Climate Change – Page 3 – Feminism and Religion

Coronavirus: The Villain Is Not Mother Nature: It Is Ourselves by Carol P. Christ

Over the past few weeks of lockdown in Greece, I have asked myself numerous times: if we can shut down the world economy because of a virus, why don’t we shut everything down until we end war or find real solutions to global climate change? In my mind the horrors of war are much worse than the horrors of disease and dying and the threat and reality of global extinctions pose a much greater threat to humanity (not to mention nature) than the Coronavirus.

Why is it that we are willing to take extreme measures to defeat the Coronavirus but we are not willing to take extreme measures to end war or to stop global climate change? A thought keeps creeping into the back of my mind: the fight against disease and death is (understood to be) a fight against Mother Nature and (sadly) we are well used to fighting against Her. If we recognized that human beings have brought the Coronavirus upon ourselves, we would have to face up to our responsibility for it. Continue reading “Coronavirus: The Villain Is Not Mother Nature: It Is Ourselves by Carol P. Christ”

The Truth Revealed by Coronavirus – It’s All Connected by Judith Shaw

Coronavirus is revealing many truths to this world – a world grounded in the patriarchal consciousness of domination and separation for millennia. Though still on the fringes of social awareness, the ancient wisdom of community and connection remains alive and growing.

Continue reading “The Truth Revealed by Coronavirus – It’s All Connected by Judith Shaw”

When Every Day Will Be Tu B’Shevat by Ivy Helman.

ivy tree hugging Tomorrow is Tu B’Shevat, the New Year of the Trees, or their birthday. It is the day of the year when all trees, regardless of when they have been planted, turn another year older. The rabbis standardized this day in an effort to minimize complexities, since in the land of Israel, fruit can only be eaten from trees that are four or older (Leviticus 23-25). Tu B’Shevat, then, on a practical level, marks how old fruit bearing trees are.

The holiday has evolved since then. In the 16th century, Kabbalistic mystics developed a seder to celebrate the holiday, which involved eating certain fruits, drinking both red and white wine, saying blessings, and reading certain mystical texts. Each type of fruit one eats has a specific mystical meaning whether the fruit is completely edible (i.e. apple), has an inedible pit (i.e. olive), has an inedible shell (i.e. pistachio) or has a covering one generally wouldn’t eat, but could (i.e. orange). To this day, many congregations observe the holiday by hosting their own Tu B’Shevat seders often ripe with such kabbalistic overtones. Continue reading “When Every Day Will Be Tu B’Shevat by Ivy Helman.”

A Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul by Mary Jane Miller

On Holy Ground is a collection of icons for this age of climate change. The collection of iconography opens with an image of Mary of Swords inspired by the number seven. This sacred number is associated with intuition, mysticism, inner wisdom, and a deep inward knowing. The ancient church speaks of seven deadly sins and seven holy attributes, and seven sacraments. The composition places the planet Earth beside Mary as she bows her head having been told, “ a sword will pierce Your own Soul ”

Mary of Sorrows or in this case, Mary the softener of Evil Hearts tilts her head lovingly towards our planet Earth. Seven swords pierce her heart; indicating the fullness and boundless sorrow, pain and “sickness of heart” that would have been experienced by Mary the Mother of Jesus at His crucifixion.

Muslims pilgrims circle the Kaaba in Mecca sevens times, and Egyptians had seven gods.

Continue reading “A Sword Will Pierce Your Own Soul by Mary Jane Miller”

Joy to the World, the CEO Is Come; Let Earth Receive Its President by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee

Ah, Christmas. So nostalgic. So sentimental. Fat, fluffy sheep. Singing angels. The ‘little Lord Jesus,’ asleep on the hay. Happy sigh.

Except… well, except that no matter the candlelit warm glow, the truth is that the communities who wrote the birth narratives about Jesus of Nazareth never intended them to be sentimental at all. They were meant to point toward his prophetic ministry of anti-imperialism and justice for oppressed and impoverished communities, a ministry that ended in torture and execution – and yet nonetheless insisted upon the resilience of hope, peace, even joy in the midst of gruesome, relentless violence. So… what happened? What… weakened Christmas?

