February 2025 News and Views
February News and Views
TAF NEWS
Third Act Faith (TAF) Leaders Plan for Coming Year
The Third Act Faith Coordinating Committee met for a Zoom retreat the afternoon of February 2 to begin discerning our goals for the next several months. While we are nearing consensus on the exact wording and areas of emphasis, we thought it was important to provide TAF members with a snapshot of our general direction and some of the main ideas we discussed.
Keeping the overall mission of Third Act in mind, we asked ourselves what the particular role of people of faith might be at this time, in relation to safeguarding our climate and democracy. Speaking from our own faith perspectives, there was a common theme of proclaiming truth and hope in the face of lies, chaos, and destruction.
A related theme emerged around what it means from the religious perspective to resist the destruction of our climate and of our democracy and its institutions. Staying true to who we are as people of faith and proclaiming the timeless truths of our various faith traditions around caring for our neighbors, near and far, and caring for the Earth, our common home, counters the cynical culture of destruction and cruelty and helps us stay resolute in our resistance to these forces.
Our work in 2025 will focus on serving the goals of Third Act and its members through proclaiming faith-informed values that reflect truths that are deeply held across religious traditions. Out of that general direction come the goals of equipping and encouraging Third Actors and others to resist the destruction of our climate and our democracy and to proclaim a message of hope and a flourishing future for all living things.
Watch upcoming issues for the final version of our goals and the activities we plan to achieve them.
Gathering Focuses on the Healing Power of Nature
The national news can lead us to feel despair, but taking our cue from poet Wendell Berry, we can “come into the peace of wild things” and “rest in the grace of the world.” On Tuesday, February 25, 3:00 pm PT/6:00 pm ET, TAF will host a gathering entitled “The Peace of Wild Things: Finding Solace in Nature.” You can register for this Zoom session online.
Using poetry, music, and small group conversation, we will reflect on how the natural world can provide spiritual and emotional comfort as we engage in activism. We’ll consider a place in nature that might be calling you, perhaps a place where you find belonging and inspiration. We’ll also invite you to reflect on memories of nature that have sustained you and how they might inspire activism at this point in your life.
The session will be led by Patty Werner, who chairs our new Education Committee, and Martin Wagner, who plans and leads our sacred listening circles. Watch for more news about both of those efforts in upcoming newsletters.
TAF Leadership Share Self-Care Tips
As the current administration takes ever more radical and frightful actions, It is equally important that we strategize how to respond and that we care for ourselves. We asked our Coordinating Committee members to share how they are keeping their spirits up these days.
“Be in community with family, friends and fellow climate activists, or make sure to develop one. We can support one another by listening well and sharing our concerns and emotions, whatever they are, with one another. Be kind and neighborly even with those you don’t know. Walk, alot. Listen to music, alot. Get caught up in a novel or mystery. Share meals and bake. Join in your particular house of prayer each week. I love South Korean shows on Netflix since they transport me to a different world! But most importantly, remember you have agency. Stand up and join in with others to preserve our beautiful planet. “ — Adriane “Ace” Leveen
“I keep reminding myself that the sun continues to rise. That Earth is beautiful and its inhabitants need protection. I join with Quakers, neighbors, and others regularly to hold each other up and have times to laugh, cry, and hold onto hope. Regular walks in the woods, feeding and observing birds, and the squirrels and racoons and other creatures observed from our windows, cuddling with my dog and hubby. I begin my day by sitting quietly with my tea, reading uplifting and educational materials before turning to the news. I choose news sources that I trust.” — Ruah Swennerfelt
“I stay in touch with my many overlapping communities of stalwart faith/climate people, both locally and across the country. I choose news sources I trust. I work very hard to take action, especially through writing and speaking, but I also try to remind myself ‘you’ve done enough for today’ and ‘you do not hold up the sky.’ I go to worship, pray a lot. I watch escapist TV (especially British shows), exercise, do crossword puzzles, and embroider.” — Debra Rienstra
“I swim. A lot. A mile at a time when I can find time. Four or five times a week. The rhythm relaxes—almost hypnotizes—me. I read Heather Cox Richardson daily, but avoid broadcast news as much as possible. I work jigsaw puzzles and cook with my son. I spend time with my daughters and grandkids whenever possible. I read fiction, even if it’s apocalyptic cli-fi. It’s less unsettling than current events. I spend time preparing for my Sunday School class. We’re currently working through “The Week,” which we’re considering presenting to the whole congregation during Earth Week. We just finished “The Good Ancestor.” Next we’ll take a deep dive into “Life After Doom” by Brian McLaren. Mostly I rely on my friends to keep me in balance.” — Dan Terpstra
“I limit my news consumption, avoiding most legacy media, and staying informed via sites like Inside Climate News. To keep from falling into a pit of despair, I also get “Fix the News” in my inbox weekly—this one focuses on the good news that is still happening, even with all that stressful news going on. Finally, I find joy each week within the community groups in which I’m involved: groups like the Pacific Northwest Chorale, my United Methodist congregation, and our local wild mushroom club.” — Kathleen Dickson
