3.  It’s all about us and how we treat each other.

It was, frankly, surprising to note the number of times during this conference we were told that we should be – and most of the early leaders of this movement were – concerned about people as much as about nature.  Nelson himself was as much concerned with conservation of urban resources as with environmental resources.  Leopold’s “land ethic” was based on a concern not only for the health of the land but for the health of the people who live on it.

The wider environmental movement has had its radicals in the past – those who are quite convinced that human beings are not much more than a fungus running wild on the surface of the globe, and that most natural places would be better off without us.   The problem with this approach is that even these radicals are human beings themselves – and I don’t see anyone rushing to the front of the line to check out.

If the speakers at this conference are to be considered representative of the mainstream environmental movement – and I think this is a reasonable assumption – we would have to conclude that the movement as a whole not only recognizes a place for human beings in the world, but also sees the connections between environmental values and human values.   Doroceta Taylor reminded us that the long history of the oppression of minorities in the US is a history of environmental abuse of those peoples.  Even recent history like the building of interstate highways through our cities shows an uncomfortable pattern.  It was not white suburbs that were generally leveled for these new highways, but thriving minority communities.

Novelist Margaret Atwood addressed the question of ecojustice by asking for new language:  Using the term justice, she suggested, conjures up an image of judgment and law and a host of negative connotations.  Why not substitute ‘ecomercy’ for ‘ecojustice’?  Whoever is wrong – and all of us have plenty to be guilty about – perhaps we can start best by being merciful to each other.  If a wealthy person were to see reducing consumption as a conscious act of mercy toward those who have less and need more, might that not help a bit?

Conservation of natural resources and urban resources is one and the same.  Preservation of ecosystems and human societies cannot be separated.  These themes ran through almost all of the presentations of the conference, perhaps best summed up by the speaker who said, “The problem is us and how we treat each other.”

Surely the connection to Creation Care is clear?  The heart of a Christian approach to environmental problems is to recognize that ‘environmental problems are sin problems.’  The problem indeed is us – but the solution is God.  This more than anything else is what we can bring to this movement.

4. Even business agrees.

One of the most enduring fallacies surrounding today’s environmental crisis is that we have to choose between prosperity and environment.

“Green business is good business” was repeated over and over – by the business leaders among us.

We had a couple of top ones at this conference, the most prominent of which was Fisk Johnson of S.C. Johnson.  This premier consumer products company (Saran Wrap, anyone?) is a remarkable family company (Fisk represents the fifth generation) that takes environment seriously.  They cut CFC’s from their products three years before the government made everyone else do it and have pioneered a “Green List” of environmentally friendly chemicals that has some of their competition a bit upset with them.  “You’re going to change the whole industry!”  “You bet.”

But Johnson sounded almost sounded plaintive in expressing his frustration at making changes at the consumer level:  Even if a company is committed to doing the right thing, it isn’t so easy when consumers won’t go along.  By way of example, he tossed several rolls of toilet paper into the audience.  Paper made with recycled fibers is better for the environment but paper made with new fibers is softer – much softer.  Guess which one we consumers prefer to buy.  “What price softness” was his question.

Johnson’s best line:  “We need to change the social norm from keeping up with the Joneses to being greener than the Joneses.”

Robert Kennedy Jr. reminded us that those countries who have moved to ‘decarbonize their economies’ by moving away from fossil fuels as much as possible are among the most prosperous economies in the world today.  This very short list includes Norway, Sweden, Germany and Iceland.

How does the Creation Care movement interact with the world of business?  Business people go to church.  Or they would do if the church is doing its job of reaching into its communities.  If churches are committed to and are preaching love for God’s creation, this ethic and passion will penetrate the boardroom and will show up on the factory floor.

We started this series with an analogy.  We’re all citizens of a town about to be engulfed in flood waters.  We need to work with each other to save our homes.  It doesn’t matter what our faith-affiliation is when sandbags are waiting.  Applying this to the environmental crisis, we who are Christians have a perspective on the problem and a toolkit that is not available to the rest of our community and we need to use these in two directions:  We need to persuade our fellow Christians that the crisis is real and that our town needs us – many of them are still asleep in their beds even as the water rises.  And we need to reach out to the larger environmental movement to let them know that we’re here and we’re ready to work.

