Category Archives: Climate

Receive the shush of God and face today’s troubles.

October 7, 2024A life in the Spirit, Climate, Spiritual directionclimate, Congo, DR Congo, Kivu, M-23, MCC, minerals, prayer, shushRod White

I made a trip to the front desk to get the gel packs the OT suggested when she heard about our icemaker breaking. On my way, I stopped by the mailbox and soon opened my Peace and Justice Journal from MCC. {MCC U.S. National Peace and Justice Ministries]. It was all about the Congo. It made me smile.

Some of you might wonder, “Why in the world would any news from Congo make you smile?” — especially when your icemaker is broken! It’s true, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the most desperate places in the world — so much suffering! The Human Development Index places it at 180 out of 193 countries (2022). It is completely off the radar of most Americans. But ever since I read King Leopold’s Ghost around 1999, I can’t keep it out of my mind. Having met MCC workers from the Congo and followed the scant news we get about it, I’ve developed an affection.

Plus, this week, on Oct. 12, it is Simon Kimbangu Day (see The Transhistorical Body]. The Congo has produced some amazing Christians. Oct 29 is Christophe Munzihirwa Day. Add to this that one of the most inspiring books of the last decade is Emmanuel Katongole’s Born from Lament: The Theology and Politics of Hope in Africa in which he shares first-hand stories of Jesus followers in the Congo leading the way.

Shush child

In the midst of my own turmoil, which has a decidedly “first world” look to it, I am hoping for some encouragement. You probably are, too, since you are facing an election, a Middle East war and your own troubles. If you’re from the U.S., you might have some connections in North Carolina or in the other areas pummeled by Hurricane Helene – our NC contacts survived relatively well, but they are surrounded by devastation and grief. I am going to say few more words about the Congo, but first, let’s all take a minute in God’s arms and receive a collective shushing.

Don’t fear, because I am with you;
don’t be afraid, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you,
I will surely help you;
I will hold you
with my righteous strong hand. — Isaiah 41:10 (CEB)

When I first read that verse as a kid, I heard, “You need to stop fearing, because it is wrong to fear when God is with you – and he might be displeased.” Maybe I needed that for a developmental season.

But in my later years I hear God shushing me like I used to softly speak to my troubled babies and grandchildren: “Shhh. Don’t be afraid, I am with you. I will always be here as long as I have breath.” When God, the eternal breath of the Spirit, shushes, it is truly an unending promise along with immediate comfort.

I suppose you know we instinctively started shushing babies as soon as they were born because we could feel their shock at entering a world of new and unfamiliar sounds. I suppose when we feel overwhelmed, our bodies may remember the time we experienced our own initial trauma. Shushing recreates the familiar sounds of the womb, providing a sense of comfort and security for that dear baby.

Nowadays, we have machines that shush for us. Some of us create a womblike environment in which to sleep, we are so anxious and so surrounded by anxiety-producing sounds. It is hard to sleep in my neighborhood because there are drag races on a street nearby – one of the last in Philly without a big speed bump! You may have fireworks and sirens going off all night. But be careful how you cope. I think after we are six years old, or so, we had better take care not to become dependent on a machine to sleep.

For now, would you like to slowly go through that shushing word from God, stored up there in Isaiah for you? I think it should take you six deep breaths to get through it. Take a deep breath and slowly read a clause as you exhale. Take a next slow inhale through your nose and gently exhale as you move through all six lines. If you do it again, that is even better.

Shush over the Congo

Now maybe we can consider the Congo and the 115 million people who live there. Over 7 million of the Congolese are displaced persons, driven from their homes by conflict or corruption. It is hard to say just how many refugees add to the population, but there are hundreds of thousands from Burundi, the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Rwanda. That list of countries sounds like a litany of war, terror and starvation to me, a wound on the world.

We have to consider the Congo because raw materials in the eastern part of it are essential for the world’s rush to replace fossil fuels and save the planet. To reach the zero emissions targets by 2050 will mean a 600% increase in mineral demand. The provinces of North and South Kivu, bordering Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi are crucial to providing the global supply chains with the coltan, gold, and cassiterite which fuel green economies.

SMB coltan mine near Rubaya, DRC. © Junior D. Kannah/AFP

Kivu is also the home of the largest and fastest growing population of displaced people. DR Congo has 250 local armed groups and 14 foreign armed groups fighting for territory, mines or other resources in the country. In North Kivu, one major armed group, M-23, controls much of northern part of the province. They control key coltan mining villages where people make their money in illegal mines, excavating without machinery. M-23 uses motorcycles, trucks and boats to smuggle coltan into neighboring countries in order to avoid the heavy taxes levied on mineral sales inside DR Congo. Imagine living there, if you aren’t there right now.

Knowing about the Congo can be overwhelming — especially when you feel burdened with problems of your own. I can relate to that. I hope this is not true of you, but I cycled in and out of feeling overwhelmed last week. I needed to turn and turn again into that loving embrace of God, who surrounds me with grace and feeds my hope. There are so many things that are far beyond our capacity to control! If we still feel we need to do that, we have to shrink our world until it is very small. If we keep ourselves that small, the Congo might as well be on another planet. Anything outside your apartment might feel foreign!

We all need some encouragement. Even though this post is filled with difficult things, I hope it also encourages you to latch on to the vast resources of God at your disposal.

Here is a final prayer to acknowledge our need to turn into God and hear the shush of our loving parent — if your are a Mennonite, you might recognize it from Voices Together. Again, take it slow, one breath a line.

Gracious God, when there is nothing we can say,
We give you thanks that your Spirit intercedes for us
with sighs too deep for words.

Loving God, when there is nothing we can do,
we give you thanks that you are working for good
in this world of struggle and pain.

Holy God, when there is nothing else we know,
we still give thanks that nothing in life or in death,
nothing in heaven or on earth,
nothing in this world or the world to come
will ever separate us from your great love through Jesus Christ.

Maybe we should all try that again, praying with the millions of faithful Congolese people, with the people suffering from the aftermath of the hurricane and other disasters. Pray it with the many people pouring out love, skill, time, and resources to help them, and with the faithful lovers in your own life who are there for you, or will be, often when you least expect them and rarely because you feel you deserve them.

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Further resources for learning about the Congo and climate issues:

U.N. Humanitarian Affairs [link to Congo efforts]

U.S. Institute for Peace [Congo emphasis]

Indigenous Environmental Network [just transition]

World Resources Institute [minerals and climate]

Friends of the Congo [statement on climate change]

Your mind is an ecosystem: May you reach a positive tipping point

September 16, 2024A life in the Spirit, Climate, Psychological growthAnthony D. Smith, ecosystem, hope, Malcolm Gladwell, masochistic, organism, tipping point, Zachary SteinRod White

I’ve been in the room when clients reach a tipping point. It is an honor. It is a moment when so much good work has been done it overwhelms their previous way of life. New beliefs and possibilities crowd out their previous view of themselves. They say, with some surprise, “I actually woke up the other day feeling good about myself. I think people call it joy.”

The self-defeating personality

Recently, some “masochistically-organized” clients started to tip. Let me create a composite of my experience with such dear people to let their stories inform what I’m trying to say. The people to whom I am refer are not “actual” in a personal way.

The two I am picturing are both “self-defeating” in their personality style, so we often talk about core beliefs having a “sticky” quality. Something like a less-than-permeable lining taints whatever is coming into their thoughts and feelings. One of them described it like the burned-on gunk on the bottom of their ceramic skillet corroding their inner life. When they were young they were told they were no good and were severely punished for it. Another was left alone in a world where they were foreign and got the impression they were shameful. There is a lot more to their stories than that, of course.

