How is my faith tradition (the Christian tradition) equipping myself (and others) … to live into this vision of the Greater Victoria Region “achieving social and ecological sustainability, with a high quality of life and a long life in good health for all its citizens, while reducing its ecological footprint to be equivalent to one planet’s worth of bio-capacity” … of “One Planet Living and being a One Planet Region”?

First just to say I’m speaking as someone who was raised in the Christian tradition.

• My parents took me to church every Sunday…
  • I attended Sunday School …
    • I attended a Christian School during the week…
      • And a Monday evening “young girls group” …
        • I taught Sunday school when I was older …
          • I attended youth group as a young teen …
        • and offered leadership in that group as I grew older …
          • I participated in summer “missions” opportunities as a teen …
            • I offered leadership at camp and at Vacation Bible School …
              • I served on a church committee as a young adult …
                • I attending a Christian University …
                  • And finally seminary …
                • I have been ministering with the United Church for the last 22 years.

So, you can see, I am very much formed and raised and offering my gifts within the Christian tradition.

It is also true that I speak as someone who was both nurtured and wounded by the Christian tradition.

I have early memories of spending a lot of time with my best friend’s family from the time I started Kindergarten until my family moved to a different city when I was 15 and starting high school. This was a family that took me camping and nurtured a sense of awe and wonder and openness to God’s presence in creation: as we breathed in mountains, streams, plants and animals. It was also a family that took me to revival meetings at their Pentecostal Church evoking huge fears about worthiness and belonging. I was a sponge soaking in everything I experienced with this family … which led to irreconcilable experiences and understandings of God. It is the place where I learned to see myself as alien to or separate from the goodness of creation.

When I was no longer able to hold these irreconcilable differences … I can remember the day and the conversation when the frame I had soaked in as a child just kind of fell away … but instead of free falling out of the tradition I found myself caught by a net of support by other voices, other understandings, other stories in the Christian tradition that gave me the building blocks for a new way to see my worth, my connection, to see myself as part of the goodness of creation.

So … when I think about what has and is equipping me in the journey from Three World to One World Living I think about the differing voices in the Christian tradition, something that I have come to really value and appreciate. When I am faced with moments and times when I need a new frame … when my old frame is clearly not working … doesn’t fit with the reality that I am facing … such as the moment we are talking about today … this moment of needing to move from three planet to one planet living … one of the things that has continued to equip me is having access to many voices in the Christian tradition. Over and over again I have found kindred spirits, saints that are there at the right time and place to accompany me into a frame that allows me to engage in more life giving ways with whatever reality I am confronting. And this has fostered an openness to saints outside the Christian tradition as well. I have come to recognize that wisdom is not the sole possession of any one tradition … and even this awareness is something that I have learned from others in the Christian tradition.

Most recently it has been saints like Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme and Ken Wilbur and others … who have been accompanying me and helping me both see and live into a new relationship with creation.

Another thing I would point to is the practice of weekly worship. One of the interesting new developments in the last ten or so years in the United Church has been a growing recognition that our weekly worship life needs to reflect the changes in our way of seeing our relationship with creation. So whereas when I was growing up we may have celebrated two seasons Christmas and Easter … and then when I was older I remember we were re-introduced to more ancient practices of celebrating the seasons of Advent and Lent … in the last twenty years a brand new season has been introduced by the Uniting Church in Australia … the season of Creation … and this has been very quickly adopted by the United Church and many other churches around the world as five weeks in the fall when we pay attention and celebrate God’s presence in creation as having as much to teach us about God as does Scripture as do our brothers and sisters.

I also think about the most recent hymnbook in the United Church and of hymn writers who have been busy writing new loving creation affirming hymns that have been adopted by congregations so immediately and enthusiastically becoming equally beloved as the some of the old classics. There is lots that suggests that what we sing shapes us profoundly … and so these new songs are part of the fabric of faith that is supporting me and my faith community as we move towards one world living.

I’m new to the Island and one of the things I love about the new congregation I am serving is that it is a group who very much sees their identity and mission and purpose as being an eco friendly congregation. They are thrilled to offer hospitality to the North Saanich Farm Market, they see their Thrift Shop as a way of helping to keep stuff out of the landfills, one of the very active teams at the church is the EcoVision Team who is made up of people who are very engaged with contemporary eco justice issues … this is a group of amazing people who feel called to educate themselves about environmental issues and to share what they learn with others.

What I so admire and appreciate about this particular group is that eco justice is not a head thing for them it is a heart thing. Oil spills and climate change and loss of top soil and the effects of pesticides breaks their hearts … and so they meet to accompany each other … so that they are not overcome or overwhelmed by their grief … it is a group in which the grief is heard and held and shared by others and in which they find themselves moving through the grief to being inspired to action knowing that they are not alone. They have provided hospitality for new movies like Green Rites, they have ensured that the land which is home to the church is held as a community trust where anyone can visit and spend time, where no pesticides are used, they’ve been actively involved with protecting ALR land, opposing KinderMorgen, the Site C Dam, the North Saanich Gateway project to list just a few. They have partnered with others groups and opened themselves to the wisdom of other traditions.

And this too is very much part of the Christian tradition. Facing and lamenting suffering and death as the first step towards being inspired by new ideas and new ways of doing things and new ways of being is very much at the heart of the Christian tradition—both in witness of the Hebrew scriptures and the early followers of Jesus through to the saints of the present day.

The more that I grasp what One World living asks of me the more I am able to see how the sacred stories of the Christian tradition … along with following in the way of Jesus … and sharing life with others who seek to do the same … while being open to the presence of God in creation and in other people and other traditions … supports and deepens this journey.