May News & Views
May 18, 2023
IN THIS ISSUE
Regrouping for Activism
General Meeting
A Trisha Teaser
More Organizing News
Third Act Central News
News from Partners & Friends
GreenFaith’s No Fossil Fuels Summit
Summer is Calling Us
Wild Goose Festival
Did You Know?
Resources
Remember the Bees this ‘No Mow May’
See “Did You Know?” to learn about the “No Mow May” campaign.
Regrouping for Another Year of Activism
By Jane Ellen Nickell
TAF Co-facilitator
With the successful 3.21.23 Day of Action behind us, Third Act is growing by leaps and bounds (recent reports show we are now over 50,000 strong and have been growing by thousands every day), and we at Third Act Faith, which also is enjoying growth, are regrouping, planning future events, and negotiating some leadership changes.
We offer heartfelt gratitude to Pat Almonrode, who initiated Third Act Faith as the first affinity-based working group soon after Third Act was launched and has been part of various TAF leadership configurations since then. Pat is stepping away from his role as co-facilitator to focus on Third Act Lawyers and Third Act NY, both of which he helps to lead, while also still working full-time! He will remain on the TAF Coordinating Committee and work with the newly formed Program Committee to plan our General Meetings, including one on May 31 (details below).
We are pleased to welcome Betsy Bennett as TAF co-facilitator. Betsy has served TAF on the Communications Committee, managing our Twitter account, and has helped provide reflections on climate hope and lament. We look forward to her sharing her gifts in this new role. (Read more about her here.)
Third Act Faithers are a busy group of folks with a number of interests and obligations, so the Coordinating Committee is also changing. We offer special thanks to those stepping back and a hearty welcome to three new members: Kathleen Dickson, Ruah Swennerfelt and Trisha Tull. (Check them out below.)
Our last issue described three new committees we are forming to help manage TAF as it grows. If you are interested in helping with membership, education or programs, please email us at thirdactfaith@gmail.com or complete this brief form.
Our thanks to all of you who are taking part in this work in whatever form fits with your life at this point. Together we are helping to safeguard a livable world for future generations!
Introducing Our New Co-facilitator
Betsy Bennett is an Episcopal deacon in the Diocese of Nebraska, where she serves as the diocese’s archdeacon and as deacon at Church of the Resurrection in Omaha. She was in the first cohort of GreenFaith Fellows in 2008, which she said formed her work in environmental ministry. She is currently serving on the Episcopal Church’s task force for care of creation and environmental racism.
Retired from teaching philosophy at Hastings College, she teaches courses in environmental ministry and diaconal studies at the Bishop Kemper School for Ministry (a regional school for six Episcopal dioceses) in Topeka, Kansas. “When we aren’t on the road, my spouse and I live in Hastings in south-central Nebraska, where the annual birdwatching highlight is the spring migration of Sandhill cranes,” she said. “I’m happy to join Jane Ellen in facilitating our working group and hope to be up to speed soon on everything we are doing.”
General Meeting set for May 31
Plan to attend Third Act Faith’s next general meeting via Zoom on Wednesday, May 31, at 8 p.m. EDT (5 p.m. PDT). It will feature an interview with the Rev. Dr. Patricia “Trisha” Tull, a professor emerita of Hebrew Bible at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary who has joined her vocation and climate activism as a scholar, writer, organizer and speaker.
In addition to her academic work, she is a GreenFaith fellow and Climate Reality presenter and has worked as program director for Hoosier Interfaith Power & Light in Indiana. She has spoken around the country on creation care and climate change and is the author of “Inhabiting Eden: Christians, the Bible, and the Ecological Crisis" and the upcoming 2024-2025 Presbyterian Women's Horizons Bible study on environmental justice.
Newly appointed to TAF’s Coordinating Committee, Trisha will be interviewed by Dan Terpstra, chair of our Faithful Banking Committee and a Coordinating Committee member. For details about the interview, read “A Trisha Teaser.”
