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How Kindness Can Increase Happiness

Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved,
clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility,
gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive
whatever grievances you have against one another.
Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues,
put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.

The Apostle Paul, Colossians 3:12-14

For the last several blogs I’ve focused on the obstacles to happiness, e.g. perfectionism and anger. Today’s blog is going to empathize one of the virtues that augment happiness—kindness.

When I first started to research kindness a few weeks ago, I thought I knew enough about kindness already. How wrong I was! Not only is kindness one of the many virtues, it seems to be out in front when it comes to happiness.

I first searched for what the Old and New Testaments had to say about kindness and the first website I found was What Does the Bible Have to Say About Kindness? It had over fifty small quotations on kindness. I also looked for parables on kindness or compassion in the New Testament. Not surprisingly the parable that stood out was The Good Samaritan (Luke 10: 10-37). Rather than focus on the parable that we all are familiar with, I chose a TED TALK by Daniel Goleman entitled Why Aren’t We All Good Samaritans? Goleman was picked to speak at a TED Conference, which is on a different level than a TALK. It’s “…where the world’s leading thinkers and doers are invited to give the talk of their life in 18 minutes.” Dr. Goleman’s presentation is very down to earth, humorous and takes compassion/kindness from a global level to a personal level.

As helpful as the themes in the Bible are for inspiration, and action, I moved on to several websites that are considered to be part of the science of happiness. I was very happy to find The Random Acts of Kindness Foundation. They even have a Random Acts of Kindness Week (this year February 14-20, 2016), and Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17, 2016. If you’re interested in celebrating either of these events, you can, “Check out their RAK Week page for kindness ideas and other activities they had in 2015. The 2016 program will be out in the middle of January.

Not only is there a Foundation for Kindness, there is also the World Kindness Movement (WKM). This international movement has “…no political or religious affiliations.” Their mission is to inspire individuals “…towards greater kindness and to connect nations to create a kinder world.” After its formation in Tokyo in 1997 the movement now includes 25 nations, one of which is the United States. If you check their website above, I think you’ll be impressed with what they’ve been able to accomplish in the last nineteen years.

Acts of Kindness

There’s such a wealth of information about kindness and random acts of kindness that it’s difficult to pick which articles to use for a blog. After much self- debate, I finally chose several websites. The first website is How to Be Kind. I chose it mainly because it is a three part article that deals with: 1) Developing a Kinder Perspective 2) Developing Kind Qualities, and 3) Taking Action Questions and Answers. I was particularly impressed with a part of Taking Action section that’s entitled Transform Your Life through Kindness. It starts with a quote from Aldous Huxley’s remedy for transforming your life: “People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It’s a little embarrassing after years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the answer is—just be a little kinder.” The article goes on to suggest that we take Huxley’s many years of research to heart and “…allow kindness to transform your life, to transcend all feelings and actions of aggression, hate, despising , anger, fear and self-deprecation, and to restore strength worn away by despair.” I say Amen, sisters and brothers!

If you’re not familiar with the The Greater Good Science Center at Berkeley, this is their Mission Statement and it contains page after page of material about kindness and happiness. You could spend hours just on this one website. Here are two articles from that website on kindness that speak for themselves. The article Three Strategies for Bringing More Kindness into Your Life “…highlights 10 core kindness practices, grouped into three broad categories. 1) How to Cultivate Feelings of Kindness. 2) How to Boost the Happiness We Get from Kindness. 3) How to Inspire Kindness in Others. The second article, Kindness Makes You Happy…and Happiness Makes You Kind, is from two studies, one from the Journal of Social Psychology and the other from Journal of Happiness Studies , that propose that “…giving to others makes us happy, even happier than spending on ourselves. What’s more, our kindness might create a virtuous cycle that promotes lasting happiness and altruism.”

To end this blog with a bang, here is a TED TALK by Dr. William Wan, titled Happiness and Kindness Dr. Wan is the General Secretary of the Singapore Kindness Movement and the World Kindness Movement. He has graduate degrees in law, philosophy, religion and theology. Now that’s impressive. His TALK is actually about happiness by the way of kindness.

