Find your voice
to speak up with love
for the wellbeing of family,
neighborhood, community, planet.
October Tips
According to research, just two hours a week in nature have a positive effect on health and psychological wellbeing—and the benefit holds regardless of age, income, or chronic illness. Build nature time into your routine and your family’s. Take a 10-minute nature break, eat lunch outside, talk and walk. Love yourself and your loved ones.
Green space is critical infrastructure for health and wellbeing. And like all infrastructure, access to it isn’t equally distributed. Lower-income neighborhoods consistently have less tree canopy, hotter temperatures, more pollution, and worse health outcomes. Speak up for parks and trees to be placed so that all neighbors benefit.
Weave love of creation and neighbor into your worshipping community’s practices through liturgy, fellowship, education, and contemplation. See to it that creation justice is not just an occasional program or a single campaign or the purview of one committee but a dimension of the congregation’s shared life.
Who pays for pollution? Not the polluters! Challenge government to shift the cost back to where it belongs. As citizens and people of faith, follow Jesus’ story of the persistent widow (Luke 18:1-8), who stuck to her mission and finally convinced the unjust judge. Keep bringing injustice to planet and people to the attention of the powers that be. Write letters, sign petitions, make calls.
Put your money to work for justice. When you buy organic, you guarantee more farmers can grow healthy, safe food. When you buy fair trade, you provide living wages and fight poverty. When you bank with a community bank or credit union, you are investing locally and likely not funding fossil fuel projects. Choose justice.
Persist in the “little things” you do to help the planet—recycling, composting, planting, thrifting, ride sharing, consuming less, using alternatives to plastic—and talk about what you are doing and why. People pay attention to the practices and words of people they know. You make a difference.
When something proposed is harmful, raise your voice to connect the dots for people and officials of how the results are injurious. Encourage others to listen and act. Go after change. Turn your private frustration into public pressure.
Love for the next generation is the number one reason why people care about climate change. Keep in mind your children, grands, greats, and future generations as you make choices for your lifestyle and for how you spend your energy addressing the environmental and justice issues of today. Be proactive for their sake.
In the face of fast-tracked, hyperscale data centers, join the community demanding transparency, truth, time, and guardrails. Learn about the inherent creation justice issues, and raise your voice along with your neighbors’. Sing out like the canary in the coal mine.
The gifts of God—sun and wind—are free and renewable. Using them rather than continuing with fossil fuels will save our planet. A crucial benefit from the switch is less incentive to go to war over limited fossil resources. Join with others and use your power—your voice, your actions, your advocacy—to love Earth.
Yes, One Person Can Make a Difference!
Individual actions that I have taken to help prevent climate change include driving a hybrid plug-in, installing a heat pump water heater, insulating my home, putting solar panels on my garage, and eating less meat. I am also trying to be more environmentally conscious in my purchases and am exploring fossil-free investments for my retirement funds.
Catherine Houle is a member of Williamsville United Methodist Church, Williamsville, NY.
As a reader of the Tips, do you have a Tip to share from your own experience? Send your idea to tips.creationjustice@gmail.com
The United Methodist Creation Justice Movement is providing these Tips
as a tool to equip church members, families, and individuals to respond to God’s call to care for creation and do justice with our neighbors.
