Eco-Act 21:10: relationships never end

It’s hard to believe but I (Adrienne) am writing this blog from sunny (but not as hot) San Diego! As many of you know, I have moved down here to start a graduate school program in Climate Science & Policy at Scripps Institute of Oceanography in July.

My journey of vocational discernment has been greatly shaped by my time with you all at Union/415. While I was with you, I was able to discern in community a call to ordained ministry (still in the works but maybe later), social work / thriving communities, environmental action, food justice, and local business that’s for the neighborhood. Though I’ll be focusing on the climate action piece this next year, I am very excited to see how all of my Union/415 experiences and interests will overlap my studies and overall vocation.

Staying Connected

reflecting on the past & looking toward the future

As we look backward and ahead regarding our Eco-Faith initiative and Union’s next iteration as we get back in person, I want to frame these wonderings within the (indigenous) idea that relationships never end. How might we live as People of the Way if relationships never end? How might we commit to acting for the care of all of Creation if we took seriously the earth’s ongoing relationship with us and all our ancestors, past and future? I can’t help but wonder about the timing and care of this message as I’ve heard it twice (maybe 3 times?) during my first week in San Diego.

The first time was from a Japanese American Episcopal priest serving in Okinawa. Nestled in our Zoom boxes, she described how beautiful it has been to get to know the community and indigenous Okinawan culture while walking with her parish through the uncertainties of a still very real COVID pandemic. She detailed how important relationships are to people there (especially the older folks most impacted by the virus) and shared there is no word in Okinawan for goodbye because culturally, relationships never end.

A day or two later, I was reading about the 751 more unmarked graves found at a former residential school in Saskatchewan, Canada. As I mourned these children and the history of genocide that the Church and State perpetuate all over the world, a package arrived. In it was a thank you present from Union: a wool blanket designed by Snoqualmie Tribal Members McKenna Sweet Dorman and Jaime Martin. The timely gift was different shades of brown (so earthy!) and “incorporates designs found on traditional basket weavings from the Puget Sound region” (see above link for more). The last note said:

These blankets were designed with wrapping, gifting, and honoring in mind. The meeting of the design from each side to the other will speak to the continuous quality of time and intergenerational connection through time. The intentional colors of the blanket reflect the use of natural plants, dyes, and materials used by traditional artists. This design speaks to Snoqualmie Tribe's collective past, present and future.

After learning in Kitchen Table Conversations of Native histories and re-imagined futures for Coastal Salish peoples and other Native folks on Turtle Island, this gift thoughtfully wrapped and held me — a tangible reminder of the histories, communities, and relations that have shaped my work at Union, alongside my hopes for deepened Union relationships with local tribes. The blanket’s Native context and Union’s gift remind me, though not quite in the same language: relationships never end…we are all part of Creation…we will always be connected.

This view of time and of relationship encompasses our sense of self in relation to the community, how we treat one another, and the ways we act for the earth. Though I am stepping away, I wonder who might step in and alongside my frank and action-oriented Eco-Faith counterpart: Gary Cooke. I believe that the momentum we’ve all created together is meaningful and one way Union can continue to show God’s deep love for all of Creation.

If you are interested in becoming more involved with Eco-Faith, please email Gary. For the rest of the summer, we will be collecting produce on Thursdays before noon at the McCollough’s in N. Seattle, 415, and the Downey’s in W. Seattle. The beautiful produce from our dispersed community gardens gets distributed to neighbors at Compass House Dexter.

As I hold on to the significance of relationships never ending, I will always think fondly of my Union community! But to be sure, I think I had more profound exhortations and reflections of gratitude for Union in my Sunday Zoom goodbye (Gary’s prayer that sent me on my way had us all crying!). What I do recall from that message is: Union is doing the Kin-dom work in so many areas; keep showing up tangibly!

I will leave the Eco-Faith blog world (for now) with some exhortations from Jesus…a 1st century indigenous Palestinian Jew and Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of the cosmos (and all our relations):

“Believe me: I am in my Father and my Father is in me. If you can’t believe that, believe what you see—these works. The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it. From now on, whatever you request along the lines of who I am and what I am doing, I’ll do it. That’s how the Father will be seen for who he is in the Son. I mean it. Whatever you request in this way, I’ll do.”

- John 14:11-14, MSG

Eco-act 21:09: acting for the neighborhood and for 2050

Last fall, we reflected on what poet Mary Oliver called the season’s exquisite, necessary diminishing.

We also wondered “… what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else?”

Now we are thankful for the continuation of the annual cadence: Easter rebirth leads to Pentecost’s message of growth. Spring promises summer. And Oliver observes, “in spring there’s hope … in summer there is everywhere the luminous sprawl of gifts, the hospitality of the Lord….”

