Scott Sabin and I met about 7 years ago at a conference in Kenya.  He tells about that conference in his new book,Tending to Eden that was just released two weeks ago:

Edith and I took several pastors to a conference on creation care in Kenya.  I was one of the presenters, and in the course of my presentation I showed a slide of the devasted forests around Mt Kilimanjaro National Park.  Pastor Lyamuya approached me later and, with an embarassed smile, explained how convicting it was to see the photo from his own community.  “God entrusted it to us to take care of, and we aren’t doing our job.”

He returned home determined to make a difference.  Collaborating with a number of other pastors in the area, he encouraged all the churches to establish tree nurseries.  They required those going through confirmation classes to plant trees as a prerequisite to graduation.  As a result of these initiatives, nearly 500,000 trees have been planted. [page 68]

That conference was significant for many people:  It was sponsored by and was the first major public effort of the Brackenhurst Environmental Programme, the organization that was to become Care of Creation-Kenya two years later, sister organization to Care of Creation Inc. of which I am the Director.  We have known of many results from that first conference, but none of us at Care of Creation knew of these 500,000 trees until I read Scott’s manuscript a couple of months ago.

And that is probably the most encouraging thing about Scott’s book – he’s reminding us explicitly and implicitly that there’s a lot of good stuff happening in the world.  As bad as the environmental crisis is – and Tending to Eden will not let you off the hook on that score – there are people and organizations working, and working together, to make real and effective change happen.

I identify with Scott – we both came into the creation care movement inadvertently and involuntarily.  He joined Plant with Purpose to help respond to poverty by providing development in the Caribbean nations of Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and now well beyond.  God brought him along a path that showed clearly how poverty, development and environmental degradation are inextricably entwined.  I came into the movement a couple of years later from the world of “ministry” – preaching, teaching, evangelism, church planting.  And God showed me just as clearly that the “gospel” is inextricably linked to caring for his world.

Tending to Eden is remarkable as well for speaking to a pressing issue in the world of foreign aid today:  How can we offer help without hurting people?  Scott and Plant With Purpose are offering a model that offers hope and help in a way that is comprehensive, holistic – and successful.

Check out the book here, and Plant With Purpose’s website here. Or find out more about the book here.  It’s worth it.

About a month ago we posted a story on frogs quoting a video segment from Planet Earth that I use in my seminars in which we are told “I think we’re facing the loss of half the world’s frogs.”

Had some pushback on that one from people who are struggling with the balance between people and nature.  In this equation, frogs are kind of like insects – it might be nice to keep them around, but what’s really the big deal if we lose them?  This week’s report on endangered primates – our closest natural cousins and the cutest things in the jungle – is more bad news and its hard to think of any excuse for not being upset about this:

Of the world’s 634 primate species, 48 percent are threatened with extinction, according to the report, issued by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The Switzerland-based group calls itself the world’s oldest global environmental organization.

“This report makes for very alarming reading,” said Christoph Schwitzer, an adviser to the group, in a statement. “Support and action to help save these species is vital if we are to avoid losing these wonderful animals forever.”

A handful of primate species count populations in the dozens. For example, there are just 60 to 70 Asian monkeys known as golden headed langurs, found only on an island in Vietnam’s Gulf of Tonkin.

There are fewer than 100 remaining northern sportive lemurs, which live in Madagascar, and around 110 eastern black crested gibbons, found in northeastern Vietnam. [CNN]

Not recommended for bedtime reading, but important none-the-less is the IUCN’s Red List of all endangered species.

Flourish Online Magazine has been running a feature celebrating the 30th anniversary of the publication of Wendell Berry’s essay, “The Gift of Good Soil”.  This essay draws lessons on “ecological and agricultural responsibility” not from Genesis 1 or 2 or even Romans 8, but from the Old Testament story of God’s gift of the Promised Land to Abraham and his descendants:  “a divine gift to a fallen people.”  And that certainly applies to us, doesn’t it?

