Tag Archives: climate

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

A life in the Spirit, Climate, Spiritual direction, , , , , , , ,

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.

Just in case you can’t quite place it.

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.

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

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]

 

Fridays for the Future #8: U.N. COP26 Climate Summit Ends with a Fizzle

Climate, , , ,

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.

COP26: How humans save the planet

Diplomats and leaders from over 200 countries finished up COP26 in Glasgow last week. They met to  save the planet.  Stick with Jesus.

Scientists agree that a change of even 2°C (3.6°F) in average temperatures will have devastating effects. The negotiators all agreed that something must be done, only they didn’t agree on exactly what or exactly when. But if everyone continues to do what they are doing now, the average temperature on the planet will rise by 2.4°C in this century. To prevent catastrophe, all nations need to cut their carbon dioxide emissions in half this decade, beginning immediately. That won’t be easy or cheap, as this photo of coal barges in Indonesia by Willy Kurniawan of Reuters makes clear:

Coal barges in Indonesia; there are a lot of them, and they are absolutely loaded. There must be 500 tons of coal visible in the picture.

The climate talks finished Saturday with a declaration, as they usually do. Some of the main takeaways from the declaration are:

  • A call for a phase-down of unabated coal use and a phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. (Unabated” means that no technology was used to removed carbon emissions from the air when the coal was used — yes that’s a plan. See this Mother Jones article, too).
  • Rich countries promise to help poor countries deal with the climate-induced change. (Keeping that promise has not happened so far).
  • Rules for carbon offsets have been set
  • Countries are encouraged to revisit their 2030 targets once in a while
  • Some observers think that limiting the planet-wide temperature increase to 1.5°C might be doable

Not everyone is smiling and praising their great work. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres responded by putting out a statement thanking the U.K. government for being lovely hosts. But it went on to say:

Our fragile planet is hanging by a thread.
We are still knocking on the door of climate catastrophe.
It is time to go into emergency mode—or our chance of reaching net zero will itself be zero.
I reaffirm my conviction that we must end fossil fuels subsidies. Phase out coal.
Put a price on carbon.
Build resilience of vulnerable communities against the here and now impacts of climate change.

In short, he feels it is too little, too late. Better something than nothing, but the earth won’t wait until Sen. Joe Manchin (D-Coal) is out of office.

Greta Thunberg told BBC Scotland:

“They even succeeded in watering down the blah, blah, blah which is quite an achievement.”

Political fiddling while the climate burns

The COP26 agreement does have some nice-sounding words though. Phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies sounds good. Does that mean we now need efficient fossil fuel subsidies? How does one measure the efficiency of a fossil fuel subsidy? Of course, phasing out subsidies is not the same as phasing out coal itself. The problem with fuel and other areas is that making changes is very disruptive and expensive and somebody will have to pay for it. People are now going nuts about 6% inflation — imagine energy costs going up enormously! Such increases won’t be popular in Arizona (think: air conditioning in the summer) or Minnesota (think: heating in the winter). The oil companies are in full court press mode to save their profits, not the planet, even though they have the resources to do so. (Did you even know the oil company CEOs were questioned by congress?)

The deal is just words, of course. It is the implementation that matters. In each country, domestic politics will play a huge role. In the U.S., if the Biden administration and a Democratic Congress is replaced in 2025 with a Trump administration and a Republican administration, the implementation might just be a bit different. Currently, the U.S. and the European Union have promised to stop adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere by 2050. China has promised it by 2060. But a Trump administration, under pressure from fossil fuel companies, could just say “climate change is a hoax” and rip up the plan.

Many countries are already seeing the effects of climate change in the form of more wildfires, fiercer storms, flooding, and other effects. But the rich countries can manage those effects better. California will not be depopulated due to more fires. But if the global temperature rises by 2°C, the country of the Maldives will be under water and uninhabitable. So will much of Bangladesh. Florida will, too, but at least Floridians can move to Georgia or Alabama. The Dhivehin and Bangladeshis have nowhere to go. Hundreds of millions of climate refugees will try to escape to other countries. It won’t be pretty. (See my Todd Miller post from Mexico).

The power struggles are killing everything

The current administration will do its best, but the Republicans will undoubtedly do everything possible to block all the necessary steps outlined during COP26 because:

  • climate change is a hoax,
  • the Democrats want to do it,
  • not doing it will own the libs big time,
  • the oil, gas, and coal companies don’t want to do it
  • it will cost a lot of money and that means either new taxes or energy prices will have to rise or both.

If Congress refuses to pass the necessary laws (e.g., banning the operation of coal-fired electric power plants by 20[XX], banning the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 20[YY], etc.) there is only so much Joe Biden can do by executive order and every step he does take by 20[XO] will be met by an equal and opposite lawsuit and likely a counter-order the next time a Republican is in the White House.

On the other hand, if fighting climate change becomes a dominant issue in 2022, it could help the Democrats since most people—and especially the college-educated suburban voters who pulled the lever for the Republicans in Virginia and New Jersey—believe climate change is real and something needs to be done about it. Calling it a hoax and pooh-poohing it will probably not work well as a campaign issue for the Republicans next year. They are better off trying to make the midterms about parental rights, not climate change.

When I read sentences like those last few, I sit back and take a deep breath and turn my attention to Jesus, who calls me his beloved. I turn to love and then decide how to show it in troubled times. We all need the breath of life: coal-free from without, fear-free from within.

