August 06, 2024
Janet Gray, living gratefully and respectfully on unceded West Coast Salish lands, invited church leaders in her denomination to fan out and invite people to Faithful Climate Conversations. Here’s why:
I have lots of questions and I certainly don’t have all the answers but I know that when I have the opportunity to spend time with others in small groups talking about these things, I feel better. I also feel more engaged and energized. I feel like I could do something or take actions. I am filled with an ‘active hope’
Are you feeling the weight of mounting significant weather / climate events around the world? Summer forest fires that stretch into earlier and later seasons…hurricanes…rain events that cause devastating floods…etc.
Do you pay more attention to the bees and the birds both to enjoy them and because you feel the grief of species extinction looming?
Are you a teenager, a young or middle aged adult, a parent or grandparent worried about what the future will hold for our communities if we are faced with increasing disasters, political unrest and ongoing climate chaos?
Maybe these questions resonate with you and maybe they don’t, maybe you have different questions when you think of Climate Change. What are they? Questions and curiosity are needed. There is no easy ‘fix’ to what’s going on so we need to create places for discussion.
I have lots of questions and I certainly don’t have all the answers but I know that when I have the opportunity to spend time with others in small groups talking about these things, I feel better. I also feel more engaged and energized. I feel like I could do something or take actions. I am filled with an ‘active hope’.
In 2023, a small group of us from the BC United church region, committed amongst ourselves to offer a number of Faithful Climate Conversations (FCC). We read over the materials provided from the For The Love of Creation. Some of us had done a few conversations already and others had no experience but wanted to take some kind of action.
Our goal was to create safe spaces for conversations about Climate Change and our love for Creation. Did we succeed? Yes. I believe that people are hungry for conversations that matter and they showed up for them. We seeded ideas, more questions, made connections with each other and possibly encouraged new FCC leaders.
I feel like we are at an exciting time in the great turning of our world’s story. Our collective footprint is too heavy and the earth is suffering. We are realizing that we must do things differently than we have done for the past century and figure out together what that might look like. We can’t make the changes needed alone, we must act together. All great reasons to encourage conversations.
Our small group of FCC leaders offered about a dozen different climate conversations. The leaders worked in pairs to prepare and lead the sessions. People could join one or all of the sessions. We provided different times and days spread out over several months, late winter and early spring. Each set of leaders decided which content they would use, what videos and updated content needed to be added.
The FCC conversations are a great starting place for a group of people to come together with a little structure and have meaningful conversations. I highly recommend them and I suggest tailoring them to suit your situation.
Turn your grief and concern into ACTIVE HOPE through conversations.
Tags: Faithful Climate Conversations, FCC