I’ve been mulling this idea over many an Advent. Of course, when the Roman Empire tried to neutralize the Christian movement, adopting it as the Imperial Religion and making it over in its own image, the radical and transformative message was forced to move underground and to the margins. We all sort of understand how political power manipulates religious and secular ideologies for its own oppressive purposes, throughout human history and today. Continue reading “Joy to the World, the CEO Is Come; Let Earth Receive Its President by Tallessyn Zawn Grenfell-Lee”

Teaching After the Getty Fire by Sara Frykenberg

This is the third year in a row that I will be writing about wildfires in California and their impact on me and my community.

This year, I don’t have any poetry.
This year, I’m not afraid.
This year, I’m angry. I am very angry. And again, I am awash in the (not so?) mundane concerns that surface in the wake of devastation. I am continually struck by this: the strangeness of the everyday next to the blackened hillside, the restricted access, and soot covered floors—the persistence and tremendous regularity, even normality of the everyday. Continue reading “Teaching After the Getty Fire by Sara Frykenberg”

Ant Hill by Sara Wright

Yesterday I gave a poetry reading at a local library beginning and ending with thoughts about how Climate Change is affecting all living things. I am a naturalist who holds the radical belief that all living things are sentient. I also argue that we must not equate animal intelligence with that of humans.

Almost every poem I read was about my intimate relationship with some aspect of the natural world, for example, the changing seasons, my friendship with sagebrush lizards, steadfast trees, Sandhill cranes, beloved Black bears. Intimacy and inter –relationship are part of every experience I have with nature and by sharing these poems I hoped might draw others in to new ways of perceiving the earth and her creatures.

The whole point of my focusing on non – human species was to raise awareness that these animals and plants desperately need our help. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough about how critical it is to bring animals, plants, trees, mushrooms into the picture in this age of the Anthropocene, that is, the period in which we live where a few men with power rule. Today, it is not an exaggeration to say that humans control every aspect of our fragile planet.

I repeat: Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough or perhaps almost no one was capable of listening? Maybe both. As soon as I concluded my reading one woman did actually bring up an incident involving a very difficult child who became attached to a lizard, so she at least, was on the track I hoped I had laid….

Continue reading “Ant Hill by Sara Wright”

Climate Change, the Generations and Religion’s Bad Rap by Susan de Gaia

As I reflect on my experience at the climate strike on September 20, 2019, I see a connection between climate change and the bad rap that religion has today. When asked what they think about religion, many are quick to point out how history has shown that it has been at the center of numerous wars. Even today we find conflicts between groups grounded in religious difference. There are other differences in these conflicts, such as ethnic differences, differences of social organization, and disagreements over territory, but religion is a clear element. Colonialism, misogyny, and priest sexual abuse are some other ways that religions have earned reputations for being too strict, too old fashioned, and too corrupt, among other things.

The climate strike was called Youth Climate Strike and had as one of its leaders a very special young woman, Greta Thunberg. It isn’t often that the youth are given a platform for their complaints and even rarer that a teenaged person – and a female at that – is seen as a world leader on one of the most important issues facing civilization. Not only does this young woman have the wisdom to see the problem from a global, even a cosmic, perspective, but she also stands before us as the face of the only group on the planet that is more impacted by climate change than any other – the youth.

Continue reading “Climate Change, the Generations and Religion’s Bad Rap by Susan de Gaia”

Insect Conversations by Barbara Ardinger

“She’s doing it again,” Mrs. Cockroach is saying to her friend Old Mrs. Spider. “You know? The giant? She’s been blowing on me and telling me to live somewhere else. Like, I’d leave a good home?”

Old Mrs. Spider looks up from her weaving. “Yes,” she says in a weary voice. “But you know she’s not a giant. She’s just a normal human being, well, overweight, as I understand humans measure their bodies. And if she’s going to blow on us and ask us to live somewhere else, well…..I think she needs to brush her teeth.”

Mrs. Cockroach chuckles. “Indeed. We insects, maybe with the exceptions of fleas and termites, we don’t have bad breath. Blood-breath and wood-breath are sour! I was sitting on the wall in her bathroom, keeping an eye on things and telling the termites to get away from the window, and she just walks up. Doesn’t she know we insects and arachnids are protecting her house?”

Continue reading “Insect Conversations by Barbara Ardinger”