Read the essay here, and comments from many leaders in the field of creation care here.  Below is my contribution to this collection…

On being introduced to the world of Christian environmental stewardship about ten years ago,  I found early on that I had a lot of catching up to do.  Wendell Berry was one of the authors I was directed to  who has taught and continues to teach me.  Evidently, this is true of many of my colleagues as well.  It is a privilege to be counted among those who have sat at Wendell’s feet and learned from him, and I am sure I am not the only one who wishes that that learning could have been in person rather than through the pages of his books.

“The Gift of Good Land” appeals to me not only for what it says, but for the method that Berry uses to discover the truths he wants to share.  This is not so much an essay as a sermon, in the very best sense of the word.  His purpose is twofold: “I want to attempt a biblical argument for ecological and agricultural responsibility” and “to examine the practical implications of such an argument.”  I’m not sure how Berry would feel about this analysis, but really, what he’s giving us is an old-fashioned expository message from scripture, complete with exegesis and application.  I know more than a few pastors who could learn from this essay.

This explains to some degree the timelessness of Berry’s message.  He has built his argument directly on the timeless truths of scripture, and he has done so carefully and, look – without using Genesis 1 or 2.  Not that there’s anything wrong with those two chapters, but they are used a lot in building the case for Christian environmental stewardship.  To the contrary, Berry leads us into one of the most important parts of the entire story of redemption, the gift of the Promised Land to Abraham and his descendants and thereby shows us how the principles of stewardship and ecological responsibility can be found on almost every page of the Bible.

The lessons Berry draws from his exposition call us to gratitude, neighborliness and good husbandry.  He reminds us, in one of my favorite lines, that “it might be easier to be Samson than to be a good husband or wife day after day for fifty years.”  These admonitions are useful and balanced because they are biblical.  One of the biggest challenges the environmental movement faces is to figure out what to do with people.  We are, without question, a blight on the landscape, but that is because we’ve lived and used creation selfishly and arrogantly – sinfully, as it were.  Berry gives us permission and shows us how to live in creation:  Not carelessly, nor greedily, but with thankfulness, wonder and awe:   “When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament.”

Learning to do this in the present is our task.  With new technologies appearing every hour, we could do much worse than to follow Berry’s example in returning to the Book itself for guidance.

Patrick Marsh received photos of snow on the ground in every state in just more than 24 hours, but it took him about 36 hours to realize it.

The Hawaii photos were lost in a deluge of incoming snow shots — which arrived at a rate of about one every two minutes. It took a second query from the photographer before he realized it, he said.

Marsh — a meteorology graduate student at the University of Oklahoma — had received photos from 49 states by 6:30 p.m. Friday. The Hawaii photos arrived about 6 a.m. Saturday, he said.

“I didn’t think I was going to get it, but thanks to some heroic efforts from people on top of Mauna Kea, they actually hiked down some of the north slope a little bit to get the photo because the snow wasn’t in an easily accessible location,” Marsh said.

I have a cousin who lives in Washington DC who claimed on her Facebook page earlier this week that she woke in the middle of the night to discover that a snowplow had completely blocked her front door – no way in or out.  (The police told her to call Homeland Security ???) It took them 5 hours to clear enough snow to get the cars out.

Meanwhile, as you know, the Winter Olympics suffered from heavy rain on one of the opening days… strange weather, indeed.

So what’s going on?  Could it be that global warming is really over? Or (as some of my friends would have it) maybe it never really was?

I don’t usually do much with climate change or global warming on this blog – there are plenty of other topics to keep us occupied, and this one tends to generate more heat than anything else (pun completely intended).

However, with snow in 50 states, it seems like a couple of comments are in order:

1.  Snow does not mean cold.

Those of us who live in the snow-belt know that often an incoming snowstorm is preceded by a noticeable rise in temperature.  It generally doesn’t snow much when the thermometer is below zero, and that’s partly because storms bring energy, even in winter, and that energy is often in the form of heat.

In fact, recent numbers from NOAA (The National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration) point to January 2010 as the fourth warmest ever recorded.  So, in spite of the tendency to say, “Where’s global warming when we need it?”, the presence or absence of snow is not evidence that global warming has gone away.  It could be the opposite.