You may have heard the term “masochistic” used to describe someone who derives pleasure, sometimes sexual, from being hurt. That is an extreme version of a common personality style. The disorder has been removed from the DSM, but clinicians have been revisiting it lately because clients keep showing up with the general characteristics. A person with this self-defeating personality style probably started out with painful family relationships. They began to avoid successful or pleasurable situations because such circumstances did not fit in with their view of themselves as bad.

They may try to please others at the expense of caring for themselves because they still want to be seen and affirmed and taking care of others seems like the only way to get there. Their identity ends up based on caring for others, often people who are difficult to care for. At the same time, they are often isolated and do not seek help for themselves because they feel like they are flawed and are ashamed to be seen. They self-sabotage – most hopes. Any positive narrative, any optimistic action faces a strong interior argument against it. They probably long for a different kind of life but have a terrible time taking action and often take up addiction as a way out of the problem.

The round-about way to health

In the process of unlearning these negative core beliefs about themselves we’ve scoured the goo off the skillet bottom, so to speak, and let the original creation be seen and cared for. It took a while; it was burned on. And it seemed like fruitless work to begin with, since “I am just a pan bottom” and “it is my own fault I let myself get so messed up.”

For these and many other clients, their journey to better mental health did not follow a straight path. The meandering process of self-discovery and making new choices is very frustrating for many of us because we have adopted a metaphor for our minds that is inadequate for describing what is really going on in us. Metaphors matter.

Zachary Stein has spent a decade trying to change the metaphors we use to describe ourselves from mechanical to organic — that seems like an obvious choice since we are organisms and not machines. But you are probably comfortable describing yourself as “not firing on all cylinders” or “not computing” something. In a nice article, Stein gives a history of why we think like we do.

Scientific models of the human mind have evolved through a series of metaphors. Sigmund Freud used several metaphors to describe the mind, but the one with the most explanatory power was the metaphor of the steam engine. “Psychic energy” was understood as if it were steam compressed within a chamber. Bottle up too much energy and tension, and it will eventually explode elsewhere as a neurotic symptom that you cannot understand. Sex, of course, was the great pressure valve for Freud, a necessary way to release potentially dangerous buildups of energy. The dynamic workings of the mind, which Freud used to explain psychopathology, were all metaphorically related to the basic mechanisms that drove the machines that propelled the Industrial Revolution.

This view fell out of favor in the 1960s when cybernetics came on the scene, and soon computers replaced steam engines as the dominant metaphor for the mind. By the 1980s, the metaphor of the “mind-as-computer” was fully embraced by the emerging field of cognitive science, and it continues to dominate thinking today. By now it has even seeped into the popular culture and become a part of our everyday school vernacular. According to this metaphor, the brain is hardware and the mind is software. The mind is fundamentally about “information processing,” and our individual information processing units vary only in terms of their speed and memory capacities. Smart students have a lot of RAM and fast download speeds. Students who are struggling just “don’t have the bandwidth.” If students follow the right programs and sub-routines, they will encode the right information, which will be stored in memory and made available for retrieval later.

My clients, including the two composites I am thinking of, often feel like they are flawed and need “re-programmed.” Since I can’t effect that, they are often frustrated with me, too! Unfortunately (I guess), they are not computers. They are organisms and are much more variable and subject to their environments and history than a machine.

You are an organism, not a machine

Just as they are, my clients are much more beautiful than a machine. I often point that out, which does not always go over well, since they think they are worthless unless they have utility to someone else. If they ever do anything wrong (and who doesn’t?) or experience some setback (and who won’t?) their lack of value is reinforced. They assume they are about to be thrown out for a better model. They either double down on some guilt-ridden good-deed-doing or double down on avoiding their fruitless search for love. My admiration of them for who they are right now does not compute. Their metaphor won’t allow it.

Dr. Stein reinforces what my faith taught me as a child. We are organisms in the ecosystem called humanity. What’s more, the various elements that make us who we are individually form the psycho/spiritual ecosystem of our personal humanity. Jesus called us a system of heart, soul, mind and strength. Paul’s metaphor for life in the Spirit pictured us as members of Christ’s body, each an honored part. Our right/left brain, brain/mind/body reality is a flexible, moving, adaptable reality.

Stein refers to the great Swiss psychologist and epistemologist Jean Piaget to get some back up for insisting on an organic metaphor to describe us.

Piaget argued that the mind is best understood as an evolving organism — living, growing, and self-regulating in a metabolic relationship to its environment….

According to this view, the mind is best understood as a complex and dynamic system, always in process, always changing, growing, and becoming more diverse and differentiated. At the same time that they grow in internal complexity, ecosystems also become more integrated and specialized, filling up their niches and fostering symbioses. Ecosystems are composed of a wide variety of independent and yet co-evolving species, so there is not one central “unit” that can serve as an overall measure of the ecosystem. Rather, to understand an ecosystem, you must take multiple measurements in a variety of places across a variety of time scales. Ecosystems are also sensitive and actively responsive to the larger environments in which they are nested. They can be easily disrupted and thrown off balance, but they are also generative and creative, self-regulating, and self-transcending. They are adaptable, open systems, and are constantly in a state of dynamic equilibrium. As ecosystems evolve, they display nonlinear growth, with jumps, dips, regressions, and daily and seasonal changes and rhythms. Their growth is not simple and linear, but messy and dynamic. And no two ecosystems are the same. Every ecosystem is unique. Give two ecosystems the same input and you should not expect the same output.

Your personal ecosystem can change, too

These days our sense of being a part of an ecosystem is more apparent than ever since we are increasingly aware of how creation’s climate is changing. We are afraid of a negative tipping point that might occur any day. Scientists seem to know what humanity needs to do to reverse the impact of what we unwittingly did.

You may have already applied that last thought to yourself. I think we all know if we apply new behaviors and avail ourselves of new knowledge, our psychological ecosystem will change. It might not be easy if the previous habits of our hearts are burned on. Or to be more ecological, it might not be easy if an invasive weed has taken over the backyard of the new psychological house we are building (God help you if it is bamboo) and we need to dig for a while to get it unearthed.

I’ve had clients who were not only masochistically-oriented, they were computer programmers! I know of such a composite person who had filled up their life with a lot of positive action: anti-porn worksheets, meds from a psychiatrist, care from social workers, self-help books, and psychotherapists. I often wondered out loud how they could avoid going over a tipping point — a psychological application of Malcom Gladwell’s first book. They saw their searching as a series of examples of how nothing ever worked out for them and how they were a shameful failure, doomed to go the wrong way.

Yet they fitfully persisted. Until one day they came in and said, “I feel different. I remembered myself thinking a negative way and realized it was a memory, not a present reality.” They had gone over the edge. In their case, one of the central features that pushed them over was returning to the church. They went back to the one place they knew they were loved for who they are. Thank God they did not encounter a priest who reinforced their sense of being a terrible human being! In God’s ecosystem of love, the various positive elements began to cohere and a new environment was made.

One of the reasons I love the difficult work of psychotherapy is how realistic it is. It doesn’t work like an internal combustion engine or a computer. It is much more like the Earth, subject to the weather, to dry seasons and wet, and subject to constant surprise and endless change. But in our process, we can also be sure the sun will come up on time every day.

From my window, I look out over the huge expanse of trees in Fairmount Park; the sun is setting right now. That view makes it easier to also see my clients reaching out like the limbs of trees finding the light. The other day, when the Circle Counseling therapists met, I had to say how honored I felt to be in the room to see it dawn on them.

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Today is Cyprian of Carthage Day! He was a leader facing the persecution of the church, disunity, and a pandemic! He was a prolific writer, so he offers us insight into his faith and the life of the Church in the 200’s. Honor his life at The Transhistorical Body.