So let’s get going!

This is part 2 of a three part report on a major Earth Day conference held in Madison WI on April 20-21, 2010.  I am using that conference as  an eavesdropping opportunity:  What is the larger environmental movement discussing today?  Rather than go talk-by-talk, I’ve pulled out four major themes from my pages of notes.  Here are the first two:

[Bios from the speakers referred to below are available here.]

1.  Think local. Act global.

Yes, it’s the familiar bumper sticker saying turned on its head.   An estimated 10 million people celebrated the first Earth Day but this was not an organized campaign.  There was no internet to coordinate events.  There was a small office in Washington DC with a miniscule budget – but the 1500 colleges and 10,000 plus schools essentially organized themselves.

It is true that many of the important accomplishments of Earth Day in the next 10 years – legislation for clean air, clean water, protection of endangered species – came from Washington.   However, the genius of Earth Day appears to be that it tapped grass roots power to move Washington, rather than the other way around.   But the drive to pass legislation came from local people wanting to protect their own places.  Moving a legislative agenda was not the primary motive of the early Earth Day organizers, and more than one speaker reminded us that no one would have been more surprised that Earth Day was still being celebrated 40 years later than Gaylord Nelson himself.

One of the perhaps unexpected effects of this decentralized movement was what Adam Rome, environmental historian from Penn State, called “superb leadership training.”  Thousands of mostly young people had to figure out on their own what to do in their own communities – and the result was not only a tremendously successful national event but also the creation of what Rome calls ‘the first green generation.’

The lesson for the Creation Care movement?  Our success will not come from large events in Washington or even world-wide internet events.  These might be useful as occasional as markers of progress, but the gold is in a thousand congregations and ten thousand youth groups.  When these are converted, the world will follow.

2.  Place matters.

Introducing this conference report I noted that a surprising number of environmental heroes come from Wisconsin.  This is not just local propaganda:  Gaylord Nelson was standing on the shoulders of John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, and Aldo Leopold, author of Sand County Almanac and the concept of the “land ethic” which became our modern sustainability movement.  Dr. William Cronan reminded us that Nelson also followed Frederick Jackson Turner whose work helped to articulate the importance of the frontier in American history and culture.  Lesser known heroes were  Increase Lapham who warned in the 1830’s of the dangers of deforestation of the great forests of northern Wisconsin, E. A. Birge, who established the science of limnology (the study of lakes), and Frank Lloyd Wright, who was a ‘prophet of organic building and architecture.’  All of these are sons of Wisconsin.

More important than the names is a question that has challenged me since I moved to this state:  Why Wisconsin?  Is there something in the water?

We seem to have three things in Wisconsin that others don’t have:

First, in our “middling landscape” urban, suburban, rural and wilderness are not far from each other.  It is possible even in modern Wisconsin to experience all four of these in a single day.  We live with daily knowledge of the effects of the ice age – the ‘Wisconsin glaciation’ explains every bump in our landscape.   Those who live here, and especially those who grow up here, can’t help but develop a sense of the presence and importance of the countryside.

Second, we have an unusual university.  Unlike many other states where a liberal arts university sits separate from a practical Land Grant college, here the two became one.  The classic liberal arts were taught alongside the new and practical fields of agronomy, forestry and engineering.  This may seem like an obscure connection that only an academic would make – but there are practical implications:  Our resource people and our poets were working together, and that proximity tempered both groups.

And third, we have the “Wisconsin Idea” which states that the university exists to benefit every home in the state.  “The boundaries of the campus are the boundaries of the state.” This mission drove the university to seek to understand and develop  Wisconsin’s natural resources as belonging to the entire population,  and not merely to captains of industry who just happened to arrive before anyone else.

What this boils down to is what is called a strong sense of place.  People here knew and cared about the landscape where they lived.  They learned about and developed an appreciation for the natural world around them.  Environmental concerns grew naturally from that soil.

