When most of us think of Israel we imagine a desert environment, the arid wilderness of Judea where Jesus spent his forty days, the inspiration for our Lenten season.
Israel does draw water from both the Jordan River and an aquifer for its highly productive agriculture. But would you think of wetlands in Israel? In the north there were wetlands which were drained as unwanted swamps during the past century. Then it was realized that migratory birds were suffering because their traditional lay-over spots had disappeared. The Jordan Valley is one of the lowest places on Earth (the Dead Seas is the lowest place) and it is a migratory channel which flows into the Rift Valley in Africa and all the way to Europe.
In the 1990's the Israeli government began restoring the wetlands of the Hula Valley in the north with spectacular results. Millions of birds move through and hundreds of thousands of cranes, seen above, now find their way to these wetlands. I have seen flights of storks floating gracefully northward on the thermals.
There is now an extension to the traditional religious tourism industry with avid birders visiting Israel to watch the migration.
Encouraging story, don't you think?
The 140 characters of Twitter mean a lot of twaddle wafts my way and may even emanate from my account from time to time. It is also remarkable how much can be communicated in the equivalent of a couple of sentences. The environmentalist Bill McKibben tweeted today that the arctic sea ice is at one-fifth the area of 1979. I remember 1979 as though it were...thirty-four years ago! Granted, none of our kids were born yet, but I had been married three years, was finishing my second university degree, looking forward to ordination and getting paid for a living. Thirty-four years is a blip in time, but 80% of the sea ice area has disappeared since then.
Most of us don't give a thought to ice, other than putting it in a drink, or trying not to go for a slide on the sidewalk (bad winter for that) but sea ice is essential for the ecosystems of the North and for reflecting the heat of the sun. Open water absorbs heat instead, resulting in rising ocean temperatures and levels along with flooding and so on and so on. Someone has described this as "Earth's attic is on fire," a startling notion. Just because we don't climb up into the attic it doesn't mean it isn't on fire. Just because I don't want it to happen doesn't mean it isn't happening.
To me it is a matter of awareness, and a willingness to acknowledge the truth about our changing climate. And I can't be self-righteous. I can scoff at climate change deniers, including alarming numbers of conservative Christians. But if I'm not willing to pay attention and alter my expectations and lifestyle, am I really much different?
Comments?
Jesus was baptized in the Jordan, changed a woman's life at a well, and called himself Living Water. All important symbolism in an arid land where H20 was precious then and still is. We assume though that in North America potable water is available in abundance, but an extended drought in much of the United States is pushing new technology to the forefront and getting governments to think the unthinkable. You may be aware that sewage is referred to as black water, and treated water is grey. Getting black water to the stage of being drinkable again is very new. Read on though about what is happening in the drought stricken state of Texas:
In response to the drought — lake levels in Wichita Falls, Texas dropped below 40 percent capacity last week — several Texas cities are pursing projects to turn treated sewage into millions of drinking water per day, the New York Times reports.
Wichita Falls, for example, hopes to produce 5 million gallons of potable water daily through reuse technology, and by the spring, a $14 million treatment plant in Big Springs will turn sewage into drinking water and distribute some 2 million gallons daily to the Midland-Odessa area. Other Texas cities moving ahead with the technology include Brownwood, Abilene and Lubbock, according to the Times.
The Big Springs plant will be the first project of its kind in the US because it will use direct potable-reuse technology – that is, the treated wastewater will not be sent through an aquifer before use.
In 2007, Orange County, Calif. opened the world’s largest sewage purification system to increase drinking water supplies, according to GrowingBlue, a water awareness group whose members include IBM, Veolia Water, The Nature Conservancy, the UN Global Compact CEO Water Mandate and others.
El Paso also treats its wastewater to produce potable water. There, as in Orange County, the treated wastewater is sent through an aquifer before being pumped and receiving additional cleaning.
I know, I know, it sounds really yucky, but desperate times call for innovative measures. I think Jesus would approve.
Do you? Could you bring yourself to drink recycled water?
Environment Minister Peter Kent just announced that a bill has been introduced in the Senate to establish Sable Island, a rugged and raw extended sand dune off the coast of Nova Scotia, as a national park. Hurray that the senate can do something useful! Hurray that the feds do know how to preserve, not just extract! Sable Island is tiny but has a fascinating history as a graveyard for ships with scores and perhaps hundreds foundering in the treacherous waters of that part of the Atlantic.
Horses from some of those wrecks made their way to Sable Island and managed to survive through many generations. The imagination of our daughter Emily has been captured by these hardy creatures and she would love to travel to Sable Island one day. At $5000 a person it may be a while.
We need protected places, even in this country of wide open spaces on both land and sea. We need governments which will act for future generations, not just short-term economic goals.
This Sunday we will hear that Jesus spent weeks in the harsh Judean wilderness to prepare himself for his ministry. In that rugged environment he heard God clearly and confirmed his purpose. The least we can do is preserve our own wilderness places.
Do you know about Sable Island? Does a trip there appeal to you, price tag aside? Are you glad to hear of the plans to protect it?
I was intrigued by this image from a website called Next Nature which invites us to examine the ways in which technology and nature interconnect, complement each other, and lock horns. On Sunday morning I watched one of our teens showing one of our toddlers her cell phone and he was fascinated. It may not start in the womb, but the technological training begins early.
A review of the Next Nature site borrows some of their material in offering:
" Children know more brands and logos than bird and tree species! NextNature.net seeks to "radically shift your notion of nature. Our image of nature as static, balanced and harmonic is naive and up for reconsideration. Where technology and nature are traditionally seen as opposed, they now appear to merge or even trade places. We must no longer see ourselves as the anti-natural species that merely threatens and eliminates nature, but rather as catalysts of evolution. With our urge to design our environment we create a ‘next nature’ which is unpredictable as ever: wild software, genetic surprises, autonomous machinery and splendidly beautiful black flowers. Nature changes along with us!"