2. Weather is not climate.

If there is one thing climate change theory is very clear on it is that even in a warming world we will still have cold weather.  In fact, one of the predictions is that there will be more extreme weather of every kind.  This has been happening not only this winter but in every season around the world.  Longer droughts punctuated by extreme precipitation events in Australia, Africa, India, China – and here.

Recent climate studies are predicting that under every warming scenario we will still have record cold and record warm temperatures.  The tendency will be toward more and more record highs and fewer record lows – but the record lows will still occur. [Map shows highs vs lows in the US from the 1950s to the present by decade.]

—–

This is not the place for a full blown explanation of climate change theory and I am certainly not the person you want to look to for that.  However, I would like to take the opportunity here to introduce you to someone you might find very helpful in this business:  Dr. Katharine Hayhoe is the author, with her pastor husband, of A Climate For Change, written to the evangelical community.  Her book is well worth reading – one of the best I’ve found – but there’s a lot of stuff on her website as well including some very useful graphics.

As Katharine put it recently (rough quote), “Look, no one wants climate change to be explained away more than the climate scientists do.  But we’ve tested every other possible explanation, and nothing else works.  We human beings are doing this – and we have to stop.”

Tu B’Shvat in the Jewish calendar begins this evening at sunset – New Year’s Day for Trees.  Here’s a bit of an explanation from Rabbi Yehuda Prero:

The Gemora, when discussing cures for ailments, writes that “a tree that loses its fruits before they ripen should be dyed with a red paint.” What is the point of dying the tree with red paint? How does the red paint prevent the tree from losing its fruits before they ripen? The point of painting the tree red, the Gemora explains, is the same as the leper calling out that he is impure. When people will pass by and see a red tree, they will know that they are seeing a tree that is not producing fruits properly and is not thriving. As soon as they become aware of this situation, they will pray that the tree should be cured of whatever affliction is causing it to lose its fruit.

This Gemora teaches us how we are to value our trees. The Gemora does not it is praiseworthy to pray for the welfare of trees. It does not say that praying for the health of trees is a preferred practice. It says that the red paint is there so that people will see the tree and will pray for the tree. It presumes that people will most definitely pray for the tree the same way people will pray for one of their brethren who is a leper. The health of our trees is vital, and the Gemora lets us know how vital: we take active measures to assure that people will be aware of the predicament of the tree and pray for it!

“The health of our trees is vital.”  This is indeed true.  Whether Haiti, Kenya, Pakistan or the Philippines, it seems that all kinds of bad things start to happen when we lose our trees. Possibly because they are so slow growing and so large, trees seem to play a key role in rainfall patterns, erosion, flood control, drought prevention – not to mention wildlife habitat and food supplies for people.

I’m sure most of us have had experience of friends (or maybe even ourselves) being involved in a home remodeling job.  Some of us are satisfied with a new carpet or coat of paint – others get a bit crazy and like to do things like moving walls around – or removing them altogether.  Those who do the latter, however, have to be really careful – some walls are fine to take down or move around.  Others cannot be touched because they are “load-bearing walls” – they hold up the roof – or the floor above.

Our trees are load-bearing walls in the house of God’s creation.

On this new year’s day for trees, let’s remember that.  And if praying ‘for’ the trees is a stretch for you, at least let’s thank God for giving us these trees, and be thankful!

[Thanks to Paul Jacobsen for this tip... ]

On the way out, one of the participants asked me:  “So, exactly what is killing the frogs?”

It happens that I had just run across an article on this very topic two or three days ago.  Richard Black, BBC Environment Correspondent, was commenting on a world-wide precipitous decline in amphibians of all kinds (think frogs, salamanders, etc) in a post he called ‘The Attack of the Killer Everything“:

Now we know that there are two prime movers in the ongoing amphibian massacre. One is the fungal disease chytridiomycosis; the other is… everything.

“Everything?” Surely not?

Well… yes, everything – or pretty much, anyway.

While the chytrid fungus has blown whole populations away single-handedly in a season’s shooting spree, many species undergo a slow, inexorable decline more akin to starvation or an ancient torture; squeezed into corners by the expanding human habitat, poisoned by farmland chemicals, eaten by bigger invasive neighbours, hunted for meat, stressed by temperature rise and stalked by viruses – or any combination of the above.

