A note to conference participants

Greetings, friends -- THANK YOU for your participation in last weekend's conference/retreat.  I am on vacation for a couple of days but will be back in the saddle later this week and will be rearranging the order of the already existing posts on this blog and also adding a lot more resources.  Come back and visit!  Peace be with you.  --Jane

YOWZA - Sorry. It is the eve of September 8. The college where I teach began classes in mid-August and I got lost in work - and in allergies and asthma. We will be up and running again, with new posts, later this week! Promise.

After which I will take down this little note.

Jane

People of Color Environmental Summits

Resource page on environmental racism and environmental justice

Principles of Environmental Justice from First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit (1991)

People of Color Environmental Justice Summit II resource page.

Includes (but is not limited to) the following links:

Environmental Justice timeline

Environmental Justice fact sheet

Executive summary, papers from Summit II

"We Are"

For each child that's born

a morning star rises

and sings to the universe

who we are

We are

our grandmothers' prayers

We are 

our grandfathers' dreaming

We are 

the breath of the ancestors

We are 

the Spirit of God

We are mothers of courage

and fathers of time

daughters of dust

sons of great visions ...

A song by Sweet Honey in the Rock

Listen here.

The Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature: Nature as Great Book

Nature can be read like a book.  The Bible is not the only sacred text available to us for gazing and pondering.

Someone has put up on the Web a compendium of quotations (by Christian authors but also by Muslim authors and authors from other religions and wisdom paths) about this ancient insight and related practices.  It is here.

A lovely, related resource is Robert M. Hamma's Earth's Echo: Sacred Encounters with Nature (Notre Dame, IN: Sorin Books, 2002).

Hamma suggests a practice akin to lectio divina to "read" nature. It involves paying attention, pondering, response, and surrender.

Hamma writes:

Paying attention is hard work; contemplative insight is not like an apple we can pluck from a tree. Adopting the right attitude is a necessary first step. That attitude is not one of goal setting but of patience. It is an attitude that simply being there is enough.

He continues:

Setting goals for maintaining heightened awareness or expecting insights to come can lead to disappointment when the inevitable distractions take over, or when we "get nothing out of it." It helps to know that we are not the first people to ever attempt this, and that there are paths that others have trod before us.

Hamma, Earth's Echo, p. 19

Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE)

The Forum on Religion and Ecology (FORE) is the largest international multireligious project of its kind. With its conferences, publications, and website it is engaged in exploring religious worldviews, texts, and ethics in order to broaden understanding of the complex nature of current environmental concerns.

The Forum recognizes that religions need to be in dialogue with other disciplines (e.g., science, ethics, economics, education, public policy, gender) in seeking comprehensive solutions to both global and local environmental problems.

-- from the description on the FORE website. 

This is "the" resource on religion and ecology.

Here is the video from which we watched a short clip; it features the founding directors of FORE, Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim.  It is also embedded on the home page of the FORE website.

"Renewal" documentary on faith communities and the environment

Click here for the "Renewal" website.   See the trailer, excerpts, information about the projects portrayed in the documentary, and more.  Great for your congregations and study groups! 

Mountaintop removal, a form of mining opposed by a coalition of Evangelical Christians in one of the eight stories in the documentary.

Photo credit: Vivian Stockman (2003) via Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, Huntington, WV.

You probably all know this, but just in case...

God of all power, Ruler of the Universe 
you are worthy of glory and praise.
   -Glory to you for ever and ever.
At your command all things came to be:
the vast expanse of interstellar space,
galaxies, suns, the planets in their courses,
and this fragile earth, our island home.
   -By your will they were created and have their being.
 
       Eucharistic Prayer C, Book of Common Prayer, p. 370


That's where our conference title comes from.