Guilt: How it starves our true selves

April 29, 2024Climate, Music, Psychological growthguilt, John Denver, Paul Tournier, Planned FamineRod White

To begin this meditation on guilt, I want to confess one of my guilty pleasures. I was (OK, still am) a John Denver fan. No, I did not think he was cool, and yes, he can still make me cringe at times. But his clear, sharp tenor often often gave melody to the best of the idealistic 1970’s and 80’s. Those were years when I also expessed some of my loftiest ideals (often in song!). Like Denver, I hoped to be accepted but sometimes I was scorned.

A hunger guiltfest

I was looking through old pictures from that era as I prepared them for digitizing and ran across one from an event for the youth group we called “The Planned Famine.” Our intentional community was devoted to living simply and sharing our resources so others could live. Many of us led the youth group so we spread our convictions into the church, as well. For instance, as part of our Famine, we charged the parents and other adults for a “Third World Dinner,” which did not go over well with some of them who got nothing and “starved.” Even today I would remind them that getting aced out of food isn’t pleasing to the 783 million hungry people in the world right now, either. (Here are some Mormons doing the same idea we had 25 years later).

Our theme song for the 30-hour, overnite “famine” was John Denver’s “I Want to Live.” He wrote it as a potential theme song for President Carter’s Commission on world Hunger. Here he is singing it.

A lot of the dinner and the overniter was, unfortunately, about our guilt. Not the good guilt of admitting a sin against God and our true selves, but guilt before what we should have been or guilt about what others think and say about us (or might), or guilt about our lack of laudable courage and deficit of shining character (at least compared to others). When John Denver sang, we felt ashamed of ourselves and the earth for letting people starve. Some of us became hunger warriors. Most of us just became better educated about more things to avoid.

Life under criticism and contempt

There is some room for the shame we felt, but not in the way we often feel it. When criticism leads to guilt and contempt leads to shame, we often defend against those awful feelings with only the tools psychology offers us. They aren’t bad tools, they just aren’t up to the full task we need to complete. Paul Tournier says,

Freud reveals to us all that remains infantile and regressive in us, our fear of life and of responsibilities, our longing for a refuge in maternal consolation. We are all children, and we feel guilty at being so lacking in courage, in virility, in adulthood. C.G. Jung widens these notions by talking of integration and by depicting [humanity’s] destiny as the acceptance of all that is within [each of us]. — (Guilt and Grace p. 54)

We cannot blame our lingering unease with ourselves on psychology alone because Christianity has specialized in guilt. It has often been better at crushing people than fulfilling its promise to set them free. Instead of surpassing Freud’s “becoming adult” and Jung’s “integration,” Christians often criticize one another’s behavior and pour contempt on people who threaten or offend them. Maybe you don’t do that, but the church of the last decade in the U.S. has become even more famous for it.

We pour guilt on ourselves, too, even if other don’t induce it. Instead of glorying in our weakness, as the Apostle Paul insists we should, so God’s power for transformation can break into us and break out, we feel guilty that our weakness makes us powerless. We can’t do what we are meant to do. Our fear of failing at our responsibilities has made us ineffective rulers of ever-diminishing zones of personal control. We have shriveled under the comparison with others, using the whole internet to demonstrate how incapable we are of measuring up. And we may also protect others from having their own struggle with guilt by suggesting they should not be so proud as to think their desires to live are relevant or warranted, just like ours aren’t.

Baby humpback finding her wings off Maui

Leaping from the dark

When we played John Denver’s song during the Planned Famine, we had a slide show to go with it. We needed to turn up the volume of the song enough to overcome the distracting squeal and click of slides moving around their carousel. The faces of child after child came on the screen from around the world, some happy, many starving, some dying. John sang for them,

I want to live I want to grow
I want to see I want to know
I want to share what I can give
I want to be I want to live

And then he changed to the hopeful imagery of animals marine ecologists were just coming to understand.

Have you gazed out on the ocean,
Seen the breaching of a whale?

We put up a beautiful slide of a whale leaping out of the depths. I vividly remember the small, involuntary gasp it aroused in me, “I want to do that.”

I want to do it because Freud is right. We are all children singing, “I want to live.” I want to leap because Jung is right. From the depths of the great ocean of the unconscious self, even the collective unconscious, if you like, our true selves are coming up to the surface for air. If we get out of the way, they might leap into the sky with joy.

It takes some courage to leap, to suck in clear air. It takes some effort to be real, to swim free in the ocean of grace in which we live. If we dive in and leap out, we know our previous methods of self-preservation will need to die. We know we will have to admit we cannot effectively avoid all the things that cause us to condemn ourselves: our lack of genuine relationships with mates and friends, our resistance to admitting our faults, our willingness to avoid responsibility, our lack of forgiveness, lack of solidarity with our struggling acquaintances and loved ones, our unfaithfulness to God and others. We will have to see how we flee, fight, and freeze because fear rules us.

Tournier, again says

To be faithful to oneself would mean to always be like oneself in all circumstances, in the presence of any interlocutor. We remain silent in turn about either our deepest convictions or the doubts which inevitably arise concerning them. We hide our feelings, or else we show them to be more ardent than they really are. To be faithful to oneself would mean to be natural, spontaneous, fearless of the opinions of others. (p. 57)

I think we all feel a calling to be faithful to our truest selves, perhaps from our first cry after leaving the womb. We want to live. I think we can at least imagine how God called us into being and can hear at least a faint voice encouraging us to live, full and free, embodying everything we’ve been given to be and do. I wish for you a moment of joy today when you dare to breach the surface. May your unique, childlike, fully-welcomed desires and fully-honored genius be well-fed and lively.

Is it OK for me to fly to Tahiti?: More climate questions

April 22, 2024Climate, Doing Theology, Spiritual directionair travel, climate anxiety, climate change, TahitiRod White

I love going to faraway places. I have airplane trips lined up for April and May already. But I got to wondering about all that travel when we seriously considered finally flying to Tahiti. Is it OK to fly to Tahiti? I know the law of supply-and-demand says, “It’s not only OK, please do!” But what about people who care about their carbon footprint on a warming planet? Even more, what about Christians who care about creation and the beloved creatures struggling for life on it? Will I protect them and my soul better if I stay out of planes?

I thought you might like to think about our moral dilemma with me, so I got together with God and some people on the internet and pondered the arguments people are having. I suppose you are not surprised that quite a few people are not in complete denial about what humans are doing to the atmosphere.

No. Don’t fly….But

In an ethical discussion there are usually people on one side who know all the facts and the rules derived from them. Many of them will be appalled someone is wantonly ignoring them. For instance, I feel for those poor souls who are still wearing masks (and wish everyone else would) because Covid is still being passed around! “Why are you infecting people?” they think. Maybe they would also be people who think it is obvious no one should be flying to Tahiti if the planet is warming. Airplanes are notorious for burning tons of fossil fuels that increase CO₂.

Philosophers and wannabe philosophers are having more nuanced conclusions (like here).

Some people think their choice to fly or not fly differs from their choice to drive or not drive, because that particular plane would be flying anyway and the additional fuel required by your weight is marginal. This is a mistaken view. How many flights are scheduled depends on how many people choose to fly. By not flying, you would be contributing to a reduction in flights that occur.

However. Almost everything we do causes some harm to the environment. Eating meat, taking hot showers, keeping rooms at room temperature, living in a house with a yard, regularly driving to friends’ houses – all of these things cause harm. Even living a very minimal ascetic lifestyle causes some harm. For everything you do, you have to ask whether the benefit to you, plus to others who are also helped, is worth the harm to the environment.