As Creation Care proponents, this principle like the last points us to the importance of the local even when we need to reach globally.  People will care for what they love, and they will love what they know.  Encouraging local church leaders to get to know their own places so they can communicate that love to their communities is the place to start.

[To be continued...]

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Dear Friends,

Of all the common Christmas carols echoing in shopping malls, elevators and on the radio – not to mention in churches and on our music players – surely the most interesting and subversive is “Joy to the World.”

You’re not in the habit of thinking of Christmas carols as subversive?  Take another look at this carol:

Joy to the World , the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven and nature sing,
And Heaven, and Heaven, and nature sing.

Joy to the World, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow,
Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow
Far as the curse is found,
Far as the curse is found,
Far as, far as, the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace,
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders of His love,
And wonders, wonders, of His love.

Have you noticed that this carol is not about Christmas at all?  We are not singing here about what is commonly called Christ’s first advent – angels, shepherds, manger, magi.  No, this song is a look into the future – when Jesus returns to establish his kingdom of righteousness and justice on the earth.  Far from being sweetness and light and romance, this is a song of triumph and of victory over evil.  Its message should make the powers that rule this world quake with fear!  And – not coincidentally –  it is perhaps one of the best expositions of a major theme in my own teaching, that redemption is more than salvation!  “Heaven and nature” are singing.  “Fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains” are echoing the sound.  Thorns will no longer “infest the ground”.  He – Jesus – will be present and will “rule the world with truth and grace”.  All of this is profoundly biblical (check out Romans 8:21, Psalm 148 to start with).

So why do we sing this at Christmas?  Because Christmas is only one chapter in the long story of God’s work in human history. The first Advent and the second Advent are two parts of one great plan.  As beautiful and romantic as the Christmas story is, it only becomes meaningful when we see the connections.  The baby is Savior.  The Savior is King.  The King is coming to restore his Kingdom.  And we, his subjects, demonstrate that by preparing for his coming by allowing him to rule our lives now.

We give meaning to Christmas and we prepare for the coming of our King by bringing his rule into our present in anticipation of this great future.  We learn to love the King and to accept his love.  We allow his Spirit to work in our lives to be more like him.  We practice our love for him by loving each other in family and in community and reflecting that love to all those in need around us.  We learn to live in God’s creation in a way that the “rocks, hills and plains” will rejoice and “heaven and nature” will sing, not just because King is coming, but because we, his people are already here, preparing the way for Him!

That, in a nutshell, is why this interesting and subversive Christmas carol is and should remain part of the standard list of carols we sing.

It’s also why we do what we do with Care of Creation!

And we thank you for your interest, partnership in and support of our life and ministry.  It is now almost 5 years since we sent out our “Sometimes you have to leap, and build your wings on the way down” letter marking the beginning of this adventure.  We now see a genuine movement beginning in the evangelical community – in the US and abroad – and we find ourselves right in the middle of it:

• Urbana09 – in St Louis right after Christmas –will feature an evening focusing on environment as an issue and no less than 9 seminars (workshops) on creation care, half of which will be taught by Care of Creation staff or our close ministry partners, Renewal and Eden Vigil.
• A new Zondervan book release – Zealous Love – features a chapter by me and Susanna on our call to the ministry of creation care, and Our Father’s World continues to sell moderately well.
• We are involved directly or in partnership with the Creation Care Consultation, a fellowship of like-minded organizations; with the National Association of Evangelicals, the Evangelical Environmental Network, the Evangelical Press Association, the US Committee of the Micah Challenge, and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES).
• Our recent experience of bringing the Our Father’s World seminar to the Philippines and Japan is opening doors to many other countries.  It is our goal, everywhere we go, to seek to lay the foundation for a self-sustaining, biblical creation care movement.  This is already happening in the Philippines.

