November News & Views
TAF EVENTS
‘Hope & Joy’ director Dan Quinlan leads Nov. 21 contemplative practice
On November 21, Dan Quinlan will lead our final contemplative practice of this year. Director of Third Act’s Hope & Joy series, Dan is a graduate of the Living School, a spiritual formation program of the Center for Action and Contemplation, founded by Franciscan Richard Rohr and guided now by Brian McLaren, who spoke this year at a TAF General Meeting and a recent Hope & Joy session.
Dan’s contemplative session will demonstrate three core ideas of many meditation methods: focused breathing, focused attention, and focused reframing. Attendees will gain an appreciation for how the practice of these fundamental skills can lighten whatever burdens they carry, be an on-going source of energy, and help maintain equanimity. You can register for Dan’s contemplative practice on our website.
Dec. 17 General Meeting to explore how to find blessings in dark times
AS WE ENTER THE DARK DAYS OF WINTER, MANY OF US feel like we are living through a dark time as well. Our December General Meeting will begin with a 30-minute contemplative service that features readings and music to help us welcome the blessings of darkness, even while seeking the light. Following the service, we’ll break into small groups for conversation about how learning to live in darkness can help us through this time. You can read more and register on our website.
We tend to shun the darkness, and many winter holidays involve lighting fires or candles. But in seeking light, we miss the mystery that lies hidden in shadows, what Henry Vaughan calls “a deep but dazzling darkness.” We also need the darkness. Our bodies need the night to rest, and our spirits need the dark months of winter when we stay indoors and read, write, and tell stories.
In her concession speech, Kamala Harris quoted the adage, “Only when it is dark enough can you see the stars.” She added that if indeed we are entering a dark time, “let us fill the sky with the light of a brilliant, brilliant billion of stars…the light of optimism, of faith, of truth and service.”
Read the reflection “Learning to Live in Darkness” on our website.
Join us on Tuesday, December 17 at 4:00 PM PT/7:00 PM ET as we gather to reflect, converse, share the light, and move towards healing.
Would you like TAF’s contemplative sessions to continue in 2025? Take our short survey
AS THE YEAR 2024 BEGAN, WITH A CONTENTIOUS ELECTION SEASON gearing up and global temperatures continuing to rise, the TAF Coordinating Committee decided to offer opportunities that could help us remain grounded and build a sense of community. Over the past year, we have hosted small group conversations, contemplative practices, and other sessions aimed at spiritual healing. To help us plan future offerings, please take a few minutes to let us know if you want us to continue offering such opportunities by completing this short survey.
TA CENTRAL NEWS
Video on McKibben talk ‘a powerful tool’ for talking about climate crisis
ONE TAKEAWAY FROM OUR RECENT ELECTION IS THAT the climate crisis is of little or no concern to millions of Americans. A critical role many of us can play in coming months is to help our fellow Americans realize that the climate crisis is real, it is already causing chaos throughout our country and the world, it is rapidly getting much worse, and that there are actions we can and must take to reduce suffering and begin to restore creation. Many climate leaders echo Katharine Hayhoe’s refrain: the most important thing you can do to address the climate crisis is to talk about it.
In addition to talking about it, sharing a visual can be a powerful tool. Perhaps the best tool available at the moment is a compelling 22-minute film “The Hottest Year in Human History… So Far… and Where We Go from Here.” It is based on Bill McKibben’s talk at the UU Church in Woodstock VT in the spring of 2024. The professional filmmakers from Old Dog Documentaries worked their magic by adding visuals that amplify Bill’s words. This video is a perfect opportunity for any congregation or small group to view and discuss. Here’s the direct link to the YouTube video. There’s no charge for viewing.
NEWS FROM PARTNERS & FRIENDS
Recent news stories cover faith groups’ environmental activism
Religious groups taking climate action have made headlines recently, thanks in part to visibility during Summer of Heat’s Faith Week in July. While the first religious environmental groups date to the 1980s, recent activism around climate has galvanized the movement and attracted wider notice.
An October 15 story by Religion News Service made direct reference to the July SOH demonstrations at Citi headquarters in New York, as well as a September meeting of religious leaders with Citigroup’s chief sustainability officer. In addition to recent actions, the story describes how GreenFaith has grown from a statewide group in the 1990s to a global grassroots multi-faith organization. The RNS story was distributed through the Associated Press and picked up by The Washington Post, among other outlets.
The RNS story mentions the work of Dayenu, which was also covered in Los Angeles Times and New York Times stories around the time of the Jewish high holidays this fall. Founded in 2020, Dayenu has mobilized Jewish individuals and synagogues, and was instrumental in pressing the Union of Reform Judaism, the country’s largest Jewish denomination, to divest from fossil fuels.
In his LA Times column on October 10, climate writer Sammy Roth places Dayenu in the context of Jewish social justice work as an appropriate focus on Yom Kippur. He makes connections to his personal story, noting the legacy of his grandfather, a Reform Rabbi, and his own recent realization that his Jewish upbringing may have fostered his commitment to climate action.
A recent story in the New York Times noted Dayenu’s efforts to drive Jewish voters to the polls, citing a September 2024 poll of Jewish voters who ranked climate fourth out of eleven issues, with younger Jews ranking it second only to the future of democracy.