That’s a “No” with a “But.” People who want to say “NO!” to everything that harms the planet usually soften that no with the admission that there is no way one cannot cause harm to others or the planet. As far as making all your choices count, soem say individual choice is too miniscule to really think you are changing the world with it — big change requires a movement of individual choosers. Others say not even a movement can help the climate now because the planet is already warmed, you can only try to help people cope with the impact. Yet others say the law of supply and demand runs the world; old, utopian ideas of forcing the hand with millions of personal choices is irrational and does not work. Of course, these conclusions can be debated and that’s what philosophers are going to do.

Right now, after listening to the qualified “no” side. I think I need to fly modestly. I think modest means I do not have a lifestyle or work that depends on flying (like the Philadelphia Phillies do). What is modest for an American is, of course, immodest compared to many people in the world who have never even thought of flying in an airplane. I will never forget Andres, the Salvadoran refugee I met just over the border in Honduras who had never ridden in a car and could not imagine going to San Salvador, from which I had just come, about 75 miles away.

Yes. You can fly.…But

On the other hand, some people say my individual efforts and my guilt, even my modesty, though noble and necessary, are not what I should be measuring too strictly. In an ethical discussion there are ofen people who will be frustrated with all the strictures and nitpicking of the other side. I feel for these “Yes” people, too, who are dealing with all us self-centered people who can’t see outside our boxes! Maybe they are like the State Department workers crisscrossing the Middle East to tamp down Israeli and Iranian hotheads and to encourage Saudis and Turks to keep their eyes on the bigger picture.

I tend to be a “yes” person by nature. But I want to pay attention to my carbon footprint — I took the test and I did not fare that well! But I don’t want to put the weight of the world my footprint. The idea behind measuring our individual carbon footprints is to make us aware of our personal contribution to greenhouse gas emissions (and “No” people would say “And to hold us accountable!”). The idea aims to encourage individuals to adopt a sustainable lifestyle and make environmentally conscious choices. That’s a good thing. But it remains true that the vast majority of global greenhouse gas emissions are not generated by individuals, but by industries and large-scale commercial activities. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), around 70% of carbon dioxide emissions stem from just 100 companies (!) worldwide. Either they get on board or our individual efforts are silly. Nevertheless, when individuals collectively adopt sustainable practices, it can create a ripple effect, influencing larger entities and prompting policy changes.

The IPCC, itself, has been a very successful big-picture process. It presented at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP28) which closed in December with an agreement that signals the “beginning of the end” of the fossil fuel era. In Dubai, no less, negotiators from nearly 200 Parties came together with a decision which agrees to transition away from fossil fuels and reduce global emissions by 43% by 2030

The COP28 action is the kind that makes a real difference. So when one of the editors of Sierra wrote about deciding whether to have children in an age of climate chaos and potential mass extinction last year, some of the readers got in her face for thinking individuals are responsible for addressing the climate crisis.

Responding to the article on Twitter, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University complained,

“The ‘don’t have kids because of climate’ argument is bunk, & absolves the choices of companies & policymakers.” Sandra Steingraber, a prominent anti-fracking activist wrote, “Stop policing women’s fertility. The fossil fuel industry along with the banks and political leaders who keep the fossil fuel party going is the cause of the problem.” Another commenter posted, “This argument only serves the big CO2 producing corps. It’s like they threw a white [tablecloth] party, served nothing but sloppy bbq, and then watched [as] the guests blamed EACH OTHER for dry cleaning bills.”

Even environmental advocates are dismissing the importance of individual responsibility. In The Daily Beast, Jay Michaelson recently argued,

“Individual behavior change isn’t action—it’s distraction. . . . It shifts the blame from the actual causes of climate change to fake ones, and shifts attention away from meaningful actions to meaningless, psychological ones. . . . The focus on individual behavior makes fighting global warming more controversial while letting the actual entities causing climate change off the hook.”

In June Michael Mann, the climatologist, made a similar argument in USA Today,

“A fixation on voluntary action alone takes the pressure off of the push for governmental policies to hold corporate polluters accountable. …One recent study suggests that the emphasis on smaller personal actions can actually undermine support for the substantive climate policies needed.”

So I would say all that is a qualified “Yes” for little old me to fly to Tahiti. I agree that the powers-that-be love to keep us individually responsible and keep the huge corporations shrouded in mystery — invisible and inaccessible. Even worse, if we protest or try to organize a union in their VW plant, they call us socialists, as if Jesus were not a common-good and common-goods kind of man.

But I also think scorning the importance of my individual lifestyle changes would be an overcorrection. It’s true that taking personal responsibility for climate change is insufficient to address the crisis, but it is also true that individual action is essential to the climate justice equation. Westerners really like their binary arguments, don’t they?

Right now, I think the best response to the arguments is the usual both/and. Ultimately, a binary argument pitting personal action versus political action is unhelpful. We need to agitate and organize for systemic change and also encourage individual behavior changes. Or, put another way: If you say fixating on personal behavior distracts from the political changes we need, you should also say dismissing the value of personal behaviors detracts from the political movement for climate justice.

So can I go to Tahiti?

If I go, I will be aware that I am probably cashing in most of my personal carbon footprint chips. Perhaps I will buy some carbon credits (but PBS reported last week that is not working so well, either). Credits or not, I cannot absolve myself with any certitude. Maybe the guilt monitors would feel better about me if I went to Tahiti and at least felt miserable about it — just like I should feel when I eat beef and drive cars (honestly I already cut out most beef and my new car is a hybrid).

I think the best way to feel OK about my extravagant use of fuel (along with the other 200 people in the plane) is to keep the pressure where it belongs. Governments, corporations, and institutions must implement policies that promote renewable energy, invest in sustainable infrastructure, and regulate emissions from major industries. They implemented the policies that let fossil fuels rule society, they need to reverse them.

If I just focus just on my individual carbon footprint the guilt will likely lead to overwhelm. We end up feeling our efforts are futile when that happens. When we feel guilty, we demobilize. If I overestimate my individual impact on the climate crisis I’ll probably get anxious. Such a view of self can lead to climate anxiety, especially among kids. It might be easier to stay anxious and be immobilized. But I think we need to do the harder thing and bravely stand up to the people willing to sacrifice the future for their immediate profits.

What do you think I should do?

In the world’s dark night of the soul: Do these three old things

April 15, 2024A life in the Spirit, Climate, Spiritual directionA Month of Climate Actions for Peace, climate action, climate trauma, dark night of the soul, Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, Spiritual Directors InternationalRod White

In the Woods by Lourdes Bernard. https://www.lourdesbernard.com/

I began my psalm last Sunday like this:

The world is inconsolable,
on constant alert for the next trauma,
perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I can feel it in my old bones, too.

A lot of us feel dragged down.

Poor Joe Biden has an administration doing amazing things and everyone hates him. The economy is the best in the world and people say it is going to the dogs, poll after poll. If you are a local leader or a church leader, you’ll likely be criticized in much the same way and be looking for the door.

Poor Lourdes Bernard! She’s a Dominican artist from Brooklyn making her way in the art world. She recently became the “visiting scholar as artist in residence” at the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary. The center recently relocated from Yale, but it was originally in Ventnor, NJ. The enterprise began in the early 20th century as a recovery ministry on the beach for missionaries. Bernard is doing amazing work (I love the piece above). But artists have to cobble together an income in the art-disparaging world. She’s sponsored by an organization with a history chock-full of vision, but which struggles to find a place in a deteriorating spiritual landscape. Why is everything so hard?

It is in the atmosphere

I did not put climate change in my title because I was pretty sure half my usual readers would skip this one if I did. But I really want us to grapple with the fact that everything we do these days, from admin to art, is enacted in front of the backdrop of our quickly-changing environment. The United States is debating abortion without noting that women are giving birth to someone today who will be 20 years old in 2044. What will it be like for them?

