Earth Hour, Creation Care progress

Sunday afternoon before I left work for my sabbath day (Monday) I sent out a draft resolution on energy stewardship to a handful of people in different congregations in our area, Metro DC, to get feedback and support. It was wonderful to open my email this morning and not only see great response and comments from those I'd emailed, but also emails from folks I've never met saying "I heard about this and want to be a part."

In short, we are working to create a new Creation Care Team within the synod (for non-church people, that's the 80 or so congregations in the DC area who work together) and to put forth a resolution at our synod assembly (again for non-church people, think stakeholders meeting) encouraging congregations to act for energy stewardship. We'd join synods like Metro New York, Chicago, Milwaukee and NE Iowa in getting such a resolution.

This is exciting work and feels good - as in "and it was good" kind of good. Speaking of good - at Prince of Peace we celebrated Earth Hour on Sat night. That's where around the world, people turned off the lights. 60 is the Earth Hour logo (for 60 mins). That's me behind the "6."


We weren't quite as dramatic as the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben, but from 8:30-9:30, we turned off our lights and a small group of us looked through a telescope, had fun with glow sticks, and shared stories. I told about the stars and night sky in the Peace Corps in Malawi, where I always knew where we were in the moon cycle because the sky was lit up bright when the moon was full, and dark when it was a sliver.

Saturday I got to see the moon up close through a telescope. The surface just looks like pitted concrete. It blew my mind to watch as it drifted out of sight in the eyepiece because we were moving so fast on Earth. Wow. We ended with a prayer of thanksgiving for this marvelous world. Thanks Joyce, David and Alex for a fun night.