Climate Change Event at Mercy Center

Faith Communities Engage with Global Warmning

Wednesday May 9, 7-9 pm

Free program

Mercy Center* in Madison, Connecticut
Contact 203.245.0401 or betty@mercybythesea.org. to register [see http://www.mercybythesea.org/ for directions]*

[unfortunately for some with mobility challenges, the only space avialablethat evening is upstairs]

Join us to share resources and to learn what various faith communitiesand organizations are doing to learn about and take action on globalwarming. Following shared reflection and viewing of the interfaith video, "God's Creation and Global Warming", participants will share experiences and resources. We will explore ways to help congregations engage with issues ina faith context, and seek ways to move beyond resistance and obstacles toidentify significant actions they can take right now that can lead to a moresustainable future for the whole community of life. Please bring handouts and resources to share. Refreshments will be served.

Jeanie Graustein, the Environmental Justice Ministry Coordinator for theOffice of Urban Affairs of the Archdiocese of Hartford, will facilitate thediscussion. There will also be input and resources from Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener, of Congregation Pnai Or, Director of the Interreligious Eco-JusticeNetwork of CT, who is unable to attend, but who has worked with numerous congregations taking action on energy efficiency. Mercy Center is a spiritual retreat and conference center for human development.

Mercy Center offers a hospitality that reveres the valueand uniqueness of each person, and hosts and develops programs thatenhance the quality of life in a changing world. For more information,contact Mercy Center Guest Services at 203.245.0401

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Eco-Awareness at Passover

According to an article in the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, the Jewish Community Federation of Rochester is promoting eco-awareness for Passover.

During B.J. Yudelson's family Passover celebration tonight, someone at the table will ask why the Jewish people dip green herbs in salt water.Yudelson, in conjunction with an initiative of the Jewish Community Federation of Greater Rochester, plans to expand on this question, one of the traditional four considered at Passover. As the family talks about how salt water represents the tears of the Jewish slaves, Yudelson will ask her five grandchildren, "Is our Earth crying?"
This Passover, which begins today and will continue through April 10, the Jewish Community Federation of Greater Rochester is asking its members to consider the Jewish mission of "tikkun olam," which means "repair of the world."
The federation sent out a pamphlet printed on recycled paper to almost 6,000 people, offering suggestions for four other questions to be asked at this year's Seder: How can we make this Passover different from all others? Why is the environment a Jewish concern? If the Earth, ha'aretz, could speak at this year's Seder, what would it say? Can our family really make a difference?


IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Florida Faithful Fight Climate Change

An infamous graphic in the Climate Change documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" illustrates how rising global temperatures could put much of Florida under water. According to this article in the South Florida Sun Sentinel, a number of Florida religious communities are trying to prevent that from happening.

Evangelical Christians, Jews, Catholics, Muslims, Unitarians: All are committing time and effort to transforming their buildings and their congregants' mindsets.

David Clark, president of Palm Beach Atlantic University, a Christian college in West Palm Beach, describes himself as a political conservative who believes God created the Earth. But he has become so convinced that the Earth is being destroyed, a year ago he joined 84 other Christian leaders in signing the Evangelical Climate Initiative, which called for federal legislation to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."I didn't want to identify with a group that's way out there," said Clark, who has begun installing energy-efficient lighting and air-conditioning regulators throughout the campus. "I'm not a tree-hugger. But the evidence is overwhelming."

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

UK Jewish Community Launches Environmental Movement

Today's European Jewish Press reported that

The Board of Deputies of British Jews together with the Noah Project have launched a new green initiative with the support of the Environment minister. The Big Green Jewish website was launched at a ceremony, timed to coincide with Tu B’Shevat or Jewish Arbor Day, in London by David Miliband MP, Secretary of State for the Environment.
The Noah Project is the UK’s only Jewish ecological group, established to promote education, celebration and action for the environment within the Jewish community. Designed to promote environmentalism through an engagement with biblical, rabbinic and contemporary Jewish sources, offers a rich resource of inspirational and practical information. Its user-friendly and interactive format offers examples of good practice by individuals, synagogues, organisations, schools and businesses. Commenting on the project Miliband said: “It is a great pleasure to be associated with the launch of this innovative and useful initiative. Climate change is one of the biggest crises we are facing. The Big Green Jewish Website is a prime example of the valuable role that faith communities and their rich traditions can play in tackling this challenge.”

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Green Faith: Good News on the Environment

Roger Gottlieb, last year's keynote speaker at our annual Sacred Trust Forum, has a long, thoughtful, and fact-filled commentary about the intersection of faith and the environment on emagazine.com. Here is an excerpt:

For many, the importance of religious environmentalism goes beyond local church members joining the Sierra Club or starting a recycling center. Ecotheologians argue that a religious vision brings something distinct and very valuable to the secular environmental movement. For one thing, when secular environmentalists rail at out-of-control unsus-tainable consumerism they often come off sounding like shrill spoilsports. “Buy less,” may be a good idea, but it is not, in and of itself, all that appealing. Religious leaders can point to the simple (and comparatively non-polluting) pleasures of religious community as alternatives to consumerism. The joys of Sabbath rest, or the emotional comfort of a familiar congregation, provide replacements for the mall and Amazon.com. Of course one need not be religious to appreciate the nurturing aspects of community and rest. Yet these values are perhaps most familiar to us as presented by a culture of religion which, as writer Bill McKibben puts it, offers something other than accumulation as the highest goal of life.

There is also a deep seriousness in religious language, a seriousness which, for many environmentalists, speaks to the depth of the environmental crisis at hand. When we learn, for instance, that the placental blood of newborns contains 287 toxic chemicals, many are not comfortable just saying that this is unhealthy, inconvenient or a damn shame. The violation of what should be a human being’s safest place calls forth a more powerful, more visceral, response. In this context most people find a language of rights inadequate, and one of “consumer preferences” patently absurd. And thus there is something appealing, even to many secular people, when Bartholomew, head of the 300 million strong Eastern Orthodox Church, states flatly that “To pollute the environment is a sin.”

IREJN is Connecticut's Interfaith Power and Light. Visit us at www.irejn.org.

Canadian Jewish Community Revives Environmental Stewardship

A recent symposium for members of the Jewish community held in Halifax featured keynote speaker Richard Zurawski, a meteorologist and scientist; Stephen King, Halifax’s head of resource management; Daisy Kidston, education programmer with Clean Nova Scotia; and Cantor Ari Isenberg of Halifax’s Shaar Shalom Synagogue to speak on global warming issues, according to an article in the Canadian Jewish News.

Isenberg stressed that Jews must revert back to the respect for the environment noted in several parts of the Torah and practised during the harvest festivals of Sukkot, Shavuot and Pesach.
He said the celebration of Tu b’Shvat, the new year of the trees and agriculture, reminds Jews of the spiritual lesson of the tree – that it’s not merely a plant that produces fruit and shade, but a symbol of life and an upright person.
“Tu b’Shvat reminds us of our responsibility [to the environment], but we have drifted and become abusive to it,” he said.

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