The virtual meeting also will include time for small-group breakout sessions, offering an opportunity for our far-flung members to meet and catch up with each other. Register here.
A Trisha Teaser: Previewing the Interview
By Dan Terpstra
TAF Coordinating Committee Member
I first encountered the Rev. Dr. Patricia K. Tull, A. B. Rhodes Professor of Old Testament at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, sometime in 2013. I was a brash, environmentally concerned Presbyterian lay volunteer. She was…well, you just read her credentials. I wanted to recruit her to join our nascent Fossil Free PCUSA grassroots group to convince the denomination to divest from fossil fuel stocks. She wanted me to review her soon-to-be-released book, “Inhabiting Eden: Christians, the Bible, and the Ecological Crisis." Long story short: I did; she didn’t.
We crossed paths occasionally over the years, connected by our concern for the church’s response to climate change. During COVID, I invited her to talk to my Zoom Sunday School class about her net-zero-carbon home in Henryville, Indiana. Earlier this year, I invited her back to our Zoom Sunday School class with her friend, the Rev. Tom Ochuka, who joined us from Kisimu, Kenya, to discuss their joint efforts to develop a tree nursery on the shores of Lake Victoria.
Between those Sunday School visits, Jim Antal, Pat Almonrode, and I, along with several others, were also meeting on Zoom, trying to figure out what a Third Act Faith Working Group could look like. Jim mentioned getting a short article published in the UCC newsletter. I asked myself who in Presbyterian circles might be able to pull off the equivalent. The answer was obvious. And after several bumps and hitches, Trisha’s resulting article became a feature story in the Presbyterian Outlook on active elders in the church.
I’m delighted to have the opportunity to introduce you to my friend, the irrepressible Trisha Tull. I hope we can all learn more about what drives her concern for creation, what it’s like for a pastor and theologian to design a net-zero home, and what attracts her to Third Act Faith. Won’t you join us?
MORE ORGANIZING NEWS
Three members join the Coordinating Committee
This month, TAF welcomed three new members to the Coordinating Committee: Kathleen Dickson, Ruah Swennerfelt and Patricia “Trisha” Tull. Epitomizing the geographic breadth of our membership roll, they come from Oregon, Vermont and Indiana respectively, and they bring an equally broad scope of experience as advocates of sustainable agriculture, earth care and climate justice. They graciously shared details about themselves so we could introduce them to you.
Kathleen Dickson is the music director for Smith River United Methodist Church in California, located just across the border with Oregon. She and her husband, Rich, live on the Southern Oregon coast in Brookings, where they have been promoting and selling locally sourced foods for the last 20 years. They began their business with wild-crafted gourmet mushrooms, and today they source and sell organic and locally grown fruits and vegetables foods produced within 200 miles of Brookings. Kathleen uses her platform to support sustainable, organic farming and to encourage her community to know where their food comes from and how it's grown. Climate change, she says, makes this imperative.
Kathleen got her start as a “climate activist” when she heard Bill McKibben's “brief but spectacular” segment aired on PBS News Hour. She read his book The Flag, The Cross and The Station Wagon in one sitting and then joined Third Act, connecting with our working group just in time to provide the music for the Service of Solidarity on the evening before the 3.21.23 Day of Action.
Ruah Swennerfelt is a Quaker, currently serving as co-clerk of the Middlebury Friends Meeting in Vermont and a member of its Earthcare Committee. She co-founded Vermont Interfaith Power and Light and Sustainable Charlotte Vermont, a Transition Town Initiative, where she is a co-coordinator. She served as general secretary of Quaker Earthcare Witness, an international organization, for 17 years before retiring.
Ruah is the author of the book “Rising to the Challenge: The Transition Movement and People of Faith.” In addition to many volunteer and activist hours, she and her husband, Louis Cox, homestead the land where they live, cognizant that it is the unceded land of the Abenaki.