The Administration has ambitious goals for make a habitable planet for them:

Reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 50-52% below 2005 levels in 2030.
Reaching 100% carbon pollution-free electricity by 2035.
Achieving a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

When our baby is 26 will the world have reached net-zero emissions in time for them to ponder having a family of their own? According to the United Nations, NO. Despite the enormous benefits of climate action to date and the brilliant people giving their lives to save the world, progress is happening far too slowly for the world to hold temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C. The UN finds that climate policies currently in place point to a 2.8 degrees C temperature rise by the end of the century. If our present weather patterns disturb you, wait till you see what is happening then!

The recitation of those stats is a good reason to stop reading this post for many of us. Maybe a lot of people stopped at the word “atmosphere.” My “old bones” feel the resistance, too. For instance, I got excited for a minute and commited to the daily consciousness of MCC’s A Month of Climate Actions for Peace. I downloaded their calendar and tacked it to the board where we keep track of our donations and compassionate action. That was fifteen days ago. I have followed a couple of days of disciplined caring with them. But I admit it was hard the other day to just make the effort to find the email with the link in it so I could do something online. I almost gave up altogether. What is wrong with me?

In the face of the world’s dark night of the soul…

Seifu Anil Singh-Molares is the Executive Director of Spiritual Directors International. In the December issue of Presence he made this summary of what’s wrong with ALL of us:

These are specially challenging times on our planet, with an unfortunate avalanche of woes besetting us: the accumulated stress of dealing with pandemics of various kinds, growing alienation and despair, geopolitical conflicts, cultural divides, the pernicious effects of embedded discrimination across the board, and spiritual wounds that cut deep and very wide at the moment.

There are a lot of good writers out there making insightful lists. But I think there may be more of us turning up our ear buds than paying attention.

Nevertheless, he has good advice for how do do more than survive and how to not lose hope in an “unprecedented” (word of the decade) time. And I will add some of my own.

…Develop contemplative practice

The other day I was treated to lunch at my favorite place by some enthusiasts from Lancaster County who schooled me on the recent realignments happening in the Mennonite Church. There is an outpouring of spiritual re-creation happening in the world! Too much of it is apocalyptic in the worst sense. But a lot of the newness is like my friends, who are feeding a lot of people with a few loaves and fish.

In the face of the turmoil of rapid change in every direction I look, I am determined to follow the spiritual direction I provide others and hang on to my contemplative practices. If you feel a bit unschooled in what that means, you could hit the link “spiritual direction” in the right column and I could help you get started.

Singh-Molares says

contemplation allows us to get some distance from our own tiredness and distress, and to reconnect to the spiritual root of what nurtures us the most. And we must find ways to make even more time available to engage with these, in direct proportion to the increased demands surrounding us.

This is age-old advice for people who care about their own souls and care for the souls of others (as in your children and the struggling families of the soccer team). If we do not tend to ourselves, we can’t tend to others. What we give out must at least match what we absorb. We are consistently absorbing bad news about the planet. It dulls our spirits and forces us into denial, into defensive reactions to an intolerable reality. Psychotherapists are naming is “climate trauma.” Sticking with the presence of God in that trauma is the key to soul survival.

The man who put the phrase “dark night of the soul” into common understanding, St. John of the Cross, encourages newcomers to contemplation like this:

The more clear and evident divine things are, the more dark and hidden they are to the soul naturally. Thus the more clear the light the more does it blind the eyes of the owl, and the stronger the sun’s rays the more it blinds the visual organs; overcoming them, by reason of their weakness, and depriving them of the power of seeing. So the divine light of contemplation, when it beats on the soul, not yet perfectly enlightened, causes spiritual darkness, because it not only surpasses its strength, but because it blinds it and deprives it of its natural perceptions.

We experienced the truth of the sun’s rays last week. Hopefully we also noted the parallel inner experience of how awesome and frightening it feels when our souls are plunged into an unnatural darkness. The light of life is being eclipsed by the disaster of a warming planet. Our work to changed humanity’s course has to be met with the inner work of staying on our spiritual journey.

…Find companions

This year, a few men and I have enjoyed a new season of companionship in our monthly meetings. We do a lot of listening, which leads to loving, which could lead anywhere. This is not everyone’s experience, I hear. Unfortunately, one of the things that often happens in disaster is people get less-connected, not more. In the United States there is an epidemic of aloneness. But it is not a good time to be alone. We cannot confront the bad news of climate change alone. But the only recourse many alone people have is to go into denial and pretend things are normal — the abnormal climate is just too much to bear.

Singh-Molares adds:

[O]ur spiritual director and companion friends can remind us not just to find the right balance, but how to. Spiritual hygiene in various other forms is also key as we navigate this global dark night of the soul, perhaps through purifying rituals, long walks in the mountains, soothing immersions in water, or in whatever other way may be available to us, regardless of our circumstances. Taking the time to catch our breath, wherever we may find ourselves, comes to mind!

One of my clients said not long ago, “I stink at spiritual disciplines.” They were concerned with their “spiritual hygiene!” While spiritual disciplines are best developed alone in silence, it is not likely you will keep after them if you are just alone. My favorite hermits usually end up in a community, themselves! Maybe you should find a spiritual director (or start by trying psychotherapy). Maybe you should find the best person in your church to be your friend. I’d just ask them if they want to make a relationship rather than just hanging out and waiting for one to happen. Church meetings are important, but they are too superficial to meet the demands of this era. We all need some real relationships.

…Get a new mindset for a new world

The normal ups and downs of life become more extreme the more trauma is applied to them. The Bible is rather frank about this, since God is going through death and resurrection as the central visual aid for us. It says, “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Psalm 30).

Some of us need to wake up to our need to deal with the death hanging over the world. People in other places generally do this better, since they’ve experienced the nearness of death since they were born. Americans sneer at death as only heirs of an empire dare. But our confidence is shaken these days. We need a new normal to dominate our minds.

I need to stop wondering why things aren’t like when I was 25. If you’re 25, you’ll need to let go of 8. This morning, as it is, is the morning when joy comes. Whatever is good, we’ll hang on to it like we are defiantly staring down the dark night. When it is night we are going to hang on to faith, hope and love, defiantly refusing to be drowned by our troubles. The era of “make it work” is pretty much over. Something bigger than our capacity and expertise needs to happen.

Singh-Molares adds:

[I]t is good to recall that out of all this individual and collective turmoil we are living through, spiritual flourishing can emerge. Loss and heartbreak are as much features of all our existence as their polar opposites, the thrill of communion and the exhilarating experience of Joy and Love. Both ends of the spectrum dance and commingle with one another. This realization, and the practical steps that emerge from it on our path…can make navigating our current Global Dark Night of the Soul less fraught and more fruitful.

Maybe these words are, basically, Bible 101 and well-known spiritualilty from the self-help aisle. But we have to do it. The old, psychological dike holding back the flood of climate disaster (and some dike actually holding it back) is not strong enough. I have to do new things, like going through the daily practices for April I signed up to do with MCC. I need to continue to talk about climate action even though I fear people will be sick of me bringing it up and spoiling our perfect societal denial (do your kids know how you are working with this?). I need to never just go to church again but actually build the kingdom of God with Jesus. You need to do that thing or change that behavior that came to your mind.

I ended my psalm last Sunday like this:

“Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ,
the Father of mercies
and the God of all consolation,
who consoles us in all our affliction:”
affliction which descends on us like a cloud or an army,
affliction which we invent for ourselves, godlike, out of nothing
affliction which we disavow as if we would never do such a thing.

