I am convinced that the majority of us are people of hope. If we didn’t have hope we would find it difficult to get up in the morning or put one foot in front of the other as we struggled to get through ordinary and even difficult days. However, I believe it is important to know there is a place for anger to be embedded in hope and to spur us to release compassionate action.

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To commemorate and honor the life and work of Professor Wangari Maathai, the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF) opened Forest Day 5, one of the most intensive and influential annual global events on forests, with a short video about the Nobel Laureate.

Wangari Muta Maathai was an internationally renowned Kenyan environmental political activist and Nobel laureate.

When God made the world, he made it beautifully, stocked with a variety of four legged beasts, aquatic mammals, incredible landscapes, and unfathomable wonder. He also made humans, and while He gave us the gift of curiosity and the intelligence to create spectacular technology, but we have left a lot of destruction because of it.

Ten years ago, former nightclub promoter Scott Harrison set out to solve the water crisis in his lifetime.

Today, more than one million people have made it their mission too. This is all of our story.

O God who suffers at our spiritual and ethical failings, and rejoices at the turning to virtue of our hearts and spirits: We confess that we have gone astray by our thoughts, words, and deeds. We have been irresponsible by what we have done, as well as what we have left undone.

We are approaching the end of an Age that began eight/six thousand years ago after our movement out of Africa and into Egypt and the Levant and beyond. We had moved out of Africa before that, but this time it was different. Something of positive import to human civilization was taking place. Looking back, there were a broad range of achievements. Yet, many of these “achievements” are now beginning to haunt us. Scientists today are giving us warning. They are telling us we are in many respects living in alienation of Planet earth’s Biosphere.

How can we re-use, re-purpose, recycle, reduce, and even compost the incidents and memories and experiences and trajectories of our lives into a new narrative that serves us and others better?

As human consciousness slowly developed over its evolutionary period, a high level of perception was the result but there remained a deficiency. That level of perception was incomplete. Humans were left unable to comprehend certain realities. One was the importance of their relationship to the biosphere of the planet. Within that biosphere there is a layer that allows all life to exist. Another; it did not provide comprehension of the importance of their relationship to planetary nonlife. The Abrahamic religions in their time attempted to address these issues. Care for the earth as a provider, care for each other, and an Apocalypse at the end well served their purpose. We now find that this religious understanding was far too simplistic and that the Abrahamic simplicity is coming back to haunt us. The reality is that we are facing the possibility of a Sixth Extinction. It is a reality of our own doing. Planet Earth is under siege. Judaism, Christianity and Islam urgently need to address this human consciousness deficit issue. The time has come for them come together with an intra religious configuration wherein all life and non-life on Planet Earth is able to find its universal meaning.

“Devil’s Whisper” taken from Raury’s new album ALL WE NEED.

In recent years biosphere degradation has been forcing many scientists and nonscientists to focus
attention on the interacting dangers within the relationship between our human species and this
planet. Many are concluding that we humans have become an ecological force contrary to
biosphere stabilization and that this is so serious it could lead to our extinction. Renowned
physicist, Stephen Hawking is now sounding the alarm. He has even predicted that we have
less than 600 years before the planet turns into, as he describes it; “a sizzling fireball.”

From the perspective of political theology, the issues of climate change and gun control are related in two ways. The first linkage is that progressive Christians need no promptings on these issues. By massive numbers they know that God is calling on them to enact laws to control guns and to take actions that help to wean the country away from carbon producing energy.

These issues also tell us something important about how many Conservative Christians think about political issues.

As fires rage in California and hurricanes menace the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean, hosts Ann Phelps and Debo Dykes talk with guest Frederica Helmiere about the environment and what lessons Christians can learn from their interaction with the natural world.

Communication is the tool we use to navigate change in this perishable, impermanent world. We talk about what’s happening and what’s coming. We use words to rally and activate citizens; to inform and educate people; to alleviate or aggravate fears, depending on our intentions. Humans use language to make sense of things — even those things that are happening at a scale beyond our grasp. As Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.” And so, while it may seem like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (let’s hope not!), reevaluating the language of climate change can offer a fresh perspective on where we are and where we’re headed.

Going back to the yard sale example, it’s a shame when something is simply thrown away that could have much more life to give. Our retail consumer-driven economy has conditioned us to forget all the other ways that the economy functions outside of retail purchases. Given global environmental problems up to and including climate change, we are going to have to re-think how we acquire and dispose of what we consume.

The biennial national gathering of the United Church of Christ approved an emergency resolution on climate change Monday, denouncing President Trump’s plans to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord and urging the church to take action.

Planet Earth is falling into deficit as a result of our presence on it. All of our institutions are to blame.

How much responsibility does Abrahamic religious belief have? It has major responsibility. Its system of belief has been a molder of Western culture and the institutions that have grown out of that culture. It is a culture that now dominates most of the world.