We’ve also got an answer to our fall question, as the photo left illustrates. Last Thursday Union gardeners delivered seven bags of greens, along with turnips, snap peas and chard; the produce was delivered to, and appreciatively accepted by, Compass House.

Let’s keep this going! For everyone interested in joining the Union Gardens project, mark Thursdays on your calendars. That’s when you can bring your produce to the McColloughs’ house in North Seattle, or the Downeys’ in West Seattle, or Union before 1:00 PM. The Union team will take it from there.

Now, let’s step back for a moment and glance at the bigger picture: fighting climate change on a global scale. This month, the International Energy Agency (IEA) released a special report entitled Net Zero by 2050. Executive director Fatih Birol describes 2021 as “a critical year at the start of a critical decade,” and the report notes that the current pace of carbon/greenhouse gas emissions reduction will miss the 2050 deadline for “net-zero.” But rather than dwell on “gloom and doom,” the report sets out a detailed set of milestones—400!—whose achievement will mark the path the world needs to follow to reach its net-zero goal—with global equity(1)—by mid-century. Some examples:

• By 2021: no new oil or gas fields, or unabated coal plants(2), receive governmental approval

• By 2025: no more sales of fossil fuel-powered boilers

• By 2030: universal access to energy; all new buildings will be zero-carbon-ready(3); 60% of global new car sales will be electric vehicles; most of the required new clean technologies for heavy industry will be demonstrated at scale; solar and wind generation additions will exceed 1,000 gigawatts annually; unabated coal plants will be phased out in advanced economies

• By 2035: 50% of new heavy truck sales will be electric

• By 2040: 50% of aviation fuel consumed will be low-emission

• By 2045: 50% of global heating demand will be met with heat pumps

• By 2050: nearly 70% global electricity will be generated by solar and wind

Is creating a list of milestones the same as meeting those milestones? Of course not. Much of the success in reaching net-zero by 2050 will be driven by technologies not yet developed or proven at scale today, for one thing. And, as the IEA report notes, innovation will require governments to put “R&D, demonstration and deployment at the core of energy and climate policy.” More daunting still, a high degree of international consensus and collaboration will be needed. Hmmm…. And yet, it’s possible to find hope in this special report, for at least two reasons. First, this is not an alarmist “the sky is falling! Quick, we’ve got to do something!” document. Instead, the report presents tangible measures—things we can watch for and work for. And secondly, we as individuals are not relegated to the sideline; we have a role to play. The writers are clear: “A transition of the scale and speed described by the net-zero pathway cannot be achieved without sustained support and participation from citizens…. We estimate that around 55% of the cumulative emissions reductions in the pathway are linked to consumer choices….” So how might we contribute?

• Through our consumer choices: making our next vehicle electric, installing energy-efficiency upgrades and heat pumps in our homes, choosing to walk, bike or take public transport, and using the car wisely when it’s necessary, ….

• Through our voting/political choices: supporting candidates who back clean energy, zero-carbon R&D, job retraining for workers displaced by fossil fuel phase-out, expansion of clean-electricity grids, solar and wind farms, ….

• Through our investment choices: investing in companies/projects working to develop and scale technologies needed to achieve net-zero by 2050.

The path is indeed narrow, as the IEA press release notes, but we do have a path, and ways that we as individuals can help stay on it. That’s encouraging. It’s also encouraging that we have a way—Union Gardens—to help at the neighborhood level. We really can, at both the local and global levels, act with purpose and hope. Reasons to be thankful!

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(1) Per the IEA Report: “Providing electricity to around 785 million people that have no access and clean cooking solutions to 2.6 billion people that lack those options is an integral part of our pathway.”

(2) “Unabated coal-powered plants:” operating with little or no carbon capture/storage

(3) “Zero-carbon-ready:” capable of producing carbon-free renewable energy onsite, or procuring carbon offset

Eco-Act 21-06: Union Gardens April Check-In

Winter’s End

For those of us happy to do a bit of gardening in the wind and rain, the 2021 growing season has been underway for a while already. Actually, we’re still harvesting lettuce and kale from our “winter’s end garden,” left. But now, the overwintering plants are slowly being joined by new sprouts from the peas and salad greens we seeded a few weeks ago (note the tiny bits of green in the foreground).

The major recent activity, however, has been preparing a new garden bed and seeding it with radishes, arugula, spinach, and lettuces. With luck, we’ll be enjoying the radishes sometime in the second half of April, followed by the arugula and spinach, and then the lettuces by late May/early June.