Patricia “Trisha” Tull is a retired professor of Hebrew Bible, author and climate activist. (Read more about her in this issue’s “General Meeting” and “A Trisha Teaser” stories.) An ordained Presbyterian minister, she and her spouse, the Rev. Don Summerfield, live (and grow vegetables and fruits and have a wildlife habitat) outside Henryville, Indiana, where they built a net-zero home four years ago. They have six children and seven grandchildren “whose futures,” she said, “we hope to help make secure and livable.”
The communications team welcomes a new member
TAF is also pleased to announce the addition of Mary Johnson to our communications team. Beginning with our most recent issue of Going Deep earlier this month, she has already provided invaluable editing and digital technology assistance.
Mary’s journalism background covers almost 30 years as a reporter and editor with The Disability Rag, a national disability-rights magazine published in the 1980s and 1990s. In recent years she has freelanced as a copy editor for web-based publications, currently writing as N. R. Staff for the medium.com publication “Novorerum,” and has copyedited and handled pre-press for independently published books. An Episcopalian, she lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with her husband, Robin, and elderly cats Morty and Manny, who, she said, “do their best to help with her pollinator garden by keeping an eye out for the chipmunks who love to uproot things.”
THIRD ACT CENTRAL NEWS
Bill McKibben to speak at Telluride festival
Third Act founder Bill McKibben will kick off the 2023 Minds Moving Mountains Speaker Series at this year’s Mountain Film Festival in Telluride, Colorado. He will speak about climate activism and the birth of Third Act. Check out this partial listing of Bill’s recent interview, publishing and speaking calendar.
Keep the momentum going, Third Actors
Noting in a recent eBlast that “we are getting noticed,” Akaya Windwood, lead advisor for Third Act’s Advisory Council, reported that two of the four big banks funding the climate crisis have contacted Third Act to “begin conversations about their investment policies.” To keep the momentum begun with the 3.21.23 Day of Action, Third Act Central is building a campaign that will “leverage the full power of this movement” and update the climate story to read: “The impossible is now possible. The future will be fueled by clean energy, and we will have a just transition. There is untold beauty and abundance in what is to come.”
Everyone’s help is needed to get us there, and there are plenty of opportunities to help right now. Check out ThirdAct.org for specific action initiatives and resources, such as instructions on how to submit letters to the editor of your local newspaper, how to help register newly-eligible voters, and even how to donate to Third Act to help us do this work. The website also has a place to report your progress in breaking up with a climate-harming bank and finding climate-friendly credit cards.
Upcoming Third Act Zoom Events
Tonight (May 18): Launch of Arizona Working Group. 9 p.m. EDT. (6 p.m. MST & PDT). Register here.
May 29: Welcome to Third Act: Let's Get Started. 7:30 p.m. EDT (4:30 p.m. PDT). Register here.
June 12: Welcome to Third Act: Let's Get Started. 7:30 p.m. EDT (4:30 p.m. PDT). Register here.
NEWS FROM OUR PARTNERS & FRIENDS
GreenFaith holds Climate Finance Summit
Nearly 1,000 people registered for last week’s Climate Finance Summit, “No Faith in Fossil Fuels,” hosted by GreenFaith, with 28 partner organizations, including Third Act and Third Act Faith.
The May 8-11 sessions covered spiritual practices for resilience in climate work, stories from Indigenous leaders and grassroots organizers around the world living on the frontlines of fossil fuel infrastructure, and the launch of a climate action circle to develop financial strategies and provide information on how to invest according to climate values. Videos of the sessions are available on GreenFaith’s YouTube Channel, and a packet of resources has been shared with participants.
Activists shut down Wells Fargo headquarters
Kudos to the Oil & Gas Action Network! They reported that over 250 activists successfully shut down Wells Fargo Bank’s global headquarters on May 1, the day before the annual shareholders’ meeting in downtown San Francisco. Check out this video for a recap of their action.