*** I lifted much of this from my favorite news aggregators, pleading jet lag.

Waterworld: The climate prophet as a box office flop

A life in the Spirit, Climate, Film/TV, , , , , , , ,

It is “shark week” here at the Big Cousins week (not THAT shark week). So this year Nana and Papa are screening shark-related movies each night by decade, starting with the 70’s. Last night we let a naked lady sneak onto the screen during Waterworld from the 1990’s (think Mad Max on the water, as off the big island of Hawaii). The ice caps have melted, and 500 years in the future the only dry land is on the upper slopes of Mt. Everest, now a roosting place for seagulls. People have forgotten other dry land ever existed and the remaining bit is considered a myth by most.

There are a lot of profound observations in the film which tempt me to tell you the whole plot. But the main one about ice caps is apropos. Isn’t it amazing that Waterworld premiered 26 years ago? During that time the governments of the world began to think about the doom it depicts; the corporations have just recently got on board. And the next generation began to have issues when Greta Thunberg got fed up (don’t miss that link). But people are still debating whether global warming is a hoax — and I don’t mean you, I mean the U.S. Congress! The IPCC put out an alarming report recently and about half the population got alarmed. Then the news cycle moved on to how embarrassing it is to leave Afghanistan the way the army is evacuating — the place the country spent its climate-change-combating money.

At the time it was made, Waterworld was considered the biggest waste of film money ever, since it was the most expensive movie ever made at that point. It had problems. For instance, a million dollar set had to be reconstructed because a hurricane destroyed it. The sets are amazing; there is no CGI, for the most part. Two Pirates of the Caribbean movies subsequently beat it by over 100 million dollars and three Avengers movies are not far behind. Waterworld made a return on its huge investment, but people called it a flop and Kevin Costner got a bad reputation for a while. He and I are about the same age, but he somehow is about $250 million dollars richer. I was there when his profitable “flop” came out. Even now, as I did then, I think I think it was labeled a flop because it proposed the melting ice caps were going to be a problem and vested commercial interests were not yet finished selling the spoils they had pumped out of a world captive to capitalism.

Is there a future for a warming wicked world?

My mostly-tween grandchildren had quite a bit to say about the movie. I’m the only one who mentioned the naked lady. They had a lot of speculation about what land would actually be left when the ice melted and they debated other less-than-reasonable elements of the plot (like where are you refining the gasoline for all those tricked-out jets skis?). I made the point that the people commandeering all the gasoline would be the same ones who tried to develop the mythic place called “dry land” if they ever found it and conquered it. The grandkids vaguely relate to my application of Anabaptist/Celtic/Franciscan theology colored with Kevin Costner/Southern California sensibilities (he started as a Baptist from Lakewood). But I persist.

There was supposed to be a Waterworld 2. But the production was so mired in slander it never quite got off the ground. And Costner was not that interested in doing more. At one point he said something like, “They can just re-release the first one. It makes more sense now than ever.” But people would love to make “Waterworld 2: The attack on Dry Land” (at least that is what I would name it).  It is just too ironic. The ice is melting and dry land is being attacked by fires and floods; hurricanes are lining up to deck Haiti and developers  are still trying to squeeze every ounce of profit out of the housing market before everything changes. It is ironic that everything already changed.

Kevin’s gills

When Kevin and I were about 20, I learned a section of the Bible that is always close at hand when the rulers of the world (and the church, etc.) are not paying attention to reality, but assuming they can make their own:

All you wild animals,
All you animals in the forest,
Come to eat.
His watchmen are blind,
All of them know nothing.
All of them are mute dogs unable to bark,
Dreamers lying down, who love to slumber;
And the dogs are greedy, they are never satisfied.
And they are shepherds who have no understanding;
They have all turned to their own way,
Each one to his unjust gain, without exception.
“Come,” they say, “let’s get wine, and let’s drink heavily of intoxicating drink;
And tomorrow will be like today, only more so.” (Isaiah 56:9-12 NASB)

Waterworld and Isaiah are on the same prophetic page and the same people are not listening.

I woke up this morning and had a couple more conversations with the kids. We were still marveling over the spectacle of imagination Waterworld represents. Those sets! That weird plot! John Dutton was once a mutant? Great stuff. In your face Dennis Hopper!

Palmer amaranth aka Pigweed

People are creative. This is kind of a strange aside here at the end of this piece. But I just discovered that farmers in Kansas are being taken over by a weed from the Southwest which has developed a tolerance for Roundup and other even-riskier weed killers. They may have to cultivate the weed as a food source, since they can’t keep ramping up the chemical bombs they use to kill it. That method is over. They are getting inventive. Organic farmers do not have the same issues with the weed. Maybe the corporate farmers will get more organic! They may finally get creative with the Creator rather than exploitative with the Invisible Hand.

It is pathetic to spend 20 something years on a failed war in Afghanistan, on a doomed method of farming and on debating whether the climate is changing due to human wickedness. All those are much more a waste of human ingenuity than a bloated bit of movie prophecy. But it is still true that when people put their mind and treasure to it, they come up with something wildly creative, like Waterworld, like the church which reinvents itself every generation, and like you, listening to the prophets wherever you find them and probably being one yourself. We might yet make it to dry land — or develop gills!