove, songbook 377 )

PASTOR
O Lord, you sent your dear and loving servant St. Francis,
as a model of how to follow you,
living simply, loving You, Your Son, and all Your Creation.
He served the poor
And loved all the birds and animals
And rocks and stars and moon.
Please bless this community and
Send us your spirit to guide us
And caring for all of life from
Conception of our children to
The very systems of air, water, land, and seas, forests and climate
upon which all of this earthly life depends.
Please watch over us, and
let us not lose heart when the tasks of caring look too big and overwhelming.
In Your Name we pray, Amen

FEMALE PRESIDER:
Dear St. Francis,
remind us of the power of every day acts of kindness, love, and caring.
Just as you rebuilt God’s Church with your example,
help us do the same.
Inspire us with new energy in our hearts, new ways in our thoughts,
new actions in our lives, and a new unity to work together.
Lead us on the paths to act now so we can pass on to our children and our children’s children and their children a livable, abundant, fertile, and still beautiful planet on which to live.
Through Jesus’s name we pray,
Amen.

Now, like St. Francis, let us pray or sing this each day in our hearts:

SING: PRAYER OF ST. FRANCIS by Sebastian Temple (song book #495)

Celebrate Life and All of Creation Service

This October 10, 2010, grassroots work party events will be held all around the world, networked through www.350.org to try to push for greater, more immediate actions to slow climate change.

For myself, I looked around and felt the greatest immediate work that needed to be done in my community was to change hearts and minds to be ready to act. So I wrote a Christian prayer service, based in Scripture, celebrating life and calling all to responsibility and asking for help from the Holy Spirit.

Connected to this, tn the online journal Minding Nature from the Center for Humans and Nature, there is an article (starting on page 35) by me entitled "Conservation and the Catholic Imagination" at http://www.humansandnature.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Minding-Nature-v3n2-August-2010.pdf.

I hope it prompts some interesting discussions!

Hotter than Hades....McKibben's Great Call for Action

This year's hot temperatures along with all the other scientific date have proven that climate change is real and all who believe in a loving Creator who gave us this planet need to get to work. John Paul II said: When the ecological crisis is set within the broader context of the search for peace within society, we can understand better the importance of giving attention to what the earth and its atmosphere are telling us: namely, that there is an order in the universe which must be respected, and that the human person, endowed with the capability of choosing freely, has a grave responsibility to preserve this order for the well-being of future generations.
I wish to repeat. The ecological crisis is a moral crisis! {emphasis is the pope’s own}

It's time for all who treasure God's creation to join with others to call for national and international and individual actions to preserve it.

Here's Bill McKibben's prophetic voice:
We're Hot as Hell and We're Not Going to Take It Any More

Three Steps to Establish a Politics of Global Warming
By Bil McKibben (Cross Posted from TomDispatch.com)

Try to fit these facts together:

* According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the planet has just come through the warmest decade, the warmest 12 months, the warmest six months, and the warmest April, May, and June on record.
* A "staggering" new study from Canadian researchers has shown that warmer seawater has reduced phytoplankton, the base of the marine food chain, by 40% since 1950.
* Nine nations have so far set their all-time temperature records in 2010, including Russia (111 degrees), Niger (118), Sudan (121), Saudi Arabia and Iraq (126 apiece), and Pakistan, which also set the new all-time Asia record in May: a hair under 130 degrees. I can turn my oven to 130 degrees.
* And then, in late July, the U.S. Senate decided to do exactly nothing about climate change. They didn't do less than they could have -- they did nothing, preserving a perfect two-decade bipartisan record of no action. Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided not even to schedule a vote on legislation that would have capped carbon emissions.

I wrote the first book for a general audience on global warming back in 1989, and I've spent the subsequent 21 years working on the issue. I'm a mild-mannered guy, a Methodist Sunday School teacher. Not quick to anger. So what I want to say is: this is fucked up. The time has come to get mad, and then to get busy.

For many years, the lobbying fight for climate legislation on Capitol Hill has been led by a collection of the most corporate and moderate environmental groups, outfits like the Environmental Defense Fund. We owe them a great debt, and not just for their hard work. We owe them a debt because they did everything the way you're supposed to: they wore nice clothes, lobbied tirelessly, and compromised at every turn.

By the time they were done, they had a bill that only capped carbon emissions from electric utilities (not factories or cars) and was so laden with gifts for industry that if you listened closely you could actually hear the oinking. They bent over backwards like Soviet gymnasts. Senator John Kerry, the legislator they worked most closely with, issued this rallying cry as the final negotiations began: "We believe we have compromised significantly, and we're prepared to compromise further."

And even that was not enough. They were left out to dry by everyone -- not just Reid, not just the Republicans. Even President Obama wouldn't lend a hand, investing not a penny of his political capital in the fight.

The result: total defeat, no moral victories.

Now What?

So now we know what we didn't before: making nice doesn't work. It was worth a try, and I'm completely serious when I say I'm grateful they made the effort, but it didn't even come close to working. So we better try something else.

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else -- energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that "green jobs" polled better than "cutting carbon."

No, really? In the end, though, all these focus-group favorites are secondary. The task at hand is keeping the planet from melting. We need everyone -- beginning with the president -- to start explaining that basic fact at every turn.

It is the heat, and also the humidity. Since warm air holds more water than cold, the atmosphere is about 5% moister than it was 40 years ago, which explains the freak downpours that seem to happen someplace on this continent every few days.

It is the carbon -- that's why the seas are turning acid, a point Obama could have made with ease while standing on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. "It's bad that it's black out there," he might have said, "but even if that oil had made it safely ashore and been burned in our cars, it would still be wrecking the oceans." Energy independence is nice, but you need a planet to be energy independent on.