Blessings!

Values stink.

by Karen Richter

Why do you bring your children to church? Why do you think there are children sitting in the pews of your church?

If you ask parents this question (or if just now, you answered this question for yourself), you might hear answers like this:

“It’s important for me that my child learns the values of our church community.”

“I want my kid to be a good person.”

“Church provides my family with moral guidance.”

Values stink. by Karen Richter, Southwest Conference Blog southwestconferenceblog.org United Church of Christ — Can we agree than authenticity is better than shiny and happy?

Nope. Sorry – nope nope nope.

Church is not about values. Not only are there OTHER places in our society to expose your children to good values, there are BETTER places in our society to teach good values.

Scouting, team sports, community theater, chess club, school-based values curricula, VeggieTales… these are excellent sources for parents to teach their children the importance of fairness, teamwork, honesty, and cooperation. The kiddos will make friends along the way – it’ll be great!

Church MUST be more than values instruction. I’ll risk overstating my point (and annoying my readers): if we structure programs for children in churches with the goal of teaching good values, we will lose. Not only are the organizations I listed above doing great things with kids, the Gospel of grace always trumps morality.

What then takes the place of values instruction? In progressive churches, we’ve somewhat abandoned old-timey instruction. I haven’t seen a good fill-in-the-blank Bible worksheet since I was 10 years old. We’re working on abandoning a school-based model and even in some churches we’re getting rid of a star-earning, funfunfun carnival model.

What’s left? Just two principles guide children’s ministry in the post-modern era, and the earlier a child can communicate and internalize these, the better.

“At church, people love me just as I am.”

This means prioritizing relationships and connections over curricula and content. This means children participating in worship – not as cute props for adults to coo at, but as full members of the worshipping community.

“At church, I can ask questions.”

Whether it’s a deep question like this one I got during Advent, ‘How do we know that Jesus was God’s son? What if he was just a good person?’ or it’s a question from the Our Whole Lives question box or just an everyday ‘Why?’ – questions are at the heart of the spiritual journey for every person. When our churches are safe places for questions, doubt, experiential pondering, they will thrive.

In fact, what would our churches look like if every person at every age and in every situation can express these same ideas:

“At church, people love me just as I am.”

“At church, I can ask questions.”

So, yeah, values stink. The Good News we have is so much better, deeper, and wider than values.

Peace to us all in 2016.

Christmas & Bowen Family Systems

by Amos Smith

Christmas is a time for family. Above is a picture of my family growing up. Family is never perfect. Every family I have encountered in ministry has challenges. Some hide the challenges better than others. Yet, challenges are always there.

How we deal with the challenges of our family of origin has profound repercussions for the rest of our lives. Family and the dynamics of family relationships give us the blueprint that tends to define our future relationships. I have a high regard for Family Systems Thought or Bowen Family Systems as it is commonly called. Bowen Systems has given me and many other ministers and rabbis a more accurate understanding of faith community dynamics than any other paradigm.

One of the counter-intuitive insights of Bowen Family Systems is that all of our relationships are inter-connected. In other words, if a man is having challenges with his wife, instinctively one might think that the best thing for him to do is to work on that relationship. Yet, often Bowen Systems would say, “If you are having challenges with your wife work on your relationship with you mother.” If a woman is having challenges in her relationship with her son, she may need to work on the relationships she has with her ex-husband, husband, or brother. And the list goes on… For a humorous representation of what this might look like in the twenty-first century you may want to take a look at the television show “Modern Family.”

During the holidays many people are stressed by all the preparations. Yet, what is more important than the meals, the stuffed stockings on the mantel, the lights, and the presents under the tree, are our relationships. Seen correctly, beyond shallow commercial and cultural trappings, Christmas at its best is a time to work on our relationships with the people we love. And when one relationship grows in honesty, good boundaries, respect, and love it will have ripple effects on our other relationships.

Merry Christmas!

Let’s Pray the Announcements: a modest proposal for church ‘communication’

by Karen Richter

Recently, someone from our church board asked me about how we communicate.