SUMMER IS CALLING US
Join Bill McKibben and Third Actors at the Wild Goose Festival
By Melanie Griffin
Third Act Staff
You are cordially invited to the Wild Goose Festival, an annual celebration of spirit, justice, art, and music held in Union Grove, North Carolina, from July 13-16. Third Act officially sponsors the festivities this year, and our founder Bill McKibben will be a special guest. You can help bring our campaigns to protect our climate and our democracy to this gathering of 1,000 (very) progressive Christians and friends, a great many of whom are over 60.
Bill will share the main stage Friday morning with acclaimed author and activist Brian McLaren, and plans are underway for him to be interviewed by author/theologian Diana Butler Bass. You can also register for an all-day Climate Justice Camp on July 13, where Bill will speak with McLaren and Third Act staff and partners. Bill loves to hang out with Third Actors, so he’s sure to sit down with us for a chat.
Members of Third Act’s Faith and North Carolina working groups will take turns greeting festival attendees at a Third Act tent. It will be a joy to get to know other Third Actors in person and introduce other elders to Third Act! (Plan to attend? Let us know at thirdactfaith@gmail.org)
Visit the Wild Goose website for more information and registration details. Take note: The senior price is $199 per person for the weekend, including a camping spot and parking space. (Prefer not to camp? There are several hotels nearby.) If the registration fee is a hardship, email Melanie Griffin at melanie@thirdact.org. She may be able to arrange a discount or even a free ticket. Also, be aware that the Climate Justice Camp registration fee ($59) is in addition to the regular admission price.
Will you be attending Chautauqua or the Parliament of Religions?
We are exploring ways to have a presence at this summer’s Chautauqua Institution in western New York and the Parliament of World’s Religions meeting in Chicago (Aug. 14-18). Chautauqua offers a series of programs over nine weeks, each week devoted to a different theme, between June and August. The 2023 Parliament, which brings together people of faith from more than 200 religions and 80 nations, will be devoted to "A Call to Conscience: Defending Freedom & Human Rights.”
If you plan to attend the Wild Goose Festival, Chautauqua or the Parliament, please email us at thirdactfaith@gmail.com. You can help us spread the word and grow Third Act/Faith by sharing our story and inviting our peers to join us in the work to safeguard democracy and preserve our planet for generations to come.
DID YOU KNOW?
May starts the growing season here in the U. S., and many of us start mowing our lawns. It’s also “a critical time for hungry, newly emerged native bees” and other early-season pollinators, according to Bee City, USA, an activist group working to protect bees and other pollinators. With over 40 million acres of lawn in the U.S., our pursuit of the “perfect lawn” removes vital habitat for bees at a time when the wildflowers they need are hard to find in urban and suburban landscapes. Half of the more than 4,000 species of native bees are declining; nearly 1 in 4 are in peril and at increasing risk of extinction. Already, the loss of pollinators has resulted in a 3%-5% loss of fruits and vegetables worldwide. Thus, Bee City’s “No Mow May” campaign: “By allowing it to grow longer, and letting flowers bloom, your lawn can provide nectar and pollen to help your bee neighbors thrive,” says its website. Learn more about native bees, and commit to working to save pollinators.
RESOURCES
Read about studies showing how mowing less helps bees and other pollinators.
Read more about the plight of native bees.
Research funded in part by the National Science Foundation showed that the “abundance of bees [in lawns] was greatest when homeowners mowed every 2 weeks.”
The May issue of Consumer Reports has practical tips for mowing less while maintaining healthy relations with neighbors who love manicured lawns.
Want to go further?
Visit entomologist Doug Tallamy's website to learn how each of us can help re-generate biodiversity using our own yards.
Listen to this half-hour podcast (or read the transcript) “Making and maintaining meadow gardens” with Owen Wormser, author of the book “Lawns Into Meadows: Growing a Regenerative Landscape.”
Send Us Your Photos and Stories
Third Acts of Faith is published the third week of each month. Please send us your news (up to 300 words) and photos by the 7th day of each month, and help keep our members updated on what you and your faith communities are doing to safeguard our democracy and beloved earth. Send the submission to thirdactfaith@gmail.com