we talked a bit about creation care during our sharing meeting at our community last night. one of our members was integrally involved in some creation care workshops at the Mennonite World Conference this past month in Asuncion, Paraguay and he spent some time talking about that last night. the Mennonites are purported (i have it on VERY good authority) to be working on a book outlining Creation Care as an issue and just what Mennonites believe on the subject. this book will eventually end up on the Anabaptist bookshelf, on which there are presently only 4 books and this would be the 5th. i say it that way because the bookshelf would outline what they believe in certain areas and it would be expected that every Mennonite pastor would have access to those books in order to guide them as they shepherd their own little flock.
our community is not Mennonite. in fact, i believe that we are the only non-Mennonite member of MCC. as the member of our community explained the direction that we'd be taking over the next little bit of future i was enthused that we were going to be discussing this matter, and i told him so. this stuff is important. you, like me, have heard from all sides about the need, the morality, the theology and the science on this issue. i was excited about the grassroots implications though, scared of them too. i want to know how I can be more ethical in my treatment of this world, what more can i be doing?
i recycle, i reuse, i try to reduce, i bike to work, i bus to work during the winter, i walk when i can just do that instead of being lazy and sitting behind the wheel, we try to use energy efficient tools, we've looked at ways to reduce our footprint. hey, i even use rechargeable batteries. you know what though? the list doesnt seem very long. i'm not trying to brag my way over this stuff because i honestly don't believe it's enough, i'm not enough in this area.
what if i'm convicted to garden? that's a lot of work, and i have a black thumb. shouldn't i be arguing for foods that i eat that ... are local? organic? fair trade? yeah, probably i should.
how simply am i living? probably not simply enough. if i were more "simple" (although some would say i'm pretty simple already) then i could give more to the support of others.
i'm excited about this discussion. let's go deep and get rid of even the hint of superficiality. hopefully i'll have some meanderings on the subject down the road. hold your breath, we're going deep.
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Ian,
You should read Surprised By Hope by NT Wright. I just finished it and am going to buy it and go through it again. it covers a lot of topics but one of the main ones is that this earth is not just all going to be destroyed in the end, but rather recreated anew and that what we do today to care for it (and for other people as well) is not in vain.
That's a huge difference from what much of evangelical Christianity tells us - mainly that it's all going to burn in the end so who cares what you do to it all.
I grew up in Alberta (and though I live in BC, this little corner is still basically Alberta) and creation care was not a topic discussed by anyone except as it pertained to the farmer's whose crops were struggling. I've always been very apathetic towards the environment and it's a HUGE stretch for me to even begin to think along these lines. I really want to know that the choices I am making actually make any kind of difference to the planet - that's important to me. I'm not interested in making changes if they are surface only and don't have an effect. Recycling was one of the first areas this really hit me, in that I stopped doing it once I found out that all of my recycling was ending up back at the dump. Just brutal.
I'll be following your thoughts on this closely, so keep it up!
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