“Too much,” I replied, to her surprise. “We communicate too much.”

How often – in our passion for mission and service – do we add to the noise and informational clutter of the lives in our care? Specifically, how many times in an average week does an average congregant hear from their church? Email, Twitter, Facebook, paper newsletter, bulletin boards, verbal announcements… And with how many organizations does our average congregant have a relationship? Are they getting an equal number of communication attempts from Heifer International, ACLU, Amazon Watch, Alzheimer’s Association, First Things First Arizona, and United Way?

Is there a better way?

I’ve observed with my own children that sometimes they listen more closely to a whisper than to a shout. Let’s Pray the Announcements: a modest proposal for church ‘communication’ - Southwest Conference blog Maybe the folks in the pews feel the same way. Maybe they are tired of being invited to participate in our ministries with enthusiastic shouts. Let’s try whispering. Even more, let’s try trusting the Spirit to move people’s hearts to action.

Let’s pray the announcements.

Now, if your church is like mine, this is going to take some discipline. Everyone wants to chat on Sunday morning, and everyone thinks that their announcement is important and needs to be conveyed with some flair. I get it.

But instead of treating the Sunday morning announcements as if they were separate from worship, what if we approached them in a prayerful spirit? Sometimes we say, “Please hold in prayer the leadership and mission of our church.” Let’s do it – right then!

Lay participation in a community of faith is a spiritual practice. What would it look like to treat it as such? Maybe it looks and sounds like this…

“There are several opportunities to serve our community and the world this week. Please look at the announcements in the newsletter with me:

On Monday at 5 pm, the prayer shawl group will meet to knit and to pray over the shawls that are ready to be distributed.

Saturday, a group will gather at 7 am to repair the bricks on the patio.

Children in grades 2-4 have a sleepover next weekend. Volunteers are needed to prepare and serve dinner.

We are looking for liturgists and song leaders for Christmas Eve services at 7 pm and 11 pm.

Please take a deep breath and join me in prayer:

Holy One, we strive to be a faithful and compassionate people. We pray for your blessings on the activities and ministries of our church this week. We trust that you move through this week with us. In a spirit of discernment, we pause to ask ourselves: what work is entrusted to me? What part of our ministry together might be mine to do? We move forward knowing that our works of service on behalf the world will bring us joy and peace. We ask for energy and passion to fulfill our calling. With the faith of Jesus our brother, we pray. Amen.”

It’s a little thing… a tiny pivot in the spirit of our time together on Sunday mornings.

I believe that churches are called to be countercultural – little outposts of God’s Realm in the midst of the world. That means we do things differently. We don’t need a hard sell – we need invitation. We don’t need marketing – we need to tell our story. We don’t need more communication – we need more prayer.

Dance, Dance, Wherever You May Be

by Teresa Blythe

Lots of congregations sing “Lord of the Dance” on Sunday mornings, but really, what would most of them do if someone lost their inhibitions, took the song literally and began to “dance, dance,” right there in worship?

It is so rare to see a real outburst of spontaneous celebration of God’s Spirit in most established (especially white) churches that when it occurs we generally go in one of two directions. If we are inspired by it, we then want to control it ending up with predictable liturgical dancers—eyes and arms lifted toward heaven (in case we don’t understand that they are glorifying God)–or acceptable movement such as a little swaying and clapping. If we are embarrassed by it, we avert our eyes, ignore it and hope it goes away.

We could instead embrace it. Understand that we do not “have” bodies, we “are” bodies and sometimes those bodies want to move or otherwise express themselves in worship. We could, as they say, let the children, young adults and those with nothing to lose lead us toward a more embodied worship experience.

Embrace that Swing

Several years ago I had the privilege of working part-time at Southside Presbyterian Church in Tucson—one of the few multicultural progressive churches in Arizona. On this particular Sunday, children’s time had just ended, but, as was the custom at Southside, the children were not yet dismissed to their respective church school classrooms because the choir had not yet sung. With the children sitting on the flagstone floor of the Native American-style kiva sanctuary, the choir sang a rousing gospel rendition of the old favorite, “Love Lifted Me.”