[But we’re still building the wings to sustain all of this.  Our current financial situation is precarious – personally and organizationally.  We anticipate losing our largest supporting church in February due to their own budget difficulties.  We need you!  Thanks for taking a look at the enclosed response form…]

Family wise, it’s been a good year.  We had the whole family together in June for a few brief days at a cousin’s wedding.  Tim even came from the Dominican Republic, where he is well into his second year with the Peace Corps, along with his lovely girlfriend Kim Dykwell.  He will end that service in May, and has been heavily engaged in submitting graduate school applications.  Other members of the family will also be transitioning in the coming year: Katrina graduates from University of Wisconsin in May, is also looking at grad schools and would like to do her Masters degree in China.  Amy will graduate from the University of Minnesota the same weekend and is still deciding what God has in store for her next year. She’s loved being a Nanny this year.  Melanie changed her position at Cornerstone Christian Academy in Philadelphia where she’s been for a number of years.  She’s now working in Administration, which she seems to be enjoying, and has been active with some significant leadership positions in her church.

And the parents are hanging on to the empty nest with glee.  (Most of the bedrooms have been repurposed so it stays that way.)  Susanna came through knee replacement surgery in April better than expected, and is now more mobile than in many years.  With improved health she has steadily added activities, including a bible study for three young(er) women, and involvement with some of the needy people on our street.  And I (Ed) keep on keeping on, grateful for good friends, health and strength sufficient (usually) for the demands of the day.

Thank you again for your love, prayers, and partnership.  We appreciate every one of you.

Ed and Susanna Brown

I was on my way back from a week of meetings in Plainview, Texas.  Now, I realize that bringing an environmental seminar to the high plains of east Texas is not the normal thing to do.  People there are warm, friendly – but pretty convinced that “environment” means “liberal” and “government” and that sort of thing, and they’re not interested.  But things are changing.  For one thing, these folks are running out of water, and they know it.  The roadside is marked by abandoned pivot-wells.   Fields have been converted to dry-land farmi ng or back to grassland.

Plainview can claim a couple of points of distinction: It’s the home of Wayland Baptist University, my host for the week (and a very welcoming host, I should add!), and one of the largest Baptist educational institution in the country.  It is also the county seat for Hale County, which I was told is this year ranked #1 among all United States counties in agricultural production – this would include cotton, of course, but also milo (sorghum), corn and cattle.  Industrial food giant Cargill runs a number of feedlots and at least one meat-packing plant in the county.  [They used to be a source of peanut butter, too - until the salmonella scandal of last spring closed down the plant there.]

I admit it – having had the opportunity to hear Michael Pollan speak at the University of Wisconsin just before this trip, I was kind of preoccupied with the topic of industrial agriculture and industrial food anyway.  So when my seat partner told me that he works with a manufacturing company in Lodi, Wisconsin, that produces industrial food processing and food packaging machines, I really couldn’t help myself.  “I’m trying to put you out of business.”

That kind of intrigued him, I think.  “What do you mean?  What do you do?”  So I started to tell him about Care of Creation, my concern for local, healthy food and so on.

About this point in the conversation we were joined by a third guy who sat in the seat in between us.  “What takes you to Madison?”  “I work with Tyson Foods.”

So I had another victim, and the conversation continued -

And then the surprising punchline.  Both of my partners said the same thing: “Farmer’s market?  Buying local?  But that’s how we eat!”

So I guess I have good news:  The industrial food system is collapsing from within!

When even its sales force, those who should believe in it most – are abandoning their own products in favor of healthy, nutritious food grown and sold in their own communities – there is hope.

from Flickr (CC License)

Human population growth – it’s one of the most controversial and difficult aspects of our environmental crisis.  In all likelihood, it is controversial because it’s difficult:  Human beings are precious, especially if you hold to the Biblical teaching that humans are ‘created in the image of God‘ – but even if you don’t have that perspective.  Really, which of us, no matter what our religious (or non-) persuasion, would put a pet or a backyard squirrel on the same plane as one of our children or grand-children?