If you’re willing to accept Sky Nursery’s “last frost date” estimate of April 15th, then a wide variety of vegetables can be safely direct-seeded outdoors at this point, as noted in our Union Gardens Calendar:

• fava beans

• peas

• spinach

• onions/scallions

• arugula

• collards

• kale

• leeks

• lettuce

• potatoes

• radishes

• turnips

• cabbage

• cauliflower

• celery

• kohlrabi

Coming Attractions

We’re anticipating rows of green to begin emerging in the “coming attractions” garden, left, within a week or two.

Might you be looking for a positive, hopeful activity—or even just sign of the warmer, sunnier weather to come? Consider planting some seeds in your garden, planter box, or a container on the windowsill!

Eco-Act 21:03: Preparing and Waiting—Ash Wednesday & Union Gardens

Lent is widely recognized as “a period of penitential preparation for Easter,” often marked by fasting and somber contemplation intended to focus our thoughts on Jesus’ impending death—and our own mortality. Gardening offers supporting images for this: the garden of Gethsemane, for example, or the reminder that our lives originated from the earth and will return to it.

But Lent also invites us to wait and prepare for resurrection and rebirth, and gardening offers rich imagery here: seeds placed into the earth emerging as new life … John 12:24 reminding us that “if the [kernel of wheat] falls to the ground and dies … it produces many seeds”—the plants which returned to dust in the fall return to life in the spring … and, as Hannah Brown notes in an article for Living Lent, Jesus was even mistaken for a gardener, in the garden by the tomb.

Brown links our climate crisis to the “lament-and-Gethsemane” aspect of Lent, but she also links it to rebirth and new life. And she observes that “Since the middle ages, it has been tradition for church communities to create an ‘Easter garden’ during Holy Week.” Hmmm… sounds a bit like Union Gardens!

Three final items to mention:

• Don’t forget the Bill Gates-Anderson Cooper conversation on climate change, Thursday night, February 18th

• You might enjoy this reflection on The Vegetable Garden and Lent (thosecatholicmen.com)

• · Stay tuned for more news on Union Gardens in the coming weeks!

Eco-act 21-01: a time to plant

Today we’re excited to begin our second season of eco-faith posts. Thanks for joining us! We’ll get started by planting seeds for three projects we hope to “cultivate” this season. Then we’ll talk a bit more about planting actual seeds to produce tangible crops that we can begin to harvest in the not-too-distant future. First, the projects.

1. Individual actions: Eco-Faith’s first season focused primarily on steps each of us can take on our own to care for the planet: diligent recycling, for example, or responsible disposal of electronic devices, or intentional repair/repurposing/gifting of items we no longer use, or regrowing scallions on windowsills—or even creating worm bins (!) to enhance soil quality. Ideas like these for earth-friendly individual actions will always crop up. So, for 2021 project #1, we will from time to time identify or revisit an individual action for your consideration. For example, last year we introduced Ridwell, a disposal service that handles non-recyclable food packaging and certain other plastics; batteries; clothes/fabric, shoes—and a “rotating” category for things such as strings of Christmas lights. Ten dollars/month provides a discreet outdoor collection bin and regular pick-up. We have now joined those of you who use this service to step up their recycling game conveniently and cost-effectively.

2. Climate change community actions: Even in the darkness overshadowing this post-election period, seeds of hope are being sown with respect to our physical world: the U.S. return to the Paris Climate Accord … General Motors’ decision to move away from fossil fuel-powered vehicles … the U.S.-hosted Earth Day Climate Summit … cancellation of the Keystone Pipeline Project …. In fact, all kinds of climate-friendly actions are being undertaken nationally and at the Washington state and King County levels as well. The future harvests that these actions promise are truly encouraging, but many workers will be needed to bring them in. So, our second project for this season will be looking more closely at various legislative initiatives to try to unearth specific opportunities for some or all of the Union community to actively support. Stay tuned!

3. Union Gardens: With the arrival of February, the gardening season quietly (and damply) begins. Time to clean up the garden beds, loosen and amend the soil, and think about what to grow this year. For serious gardeners, it’s also time to think about indoor starts—and actually to sow peas and spinach outdoors. In fact, before too many more weeks pass, it will be time to transfer starts or directly seed:

• Arugula

• Cabbage

• Cauliflower

• Celery

• Collards

• Kale

• Leeks

• Lettuce

• Onions

• Peas

• Potatoes

• Radishes

• Scallions

• Spinach

Eco-faith 2021 Directions

Individual Acts, Communal Acts, Union Gardens

In a post last October, we wondered …

“…next spring, what if everyone in the Union community who gardens, or who could garden, decided to plant extra tomatoes, or lettuce, or spinach, or onions, peppers, melons, squash, potatoes, …. Could we grow enough food to make a difference for someone else?”

