June 2025 News and Views
June News and Views
TAF NEWS
Religious Environmental Leaders to Discuss Engaging Congregations around Sun Day
Make sure to register for our next virtual meeting, in what promises to be an engaging panel discussion around the subject of the Season of Creation, faith communities, and renewable energy, especially solar power!
On Tuesday, June 24 at 4 PM PDT / 7 PM EDT, Third Act Faith will gather to learn from a panel of leaders who are working within their own organizations to promote and support Sun Day. Register on our website.
Speakers include Avery Davis Lamb, Executive Director of Creation Justice Ministries; Hannah Shultz, Program Director of Georgia Interfaith Power and Light; and Nina Cardin, rabbi, author, and environmental activist. Along with Debra Reinstra—Third Act Faith member, author of Refugia Faith, and podcast host—the panel will discuss the Season of Creation (during which Sun Day falls) and ways that faith communities can engage with the Season of Creation and Sun Day.
Get to Know Other Third Act Faith Members at our Coffee Klatch
Third Act Faith is filled with people who share at least three things that matter to you: climate change, democracy, and spirituality. Would you like to get to know some of those people better? We are instituting a monthly mid-day coffee klatch to give you the opportunity to do just that.
Beginning on July 10 and on the second Thursday of each month after that, a member of our Coordinating Committee will open a Zoom room to host an informal gathering of Third Act Faithers. We’ll meet for 30 minutes with no agenda other than to get to know one another, and we’ll hold the room open for an additional 30 minutes for anyone who wants to stay longer.
Details about the first session on Thursday, July 10 at 10 AM PT / 1 PM PT are on our website. No need to register—just join us in this Zoom room!
TAF Sun Day Plans Underway
As Third Act and other partners look towards Sun Day on September 20-21, Third Act Faith is working on plans to help individuals and faith communities engage in this celebration of solar power and other forms of renewable energy.
TAF’s Jim Antal has written a call to grassroots action, which was emailed via Substack and is also on our website. Jim has laid out specific ways to engage for people involved with congregations and those who are not. We encourage you to share this widely to help spread the word to anyone for whom climate action is a spiritual calling.
We have also created a web page with Religious & Spiritual Resources for Sun Day that we will continue to update. The web page includes general Sun Day links, specific resources for faith communities, a section of resources from our May General Meeting on climate storytelling, and links to denominational environmental networks. This is clearly a work in progress, so please email us with your ideas and items!
We urge you to reach out to your regional Third Act working group to see if a Sun Day action is already being planned in your area that you could join. If not, help your regional group plan something or initiate your own plans with your congregation or local community.
Please let us know if your regional working group wants to connect with houses of worship that might be worthy partners in local Sun Day actions, because houses of worship typically have a building and a parking lot where people could gather. If possible, we will connect you to a congregation that might be a great collaborator.
We also encourage denominations or other religious environmental networks to come on board as official partners, as both GreenFaith and the United Church of Christ have done. If you have connections in this area, share the Partner Outreach Flyer.
GreenFaith has an easy task you can do right now. Faith communities and individuals across the country can shine a green light for climate justice on the weekend of the Summer Solstice (June 21–23). Find specific instructions in their Sun Day Host Toolkit.
We will continue to roll out plans in the next few months, so watch for more information and join us for our General Meeting on June 24, about how to engage congregations, and our July 22 General Meeting that will feature lessons on sustainable homes and communal solar to support the transition to solar, wind, geo-thermal, and other sources of clean energy. If you want to join our planning team, please email patty.werner@live.com and write “TAF SUN DAY” in the subject line
Sacred Listening Circles Continue in July
Our next bi-monthly Sacred Listening Circle is scheduled on July 8, at 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET. TAF’s Martin Wagner hosts these lightly facilitated conversations to provide an opportunity to share and witness our grief, anger, fear, and everything else that these times stir up in us. Register on our website.
TA CENTRAL NEWS
Hope and Joy Centralized on Website
In 2023, Dan Quinlan and a small band of Third Actors began developing a series of online Hope & Joy gatherings for Third Act to help connect contemplation and climate action. Now those sessions and other resources are available on the website for SolaVida, an organization that Dan founded and directs.