The difficulty lies here:  If every human being is precious, how can there be too many of us?  How can there be too much ‘preciousness’?  But it is clearly possible to have too many people in one place at one time.  Ever read a news story about an overloaded ferry boat?  How about the woman in California who recently gave birth to octuplets, though she was unmarried, without financial support and already had six children?  This is the population problem in miniature:  God in his wisdom placed us on a globe that, by definition, only has so much space, so much water, so much oil, so much whatever…  And whether you believe the maximum population level is four billion, six billion, or 50 billion, there is a limit?  I personally believe we passed the ideal limit sometime in the last couple of decades – but that’s purely an academic point.  Once the people are here, the challenge is…

Well, the challenge is and always has been this:  How to keep within the natural limits imposed on us by the size of our planet while still affirming basic human rights and dignities?  I have been teaching in my Our Father’s World Seminars for several years now that a)coercive government actions do not work but b)policies that provide health, education and empowerment for women do work, and so I was pleased to find my position affirmed by a recent story from the Times of India.

The story itself is an acknowledgment that for the most part population control policies in India have been an abysmal failure – but in that description of gloom and doom the journalist finds one very bright spot in the southern state of Kerala:

In 1979, China’s total fertility rate was 2.8, while Kerala’s was 3. By 2007, 28 years after it forced a coercive one-child policy on its people, China’s fertility rate stood at 1.7. Kerala reached the same figure but without treating its people like laboratory rats. Its success stands on the three ‘E’ pillars: Education, Employment, Equality. On the ground, Kerala’s three Es translate into a high literacy rate, regular income for families and more confident women.

For reference, a population rate of 1.7 is overdoing it slightly – the normally accepted ‘replacement’ fertility rate is 2.1 children per woman.  (It might also be worth noting – though I cannot claim to have investigated or confirm the connection – that Kerala is home to many of the Christians who live in India.)

What is the lesson here?  Quite simply, it is possible to achieve population balance (and environmental balance in other ways) and still treat people with love and dignity. One of my proverbs runs like this:  “If it’s good for the environment, it will be good for community (and for people); and if its good for community (and for people), it’s probably good for the environment.”

This is the kind of environmental ethic we need to strive for – and it is the reason I teach and promote Christian environmental stewardship:  I frankly don’t believe we can find the balance between people and God’s creation anywhere else.

Your thoughts?

I ‘ve had several opportunities this summer to enjoy some quiet moments on porches.  Not too long ago, I sampled my brother – -in-law’s porch in Bethesda, Maryland, not far from Washington DC.  The day was just right – not too hot, not cold, not very humid.  The porch furniture was just right – lovely couches that allowed me to sit up or lie back,  tall glass of sweet-tea close to the elbow.  The surround-sound soundtrack gave me birds, lawnmowers, airplanes, and an occasional car wandering down the street on the outdoor channel, while the murmur of voices reminded me of family members busy at various tasks inside the house.  Light patterns shifted with alternating clouds and sun, punctuated by an occasional summer rain shower that left almost as soon as it came.

It was a perfect place and a perfect time for reading – and I made the most of it.

This experience started me thinking about porches.  What a wonderful feature in a house – not terribly expensive, I don’t think – and I am wondering why most ‘modern’ homes have given up this bridge between house and street, between home and neighborhood, between family and friends.   You see, a porch is different from a deck.  The porch is usually on the front of the house, rather than the back.  Having the roof extended over it, the porch is part of the house, while your normal deck is part of the yard.  As such – as a part of the house that is open to the world, the porch has a unique role to play.  The porch offers a secure perch from which to view – and experience – the world.  You can taste the weather, without getting wet in the rain.  You can hear the birds.  You can enjoy the sunshine, sitting in the shade of the roof.  You can be touched by nature – no, not in the sense of being immersed in it on a canoe trip to a wilderness area, but by having your senses exposed to God’s world even as you go about your ordinary human activities – reading, enjoying that glass of sweet-tea, thinking about life.  And seen from the street, a porch is a welcoming platform – a place to which you can come and be sheltered from the elements while you make your presence known to the family inside.