“I go outside more. I feed the birds. I heal what I can among the flora and fauna. I remove that which is invasive and harmful and plant that which belongs. They are all basic and sane and pure in heart, even while we are not. They are goodness, and touching that goodness nurtures my sanity and purity of heart. I find relief in that there is no disinformation there, no clamoring voices with something to sell. I can recover at least a bit of my heart and mind, so to reenter the fray with some peace and clarity grounded in the ground. — Jerry Cappel
“I stay connected with and inspired by my companions on the Third Act Faith Coordinating Committee. The wisdom and insight they have provided in this exercise is representative of the guidance they regularly offer. In other words, ‘What they said!’” — Jim Antal
TAF Is Now on Bluesky
Following the lead of Third Act, TA founder Bill McKibben, and a half dozen other TA working groups, TAF is now on Bluesky Social. This decentralized social media app was developed by Twitter in 2019 as a possible alternative to the platform. When Elon Musk purchased Twitter, now X, Bluesky severed ties and is now an independent company
After launching as an invitation only service, Bluesky offered open registration beginning in February 2024. The platform grew steadily, seeing its greatest surge in membership after Donald Trump’s re-election and Musk’s close association with the administration, adding as many as one million users a day. By the end of January 2025, Bluesky had 30 million users.
We encourage you to check us out at bsky.app/profile/thirdactfaith.bsky.social for the latest news from TAF. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram. Please email us at thirdactfaith@gmail.com if you have ideas for content and how we can better use these social media apps to connect with our members.
NEWS FROM PARTNERS & FRIENDS
Interfaith Power & Light Suspends National Operations
After 25 years working with congregations to address climate change, Interfaith Power & Light has suspended its national operations and will function through its 40 state affiliates. Citing financial challenges, IPL issued a statement that began: “After much careful deliberation, the board of Interfaith Power & Light (IPL) National has made the difficult decision to suspend its central office’s operations, effective January 17, 2025.”
It continued, “To be clear, the work of the state affiliates, each its own independent entity, continues unabated, and it is from these groups that much of the IPL network’s prodigious output has come over the years, and will continue to emerge.” You can read the full statement online.
Started in San Francisco, the group’s national reputation grew in 2006 when they secured the rights for houses of worship to screen the film An Inconvenient Truth. IPL continued to provide opportunities for congregations to view climate-related films, sponsored a Climate Action Week in April each year, and sponsored a Cool Congregations program to help places of worship reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Third Act Faith is grateful for IPL’s leadership and more than two decades of climate advocacy with people of faith. We encourage our members and their congregations to connect with the IPL state affiliate in their area and continue to partner with them in this vital work.
Climate Storytelling Workshop
Climate storytelling has grown in popularity in recent years, drawing on how much more influential personal stories can be in motivating climate action than statistics are. TAF took part in an intergenerational storytelling project last summer with the Chautauqua Institution and Planet Forward.
Now the High Meadows Environmental Institute is partnering with My Climate Story, the Yale Program on Climate Communication, and the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, & the Media, to offer a free, live, online, two-hour storytellers’ summit on April 10. You can read more about it, submit a story proposal, or register to attend on the event website.
CLIMATE GOOD NEWS
The Daily Climate reports that renewable energy continues to increase its share of the energy market in the U.S., despite political battles over tax credits and the expansion of fossil fuels. Renewables supplied over 20% of U.S. electricity in 2023, double their 2010 share. Solar should continue to expand, even without subsidies, because costs have fallen nearly 85% since 2010.
The New York Times (free link) suggests that Trump may run into resistance in his plan to scrap the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate package in history, as 80 percent of manufacturing investments it has funded are in Republican districts. The article quotes Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, who said: “This is where we get a test of whether the Republican Party is a real political party serving its constituents, or a personality cult.”
While progress at home seems slow, Katharine Hayhoe encourages us to look globally, as “the world is accelerating towards a clean energy future.” She reports that last year in the European Union, solar surpassed coal, providing 11 percent of power in the E.U. Also last year, “investors across the globe spent almost twice as much money on green energy than on fossil fuel projects, with investments hitting $2 trillion, a new record.”
UPCOMING EVENTS
February 24: Welcome to Third Act: Let’s Get Started. (Zoom), 4:30 PM PT / 7:30 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
February 25: The Peace of Wild Things: Finding Solace in Nature. (Zoom), 3:00 PM PT / 6:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
March 5: Hope & Joy: A Conversation with David Loy, Author of Ecodharma, Buddhist Teachings for the Ecological Crisis. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET REGISTER HERE.
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