In the middle of the song, with not a shred of inhibition, a six-year old girl leaps to her feet and starts free-form dancing. Now we’re all familiar with the one or two children in the church who enjoy making a scene during children’s time. But this little girl wasn’t in it for the attention. The motivation appeared to be pure adoration and praise. Most of the adults in the congregation were smiling—some had tears in their eyes—at the freedom the girl felt to “dance, dance, wherever she may be.”

When the song ended, the pastor, John Fife, stood to say, “That’s the difference between children and adults. She was inspired, so she got up and began dancing. Many of us were inspired as well, but we just sat there and let her dance all by herself!” Since then, when people at Southside feel so moved by the choir, they stand up and move.

That 6-year old dancer has a prophetic message for the larger church. On a base level, we have to understand how music moves the body and soul. I’m talking about music with full-bodied rhythm—and let’s be honest, most people just don’t feel like dancing to the pipe organ. Yes, saying that can start up a “worship war” in your congregation, but it doesn’t change the truth of the matter.

What this girl demonstrated was that if our churches want to be welcoming and attractive to people younger than your average church member, we had better be alive and ready for anything to happen in inspired worship.

(Which is why it thrilled me this past Sunday at First Congregational UCC Phoenix to turn around during a high-energy gospel song and see one of the young adults who was running the media center in the back moving and dancing to the music the way God intended! I only wish everyone there had turned around to see how much fun he was having at church.)

Embrace the Awkward Illustration

Sometimes spontaneity is thrust upon us by those who have long ago lost the usual societal inhibitions. I once visited a Presbyterian church in Albuquerque as a wild-haired, scruffy older man in a heavy coat had a burden to share in worship. Rising during announcement time, he proceeded to the pulpit to confess to a number of “sins of the flesh.” The young pastor appeared to know this man, and was not exactly surprised at the pop-up confession but was at a loss for what to do. So, he let the man speak.

As fate would have it, the sermon that morning—from the lectionary—was the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. Jesus saying that the one who “beat his breast” saying, “God, be merciful to me a sinner” was justified. What a brilliant sermon illustration! Unplanned and awkward, yes. But, frankly a bright spot in the liturgy.

Was this celebrated as a happy coincidence? Or even a Godly moment? Hardly. No mention is made of the event after the man is escorted away from the pulpit, because his interjection is seen as an embarrassing disturbance.

We’ll need to shed this self-consciousness and a desire to control if we want God’s spirit to blow around in worship. If something bizarre but meaningful happens in worship, let’s make the most of it. It sure beats the Easter Sunday I spent at a mainline church in the Bay area where I counted at least three people in their twenties fast asleep during the sermon.

Let’s embrace the crazy outburst as important data for discerning when and where God’s Spirit is moving within the congregation. How can we follow it more closely? How can we stay open to those times when worship goes slightly awry, seeing what those moments have to teach us? Savor them, in all their ickiness, and you’ll soon become more comfortable with the unusual, the ecstatic, the surprising.

Honoring the Body

Church leaders could start to honor the body in worship by incorporating call-and-response music, drums, incense and a variety of simple prayer postures. Make worship a feast of all five senses, not just the ear and eyes. Instead of bringing on the approved liturgical dancer why not go into the community and hire a professional contemporary dancer to do an original dance illustrating the theme of worship that day? Lift our eyes from the bulletin by posting what we need for worship on a screen or even an old-fashioned poster board up front. Leave us on the edge of our seats by writing sermons with cliff-hanger endings, like the serial dramas on TV do each week. Ask us to yell out “Amen” to your sermon when we feel it. And then entice us with God’s word so that we want to.

Making room for the spontaneous will not be easy for people set in their ways. It requires an attitude of hospitality that says whatever is done in authentic response to the Word or the Spirit is OK with us.

It requires being brave enough to admit that if our music, preaching and prayer aren’t filled with enough of God’s Spirit to move people in some pretty significant ways, we’re in trouble and need to plead for God’s mercy. Remember, boring people in worship is a sin.