Mysteriously enough, this seems to be a particularly hard point for smart people to grasp. Even in the wake of the disastrous Senate non-vote, the Nature Conservancy's climate expert told New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, "We have to take climate change out of the atmosphere, bring it down to earth, and show how it matters in people's everyday lives." Translation: ordinary average people can't possibly recognize the real stakes here, so let's put it in language they can understand, which is about their most immediate interests. It's both untrue, as I'll show below, and incredibly patronizing. It is, however, exactly what we've been doing for a decade and clearly, It Does Not Work.

Step two, we have to ask for what we actually need, not what we calculate we might possibly be able to get. If we're going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don't actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run. We need a stiff price on carbon, set by the scientific understanding that we can't still be burning black rocks a couple of decades hence. That undoubtedly means upending the future business plans of Exxon and BP, Peabody Coal and Duke Energy, not to speak of everyone else who's made a fortune by treating the atmosphere as an open sewer for the byproducts of their main business.

Instead they should pay through the nose for that sewer, and here's the crucial thing: most of the money raised in the process should be returned directly to American pockets. The monthly check sent to Americans would help fortify us against the rise in energy costs, and we'd still be getting the price signal at the pump to stop driving that SUV and start insulating the house. We also need to make real federal investments in energy research and development, to help drive down the price of alternatives -- the Breakthrough Institute points out, quite rightly, that we're crazy to spend more of our tax dollars on research into new drone aircraft and Mars orbiters than we do on photovoltaics.

Yes, these things are politically hard, but they're not impossible. A politician who really cared could certainly use, say, the platform offered by the White House to sell a plan that taxed BP and actually gave the money to ordinary Americans. (So far they haven't even used the platform offered by the White House to reinstall the rooftop solar panels that Jimmy Carter put there in the 1970s and Ronald Reagan took down in his term.)

Asking for what you need doesn't mean you'll get all of it. Compromise still happens. But as David Brower, the greatest environmentalist of the late twentieth century, explained amid the fight to save the Grand Canyon: "We are to hold fast to what we believe is right, fight for it, and find allies and adduce all possible arguments for our cause. If we cannot find enough vigor in us or them to win, then let someone else propose the compromise. We thereupon work hard to coax it our way. We become a nucleus around which the strongest force can build and function."

Which leads to the third step in this process. If we're going to get any of this done, we're going to need a movement, the one thing we haven't had. For 20 years environmentalists have operated on the notion that we'd get action if we simply had scientists explain to politicians and CEOs that our current ways were ending the Holocene, the current geological epoch. That turns out, quite conclusively, not to work. We need to be able to explain that their current ways will end something they actually care about, i.e. their careers. And since we'll never have the cash to compete with Exxon, we better work in the currencies we can muster: bodies, spirit, passion.

Movement Time

As Tom Friedman put it in a strong column the day after the Senate punt, the problem was that the public "never got mobilized." Is it possible to get people out in the streets demanding action about climate change? Last year, with almost no money, our scruffy little outfit, 350.org, managed to organize what Foreign Policy called the "largest ever coordinated global rally of any kind" on any issue -- 5,200 demonstrations in 181 countries, 2,000 of them in the U.S.A.

People were rallying not just about climate change, but around a remarkably wonky scientific data point, 350 parts per million carbon dioxide, which NASA's James Hansen and his colleagues have demonstrated is the most we can have in the atmosphere if we want a planet "similar to the one on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." Which, come to think of it, we do. And the "we," in this case, was not rich white folks. If you look at the 25,000 pictures in our Flickr account, you'll see that most of them were poor, black, brown, Asian, and young -- because that's what most of the world is. No need for vice-presidents of big conservation groups to patronize them: shrimpers in Louisiana and women in burqas and priests in Orthodox churches and slumdwellers in Mombasa turned out to be completely capable of understanding the threat to the future.

Those demonstrations were just a start (one we should have made long ago). We're following up in October -- on 10-10-10 -- with a Global Work Party. All around the country and the world people will be putting up solar panels and digging community gardens and laying out bike paths. Not because we can stop climate change one bike path at a time, but because we need to make a sharp political point to our leaders: we're getting to work, what about you?

We need to shame them, starting now. And we need everyone working together. This movement is starting to emerge on many fronts. In September, for instance, opponents of mountaintop removal are converging on DC to demand an end to the coal trade. That same month, Tim DeChristopher goes on trial in Salt Lake City for monkey-wrenching oil and gas auctions by submitting phony bids. (Naomi Klein and Terry Tempest Williams have called for folks to gather at the courthouse.)

The big environmental groups are starting to wake up, too. The Sierra Club has a dynamic new leader, Mike Brune, who's working hard with stalwarts like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. (Note to enviro groups: working together is fun and useful). Churches are getting involved, as well as mosques and synagogues. Kids are leading the fight, all over the world -- they have to live on this planet for another 70 years or so, and they have every right to be pissed off.

But no one will come out to fight for watered down and weak legislation. That's not how it works. You don't get a movement unless you take the other two steps I've described.

And in any event it won't work overnight. We're not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn't been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in… never. We may need to get arrested. We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger.

Mostly, we need to tell the truth, resolutely and constantly. Fossil fuel is wrecking the one earth we've got. It's not going to go away because we ask politely. If we want a world that works, we're going to have to raise our voices.

Bill McKibben is founder of 350.org and the author, most recently, of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet. Earlier this year the Boston Globe called him "probably the country's leading environmentalist" and Time described him as "the planet's best green journalist." He's a scholar in residence at Middlebury College.

We need to be willing to sacrifice and do our part now so others may live. And so that we may live well in the garden of life God gave us. Let start today!