A main course of information about the liturgical Season of Creation was served up by the Bishop’s Commission on Climate Change (BCCC) team at yesterday’s Climate Kitchen meeting, along with ‘side dishes’ of creation care projects for inspiration, and a ‘recipe swap’ to share ideas for engaging in the Season of Creation.
Climate Kitchen, said Kate Varley, BCCC member and one of the Climate Kitchen organizers, is a warm and welcoming space for conversation on all the things in the diocese that are happening around climate, the environment, sustainability.
“There’s so much going on around the diocese,” Varley said. “We wanted to have a networking space so that we could share ideas, to swap our recipes, if you will, on how best to live into our call for creation. And it’s hopefully where we’ll find a little bit of food for the soul.”
After an opening prayer thanking God for creation and the web of life from BCCC member Mahri Mendelson, the Rev. Payton Hoegh, a deacon in the diocese, offered an introduction to the Season of Creation.
The Season of Creation, which begins Sept. 1 and Culminates Oct. 4 with the Feast of Saint Francis, is an emerging liturgical expression within the Episcopal Church, which has been a long standing tradition in the practice of our Orthodox churches, Hoegh said. The season has been increasingly observed ecumenically for more than 35 years. He said that with leadership from the World Council of Churches, the season has been marked out as a time of action and prayer for Earth. The Episcopal Church, he added, has been encouraging communities to participate in the liturgical season for many years now.
“We can look at this from our Anglican tradition as an enrichment of our traditional liturgical calendar, not just an expansion or an extension,” Hoegh said. “It’s a time where we intentionally focus on God’s creation, on the call and even the command established in Scripture for us to tend to and care for the created world.”
Hoegh said that faithful care of the health of the planet also touches concerns about immigration, economic sustainability, racial justice, global conflict, and other issues that call the church to spirit-grounded response.
He highlighted the new Perennial edition of the Season of Creation Resource, a guide to the Season of Creation for Episcopal congregations complied by the Rev. John Elliott Lien and the Rev. Margaret Bullitt-Jonas. The Resource offers a detailed companion in a format similar to the Book of Common Prayer, including the lectionary for the Season of Creation for Years A, B, and C, as well as overviews on creation care, collects, lessons, prayers, propers, spiritual writings, and tips on preaching about the Season of Creation.
He shared a favorite quote from the resource, by Simone Weil: “The beauty of the world is Christ’s tender smile for us.”
The Commission also recommended those interested in the resource watch the webinar that Lien offered, which is available here (passcode: &JhuCf6L).
The Rev. Danial Tamm, also a deacon in the diocese, shared that at his parish, Holy Nativity, Los Angeles, he and several others planned to preach about the Season of Creation and Creation Care, and the parish is working to create more involvement with their community garden, both from parish members and the surrounding neighborhood.
Representatives from Trinity Episcopal Church, Redlands, shared their experiences engaging with climate change by drawing on the knowledge and connections of parishioners. The congregation held a forum led by a parishioner and environmentalism professor on the reasons people deny climate change, which ultimately lead a group at the congregation to begin a creation care action plan for the congregation. They have also drawn on the connections of parishioners to form ties with local environmental groups, and have further creation care actions planned.
Next, for a ‘recipe swap,’ attendees met in breakout rooms to share ideas for creation care projects. Attendees encouraged one another to switch from plastics and single use items to reusables at coffee hours and meals, to get involved with California Interfaith Power and Light’s Our Sacred Canopy project, to investigate solar power for church buildings, and look into Solar Faithful, a possible way to finance solar panels, to begin composting, and more. Representatives of All Saints by-the-sea, Santa Barbara, shared that the parish was the first religious organization to be certified as a Santa Barbara Green Business. A similar program exists in Los Angeles County.
Commission members encouraged all in attendance to urge their counties to support the Polluters Pay Superfund Act, to participate in the Sept. 21 “Sun Day” day of action, and to join the Sept. 9 BCCC virtual compline.
The meeting closed with a moment of silence for The Rev. Canon George Woodward, and finally a prayer from St. Augustine: “Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you. Look below you. Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink. Instead, he set before your eyes the things that he had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that?”
Watch a recording of the Climate Kitchen meeting here.