The good news is that the Lord of the Dance is the one who saves us.

Why I Need You to Survive

by Davin Franklin-Hicks

Last week was awkward and hard. It really was. It was one of the weeks where nothing seemed to synch up for me. From attempting to greet an acquaintance with a hug, but instead elbowing them in the nose to forgetting about a meeting I was supposed to be at while I was just chilling at home as though I hadn’t a care in the world. I set my alarm for 6pm instead of 6am not once, but twice. I woke up with this pit in my stomach and sense of dread, but it wasn’t connected to any thought. It just constantly felt like something was wrong and I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I wasn’t the only one feeling this way last week. I have two friends that I talk to every single day over text regardless of rain or shine. Sometimes it is lengthy, sometimes it’s short, but we always connect. As I texted my, sometimes humorous, often complaining texts to them last week, I received very similar responses. Each of us said at some point, “What the heck is going on? Is something in the air?” Nothing was synching up.

I was avoiding things that week. I was eating less, not much of an appetite. I was walking under a plume of strangeness without knowing why. I caught myself walking very quickly through my living room as I came home, a sense of urgency to get into another room. I noticed it and wondered what the heck was wrong with me. Why am I feeling compelled to avoid so much? I walked back into my living room and realized the source of anxiety was the TV. It was the news anchor. It was the images. It was the terror in the world.

And I cried.

This thick pall that I was in the midst of was the sense of helplessness in the face of unimaginable suffering. I felt shame for the human race. I felt absolute rage for the vulnerability that is exploited and crushed. I was avoiding the pain of living in this world. There isn’t even a starting place that makes sense to me to begin to hold what is happening in the world around me. So I check out entirely. And when I do, I step out of the flow of life. My fears increase, my reasoning decreases. I am ill-tempered and checked out. I am withdrawn. All of this leads to me living out of synch.

My pastor, Rev. Delle McCormick, said something incredibly profound the Sunday after the attacks in Beirut and in Paris. She used the phrase “unsettled ache” repeatedly in her sermon and that resonated very strongly with me. The reality is I am impacted by all of this pain and violence in the world. The reality is you are too. Even if we are avoiding knowledge of it or attempting to distract, it is the thing that greets us when there is a quiet moment. It’s just on the edge of our awareness more often than not and it impacts the way we interact with the world around us.

My starting point to engage in the world again was the awareness of this very simple point: you impact me and I impact you. We do not exist in a vacuum. We do not live the individual lives that we are constantly trying to tell ourselves we are living. This is a global community.

We say something to each other at Rincon Congregational UCC that I have never said to anyone before. Often after service, during the benediction, we are encouraged to look at one another and say, “I need you to survive”. Regardless of what word you put the emphasis on in that statement, it is true and powerful. I need for you, my dear one, to survive. I also need you, my dear one, for my own survival. We are connected. It is unsettling. It is life.

image credit: Roy DeLeon

Slow Churches in the Lead

by Amos Smith

I just finished reading Slow Church: Cultivating Community in the Patient Way of Jesus by C. Christopher Smith and John Pattison (much of the writing below is paraphrased from the book’s Introduction).

The authors of Slow Church explain that the industrial revolution made us obsessed with speed—fast cars, fast food, fast computers, and “the fast track.” In resistance to this, an international “Slow Food” movement arose. The Slow Food movement has inspired other Slow campaigns. Cittaslow (Slow Cities) was launched by a group of Italian mayors in 1990 and now includes more than 140 communities in twenty-three countries, which are committed to sustainable agriculture, local food cultivation, local land use, and hospitality.

Other manifestations of wanting to down shift sometimes, rather than stay in high gear, are Slow Gardening, Slow Parenting, Slow Reading, Slow Design, and Slow Art. There is even a World Slow Day, which some playful Italians recently celebrated by issuing fake citations to pedestrians who were walking too fast or taking too direct a route.

Canadian journalist Carl Honore describes “the cult of speed.” Fast and slow, Honore writes, do not just signify rates of change; they are shorthand for ways of being, or philosophies of life.