And while the problems of bees are no longer in the news much, Black reminds us that “colony collapse disorder” has  not disappeared:

…about five years ago, commercial beekeepers in the US began reporting total wipe-outs of hives on a scale not documented before, leading to the term colony collapse disorder (CCD).

Since then, the phenomenon has been noted across much of Europe, with indications that it’s gone further afield – to Brazil, to Taiwan.

There’s some doubt as to whether CCD exists as something new or whether it’s just an extreme form of a hive decline that’s usually more gradual. Whatever the realities of that, it’s clear that wild bee populations are also declining at serious rates, both Apis mellifera and other species such as bumblebees.

Using a medical analogy, Black suggests that the problems of the bees and the amphibians may not be solveable.  If either decline involved a single factor, we could probably figure out how to deal with it – like a patient suffering from a broken leg or a single flu virus.  But these populations are suffering from causes across the spectrum – as when a person starts to decline in advanced old age:

…just as there is no medical treatment for old age, there is no defence against everything – nor is there ever likely to be.

Which leaves us with what conclusion to the story?

Indeed.

Does it matter, though?

One could argue that a world without frogs or bees would be aesthetically deficient. We would have lost some of the most interesting and beautiful pieces of God’s creation, and we and our children and grandchildren would be immeasurably poorer for the loss.

Many fear that continued massive loss of bees would threaten all kinds of plants, including those that feed the entire human race.  This possibility is so dooms-day-ish that, though I spend plenty of time reading about and contemplating these kinds of doomsday scenarios, even I hesitate to consider the implications.  [But there's an indy movie at Sundance this week on the topic:  Colony -  be my guest and let me know what you think.]

"House to house, field to field" - yup.

But the most important reason of all to be concerned about these developments is found in Isaiah 5:8 -

Woe to you who add house to house
and join field to field
till no space is left
and you live alone in the land.

We have so filled the earth with human civilisation and chemicals that the tiniest creatures that God put under our care can no longer survive.  I’m afraid we deserve the judgements Isaiah spells out.

What do you think?

[*Neem Hakeem is an occasional feature on health and the environment. See other Neem Hakeem posts and an explanation of the term here.]

Worshiping outdoors is easier than it is inside a building, and playing outdoors is good for your kids’ eyesight.

What in the world do these two things have to do with each other?

The statement on worship is an experience so common that it’s almost a truism.  And there are some powerful reasons for this, rooted in how God created us, how he reveals himself to us in his created world (see, for example, Psalm 19, Romans 1).  It’s a major reason one of my pet peeves is worship centers that have no windows – we’re trying to worship by cutting ourselves off from one of God’s chosen methods by which he reveals himself to us, which is something like trying to regain health with a diet that eschews all fruits and vegetables. [There's a lot more on this in my book - check it out!.]

However, there is a growing body of evidence that suggests that the connection between human beings and the outdoors – read, God’s Creation – is much more than how we worship.  We’re hardwired both to function better and in fact to need time in God’s creation in order to be healthy and even happy.  A must-read on this topic is Richard Louv’s Last Child in the Woods – every parent and anyone seeking to serve children in any capacity, from teachers to pediatricians to youth leaders should be required to read this book.

And – the main point of this post – the evidence continues to accumulate.  NPR had a story yesterday on myopia – near-sightedness – , that included the following surprising comments on the work of  expert Dr. Don Mutti:

For the past 20 years, Mutti has followed a group — from childhood to adulthood — to see who develops myopia. He found something significant: Time spent outdoors during childhood was important.

“If you have two nearsighted parents and you engage in a low level of outdoor activity, your chances of becoming myopic by the eighth grade are about 60 percent,” he says. “If children engaged in over 14 hours per week of outdoor activity, their chances of becoming nearsighted were now only about 20 percent. So it was quite a dramatic reduction in the risk of becoming myopic.”

The story goes on to eliminate reading or other close-up work and exercise as causes.  The work is on-going, but it appears, again, that we – and importantly, our children – will be healthier, happier, and more in touch with God if we just spend time in his world.

So….

Go on – reach for the power button, turn off this computer, and get yourself outside!  [I'll do the sam........]

