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Bestselling author and environmental activist Bill McKibben recounts the personal and global story of the fight to build and preserve a sustainable planet.

This week, I have witnessed pipeline construction tear its way toward the waters of the Missouri river which flow into the Mississippi, threatening to pollute the aquifer that carries drinking water to 10 million people. I have seen where their machines clawed through the earth that once held my relatives’ villages. I have watched law enforcement officials protect the oil industry by dragging away my indigenous brothers and sisters who stood up for our people.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership is opposed by a great majority of voters, members of Congress, environmental groups, trade unions, consumer groups, human rights advocates, and more. We ask that you not subvert the will of the people. We ask that you stand in solidarity with the proposed Hightower Amendment to the Democratic Party Platform that we will unite to oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership if it comes up for a vote in the lame duck session of Congress or beyond.

How do we respond to difficult times? We turn to our spiritual practices. Here are some of our tried-and-true ones.

The path forward is clearly marked: reach beyond our walls, communicate more aggressively, stop relying on Sunday worship, encourage clergy to be entrepreneurs and not chaplains, form small groups, turn our funds to mission work, seek to change people’s lives. Many congregations are trying it. But it’s like installing a swimming pool. Everything is new, and the new things that need to be done now are the hard ones.

Let’s start with a “what if”: what if you were starting a church today, what would you do?
You can do this. It’s like the state motto of New Hampshire: “Live free, or die.” You can live free of negative overhead, dysfunctional practices, and old expectations. You can make fresh decisions – “choose life,” said Moses. Or you can die.

“Racial antagonism structures our imaginations as does our love of weapons. The former creates our enemies, and the latter constructs a false sense of independence and freedom.”

I don’t know if we Americans, especially Christians in America, want to be freed from our demons. The late New Testament scholar Walter Wink defined the demonic as an array of human and supra-human forces aligned to destroy life. The demonic was both individual and structural, personal and collective, sentient and mechanical. Wink’s expansive way of writing about the demonic sought to capture the dynamic interplay of our being oppressed by evil and our making ourselves tools for evil’s use. Some yield to evil, and others receive the suffering inflicted by such yielding.

The work of the religious professional must look “beyond the walls” of the church, beyond the comfortable conversations we have with people we know, beyond in-house concerns, beyond the shared language of our years together.

To engage with the larger world beyond our walls, we can’t just send more people our latest in-house, inward-facing conversations. We need to address the needs, concerns, yearnings, questions and personalities of that larger world.

What are the big questions that religion answers?

I know what you are thinking, this being St. Andrew’s, and St. Andrew’s being a good liberal Protestant church: “Bob, it’s not about answers but about living the questions.”

We can say that, yet we do need answers. Questions are fine in church, but we live day-to-day by answers, no matter how tentative and incomplete they may have to be. Whether or not there are any definitive ones to be found, we’re all hunting for answers.

One traditional formulation of the questions that various religions seek to answer is: Where did we come from? What happens to us when we die? How are we to live?

You should be spending as much as 50% of your time on communications, I told a group of clergy at the Kenyon Institute’s “Beyond Walls” writing seminar for religious professionals.

That means time spent blogging to the vast world outside your walls, engaging with prospects, and communicating with your flocks. It means email campaigns, as well as ad hoc emailing. It means creative use of social media, especially Facebook. It means messaging. But always, three audiences, and distinct messages tailored to the questions, hungers, issues, yearnings that actually occupy each audience.

There are many misconceptions about meditation that Tibetan Buddhist master Mingyur Rinpoche wants to set straight. The biggest one? You don’t have to quiet your mind for an extended period of time in order to reap the benefits.

You have the ability to engage in the practice anytime, anywhere. The key is focusing on what’s happening inside your head. Instead of trying to block your thoughts and emotions as you’re meditating, Rinpoche said that you should lean into what he calls your “monkey mind,” or the constant chattering in your head.

When the dominant white culture doesn’t see and hear African-American voices concerning our pains, fears, and vulnerabilities our humanity is distorted and made invisible through a prism of racist, LGBTQ and sexist stereotypes. So, too, is our suffering.

I’m calling on my white LGBTQ brothers and sisters for help because my spouse and I don’t know where our Black bodies are safe in America.

Activist Alexandria Williams of Black Lives Matter – Toronto says her group temporarily shut down the parade to challenge ‘Pride’s anti-blackness’

“Shoot first. Ask questions later.”
“The best defense is a good offense.”
These seem to be the mantras of our time. Waking as we do each morning to a new shooting in our country or bombing in our world, accompanied by sights and sounds of shots and explosions, shouting and screaming, followed by the heart-rending wailing of the grieving, gives new impetus to the cry:
O God, make speed to save us.
O Lord, make haste to help us.

Against or Through? With or For? But or And?

Skits for worship

Let’s talk about leadership transition, namely, calling a new pastor. This is where many congregations go astray, because they make transition more difficult than it needs to be, because they infuse the process with “magical thinking,” and because they fail to complete the transition process.

Moving beyond the deep-seated cultural feelings of shame that have long fueled the conflict between Christianity and sex—and the belief that there is only one right and valid way to practice one’s sexuality—this renowned University of Chicago pastor uses enlightening personal stories and examples from theology to show how sex is powerful and holy.

“Earth My Body” was written and performed by Nicole Sangsuree though the opening and closing chant is a very old song with an unknown author. The song was recorded and produced by Jeremy Davidson in Portland, Oregon, U.S.A., and the video was filmed at many locations in Thailand by producer and filmmaker Emma Carroll (Wee Earthlings). The experience of writing, recording and then filming this song has been part of a healing awakening for Nicole.