Which leads to this question about a third project: Can Union members plant and manage a “socially-distanced community garden?” The idea would be to plant and grow enough veggies in the back yard, on the deck, in the pea patch, or wherever, for the enjoyment of the gardeners—AND someone else … some Lake Union Village residents, for example, or Union’s burrito-rolling team, ICS sandwich makers, Compass House residents, or ….

So, these are the three project “seeds” we want to plant with respect to Eco-Faith season two: (1) occasionally sharing ideas that Union members can implement on their own to benefit our physical world; (2) climate-focused legislative initiatives that Union could actively support/engage in; and (3) Union Gardens, a socially distanced community garden that aims to grow vegetables to share with others in our wider community.

As we get rolling in the coming weeks, we’ll be on the lookout for purposeful individual actions to share. We’ll be browsing legislative programs for community action opportunities. And we’ll be digging into the possibility of gardening for others as well as ourselves.

We would love to hear what you think about these ideas!

Eco-act 034: taking a Sabbath

What a year this has been kicking off our new Eco-faith ministry of acts of purpose and hope for climate healing. We have really enjoyed diving into these topics and the interrelated ways they intersect with our call to care for all of God’s Creation.

After many weeks of contributing to the Eco-faith blog, we’re taking a little time off to rest, regroup, and plan our next series! Though we will be pretty quiet on the blog for the next few weeks, we encourage you to reflect and re-member this last year. What have you learned? Have you integrated care for Creation into your faith praxis and discipleship?

While we are away, we welcome any feedback, questions, and topics that you want us to cover next. And finally, we offer this excerpt from Wendell Berry’s writing, "Sabbath as the Path to Creatureliness” for further Sabbath reflections.

Eco-act 033: love for God, creation, and one another

What has this Advent felt like to you? We hope you have been able to practice stopping, taking a deep breath, being attentive to the present moment, collecting your bearings, and living in gratitude for all of the gifts of this life — even just for a moment. As we finish out this 4th week of Advent in the midst of a very long year, we are dwelling on and in God’s great love — for all of Creation (including us!).

waiting + love

for climate healing

We believe love is an action, not just an intention or warm and fuzzy feeling. It is embodied by seeing, listening, and knowing, by sharing in belonging and mutual care. God’s love radically embodied and made known by Jesus actively demonstrates and models for us what are the possibilities of love and that this abundant, overflowing love is for all of Creation — human and non-human. It is a Cosmic love that does not shy away from the hard yet truthful realities around the injustices of oppression, greed, and death that pervade the earth but rather, because of love, works tirelessly and creatively toward furthering life. In our time, Jesus’ love calls us to recognize, pray for, and act on much of the climate chaos we find ourselves in, as directly related to capitalism, consumerism, environmental racism (in the extraction of natural resources and BIPOC labor, ideas, lives), and in our accounting of Christianity’s entanglement in all of this. And yet, we can look to Jesus, the Word, who sustains and furthers all of the Cosmos as our hope and continued reason to act (Hebrews 1:1-2:8).

So. What might waiting on, looking for, and acting in God’s great love look like for us in this somewhat dismal state of our climate crisis? For one, it might look like joining in with what the Spirit is doing to bring wholeness, healing, abundance, vibrance, creativity, truth, interdependency, and ultimately more life. We would point to the other blog posts we’ve done on Eco-faith because acting for climate healing is a lot of things…but really does come from God’s invitation to participate in love-in-action.

For some ideas to further your reflection on God’s love and climate healing, we encourage you to check out these organizations, resources, and practices:

• For the Love (Canada): this interfaith organization in Canada that “invites Canadian faith communities and faith-based organizations to come together under a unified banner to mobilize education, reflection, action and advocacy for climate” (homepage).

• Interfaith Power & Light: this group is similar to the organization above, but located in the United States. It builds movements amongst faith communities, especially in the policy realms.

• Earth Ministry: on a very local Seattle level, this group helps churches green their congregations, partners with IP&L above, and provides resources for advocacy in the ways of sustainable futures.

• Read this reflection about Wendell Berry’s view of love, health, and wholeness.

• Show your love for the earth and our communities by going on a nature gratitude walk, tending to your plot of earth, or supporting local food growers.

“I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world,” he writes. “I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, insofar as it is redeemable, it can be redeemed only by love. I believe that divine love, incarnate and indwelling in the world, summons the world always toward wholeness, which ultimately is reconciliation and atonement with God.”

—Wendell Berry, “The Body and the Earth”