“Fast is busy, controlling, aggressive, hurried, analytical, stressed, superficial, impatient, active, quantity-over-quality. Slow is the opposite: calm, careful, receptive, still, intuitive, unhurried, patient, reflective, quality-over-quantity. It is about making real and meaningful connections—with people, culture, work, food, everything.” (pg. 13)

Many church growth models come dangerously close to reducing Christianity to a commodity that can be packaged, marketed, and sold, instead of cultivating a deep, holistic discipleship that touches every aspect of our lives.

“Following Jesus has been diminished to a privatized faith rather than a lifelong apprenticeship undertaken in the context of Christian community.” (pg. 14)

Congratulations to churches that foster sustainable community that is primarily about relationship to God and relationships with each other. Congratulations to churches that understand that the quality of relationships is more important than the numbers of bodies in the chairs on Sunday and the number of dollars in savings.

Consistency in the Spiritual Life

by Amanda Peterson

As I watch TV shows on parenting or even raising pets the most common challenge that I notice is inconsistency. Parents (myself included) know the importance of follow-through and a consistent message. Then there are the times, due to tiredness, guilt, or for some other reason, the consistency stops. The behavior increases and surprised the questions comes, “How did this get so bad?” I am currently working with my dog, Grace, who does not have good manners with other dogs. This is a polite way of saying she overwhelms them with her energy and if they are not a strong dog bedlam ensues. I now live in a neighborhood that has lots of dogs and she is getting lots of practice learning how to say hello.

Consistency in the Spiritual Life — Consistency, or a cookie?

The reality is that I am the problem, not Grace. I need to be honest about that and if I care about Grace, I will do what is best for her, not for me. I need to work with Grace. I have tried using one technique or another and guess what…as time goes on it gets better. Yet I find myself some days just wishing she wouldn’t be so aggressive and then pretending all is well now. Wishing and pretending doesn’t help. I can’t ignore it one day and expect a different result.

As I was thinking about this, I notice a similar pattern in my prayer life and in the prayer lives of others. Why does God seem so far away? Why does something that used to be so easy now feel overwhelming? The spiritual life takes just as much consistency as anything else that is important to us. We can’t expect to pay attention, develop a relationship with the Divine one day and then not pay attention the next day and expect a deep spiritual life. The spiritual life takes just as much consistency as anything else and honestly some days it is really hard work to show up. That is why community support is so important.

A contemplative life is an honest life and a consistent life. Not necessarily to the same practices in the same way every day. It is a consistency in the choice to show up to a relationship with God. It’s that easy and that hard.

Exercise

What is your spiritual practice? Are you consistent or does it go in stops and starts. Pick a spiritual practice and try to be consistent for 2 weeks. How did it go? If it didn’t, why? Do you need a different practice?

Your Hyphens

by Karen Richter

I am a woman-wife-mother-introvert.

multiple religious belonging - intersectionality — Whooo are you?

I am a democrat-progressive-child advocate.

I am a Christian-universalist-meditator-educator.

We all have many layers of our identity, different roles emphasized at different times or in different settings.

Later today at Shadow Rock UCC, people interested in the idea of people identifying with more than one religious tradition will be gathering. Some will be folks who themselves identify as Christian-Buddhist or church-attending Jew or Muslim-Christian or Sikh-Wiccan. Other participants will be religious leaders who want to prepare their faith communities to better meet people of faith who claim a variety of backgrounds. Some – like me – will be curious and eager, coming with questions and assumptions about what this might mean to the future of faith.

Yesterday, I saw a video online about a Palestinian woman who is striving to be an active participant in the struggle for Palestinian identity and liberation as a woman. Activists often call this ‘intersectionality.’ I found this definition (thanks Google!) of intersectionality quickly, but I didn’t really need it. It’s one of those things that you know when you see it.

Intersectionality (or intersectionalism) is the study of intersections between forms or systems of oppression, domination or discrimination by examining the complex multiple facets of identity of an individual such as race, gender, class, sex and age.