When we went to Quebec to meet our new grandson, Nicholas, my wife, Ruth, video'd me holding him in my arms saying softly, "I'm going to teach you about the birds, and take you canoeing..." I didn't realize she was doing so, so it caught me off guard when she played it back for me today. For me, taking on that role teaching about creation will be an important aspect of teaching about the Creator. I'll take it seriously and playfully.
What are your thoughts about this?
I got a grandfather gift, and a nice one too! It is the sort-of children's, muchly adult illustrated book called Grandad's Prayers of the Earth by Douglas Wood. Wood's name was familiar, and when I searched him online I discovered that he is the author of Old Turtle, one of my favourite kid's books.
The grandfather in the book walks often with his grandson and offers that the trees, the flowers, the birds are all prayers: "A bird prays when it sings the first song of the morning, and it prayer in that silent moment just before it sings. And the robin's last song at sundown is an evening prayer."
The illustrations are beautiful and I like the notion that everything living praises God. It is biblical too. Read psalm 104, or psalm 150: "let everything that has breath praise the Lord."
After the initial wonder of holding our very new grandson, Nicholas, my mind went to what sort of world he will grow up in, and my part in making it less hospitable, less balanced. I'm not proud of what the Boomer generation has done. But the book comforted me, both in my conviction that "the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" and that I can be part of teaching and modelling for my grandchildren what abundant life as a gift of God really means.
Do you know this book, or Old Turtle? Do you believe that the very existence of other creatures is a prayer to the Creator? Are you part of the problem, or part of the solution?
I have blogged a couple of times about car share programs, including the one in Montreal called Communauto which was used by our son and daughter-in-law while they lived there. Instead of owning a vehicle which they would have to maintain, insure, and park, they subscribed to the service and paid by the hour for the use of a car which was handily kept just down the hill from where they lived. It seems like a perfect solution in a big city, especially for those who aren't into the stage of ferrying children around in every spare moment.
On our drive back from Quebec on Tuesday we heard an interview with the Benoit Robert, the founder of Communauto. To our surprise we discovered that all other car share programs in North America followed on this one, as well as the Paris program. It began in 1994 with three cars and a handful of subscribers. Today there are about 25,000 subscribers in four Quebec cities and Ottawa, sharing 1300 vehicles. Robert cheerfully admitted that while he now makes a decent living, he didn't for the first years as Communauto got rolling, so to speak. He started out studying the possibilities when he was a student and became so convinced it could work that he just jumped in.
He pointed out that we use our cars about ten percent of the time, yet we have lots of money tied up in them. Most of the cars they use are eco-friendly and serve a need. He figures that Communauto is part of what he calls a transportation cocktail, along with taxis and car rentals. What's not to like?
As I have pointed out before, according to the gospels Jesus and the gang hoofed it everywhere, other than brief stints in boats with sailsand oars, and on the back of a donkey. Talk about eco-friendly.
Does anyone else admire a guy like Robert for doing something rather than just thinking about it? Are you overly dependent on your vehicle? Do you wish you could car share or is that just not practical for you? What about public transportation?
"Fishery management officials...voted to impose drastic new cuts to the commercial harvest of cod along the Atlantic coast, arguing that the only way to save the centuries-old cod fishing industry was to sharply limit it."
Is this a Canadian press release issued by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans from twenty-five years ago? No is was made this past Wednesday by the New England states where the cod fishery still exists, but is rapidly failing. There was a time when this fishery was so vital to the state of Massachusetts that there is a "sacred cod" hanging in the assembly in Boston -- is the motto "In Cod we Trust?" The carving is 1.5 metres long, which is impressive, but in another day cod were hauled up measuring two metres in length, and weighing 100 kilograms. It is estimated that what once seemed to be an inexhaustible resource is at about one percent of traditional populations. The once abundant cod is now an endangered species.
There is a personal fishery for the cod in Newfoundland now, meaning that individuals can catch a few for a family feed. But there may never be a commercial fishery again, of any note. When we lived there thirty years ago I actually went out jigging for cod with parishioners, which makes me feel like a relic from the past...don't say it!
The book of Genesis tells us to be stewards of the earth and sky and seas, not plunderers. It is a message we steadfastly ignore, to our peril. With a tip of the hat to an adage from another day, if we can marvel at a Canadian astronaut circling the planet taking breath-taking photos, why can't we take of the planet itself? That we don't is a sin.
Were you aware that the Americans were still fishing for cod? Does it matter to you whether those ugly old cod exist or not? Do you like fish and chips?
Recently I expressed my bemusement at the fact that some colleagues in our ministerial were reluctant to participate in a joint Blessing of the Animals service for Bowmanville.
Their heads would probably spin like tops if they heard that there are Lutheran canine pastors called comfort dogs, seven Golden Retrievers which go into difficult situations where healing is needed. Seven...eventually twelve I wonder?
They go to nursing homes and hospitals, but they are also deployed to disaster sites including areas ravaged by Superstorm Sandy. More recently they spent time with the children of Sandy Hook elementary school where twenty children were brutally murdered. The program began in 2008 and one of the founders observes: "they are safe. they show unconditional love. and dogs have a unique ability to sense hurt in people." The overall theme of the ministry is to "bring the mercy, compassion, presence, and proclamation of Jesus Christ to those who suffer."
In other words, these dogs are not being blessed, they are a blessing.
Does this ministry give you "paws" for thought? Comments about anything other than bad puns?