I was awash in experiences with people who were drowning when I wrote that. God was lifting me up, but I still felt weighed down by the darkness the light revealed.

The troubles of climate are not just another thing on the list. They are a backdrop accentuating all the other troubles. The distractions I invent for myself to keep my private worry world whirring are deadly. The reality I disavow, as if the troubles are caused by “all those other people” and not me, despoils my inner environment, too.

This week I am up. I feel consoled. I am trying not to wait for a shoe to drop. I am enjoying how lives are being transformed. I am rejoicing in the brilliant people all over the world and throughout history doing transformative things. I am sensing God’s presence right now filling this moment with mercy. But I am also remembering to keep talking about the darkness and death stalking us, especialy the least among us. More than ever, the light and dark need to dance.

**************************

Today is Corrie ten Boom Day! Celebrate her at The Transhistorical Body.

October 2, 2023A life in the Spirit, Climate, Spiritual directionaccelerators, Black Hawk Down, climate change, conflict, economic turmoil, International Rescue Committee, Joe Biden, Mennonite Central Committee, Somalia, soulsickRod White

In a land of food glut and people overdosing all around us, it is hard to remember that 1.3 billion people in the world are food-insecure and the number is rising. But we did remember.

I was treating my wife to an exquisite and expensive meal at Lark for her momentous birthday. But even as she was taking another splendid bite, she remembered people who do not have food.

So the next day, I got into the IRC website and ended up connecting my wealth to the starving people of Somalia. We regularly connect with the International Rescue Committee because they often find a way to get on the front lines in the most distressed places. We also stay connected to the Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) because they are good at long-term solutions produced through churches or partner organizations.

I want to tell you a bit about Somalia, since you might not remember where it is and might not know how it got into the mess it is in. Maybe even more, I think I can help to show how the same elements that produce physical hunger around the world are also threatening to impoverish our souls in Philadelphia and all over North America.

Poor Somalia

The IRC puts out a yearly Watch List in an attempt to understand where the deepest crises are happening and where the greatest trouble will be in the coming year. They and their supporters want to be in those places to save lives and help form a better future. If you hit the link above and read the material, you will be much more educated.

Conflict, climate change and economic turmoil are the three key accelerators of humanitarian crisis in Somalia and all the other watch list countries. “They have a twin impact:

exposing individuals and communities to greater shocks and
weakening the systems and infrastructure they depend on to withstand such shocks.

These three accelerators consequently feed off themselves— and one another—to drive vicious cycles of deepening crisis.”

The United States was intricately involved in deepening the 30-year conflict that is confounding every attempt to save the lives of Somalis. You might remember Ridley Scott’s movie Black Hawk Down, which followed one of three helicopters shot down over Mogadishu when U.S. special forces were sent by President Clinton to capture or kill the warlord who was not following the U.N. peace accord brokered in 1992. If you’re not about 40, maybe you don’t remember the action itself but have run into the Oscar-winning film on Netflix (where it is “included with your subscription”).

What was supposed to be a couple of hours of in and out turned into an overnight battle the U.S. calls Battle of Mogadishu. The Somalis call it Maalintii Rangers, the Day of the Rangers.

In 1992 under the first President Bush, U.S. forces, primarily, helped end the Somali famine in the south. In 1993, the U.N. authorized a force to establish a secure environment throughout the country (which is big, as you can see). All 15 factions agreed to the terms hammered out at the Conference on National Reconciliation in Somalia. But Mohammed Farrah Aidid’s faction signed it and did not comply. So President Clinton authorized the Rangers to take Aidid out. The military objectives were achieved but the U.S. could not tolerate soldiers being killed and dragged through the streets with contempt. Within six months American forces were withdrawn and the whole U.N. experiment ended in 1995. The civil war is ongoing.

Somalia illustrates how crisis accelerators interact with each other. The country has been on IRC’s Watchlist for the past decade but recently rose to #1 as climate change and worldwide economic turmoil deepened the crisis. When well-constituted countries get a jolt, poorly-organized ones get clobbered. Somalia would have been better able to withstand the shocks were it not for decades of chronic armed conflict that destroyed and weakened many of the systems and infrastructure that protect communities in other countries when disaster strikes. What’s more, Somalia was unable to produce food locally because of conflict and climate change, so they had to rely on imports. 90% of their wheat comes from Russia and Ukraine. Last year U.S. citizens were upset at 11% rise in food costs. In Somalia, the sixth poorest nation in the world, food price inflation was about 40%.

Worldwide, a staggering 80% of malnourished children are not getting treatment, leading to roughly two million deaths annually. In Somalia nearly 8.3 million people were projected to experience crisis or worse levels of food insecurity by mid-2023, with over 700,000 facing starvation every day. With poor rains persisting in 2023, even more Somalis have been unable to access enough food and many have little option but to leave their homes to seek humanitarian assistance in urban centers or across the border in Kenya and Ethiopia. About 80,000 Somalis had crossed into Kenya by last April — that’s twice as many people as live in my zip code

The Somalia of the Soul

Last week Republican radicals in the House changed their focus of uproar to the Southern Border, where thousands of people have pressed for entry into the United States. Their insistence that we wall off the country is characteristic of their hollow Christianity and emblematic of the loveless and murderous solutions the nations of the world are implementing when it comes to growing crises.

Their reaction is much like the situation married couples find themselves in when their mutual sense of violation makes them defensive and they are caught in a recurring argument that often escalates into rage and even violence. They build emotional walls to feel safe.

The same factors that are bearing terrible fruit in Somalia and also infecting my city and undoubtedly yours, too. Conflict, climate change and economic turmoil are the three key accelerators of crisis in the U.S. too — and maybe in your homelife. They have exposed individuals and communities to greater shocks and they have weakened the systems and infrastructure they depend on to withstand such shocks. The accelerators feed off themselves to drive vicious cycles of deepening crisis. Joe Biden was trying to fight them in Arizona last week.

These accelerators create an atmosphere our souls are breathing. Each of us may, or may not have the personal, spiritual, or relational resources to screen out the toxins and have a healthy soul. If there is any hope of spiritual survival, we must begin with identifying what is choking off love and starving faith. Here are five factors making us soulsick.

Climate change causes anxiety and withdrawal.

Climate change is real and climate change anxiety is increasing. When we are threatened we proverbially fight, flee or freeze. We might not automatically pray, connect or act. Many churches discovered they were too weak to withstand the pandemic and other recent challenges. Some became addicted to fear and no longer follow Jesus. But I see revival beginning in unexpected places. It is hope for the world if Jesus followers trust God, build community and take action.

High food prices make us insecure

Last week a friend obsessed about whether his palatial house was actually a good deal. He could hardly enjoy it because he could only think of whether he had squandered too much of his wealth to buy it. Our first world problems are dehumanizing.

The media helped preoccupy most of us with inflation after the pandemic, which has quickly calmed down. But we were so used to inexpensive food, the uptick felts like a crisis. I refused to buy a $6 box of cereal yesterday, which gave me a little twinge of insecurity. Meanwhile the U.N. says 10,000 children a day die from hunger and related causes.

When I am in crisis because my glut of food costs more than it used to, that is being soul sick. If you have faith, your security is in God, right? If you don’t have faith, you at least have the rational capability to respond to facts.

Violence makes us feel at risk

Last week opportunists overshadowed the protesters who were bringing attention to Judge Wendy Pew’s dismissal of charges against Office Mark Dial. On August 14, he shot Eddie Irizarry through his rolled up window during a traffic stop, on video, within 5 seconds of exiting his police cruiser. Maybe that exemplifies our deteriorating social infrastructure in a nutshell.