My best understanding of intersectionality is that society often appears to ask people to choose and prioritize from among their identities. Are you advocating for families or union workers? Are you representing African-Americans or women? Intersectionality pushes back against this phenomenon, instead recognizing that people crave space to be their whole selves… bringing every bit of their identities and experiences to bear on issues and decisions.

So, why are we even a little bit surprised when this idea of wholeness and recognition and valuing unique experiences breaks into religious communities? Maybe a Christian-Hindu should surprise and challenge us no more than a Native American feminist. Don’t we want churches to be places where people can be their whole selves and be welcomed? Don’t we want more genuine people in the world?

These kinds of developments remind me that as a species we are still growing, maturing, evolving. It’s exasperating! And it makes me hopeful for the future.

The gathering begins at lunch today. Join the conversation.

Noah as Metaphor

by Q. Gerald Roseberry

When I was a kid growing up in Georgia, in a small village outside Atlanta, my parents were leaders in a small fundamentalist congregation. All six of us kids attended the Sunday School and Vacation Bible School. One of the things I enjoyed most about those early educational experiences was the teachers’ use of “flannel graph” art as a teaching aid in illuminating the Bible stories. Pictures of people and significant objects in the story backed with flannel adhered to a lightweight board covered with flannel which helped make the story come to life.

One of the stories I loved was “Noah and the Flood.” So I was fascinated to hear that Hollywood was producing a movie on the subject, and I intended to see it. Unfortunately I was unable to see the movie. Many years ago I stopped believing that the stories were literally true. In my imagination, however, I would like to have a heart-to-heart conversation with Noah. The really big question I would ask Noah is, why did God send such a terrible flood to destroy the people and animals and everything else in the land where you lived? But, of course, my interview with Noah doesn’t go well because we live in such different worlds. Everything is different. They are said to have lived unbelievably long lives, such as Noah’s 950 years. Different times, cultures, languages. Even to talk of faith and beliefs would be a difficult at best.

Setting aside a preoccupation with all the species of animals, birds, and insects being rounded up and adequately housed as totally impossible, I am left with the most important question of all: Why did God send such a terrible flood to totally destroy people, animals, and everything in the land were Noah lived? The ancient text gives the explanation:

God saw that human evil was out of control. People thought evil, imagined evil, evil, evil from morning to night. God was sorry that he had made the human race. . .it broke his heart. God said, “I’ll get rid of my ruined creation, make a clean sweep: people, animals, snakes, bugs and birds—the works.” – Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, chapters 6-7.

So what can we learn from Noah’s story? One possible lesson is that when human beings forget their origin in God’s creation, neglect their responsible stewardship of the earth, God’s gift, and forsake their due care for one another, then bad consequences follow. Pope Francis, a scientist himself, has caught the attention of the world, and one thing he said reverberates in our thoughts: “Destroy the earth, and the earth will destroy us.” In his encyclical, On Care for Our Common Home, Laudato Si, he referred to “integral ecology” which means that everything on earth is connected, and implies that our actions can and do upset the delicate balance of our environment, disrupting the intricate web of life supporting everything existing on earth.

The Psalmist says in Psalm 24, “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it, the world and those who dwell therein. For it was He who founded it upon the seas and planted it firm upon the waters beneath.” Poetic to be sure, but it points to our problem: we have forgotten that earth is not ours to do with as we please. We mortals hold the earth in trust for future generations. In one way or another, we have participated in bringing the earth to the point of rebelling and crying out against the harmful effects of hubris and technology which destroy human community, and disrupt, poison, and pollute the oceans, our atmosphere, water, and soil. This, I venture to say, is the world-destroying “evil” which has brought us to this critical point in human history.

The nations of the world, their leaders and representatives, will meet in early December in Paris to make commitments to reduce and eliminate greenhouse gases from their combustible energy systems. Solutions are at hand. We need to find the political will and the moral courage to apply them. Obviously, the change cannot be overnight, but we must act now with all deliberate speed in ways that enable the essential transitional changes to begin and continue without undue obstruction. That meeting of the nations should be in the prayers of every community of faith and in the hearts of all believers, beginning now and continuing until a just and healing solution is reached.