Green Options

I was intrigued by this couple after they appeared on Oprah Wednesday, February 27. I know it’s been over a week. Did you really think I caught the episode on Oprah? I heard about this from a friend who never misses the show. Honestly! OK, I watch it sometimes.

Daniel Burt is an eye doctor and his wife Amanda is a civil engineer living in Nashville. Their hobbies include living a lifestyle that makes a statement against rampant overconsumption and wastefulness in America. In other words, they dive in dumpsters to redeem things that have been thrown away.

Daniel explains, “We try to live very simply, and we don’t spend a lot on ourselves. We are very happy with having a little. We like to make it a priority to share a lot of our money. A lot of that comes from our Christian values of sharing and generosity.”

A barefoot woman learns the language of the local indigenous tribe, and cultivates her own spirituality based on their deep spiritual connection to the Earth. This woman was a highly educated Mexican nun and playwright who lived during the 17th century.

The Boston Globe published an article today about Nina M. Scott, a retired University of Massachusetts Amherst professor of Spanish Literature. Instead of chocolate, Scott has chosen to give up carbon this Lent. She is doing a few extra things to reduce her carbon footprint, such as hanging her clothes up instead of using a drier and carpooling to use less fuel.

“For me it’s that connection between protecting nature and faith,” she says. She and a dozen of her friends at Grace Episcopal Church in Amherst first got the idea when they heard about two Church of England bishops who encouraged parishioners to go on a low carbon diet for Lent. (Check out my article, “What Does Lent Have to Do With Sharpening Green Habits?”)

The Globe article also mentioned this past weekend’s Yale Divinity School’s conference “Renewing Hope: Pathways to Religious Environmentalism.” This is the conference that screened the film Renewal, which I wrote about last week. The Globe pointed out the conference to illustrate the movement that is taking place, that religions are becoming enlightened to their environmental responsibilities.

Known as the “Green Patriarch,” Bartholomew I, the leader of 300 million Orthodox Christians, celebrates his 17th birthday this Leap Day. At age 68, his health has been slowly declining for decades. This has led supporters of his environmental achievements to begin speculating about whether his successor will continue his green legacy.

Bartholomew first earned his reputation with the statement, “Crime against the natural world is a sin.” His grandest endeavor was inviting 200 scientists, journalists, and political leaders to hang out with him on a cruise ship. They traveled around the Adriatic Sea to observe the ecological degradation taking place. During the symposium, he persuaded Pope John Paul II to adopt his agenda.

More and more people each day are joining the sustainable table. I am not referring to the wonderful website about healthy and ethical food choices, but heck it’s worth a mention anyway. By “the sustainable table,” I mean the conversation about how to bring the vision of a greener world into reality. So when I read “Evangelical leaders host ‘creation care’ summit in Orlando-area church” in the Orlando Sentinel, I got this funny picture in my head of church folk sitting down for brunch with a bunch of barefoot tree-huggers.

“‘We are the ones who are late to the table,’ [Rev. Joel] Hunter said. An emerging national evangelical leader on environmental issues, Hunter said the goal of the conference was to ‘get mutually stirred up’ and to ‘assume stewardship’ of this issue.”

Evangelical leaders gathered at Northland, a Church Distributed to hammer out “creation care.” If these green evangelicals are beginning to embrace terms like “sustainable,” “green,” and even “carbon neutral,” but still shudder at the sound of “environmentalism,” are we really all sitting at the same table? Or are we sitting at completely different tables, looking at the same evidence, but pretending to ignore each other’s solutions?

Buddhist monks are ordaining trees. Future Jewish leaders are learning about sustainable living. Evangelical Christians are fighting mountain top removal. Muslims are giving away organic meat to the poor during Ramadan.

These are just a handful of the stories told by veteran filmmakers Terry Kay Rockefeller and Marty Ostrow in their upcoming documentary, Renewal.

RENEWAL is the first feature-length documentary to capture the breadth and vitality of America’s religious-environmental movement. In rural communities, suburbs and cities, people of faith are rolling up their sleeves in practical and far-reaching ways. Offering a profound message of hope, RENEWAL shows individuals and communities driven by the deepest source of inspiration - their spiritual and religious convictions - being called to re-examine what it means to be human and how we live on this planet .

Fish burgers are back on the restaurant menus. It must be Lent again.

Marking the beginning of the Easter season, worshipers go to church on Ash Wednesday (often still recovering from Fat Tuesday) and get ash spread on their foreheads. The ash is a symbol of contrition and repentance. Then everyone is expected to give up meat and beer and act gloomy for the next 6 weeks. Sound like fun? No wonder Mardi Gras is so popular!

But when you think about it, a collective confession can be incredibly meaningful in light of our complicity in greenhouse gas emissions. The tradition of Lent has potential for inspiring action. In addition to repentance, the ritual of smearing carbon on faces can visually represent the carbon we are contributing in our daily lives. The following are some reformulations of the elements of Lent with a green focus. (These principles are intended to be helpful to people of any faith background or none at all.)