Instagram got looting going for a few days. The media exploded with outrage. And people got more scared and hopeless. Consider that Somalis have been enduring a much higher degree of violence for 30 years!

We are minting psychotherapists and hallucinogen providers at a quick rate, these days. They often identify any thing that bothers us as “trauma.” Our endless defensiveness makes us sick.

Conflict blunts compassion

Last week the U.S. Senate passed further aid for Ukraine but House radicals still want it ended. This has a direct impact on Somalia. But I think it also is having an impact on our souls.

Our own interpersonal and societal conflict makes it difficult to feel well and cared for. We have become accustomed to a constant battle for power instead of collaboration to find mutually beneficial solutions. I think people actually care about others, but we are caught in a bad pattern. Again, it is like some couples I have worked with. Many of them have to spend a long time learning and implementing nonconflictual behavior before they can get back to love and hope.

Lack of funding undermines action

Poverty leads to more poverty. Philadelphia is the poorest city in the United States like Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world. One of the main reasons is lack of or inequitable funding and poor use of the funding there is.

Likewise, a starving soul leads to a dead faith. At least that is what James said. Not long ago an AA acquaintance said they had a “high bottom,” meaning others had to hit “rock bottom” before they would turn around. I pray that soulsick people in the U.S. see the grace around them long before they hit rock bottom. Developing our souls is not a luxury it is a necessity.

The other night, we were inspired to make an investment in a living faith that has been exercised enough to be strong when it faces the deterioration of the world. We literally funded our development. Obviously, having a healthy soul is not just about about how we spend our money. It takes a lot of various investments to thrive. But if we don’t put our money where are hearts are, it surely won’t make our souls healthier.

Is the Inflation Reduction Act a climate game changer?

August 15, 2022ClimateAntónio Guterres, climate action, Daniel Hunter, Inflation Reduction Act, Mar-a-Lago, overwhelm, resistance, shameRod White

Are the climate elements in the recently-passed “Inflation Reduction Act” a game changer? Or are they just a way to lessen the disastrous impact of the U.S. inaction over the past decade? Did you personally do anything to help us collectively stand in front of that inaction train as it carried the world toward a climatic wreck? Maybe you have been preoccupied. The news outlets probably won’t help your focus too much. Both newspapers I read put the news about the House passing this huge bill last week second to Donald Trump’s predictable, attention-grabbing violation of the law and the Republican defense of it. I suppose our leaders will be calling for war on each other when Mar-a-Lago is under rising seas.

The climate disaster is here. Temperatures soared across Europe, the US and much of the northern hemisphere this year – it’s a new normal. What scientists have predicted for decades is becoming palpable, indisputable. The deniers keep denying and the fossil fuel oligarchs won’t give up until all the oil is out of the ground and sold, but it is hard to argue against climate change when the Po and Colorado Rivers dry up. The new, human-caused climate patterns have far-reaching effects – for the natural world, for global food supplies, for health, for infrastructure and for much more. UN chief António Guterres has likened the crisis to ”collective suicide.”

I hope you already knew all that and are figuring out what more you can do – even though we need massive systemic change, not just individual action. We are all in this together, but it is the systems and the leaders of them who must make the planet-changing alterations. Christians who love their Creator should be their main exhorters. But Christians in the US still generally think climate action is “liberal,” which is another atmosphere that burns me up. They are so individualistic and paranoid they think hunkering down in their bunkers will save their families.

Maybe they will change and care for creation. I know some who woke up long ago. You noticed I said “generally” a couple of sentences ago when I indicted “Christians” because I suspect some of you reading are Jesus followers who voted for Al Gore and still wince when you see Styrofoam. But, unfortunately, Christians are generally not known for being at the forefront of climate action

Celebrate climate action

I’m writing today to add a bit more to our knowledge of the massive budget bill the Congress squeezed by the uniformly-opposed Republicans. “Opposed Republicans” when it comes to environmental protection is a recent change, since some of the first environmental activists in government were Republicans. Richard Nixon organized the EPA! I don’t think the present crew in Congress are all opposed to climate action on principle. They are in a death match for instituting a minority government free of pesky laws (the flouting of which dares the FBI to raid your mansion).

I went looking for what was actually in the unfortunately-named Inflation Reduction Act and it was quite hard to find. The Democrats put out a summary but it doesn’t give many details. The House has another summary with more detail. Why do I think you should care about this?

Our empathy needs to expand. Overwhelm diminishes our capacity to care. It takes discipline to care about anyone but oneself and one’s own.
We face shame when we encounter change. It takes a lot of self and other awareness not to get stuck in resistance.

I think the Holy Spirit brings us into connection and expands our ability to love – even in the face of climate inaction.

Daniel Hunter encourages bird counters to celebrate (click for article)

Let’s look at the amazing and inadequate features

Energy experts assert the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will help the United States cut greenhouse gas emissions about 40% below 2005 levels by the end of this decade. That puts the Biden administration within striking distance of meeting its goal to reduce greenhouse gases by 50% below 2005 levels by 2030 under the Paris climate agreement of 2016.

Pray with me, here, as I offer my own summary of the bill Biden will sign this week. The planet’s future is hanging in the balance.

Here are the main elements.

It attempts to lower energy costs

Home energy rebate programs focused on low income consumers to electrify home appliances and retrofit homes for energy efficiency. ($9 billion)

Just in case you can’t see how rich the U.S. is, if you personally earned $1 million dollars a year, it would take a thousand years to make 1 billion.

Tax credits to make homes energy-efficient and fueled by clean energy — making heat pumps, rooftop solar, electric HVAC and water heaters more affordable. (Lasts ten years)

You can get an $8,000 tax credit to install a modern electric heat pump that can both heat and cool buildings. You could get $1,600 to insulate and seal your house to make it more energy efficient.

Tax credits for lower/middle income people to buy used clean vehicles ($4,000), or to buy new clean vehicles ($7500).

I apparently bought my new hybrid too soon.

Grant programs to make affordable housing more energy efficient. ($1 billion)

It retreats from the global economy and encourages domestic production of climate related products

Tax credits to accelerate manufacture of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries, and processing of critical minerals. ($30 billion)

A piece about “critical minerals.”

Tax credits to build clean technology manufacturing facilities, like facilities that make electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. (10 billion)
Money through the Defense Production Act for heat pumps and critical minerals processing. ($500 million)
Grants to retool existing auto factories to make clean vehicles, ensuring that auto manufacturing jobs stay in the communities that depend on them. ($2 billion)
Loans to build new clean vehicle manufacturing facilities across the country. ($20 billion)
Money to fund National Labs to accelerate breakthrough energy research. ($2 billion)

It begins work to decarbonize the economy

Tax credits for clean sources of electricity and energy storage
Targeted grant and loan programs for states and electric utilities to accelerate the transition to clean electricity. ($30 billion)
Tax credits and grants for clean fuels and clean commercial vehicles to reduce emissions from all parts of the transportation sector.
Grants and tax credits to reduce emissions from industrial manufacturing processes, including almost $6 billion for a new Advanced Industrial Facilities Deployment Program to reduce emissions from the largest industrial emitters like chemical, steel and cement plants.
Money for Federal procurement of American-made clean technologies to create a stable market for clean products, including $3 billion for the U.S. Postal Service to purchase zero-emission vehicles. ($9 billion)
Money for a clean energy technology accelerator to support deployment of technologies to reduce emissions, especially in marginalized communities. ($27 billion)
A Methane Emissions Reduction Program to reduce leaks from the production and distribution of natural gas. The bill forces oil and gas companies to pay fees as high as $1,500 a ton to address excess leaks of methane, and undoes the 10-year moratorium on offshore wind leasing established under Trump.