The porch is for me a symbol of what we need to do to bring human activity and culture back into contact with God’s creation.  You don’t give up anything to have a porch except for a few dollars extra when the house was built – but look at what you gain.  All the sounds, smells and experiences of nature mingled with the comfort and security of ‘civilisation’.  Looking at the porch as a symbol, there are other examples in our world:  A paved bike trail is an example of a “porch”:  It offers secure, healthy, rapid transport but it’s close to nature.  A couple of days ago I took one of our local bike trails out into the countryside – a five mile ride that took me through a couple of wetlands, past numerous cornfields, under a major highway (twice), through a two mile long tunnel of trees and past a small downtown commercial area.  Just like the porch, the bike trail gave me both nature and civilisation.  The construction of the trail would have done some damage to creation, but little compared to the nearby highway.  Using it does nothing to harm the environment and actually does a great deal to bring health to my somewhat overweight and under-utilized body.  A farmer’s market is another example.  A concert in the park.  A restaurant that serves tables outdoors (‘al fresco’).

So… let’s build more porches – and then grab that glass of iced tea, and go read a book!

I grew up in the country of Pakistan, with goats as a normal part of life.  No, we never had our own, but neighbors did.  Flocks of goats wandering the fields, eating anything they could get their teeth on to, were just part of the landscape.

And now we have Google, arguably the poster child for modern corporate technology, using… goats… to maintain part of the landscape at Google’s corporate headquarters in Mountainview, CA.

This has generated some predictable discussion on the blogs:  Is it good? bad? Indifferent?  One of my favorite researchers on topics like this is Umbra over at Grist.org.  She weighs in the important goat question this week:

You tell me: would you rather look out your office window at a riding lawn mower or at a herd of goats? And which would you rather hear as you lounge over breakfast on Saturday, baaaaa or rrrrummmmrrr? Not that visual and aural preference should dictate environmental actions.  There are other good reasons to use goats for mowing.

It appears that on almost every count, goats win.  Umbra even offers us an opportunity to rent goats for ourselves if the mowing is just too much to keep up with.

All of this contrasts strangely with a sign I saw on the campus of the world headquarters of another corporation in my own home town just today.  “This nature reserve is set aside for our employees, family members and guests.  No pets allowed.”

Hmmm – a nature reserve, but no pets allowed?  Seems like someone needs to update our dictionary definition of ‘nature’…

Springtime flowers (Flickr - Creative Commons License)

These thoughts were originally written for a church devotional for Park Street Church in Boston, and comprised the main text of my newsletter to Care of Creation ministry partners last week.  They seemed worth preserving here as well.

“I am making everything new!” Rev. 21:5

It is not a coincidence that Easter occurs in the springtime.

Spring is exciting, especially for those of us who live in the frozen north, as we do in Wisconsin. Returning to our house recently, my wife and I pause and glance over our flower beds as we do often at this time of year. This time she gives a little cry of joy: Hidden beneath dead leaves and other leftovers from winter isa spot of green. As we bend to look, we see another and then another: the first signs of resurrection. Frozen in below-zero soil just a few weeks ago, the flowers are coming back to life.

As we look around what is still a pretty dismal landscape, we realize that these tiny dabs of green are not the only sign of hope. We look carefully at the branches of the lilac bush in the corner. Sure enough – it has buds. We realize that the strange sound we hear is birds chirping in bare branches, as if like Aslan they can sing the leaves back onto the trees. The miracle of springtime is unfolding all around us. No matter how cold and endless the winter has seemed, and no matter how weak our faith, spring always comes. It comes with an explosion of new life, with fresh light, with vibrant new colors, with sounds of birds and water and melting snow. It is the sights and sounds of life overwhelming death. The outcome may have seemed in doubt a short time ago, but today the end is clear: Winter’s defeat is inevitable. Spring is going to win.

After a long Wisconsin winter, that fact by itself would be enough for me. But there is more. I remember the words of St. Paul in Colossians 1: “All things were made by Him, and for Him…and in Him all things hold together,” When I look at a new leaf unfolding from a bud, or watch a bird scratching for food I realize that I am seeing God create life once again. The power of Jesus himself is unfurling that leaf, and his joy reverberates in the bird’s happy chirps. I know that as I ponder the mysteries of a leaf’s tiny veins I am studying God’s word – his revelation of himself in Creation – just as surely as if I were reading John 3:16 in the original Greek.

