Green Patches

Francistide Blog of The Week - Creation Care Newsletter

Why Care For Creation?

Here are three reasons to interact carefully with the Creation, to nurture and preserve it

Prudence or the thoughtful care for one’s own well-being.  You breathe; so you need breathable air.  You drink, so you need potable water.  You eat, so you need nutritious food.  You see, so you need clean skies.  You can get sick, very sick with cancers, so you need a world without cancer causing chemicals.  You move through and have your being the environment, so you need to wake up to it, think about it, perceive how the changes we have made and are making could be harmful to you.  Your life comes from nature.  Protect your source. It’s just common sense.

1. Do you owe a debt to the future?  “What did the future ever do for me”? You say?  Well, it created you.  Before you were, you were in the future.  Before you were, people planted the trees that shade you, developed the grains and the animal strains that feed you, invented the clothes and the way of building houses that shelter you, kept pure the water that you must have to live each day, invented the writing that you are now reading, and learned how to teach you to read it  They preserved this  world through countless generations so it would be here for you to inhabit.  You owe them a debt, the debt of your very life; but here’s the paradox; since they are gone, you can only pay it forward, to the next generations. It is a moral obligation.

 

1. Jesus came to reconcile us to one another and to God our Creator and Sustainer Who has made us as part and parcel of the larger creation—as members of it.  We are not alone here—God made millions of other creatures and all are His children.  He is manifest in His creation—it is His work.  To be reconciled to Him we must be reconciled to his creation.  If we love Him Who made us, we must love what else He made.  If our mortal father lovingly built for us a house and garden with his own hands and we then trashed it, we could not say we loved him.  Jesus said, “Love one another as I have loved you. By this all men will know you are my disciples.”  And if we are to be reconciled to one another, we must care for that which cares for others, namely the earth and all that is in it.  If I say I care for my neighbor, then go cut down his apple trees and take the fruit for myself, I can not say I love him.  If I poison her air, use up resources she needs to live, foul his water with my landfills and radioactive dumps, how can I say I am reconciled to her?  The choice to drive a hybrid or a Hummer is not about you—it’s about other people and about your grandchildren.  God’s earth was made for us all, and for all who are yet to come, not just for those of us who are fortunate enough to live in comparative prosperity at the present moment.  - From Environmental Commission, Episcopal Diocese of Eau Claire via Franciscan Associates 

 

 

 

Generous. Small Idea

From Paul Northup's blog over on Generous.org:

Generation or insulation? Time to get our houses in order.

The government’s recently announced micro-generation scheme is great news. Isn’t it? If you install small-scale renewable energy generating capability into your house there will be a guaranteed pay-back per kw on all the electricity you produce for 25 years – no matter if you use that energy yourself or sell it back to the Grid. (Read more about these ‘feed in tariffs’ here.) ‘If the government offered to pay you £1,000 a year for the next 25 years, in return for an up-front investment of £12,500, you’d snap it up in a second.’

Not everyone thinks this is good news...

For the rest of the post, go here.

Change can be easier than you think

Says Generous.org  

Paul Northup shares a few familial thoughts at the start of another New Year about how the thought of change can sometimes daunt us, force us into passivity, hold us captive. When, in actuality, things might be easier – and sometimes even quicker – to change than we think.

Carbon- neutral church

Given the name of this blog, I've been a bit remiss in not mentioning an exciting new sustainable development project launched recently. Newchurch [must stop calling it that; I've been there a year] is aiming to become one of the first carbon-neutral congregations in the Church of England.  Hear and read all about it here, here  , here   and of course, here. [you'll need to be a  Church Times subscriber to access this last link]. 

For readers who might wonder Climate Change - Why  the church?  the C of E's National Environmental Campaign Shrinking the Footprint  provides some helpful info, as well as linking to a talk on the topic by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Green Christianity and Romans 8

Courtesy of Matt Stone.

Romans 8:18-25

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently. 

This is a passage of hope, and more, of a hope that encompasses the entire creation. It includes a sober assessment of the frustration and decay that the environment now suffers, but says IT WILL NOT END THERE. Paul’s words here are light years away from the prophetic speculations of some Christians who think that the world will one day be “Left Behind”. No, the apostle Paul here counsels that the reign of God includes the renewal of creation, its rebirth.

This naturally leads to the question, so what does that mean for me here and now? My response is, if God does not consider the earth to be disposable, should we?

 

Where God Is

Christians don't take God into the world. They discover God actively working there for good through all sorts of people and situations whether Christian or not. God challenges us all to join in with his mission of love to the world.

- After Sunday

Thanks to Dave Walker of Cartoonchurch for pointing me in the direction of this site.

Are You Self-Sufficientish?

Asks Eco-Worrier over at  the 'Times.'  Anna Shepard passes on Ten unexpected benefits of being self-sufficientish from Andy and Dave Hamilton, urban guides to almost self-sufficiency. There are some great tips on their site for you to follow. Thus spake the Greenpatches whose sole effort to grown her own produce just now consists of cultivating a rather forlorn basil plant on the kitchen window sill. (Next to the would-be Honesty plant).

I wonder if Mr GP might be interested in the Hamilton's recipe for nettle beer?  It'd provide me with the ideal excuse to put off that weeding for a little longer!

La modification de l'environment

Cartoon Wallpaper : For the Birds

Found  earlier in a box of old photos: an essay written by Ms Greenpatches back in French primary school, many years ago. Just look at the fiddly graph type paper they had to write on, and proper pen and ink; none of this new-fangled  free expression nonsense in those days!

It's the following paragraph that made me smile:

C'est vrai que c'est plus cher d'enterrer les cables electriques que de les pendres a des poteaux, mais ca gache le paysage. Et pensez aux pauvres oiseaux qui se perchent dessus...

A  St Francis in the making, there! Even if her scientific knowledge hadn't quite caught up with everything else. Oh, and anticipating protest from my now adult offspring, yes, I know I missed off the accents. All this HTML is beyond me! Click below if you want to read the real thing in all its glory.

 

God 'doesn't do waste' - really!

Ladies and gentlemen, here is my second attempt to bring you the profound wisdom of Dave Walker from Cartoonchurch:

OK, resolutions. Last year I set my sights too high I think. This year I plan to draw more, put things away when I have finished with them, join an environmental organisation, do the bins the night before, cut dilly dallying by 12-15% and generally be a marginally better person. How about you?

and

The Archbishop of Canterbury in his New Year Message broadcast last night:

...God doesn't do waste.

He doesn't regard anyone as a 'waste of space', as not worth his time – from the very beginnings of life to its end, whether they are successful, articulate, productive or not. And so a life that communicates a bit of what God is like, is a life that doesn't give up – that doesn't settle down with a culture of waste and disposability – whether with people, or with things...

(thanks to Mootblog for the original link, although I used the news service for this post because of the Youtube access. When I try to embed clever things like this I tend to end up with a bad attack of 'malformed HTML!)

God 'doesn't do waste' - Archbishop of Canterbury's New Year Message

But hitting the delete button instead of 'save' does! Try again.