Here is a little local color that includes methane capture.

It includes a focus on environmental justice

Environmental and climate justice block grants will invest in community-led projects in marginalized communities (and the agencies poised to use this money) to address disproportionate environmental and public health harms related to pollution and climate change. ($3 billion)
Neighborhood grants will support equity, safety, and affordable transportation access. The aim is to reconnect communities divided by existing infrastructure barriers, mitigate negative impacts of transportation facilities or construction projects on marginalized communities, and support equitable transportation planning and community engagement activities. ($3 billion)
Grants to reduce air pollution at ports will support the purchase and installation of zero-emission equipment and technology. ($3 billion)
Money for clean heavy-duty vehicles, like school and transit buses and garbage trucks. ($1 billion)

It pointedly includes farmers, forestland owners and rural communities

Money to support climate-smart agriculture practices. ($20 billion)
Grants to support healthy, fire resilient forests, forest conservation and urban tree planting. ($5 billion)
Tax credits and grants to support the domestic production of biofuels, and to build the infrastructure needed for sustainable aviation fuel and other biofuels.

This summary of tax implications tells you how complex this all is.

Grants to conserve and restore coastal habitats and protect communities that depend on those habitats. ($2.6 billion)

It does not neglect the fossil fuel addiction companies

The big oil companies, fresh off their record-breaking pandemic profits, did not make a big push against the bill, which says volumes. The Democrats agreed to a number of fossil fuel and drilling provisions as concessions to Senator Manchin of West Virginia, a holdout from a state that is heavily dependent on coal and gas. The measure assures new oil drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s Cook Inlet. It expands tax credits for carbon capture technology that could allow coal or gas-burning power plants to keep operating with lower emissions. It instructs the Interior Department to also hold auctions for fossil fuel leases if it approves new wind or solar projects on federal lands.

What do you think God thinks about all of this? What does Jesus want you to believe and do about it all? Let’s pray today and hope. We are the salt of this poor planet.

FFF #20: My first set of climate action posts.

February 11, 2022ClimateRod White

Climate strike Philly — Climate Strike Philly — WHYY pic

I committed myself to twenty posts in solidarity with Greta Thunberg and her climate strike movement among high school students (and others). Here is #20. I suspect I will be back with 20 more, someday, since there is much to learn and share in this dire time.

For now, I invite you to check in on what you may have missed. The two entries with an asterisk are the most read, so far, in case you are curious what others find interesting. The entry on Phoenix, in particular, received about five times as much interest as one of my weekly posts.

If you care about climate action, I am with you. It is going to be hard to sustain our efforts when the powers are preoccupied with fighting and fiddling as the Earth burns — they are often in the way. Our experience of community is so weak these days solidarity is hard to find — the pandemic accelerated the development of societal trends and technologies that were already isolating us. But good things are happening, too and people are joining together to make a difference. Even if we fail at keeping under the limits of disaster, I want to fail doing the good I can, don’t you?

FFF #19 — Do you live in a C40 city? I do.

February 4, 2022ClimateAspen Institute, Bill Clinton, C40, Chris Puchalsky, climate action, Eric Garcetti, green shipping, Jim Kenney, Michael Bloomberg, shipping corridorRod White

Posting every Friday at noon is how I act in solidarity with young climate strikers all over the world who want their elders to save their future.

Philadelphia has been a C40 city since 2005. That means my city helped create what many people call the leading edge of climate action: the mayors of large cities. My friend, Chris Puchalsky went to Copenhagen in 2019 for a C40 summit with Mayor Kenney and shared his inspiration with WHYY.

I did not know I lived in a C40 city until I was wandering around city government, exploring what it is doing to take climate action and adding my voice to spur the government on. Turns out Philly has an even bigger government than I thought — even goes global! It does a lot and it gets clogged up a lot. One thing I did not know I give to you, in case you didn’t: we’re C40, Philly people. How about the rest of you?

The C40 cities are deploying a “science-based and collaborative approach to help the world limit global heating to 1.5°C and build healthy, equitable and resilient communities.” In 2006 the Mayors of the C20 invited 22 further mayors, including many from the Global South and became the C40. The name has stuck, even though now the number of member cities is closing in on 100.

The Clinton Foundation’s Climate Initiative was also put into action in 2006 and was an important partner for the Mayors at that point. In 2011, C40 Chair Michael Bloomberg (remember that presidential candidate?) initiated the merger of the Clinton Climate Initiative’s Cities Program with C40. Bloomberg Philanthropies supplied enough funds at that point to make C40 a major climate action organization (choose your chairs wisely!).

C40 member cities earn their membership through action instead of membership fees. Their Leadership Standards set the minimum requirements for all members and ensure the integrity of C40 as a network of climate leaders. That sounds like Jesus telling people his disciples are known by their fruit, right?

What are C40 Cities doing now?

C40 played an important role at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP26) last year. There, Chair Eric Garcetti from Los Angeles passed the baton to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. They also announced that more than 1,000 city and local governments around the world have joined Cities Race to Zero. What’s more, they presented a report from the C40 Cities and Mayors Migration Council which deployed a Task Force on Climate and Migration. This warmed my heart, since I got a close-up view of the environmentally-disastrous border wall the U.S. put up on a shocking amount of its Mexican border last year and heard about climate refugees being refused entry.

Part of Eric Garcetti’s work as Chair was to partner with Mayor Gong Zheng of Shanghai to begin building a green shipping corridor between two of the busiest ports in the world. The port businesses and other C40 cities will work with industry partners to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the movement of cargo throughout the 2020s, including a goal to transition to zero-carbon fueled ships by 2030. I drove my VW around most of LA in high school, and it warms my heart to see LA’s mayor subverting the snail-paced national governments

Here are the key decarbonization goals for the corridor, so far:

Phase in low, ultra-low, and zero-carbon fueled ships through the 2020s, with the world’s first zero-carbon trans-Pacific container ships introduced by 2030.
Develop best management practices to help reduce emissions and improve efficiency for all ships using this corridor.
Reduce supply chain emissions from port operations, improving air quality in the ports of Shanghai and Los Angeles and adjacent communities.

A major player in Garcetti’s initiative was the Aspen Institute (for the history of the institute, which is enlightening, here’s the Wiki). Aspen Institute created a collaborative called Cargo Owners for Zero Emission Vessels (coZEV). This platform facilitates action to speed up the decarbonization of maritime shipping and encouraged the C40 to get onboard. The collaborative is a specific application of their Shipping Decarbonization Initiative (SDI).

I did not know most of this stuff until I bumped into it. Now, when I talk to the PEA (Philadelphia Energy Authority), where all my research started, I might sound like I’ve been trying, at least, to pay attention. My city is involved in important steps to save the planet. Things might not work that well, but there is work being done.

Shush child

Shush over the Congo

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The self-defeating personality

The round-about way to health

You are an organism, not a machine

Your personal ecosystem can change, too

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A hunger guiltfest

Life under criticism and contempt

Leaping from the dark

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No. Don’t fly….But

Yes. You can fly.…But

So can I go to Tahiti?

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It is in the atmosphere

In the face of the world’s dark night of the soul…

…Develop contemplative practice

…Find companions

…Get a new mindset for a new world

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2023

2022

Top ten posts from the past — many of them read more than 2023’s

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Poor Somalia

The Somalia of the Soul

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Celebrate climate action

Let’s look at the amazing and inadequate features

It attempts to lower energy costs

It retreats from the global economy and encourages domestic production of climate related products

It begins work to decarbonize the economy

It includes a focus on environmental justice

It pointedly includes farmers, forestland owners and rural communities

It does not neglect the fossil fuel addiction companies

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What are C40 Cities doing now?

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