As he describes the Hope & Joy gatherings: “The approach is simple but powerful: (1) hear inspiring stories from wise people who wake up every day committed to taking on big societal challenges, and (2) hear how they navigate the personal ups-and-downs of their work.”
Housed under Third Act Central, these sessions have been a natural complement to Third Act Faith’s contemplative sessions and Sacred Listening Circles.
The next Hope & Joy session is today, June 19, and will feature Martin Wagner, who coordinates and leads TAF’s contemplative offerings. At the Hope & Joy gathering, Martin will discuss “The Moral Injury of Climate Activism – Theory and Practice for Restoration, Resilience, and Rejuvenation.” Read about it and register online.
If you miss the conversation with Martin, you will find the recording, along with other past Hope & Joy sessions, on the SolaVida website, which also includes links to books, videos, poems, mediation examples, and other resources that have been used in the series.
NEWS FROM PARTNERS AND FRIENDS
Twenty-years ago this month, visionaries launched the Earth Charter, a document that seeks to turn conscience into action and inspire in all people a sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater community of life, and future generations. Among its principles is a section on Ecological Integrity. You may not be able to make it to the 25th anniversary celebration, “Planetary Consciousness, Ethics of Care and Intergenerational Justice,” July 1-3 in The Netherlands, but you can join a kickoff webinar on June 26 with Steven Rockefeller, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and Mirian Vilela.
Based in southern Oregon, the Interfaith Solar Campaign has lots of good information for congregations anywhere, including a resource page with a digital handbook on How to Go Solar, a one-page guide to help congregations apply for incentives, and a link to the CollectiveSun Foundation that helps nonprofits go solar.
CLIMATE GOOD NEWS
According to a recent New York Times article by David Gelles entitled “The US under Trump: Alone in Its Climate Denial” (free link), the current U.S. administration is not only encouraging more greenhouse gases but also “undermining our ability to understand and respond to a hotter planet.” Its elimination of climate data and of the country’s capacity to respond to disasters, slashing of regulations, and throttling of the energy transition makes our country a global outlier in a world where nearly every other government recognizes and seeks to rectify the profound threat that climate change poses to life.
But the good news is that nearly every other nation in the world is surging forward. China has prioritized renewable energy, dominating world markets for electric vehicles, solar panels, and more. Even oil-rich Saudi Arabia has set its sights on producing half of its energy through wind and solar by 2030. Kenya’s vast motorcycle industry is going electric—with 7% of all new cycles electric, up from almost none four years ago. This is a boon in a country that gets 90% of its energy from renewable sources. Whole bus companies in Nairobi as well as in Kigali, Rwanda are now 100% electric.
And, largely thanks to the late Pope Francis’s foresight, Vatican City is now fully powered by a 1000+ acre agrivoltaics plant on Rome’s outskirts, which combines agriculture and solar in the same field—a land-conserving technology that cools plants and animals while producing electricity. In fact, the world’s tiniest sovereign nation is not alone: countries as diverse as Albania, Bhutan, Nepal, Paraguay, Iceland, Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of Congo all run on 100% renewable energy.
UPCOMING EVENTS
June 19: Hope & Joy: The Moral Injury of Climate Activism – Theory and Practice for Restoration, Resilience, and Rejuvenation – A Conversation with Martin Wagner. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET REGISTER HERE.
June 24: TAF General Meeting: Engaging Congregations Around Sun Day. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
June 30: Welcome to Third Act: Let’s Get Started. (Zoom), 4:30 PM PT / 7:30 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
July 8: TAF Sacred Listening Circle. (Zoom), 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
July 10: TAF Coffee Klatch. (Zoom), 10 AM PT / 1 PM PT. JOIN ZOOM ROOM.
July 22: TAF General Meeting: Sustainable Homes and Communal Solar. (Zoom), 4 PM PT / 7 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
We encourage you to visit thirdact.org/events to see the full list of Third Act events, including virtual and in-person events that geographic working groups may be holding in your area.
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