Three months of planning, writing, praying and creativity and now, a bit of rest before we get into 2010.

The first day of the new year of 2010, was spent driving back to Madison, WI from St. Louis, MO where we had spent the previous week with about 13,000 students and 3,000 other attendees both experiencing — and in some ways helping to shape — the future of missions in the US.

Besides presenting 4 creation care seminars (to a total of about 150 people) and speaking to another 200 or so students at our booth, we hosted a breakfast for 50 leaders from various missions organizations where we presented the concept and the critical need for blending environmental missions into the “traditional” missions activities that these organizations are doing.

We also had many amazing opportunities to talk about what we are doing in Kenya and what we think needs to be done in both local and global missions, as well as being able advise many students how they can blend their love for God and His creation with their chosen profession of environmental care.

What we were able to do at Urbana 09 was all about laying a strong foundation for this “movement” called environmental missions and creation care. From here on out, our job (you and us as partners) is to continue to pray, continue to spread the word in our churches and continue to support this work.

And finally, we, at Care of Creation want to thank you for helping all of us at Care of Creation, Au Sable, Renewal and Eden Vigil reach students that are seriously thinking and praying about how they can blend their desire for caring for God’s creation with their desire to spread the gospel.

Here’s wishing you a blessed 2010.

For all of us in the Care of Creation family,

Fred Gluck

There are a couple of common threads that we have heard from each of the over 100 students we have talked to at our Urbana09 booth and the countless others that we have sat next to in the morning worship service, met in the lunch line or ridden with in the hotel elevator.

The common thread that these students have is that they are seeking how they can serve God with the resources (their lives, their money and their talent) that God has given them. They see injustice, human slavery, poverty and suffering caused by environmental issues, greed and other sins and, deep in their hearts, they want to do something about it.

For some of us, especially those of us who are approaching the later parts of our lives, we may see this kind of thinking as idealistic. We might remember when we were “that age” and thought, as these students do, that we could change the world.

The real truth is, that some of us did change the world because we chose to follow God’s leading in our lives. Just like these students, we asked ourselves the same question that they are asking. “What is God calling me to do?”

Urbana challenges the students who are here in a few important areas of their lives. First, there is the challenge of resources. They are challenged to use what they have to further the purposes of the kingdom. Second, they are challenged to use their gifts and talents. And finally, they are challenged to commit to take action.

For some of the students that accept these challenges, it means changing their plans. For some, it means the comfort of knowing that they are doing what God intends them to do. For some, Urbana is a wakeup call when they realize that following God’s will is a lot better than trying to follow their own imperfect wills.

Last night, I sat next to a couple in their late 20s who were both seniors in college (she was a music major with a concentration in piano performance and he was majoring in economics). As I do with just about everyone who I have run into here, I enjoy finding out why they took their time and money to come to St. Louis for a week.

As we were talking, they told me that they had met in high school, had gone to different colleges and were engaged to be married in June. Their wedding was all planned.

They decided to come to Urbana so that together, before they got married, could try and discern what God wanted them to do with their lives as a couple. We chatted about their decision, the heart changes that they had gone through in the past 4 years (“I used to be concerned about making a lot of money but now, I don’t think that that’s really important in God’s eyes. There are more important things than accumulating wealth”) and what their future plans were.

As I was walking back to my hotel after that conversation, I couldn’t help thinking about the wisdom of what this couple was doing and the small part that Care of Creation and you, who help us do what we do, are playing in helping them and others make decisions like the ones they are contemplating.

I’m going to go a bit further here and ask for your help. I realize that you have not met this couple (maybe you know someone who is at Urbana) but I am going to ask you to pray for them and the others who are, maybe, making the same kinds of decisions about their lives. When we do this, we are helping in a small way, to further God’s purpose in this world – the spread of the gospel and reconciliation of His people back to him. We are working to build shalom and put things back to the way that God intended them to be.

Maybe it’s not the “winter break” that you had planned but, hey, when did God stop acting in ways that we expect?

For the entire Care of Creation Family (some of us who are here at Urbana09 in St. Louis, Missouri, USA), thanks for joining together in this prayer.

God Bless!

Fred Gluck