And there’s even more. For as winter seems to assault and defeat the forces of life, God’s creation is under assault in our world today. On every side, from toxins in the water to destruction of God’s great forests to the melting of glaciers that have lasted for thousands of years, it feels as if winter is upon us. It is a winter of sin, selfishness, greed, cruelty – and the snow is deep and the winds are bitter. But there is hope! Winter can’t hold back spring, and the forces of evil that would destroy God’s good creation cannot hold back God’s ultimate purpose of restoration and redemption.

Why? Because God himself is the one doing this. And he is doing it by the same power that raised Jesus from the dead, the power that brought us our salvation. Why else would these words be found in the middle of Romans chapter 8, that great passage about redemption? “…the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.” Things may look grim from time to time – as when one more late spring snowstorm comes barreling out of the plains onto my poor flowerbeds. But when spring comes, it always feels as if it was inevitable. Because it was.

At Care of Creation this is our reason for hope. And we hope you share it with us, and will work with us to prepare for spring. It – and He – is coming!

But this encounter was somewhat unusual and possibly quite special. The scene played out at Kansas State University, in the midst of an academic symposium on sustainability issues in Africa. I was one of the participants in the conversation, and had, the day before, presented a talk on ‘mobilizing the African church to respond to the African environmental crisis.’ The other speaker was a representative of a prominent and important botanical garden, and had just presented what I considered the best talk of the conference on dealing with biodiversity loss in Madagascar.

As it happens, Madagascar is one of the richest – and one of the poorest – countries in the world. Rich in plants, animals and insects that are found no where else. [Your favorite zoo animal, the Lemur, is found only on Madagascar, for example.] 90% of the animals there are ‘endemic’ – they occur only on this one, large island. But Madagascar is poor – the people who live among this rich abundance are among the poorest in the world. And both groups – the plants and the people – are under great pressure. Plants and animals are going extinct. People are going hungry. Which one do we help?

We two agreed – we have to help both or we will end up helping neither. My talk – mobilizing the church – meshed perfectly with my friend’s approach to his work: “People are a large part of the problem, but people have to be part of the solution as well…” and we went on to discuss possible ways that we might be able work together to achieve a goal we both want: A solution to the pressures that are squeezing the flora and fauna and the people of Madagascar.

So what was unusual or remarkable about this conversation? Well, I’m a preacher – a confirmed evangelical Christian. The whole conference knew that because of my talk the day before. And he is a scientist, specifically a botanist, and a “devout atheist” (his words). He has no belief in God but he has a passion for the plants of Madagascar and a very real concern for the people who live there. We come from such different worlds that many people – from each of our worlds – would have wondered what we even had to talk about, let alone how we could discuss the potential of working together.

Two worlds – science and faith – met today, shook hands, and agreed that we can help each other.

That is no small thing.

[to be continued, I'm sure...]

Cross-posted at Sustain Lane.

"Modern Loneliness" - from Flickr (Le Pere, Creative Commons License)

Listening to To the Best of our Knowledge on NPR this morning, that phrase jumped out at me.  The topic for the morning was loneliness and solitude, and for the most part, the comments were interesting if predictable.  Yes, our culture has made us lonelier than we’ve been in the past.  No, there is no difference between men and women – both genders are equally lonely, though (again, predictably) men tend to be less likely to admit to loneliness.But the statistic from New York City really struck me:  50% of us (in that city anyway) live alone.  This is a terrible statement about the condition of community, but it is also points up a significant environmental concern.  Think about it:  The environmental impact of a city apartment is almost the same whether it is being used by one person or four.  With the possible exception of water, the cost of lighting, heating is exactly the same.  The person living by herself places four times the burden on the planet as another who has three roommates (or family members).

One of the principles I have developed over the years is this:  If it’s good for community, it’s probably good for creation.  And if it’s good for creation, it’s probably good for community. Both the fault and the solution can go in either direction.  Our retreat from nature and from each other into a busy, noisy, confusing world has made us lonely and has been devastating for our experience of community.  And our return to a more creation-friendly lifestyle, whether we pursue it because we want community or because we want to be kind to the planet, will be helpful to both.

So – live lightly on the planet:  Get a roommate!