Climate action also appeared in the religious press following the election, with this op-ed by Fletcher Harper, Executive Director of GreenFaith. While things look dim, he reminds us that many religions urge us to remain vigilant – to keep awake. He writes that “even as we cringe from the insanity of banging our heads against something that feels like a concrete wall but that, history shows, does have an unpredictable breaking point.”
TAF is part of this growing movement of religious people and communities who recognize that the climate crisis is a moral issue. Many see climate activism as a spiritual practice. As we partner with GreenFaith, Interfaith Power & Light, Dayenu, and other such organizations, as well as with other Third Act working groups, we seek to bring ethical and spiritual grounding that can inspire hope in these challenging times.
IN CLIMATE NEWS …
With national electoral losses, climate action moves to the states
Despite major losses on Nov. 5, there were wins, too, perhaps pointing the way forward for climate activism. Washington state voters rejected Ballot Initiative 2117, which would have overturned the state’s signature climate law, the Climate Commitment Act, which authorized a market-based “cap and invest” program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 95 percent by 2050. A ballot measure in South Dakota aimed at easing the construction of carbon dioxide pipelines (dubbed “Referred Law 21”) was rejected by voters. Hawaii voters approved a ballot initiative to create a “climate resiliency fund” — the money coming from existing property tax revenue. California voters approved Proposition 4, a $10-billion bond measure to raise money for disaster preparedness, an investment that will pay great dividends: the Federal Emergency Management Agency has estimated that every dollar spent on climate preparedness saves $6 on disaster relief. “A key provision of Prop 4 ensures that at least 40 percent of funds go to projects that benefit vulnerable and disadvantaged communities,” reports Inside Climate News. Louisiana voters passed a constitutional amendment stipulating that revenue from the state’s renewable energy production will go to Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Fund. Read more about these wins at Inside Climate News.
Going forward, it will primarily be up to states to deal with the ravages of climate change. Maryland, with its Democratic governor and Democratic majorities in both chambers of the legislature, plans to be one of those states. “We have been a leader across the nation, and fortunately, our governor is committed to being a national leader on this,” Kim Coble, executive director of the Maryland League of Conservation Voters, told Inside Climate News. The state will have “an important and significant role to play.”
Biden administration rushes to lock in climate help
The Biden Administration is “racing to award hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and finalize environmental regulations in an effort to lock in President Biden’s climate agenda before Donald J. Trump enters the White House,” according to a story in the Nov. 9 New York Times (free link to story). Biden’s signature Inflation Reduction Act calls for over $390 billion to be made available over 10 years in “tax breaks, grants and subsidies for wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery production and other clean energy projects.”
Administration senior adviser on clean energy John Podesta told The Times the administration had “issued $98 billion in climate and clean energy grants in the fiscal year that ended in September, which was 88 percent of the funding available for that year.” The rest will be delivered before Mr. Biden leaves office, he said.
Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, all but dared Republicans to repeal the law. “If Republican lawmakers want to follow Donald Trump off the cliff and kill 343,000 jobs nationwide, they’ll be signing their own political death warrant,” he said in an interview.
The Environmental Protection Agency “intends to obligate all of the $5 billion that Congress gave it for a Climate Pollution Reduction Grant program, which goes to states, tribes and local governments that submit plans for reducing emissions,” Markey said.
Okefenokee Refuge's expansion would protect unique ecological area
The Okefenokee Swamp, spanning over 400,000 acres in southeast Georgia and northern Florida, is one of the world’s largest freshwater ecosystems. Its tea-colored waters, rich in peat, lock up possibly 140 million metric tons of carbon. Over 850 kinds of plants, 230 species of birds; snakes, alligators, salamanders, frogs; carnivorous pitcher plants and bladderworts all call it home, including threatened creatures like the indigo snake, the wood stork, the gopher tortoise and the red-cockaded woodpecker. It’s a wintering ground for migratory birds. Within its boundaries lies the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge Area — nearly 90 percent of the swamp — established by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Among the many regulations the Biden Administration is racing to finalize is one proposed by the U. S. Dept. of Fish and Wildlife Service in October to expand the Refuge’s boundaries, to “help preserve key wildlife habitats, mitigate the impacts of wildfires and drought, and protect the swamp from mining threats,” said the Sierra Club. Activists have been flooding the agency with comments urging the adoption of the rule. The comment period ended Nov. 18.
Read stories from the Nature Conservancy and Westwise about the swamp and pressures from the mining industry.
‘Green energy’ may prove popular, no matter what
“It is not clear that even MAGA Republicans want to kill the green energy initiatives in the Inflation Reduction Act that have brought new factories and good jobs to more Republican-dominated states than Democratic-dominated states,” wrote Heather Cox Richardson Nov. 12 in her 1,700,000-subscriber Substack. “[C]hair and chief executive officer of ExxonMobil Darren Woods [has] asked the incoming administration not to change Biden’s climate policy dramatically, saying that the lack of consistency on climate change is bad for the economy. ‘I don’t think the challenge or the need to address global emissions is going to go away,’ he said. ‘Anything that happens in the short term would just make the longer term that much more challenging.’”
UPCOMING EVENTS
Click on the link to register for the online events.
November 21: TAF Contemplative Practice with Dan Quinlan. (Zoom), 11:00 AM PT / 2:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
December 2: Welcome to Third Act: Let’s Get Started. (Zoom), 4:30 PM / PT 7:30 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
December 17: TAF General Meeting: Learning to Live in Darkness, (Zoom) 4:00 PM PT / 7:00 PM ET. REGISTER HERE.
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