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Earth Sunday, April 21

"[W]e know now that humans have destroyed the foundations of their civilizations over and over in outbursts of madness, but they have also rebuilt, in many cases better than ever. But how do you rebuild mountain glaciers, or the soft soaking rains of the Midwest farm belt, or the Arctic sea ice? How do we prevent the northern peat bogs from drying out and bursting into flame?..." Read Jim Lenfestey's Earth Day fellowship concern.

Plymouth’s Caring For Creating Committee has been planning activities for Earth Sunday, April 21. To center Plymouth as part of the solution to the planetary emergency of climate change, Caring for Creation proposes three actions for the congregation to consider:

1) Commit to make our church facility carbon neutral by 2030. That means that energy consumption that cannot be limited by conservation measures will be provided by sources such as wind or solar that do not produce waste carbon dumped into the atmosphere. The committee is eager to share an exciting presentation by Mayflower Congregational Church, which made the carbon neutral commitment two years ago and is well on the way to achieving it.

2) We are asking the congregation, as individuals, families, businesses, and college alumni to consider disinvesting in the fossil fuel industry. The spark for this international campaign comes from author Bill McKibben, the Martin Luther King of climate science, who argues persuasively that the dire prospect of a radically changed planet is a moral issue akin to that which propelled the anti-Apartheid campaign fifty years ago. The fossil fuel industry currently has five times the amount of carbon on its books that will send the climate reeling beyond control.

3) Participate in an ongoing citizen science project at the Nature Conservancy’s Schaefer Prairie preserve an hour west of Minneapolis, hosted by naturalist and Plymouth member David Astin. Through C4C, Mr. Astin will offer Plymouth members his course, “Learning to See Nature: A Spiritual Practice,” including the guided trip to Schaefer Prairie.

Stop by the Caring for Creation table in Guild Hall to pick up more information and to discuss any of these initiatives. While there you can also sign up for spring Warbler Day, also lead by Mr. Astin, a Saturday in May to follow the birding trail first blazed by Dr. Thomas Roberts, Minnesota’s pioneering ornithologist, seeking sightings of spring warblers and other visitors and returning residents.
—James P. Lenfestey

Climate Change: Bringing Kansas to Minnesota
According to forest ecologist Lee Frelich at the University of Minnesota, by 2100 the current forests of Minnesota’s Arrowhead region will be extinct, along with the plants and animals that depend on them. A colleague says that 30 percent of our lakes will have boiled away with the remaining lakes hospitable only to species able to endure much hotter temperatures. University climatologist Mark Seeley adds that Minnesota’s productive farmland will be ravaged by even deeper droughts and ferocious storms as the hotter atmosphere holds more and more moisture.  Dr. Seeley notes, with astonishment, that on one summer day in 2011 the hottest place on planet earth was Moorhead, Minnesota, with a temperature of 97 degrees F and a dew point of 88 (a dew point of 80 heretofore considered impossible in Minnesota).  By 2100, Minnesota will have the ecology of Kansas. And after 2100, what? And what will Kansas become?

 

 

    News & Issues

The 2012 annual report from the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches now is available online.

Read news from Beacon Interfaith Housing Collaborative (formerly Plymouth Church Neighborhood Foundation).

Caring for Creation resources from the Plymouth Outreach Working Group

Plymouth Church 2012 Annual Report is available as a PDF. It was presented to the congregation at the June 17, 2012 annual meting. Sonia Cairns also presented the report of the Communications Committee and the appendix at the annual meeting.

Strategic Plan 2010-2015 [PDF]

Plymouth's Statement on Environmental Sustainability [PDF]

Heading Home Hennepin, a plan to end
homelessness in Hennepin County by 2016.

In inclement weather, please use your best judgment. Closing notices will be posted on the church's Facebook page, as well as communicated through other channels. Read Plymouth's closing and cancellation policy.

Read or subscribe to The Congregationalist magazine. To obtain a reprint of the Congregationalist's article "Forty Years of Needling," contact allisoncj@plymouth.org or call 612/ 977-1269.

The latest issue of News for the Common Good, from the Minnesota Council of Churches.

The latest issue of Expressions, newsletter of the Greater Minneapolis Council of Churches

Footsteps: A Journey in Faith DVD available depicting
Middle East trip by 12 downtown Minneapolis clergy

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Plymouth at Pride, June 26, 2011

 

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